24 new york | july 8–21, 2019
into paper, explored textures, and danced the Wiggle Worm. The
atmosphere had often been compared to a “warm bubble bath,” and
while this was lovely, there were some who felt the school could turn
up the temperature a notch. The ideal director, the board noted in
its advertisement, would “embrace our traditions” while being
“informed and guided by current research regarding best practice
in the 21st century.”
After all, the world wasn’t a warm bubble bath.THE WORLD WAS a simmering, seething cauldron, one that
was only going to get hotter and harder to survive in. If this felt true
in general, it felt especially true to the residents of Brooklyn Heights,
whose small universe had recently gotten a lot more crowded. The
glass towers that sprung up along the waterfront had filled up with
wealthy families that seemed just as intent on getting their 4-year-
olds into St. Ann’s or Packer Collegiate, one of the two private schools
traditionally favored by Brooklynites with $40,000-plus a year to
spend on setting their children on The Correct Path. On a clear day,
looking out at the towers along the East River, you could practically
see their tiny handprints smeared on the glass: the competition.
Now, even the wait-list for Grace Church started practically in
utero, and though the school had long been considered a feeder to
local private schools, this privilege, like all others, seemed in jeop-
ardy. Even if children were lucky enough to land a spot in Grace’s
coveted morning sessions, it was no longer a guarantee of future
success. “You’ve got all of Dumbo, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Cobble
Hill, and parts of Manhattan vying for the same number of spots
there always was,” said one Grace parent. “The intensity is fierce.”
Of the ten candidates the search committee interviewed for the
director position, Amy Morgano seemed like she best understood
the predicament the parents were facing. As the founding director
of Kaplan Nursery School, an upstart preschool overseen by the Sut-
ton Place Synagogue, Morgano had done an impressive job of get-
ting the students into competitive institutions like Dalton, Chapin,
and Spence. She had attended the prestigious Bank Street College
of Education, where she’d done a specialization in child and parent
development, and spoke wisely about the “whole child” philosophy.
Perhaps best of all, no one could accuse the board of trying to Man-
hattanize Grace because Morgano was from Brooklyn.From the 19th-century sea captains with their “great broods of
future bankers and fashionable brides,” as Truman Capote put it in
his famous essay “A House on the Heights,” to the “urban, ambitious
young couples” that came after, the neighborhood has always drawn
families. “It’s a good place to raise children,” as Capote said.
Capote, of course, didn’t have children, though if he had, they
would likely have attended the Grace Church School on Hicks Street
and Grace Court. Adjacent to the Episcopal church, a Richard
Upjohn–designed neo-Gothic structure, it contains what is known
as “the oldest preschool in Brooklyn.” And until recently, for as long
as anyone in the neighborhood could remember, the school was run
by Hope Prosky, who was something of an original fixture herself.
Over the course of her 37-year tenure, Prosky helped generations of
children to “expand the cocoon of the little world of home to include
and trust in the community.” So familial was the environment that
a good number of its graduates returned years later with their own
broods so they could partake in the same whimsical traditions they
had as kids: the Japanese Kite festival, the annual Holiday Sing. Of
course, New York being New York, many families also left, making
room for new families, who paid ever-higher prices for the same
handful of properties in the Heights. Even as the bankers got more
bankery and the wives got more fashionable, the neighborhood,
insulated by its status as a historic district, was unable to grow up,
only out, and so its core remained much the same. This Peter Pan
quality was part of its charm. Institutions like Grace Church School,
where Prosky and her fellow teachers, who played “Oh! Susanna”
on guitars and dressed up as Pilgrims every year on Thanksgiving,
were exemplars of the kind of authenticity Manhattanites sought in
moving to Brooklyn. “It was this sweet neighborhood school with
this kind of loosey-goosey atmosphere,” recalls one transplant.
Then one morning in 2015, one of the school’s 3-year-old charges
walked several blocks to her home, surprising her parents. Loosey-
goosey started to seem like a liability.
Not long after, Prosky announced her retirement, and the rector
of the church, which oversees the school, met with the Grace Church
School Advisory Board, a volunteer body made up of parents and
members of the church. They formed a search committee to find a
replacement. Under Prosky, Grace Church had functioned as a “glo-
rified playgroup,” as one parent put it. The children pressed leaveshen you buy a home in Brooklyn Heights,
you aren’t just purchasing real estate. The stately town-
homes and converted carriage houses, with their window
boxes of Algerian ivy winking over splendidly preserved
original details—the Grecian columns, the soaring Roman-
esque windows offering a glimpse of curated furniture—
connote a certain level of not just wealth and taste but
respectability. These are houses not just for people who
have money, but people who have values.