Built 1900 Opened 1900 Added to NRHP 25 January 1973 | NRHP Reference # 73001188 Area 15 ha | |
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Location NY 438 on Cattaraugus Reservation, Irving, New York Architectural style Colonial Revival architecture Similar Carlisle Indian Industrial, Barclays Center, Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Hotel Pennsylvania, Madison Square Garden | ||
Thomas Indian School, also known as the Thomas Asylum of Orphan and Destitute Indian Children, is an historic school and national historic district located near Irving at the Cattaraugus Indian Reservation in Erie County, New York. The complex was built in about 1900 by New York State as a self-supporting campus. Designed by the New York City firm Barney and Chapman, the campus contains the red brick Georgian Revival style main buildings and a multitude of farm and vocational buildings.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
Numerous works address the stories of former residents of Native American boarding schools in Western New York and Canada, such as Thomas Indian School, Mohawk Institute Residential School (also known as Mohawk Manual Labour School and Mush Hole Indian Residential School) in Brantford, Southern Ontario, Haudenosaunee boarding school, and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania; the impact of those and similar schools on their communities; and community efforts to overcome those impacts. Examples include: the film Unseen Tears: A Documentary on Boarding School Survivors, Ronald James Douglas' graduate thesis titled Documenting ethnic cleansing in North America: Creating Unseen Tears, and the Legacy of Hope Foundation's online media collection: "Where are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools".