We want to show by this building, with its towering walls and fair proportions,that the dignity of the school is rising in the world. . . . We believe that the existence of our government depends on the education of the people. . . We want the people, as they pass back and forth to ask what public building this is. We want them to understand that this is a noble institution of learning, and that people have wisely expended their money in erecting schoolhouses in preference to erecting jails. . . . It has been the wish of the school officers to make in such an institution that all classes might be induced to send their children to it; they wished to draw the rich as well as the poor within it, so they erected a structure of which the son of a wealthy man need not be ashamed, and that the son of a poor man may feel proud to enter. Here the both are placed on a perfect equality, and the road up the hill of fame is as broad to the humblest child of our ward as it is to the most favored son of the wealthiest citizen.

From the dedication of New York City’s Ward School 4
April 23, 1856