The Wadleigh High School for Girls, which was established by the NYC Board of Education in 1897, and which moved into its new building in Harlem in September 1902, was the first public high school for girls in New York City.At the time, public secondary education for girls was considered highly novel and perhaps a bit scandalous. Newspapers considered it newsworthy enough to devote many stories to describing classroom scenes of girls receiving “higher” education.