recitation rooms on each floor, but as primary as well as grammar
    children attend each department, much difficulty and confusion
    arises from the want of class room for the respective studies. 
    The building covers only part of the lot, and as it is, the best
    attended and among the best taught of the colored schools, a
    new and ample school building, erected in this place, would
    prove a great attraction, and could be amply filled by children.

b.  Schoolhouse No. 2, erected in Laurens street more than twenty years ago for colored children by the Public School Society, is in one of the lowest and filthiest neighborhoods, and hence, although it has competent teachers in the male and female departments, and a separate primary department, the attendance has always been slender, and will be until the school is removed to a neighborhood where children may be sent without danger to their morals.

c.  School No. 3, for colored children, in Yorkville, is an old building, is well attended, and deserves, in connection with Schoolhouse No. 4, in Harlem, a new building midway between the present localities.

d.  Schoolhouse No. 5, for colored children, is an old building, leased at No. 19 Thomas street, a most degraded neighborhood, full of filth and vice; yet the attendance on this school, and the excellence of its teachers, earn for it the need of a new site and new building.

e.  Schoolhouse No. 6, for colored children, is in Broadway, near 37th street, in a dwelling house leased and fitted up for a school, in which there is always four feet of water in the cellar.  The attendance good.  Some of the school officers have repeatedly promised a new building.

f.  Primary school for colored children, No. 1, is in the basement of a church on 15th street, near 7th avenue, in a good location, but premises too small for the attendance; no recitation rooms, and is perforce both primary and grammar school, to the injury of the progress of all.

g.  Primary schools for colored children, No. 2 and 3, are in the rear of church, in 2d street, near 6th avenue; the rooms are dark and cheerless, and without the needful facilities of sufficient recitation rooms, etc.

From a comparison of the schoolhouses with the splendid, almost palatial edifices, with manifold comforts, conveniences and elegancies which make up the schoolhouses for white children in the city of New York, it is evident that the colored children are painfully neglected and positively degraded.  Pent up in filthy neighborhoods, in old and dilapidated buildings, they are held down to low associations and gloomy surroundings.

Yet Mr. Superintendent Kiddle, at a general examination of colored schools held in July last (for silver medals awarded by the society now addressing your honorable body) declared the reading and spelling equal to that of any schools in the city.