Poly Prep owns six homes surrounding the Poly campuses, with each serving essential and unique purposes to the inner functions of the school by providing residences, office space, event space and more. According to Monique Lopez, Chief Financial and Operations Officer, further decisions to come involving these spaces are undecided and remain dependent on plans for Poly’s future that the Poly community and administrators are working closely on.
“We have all these assets, and [these homes are] a liquid asset,” Lopez explained. “They’re not something that we could easily get cash out of, but it diversifies the school’s portfolio,” making Poly unique compared to many other New York City Schools.
The first of the five homes has remained a part of Poly’s property since the Poly community first relocated to the Dyker Heights campus in 1917, according to the alumni-written novel titled “Far Down On The Heights Called Dyker.” This home, called the engineer’s house, accommodated the superintendent of the school, who acted as a caretaker of the Poly campus.
Then in 1959, the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge began construction and various roads were expanded to “add to the city’s vision for creating a connected network of highways,” according to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation — one of these streets being 92nd Street, which lies on the edge of Poly’s campus. Due to the street’s expansion, “Poly lost 50 feet [of] frontage, the corner gate and the engineer’s house,” according to a 2024 article from The Polygon.
To make up for the loss, the engineer’s house was later built within Poly’s updated bounds and still stands today just off Poly’s 92nd Street entrance.
Before 2024, the house continued to be used as a residential space, housing “the caretaker of Poly’s property… who would keep track of the grounds,” Carol Bongiorni, Payroll and Benefits Administrator, explained. As Emily Gardiner, Upper School Deans Department Chair; Director of College Guidance, put it, those who lived in on-campus housing “metaphorically turned off the lights at the end of each day.”
Later, around 2007, Poly acquired a home on Battery Avenue in Dyker Heights which Poly’s building engineer, Gaudencio Andrade, would move into — and currently continues to reside in. Andrade oversees the Poly campus, dealing with daily maintenance of the Poly campus and supervises plumbing, electricity, campus installations and much more, according to the Poly Prep website.
Therefore, with the campus caretaker residing elsewhere, the engineer’s house began to serve as residences for staff that had newly joined the Poly community as a sort of benefit-package. Former Head of Athletics, Richard Corso, was the home’s final resident, who left Poly in 2024.
Once the home was empty, administrators realized that the engineer’s house would be a perfect space to house the business offices. This realization came after a years-long process of office relocation and layout changes across Poly’s campus.
In 2022, demand for classroom spaces increased, resulting in many offices, like the business offices, being moved and combined with other departments while their previous office spaces became classrooms, according to an article from The Polygon. These new office spaces soon became crowded, inspiring administrators to purchase 261 Battery Ave. in Dyker Heights in order to “maximize the school’s use of available spaces while also maintaining and, in some cases, improving their functionality,” a 2022 article from The Polygon wrote, and the house became the location for the business and operation’s offices, which, before then, had been on the top floor of the Alumni Building, where the learning center now is.
After the purchase of 261 Battery Ave., Audrius Barzdukas, former Head of School, told the Polygon of his plan to continue buying up neighboring properties. “Any time we can get continuous real estate, we should [buy it],” Barzdukas said in an interview with The Polygon in 2022. “We’re never going to sell this, and if we could grow Poly by buying properties next to ours, we should.”
The plan for these theoretical homes, according to Sarah Bates, Head of Upper School, was to turn them into “office spaces, personal residences for upper admin as part of a benefits package or potentially renovated, depending on zoning, to be able to be used for student purposes,” such as classrooms and meeting spaces. But, this plan is no longer in action, according to Lopez, and was never acted upon besides with the purchase of 261 Battery Ave.
Furthermore, despite the addition of 261 Battery Ave., Bates noted “we’re busting at the seams in terms of space,” so once the superintendent’s house became free, renovations began on the home to make it fit for the business offices, allowing 261 Battery Ave. to remain solely an additional office space for Poly’s Human Resources (HR) department, which currently remains located in the home.
