Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School

Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School was a private, Roman Catholic high school in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. Open from 1962 through 2014, it closed following a period of steeply falling enrollment and with an estimated $4 million in outstanding debt. Now called the Bishop Ford Educational Complex, the building is used by New York City Department of Education to house a pre-kindergarten school and two middle schools. History Bishop Ford Central Catholic High School was established in 1962 by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn. It was named after Bishop Francis Xavier Ford, a Brooklyn native and Maryknoll missionary who was martyred in China in 1952. It was decorated in a Chinese-themed style, with a large red pagoda on its roof, signs with letters in a font meant to suggest Chinese characters, and a red-and-gold tiled lobby with light fixtures shaped like pagodas. The school was built on the site of the former 9th Avenue bus and trolley depot, used until 1956 for trolleys, and for buses until 1959 following a fire, with bus routes moved to the 5th Avenue (today's Jackie Gleason Depot) & Ulmer Park Depots.