In the 1880s and 1890s the Children’s Aid Society built a dozen distinctive Victorian Gothic lodging houses and vocational schools, advancing its mission of rescuing young people from the evils of 19th-century New York. All were on the same model, red-brick Victorians with towers and gables, and six remain.

Of those, the 1892 Sullivan Street Industrial School, at 219 Sullivan Street, may have just barely escaped demolition. A new owner has promised to redevelop the site in a way that “reflects the property’s historic nature.” What that is remains to be seen.

The Children’s Aid Society was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace, a Protestant minister still in his 20s who had decided that the street, not the church, was where he would make his mark. Brace was most concerned about the homeless bootblacks, newsboys and girls who lived by their wits and were regarded as a threat to public order. His memoir, published in 1872, was titled “The Dangerous Classes of New York and Twenty Years’ Work Among Them.”