“Even though we were sort-of closer to the main building [in the Battery Avenue house], because it was right behind the theater, we felt very disconnected from the school,” Bongiorni explained. “Now that we’re back on campus, even though it takes longer for people to walk here, we feel that we’re more connected to the campus again, and there is more space…it’s lighter and brighter… it just works out a lot better.”
In addition to these houses, Poly also owns what is called the Head of School’s house. This house is a benefit included in the role of Head of School — an addition not uncommon for the heads of private schools, according to Bates. The Head of School’s house previously resided in Cobble Hill Brooklyn but, in 2019, 572 First St. in Park Slope, which lies directly next to the Lower School campus, was acquired, replacing the home in Cobble Hill. The Cobble Hill home was then sold.
This change, according to Lopez, was strategic as “in the same way we have someone here 24/7 that could respond to anything on Dyker’s campus [referring to Andrade], we need someone at the Lower School who has the authority to respond to any type of emergency within close proximity,” that person now being Noni Thomas-López, Head of School, who uses this house as her primary home.
The Head of School’s home, specifically the parlor level, is also used for “any Poly events we deem appropriate,” Lopez explained in an email. Lopez also added that all events and gatherings held there must be Poly-related.
Additionally, in 2019, Poly acquired 227 Battery Ave. in Dyker Heights. This home “was lived in by the former Head of Advancement, [Peggy Cook], [and] was used as a temporary residence for the current Head of School, and is currently used for out of town guests and on site meetings,” according to an email from Matt Stelluto, Head of Facilities Management & Capital Projects.
Additionally, in 2023, 53 Prospect Park West, the building directly neighboring Poly’s Lower School campus was acquired, which had served as the home for the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture (BSEC) since 1947. This house, according a 2024 article from The Polygon, is a “four-story Neo-Jacobean building that ‘features abundant interior space, the largest private garden in Brooklyn and stunning original Gilded Age architecture.’”
As of right now, the building is not being used. When asked about plans for usage of this building, Lopez stated, “We have a lot of ideas. There’s people who have speculated, but there is nothing concrete as of yet.”
In 2017, administrators expressed interest in buying the property directing neighboring Poly, 670 92nd St. in Dyker Heights, according to Bongiorni. This plan ended up falling through and the property was sold to the Greek School of Plato which continues to reside there now.
In response to the question of buying additional homes, Lopez said, “I don’t rule it out,” but Poly has not formulated any specific plans to buy more homes, nor sell the ones they already own. But, Lopez noted, should more houses be purchased, “I do not foresee [Poly] buying homes for the pure use of residential accommodations,” and, depending on the type of home, she sees them being used for “potential offices, perhaps for administration or for gathering spaces for people… to convene and have community.”
Similarly, Bates explained, “we can use [the homes] as offices for adults, but if we wanted to host classes in one of those, I think we run into some really significant challenges with our insurance… [and] legal restrictions with what those spaces are zoned for.” Therefore, most likely these homes, and potential additional homes, will not be used for student purposes.
Additionally, Lopez noted, “I don’t foresee these properties being a disadvantage outside of maintenance, because they were bought at the time that they were not an overextension of capital.”
Furthermore, other private schools, like Saint Ann’s School or The Packer Collegiate Institute, also own residential homes that have been renovated for other purposes. But, most schools that own homes have urban campuses with limited space, unlike Poly’s Middle and Upper School campus which can be called a campus-school, due to its sprawling grounds. Therefore, Poly remains unique in the sense that it is one of the few schools with an already-large campus that has sought to buy further capital.
“I think we, as a community and as a leadership team, need to create a vision and a mission around both the properties and where we want to go and who we want to be,” Lopez explained. This vision will then shape further plans for the homes Poly owns, as well as other facets of Poly.
“These homes are really kind of cool,” Lopez said. “It’s a little quirky, but it’s kind of cool to have them available to us… There’s so much room for opportunity here at Poly. And that’s what we’re doing, right? We’re creating a plan for the future.” She continued, “And there’s a lot of different ways that these spaces can play a role in how we execute and provide for the needs of the students, the families and the school as a whole. So long winded way of saying, I think the homes will play a role in Poly’s future. I think it’ll be a fun, exciting role and more to come. Stay tuned.”
