The Brearley School at 610 East 83rd Street, one of the city's leading private schools for girls, has acquired three low-rise buildings at 70-74 East End Avenue on the corner at 83rd Street, according to an article yesterday at therealdeal.com by Amy Tennery.

The purchase was mentioned in a school letter sent to alumnae Monday night, the article said, adding that the acquisition was made for "an unidentified sum," but adding that "previous owner East End Acquisition LLC filed a deed on the properties for a combined $52.5 million in December 2005, according to city documents."

The school, which overlooks the East River a block south of Carl Schurz Park, had announced previously that it was acquiring part of the apartment building across 83rd Street at 85 East End Avenue, but the article said that that "contract fell through for unknown reasons in March."

The article said that Stephanie Hull, the head of the school, had said in a statement that the school had spend a decade looking for "a suitable location in our neighborhood" for "additional teaching space."

Tara Kelly, executive director of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, told threaldeal.com that her organization hopes Brearley "sensitively reuses these 19th century buildings" and Ms. Hull was quoted as stated that "While there are many details to be worked out, all of our actions will reflect our commitment to move forward in a manner that respects all of our neighbors and minimizes any disruption to the surrounding community."

The Brearley facility, erected in 1928, is more somber-looking than the cheery, Georgian-style design of the Chapin School only a few steps away on the northwest corner of East End Avenue and 84th Street, but Brearley, tucked away on a sidestreet, is one of the city's few high-rise schools. Its dark-brown-brick structure was designed by Benjamin Wistar Morris, the architect of the great, former Cunard Building at 25 Broadway, whose great hall is one of New York's most fabulous and awesome interiors.

In his superb book, "New York Streetscapes, Tales of Manhattan's Significant Buildings and Landmarks," Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2003, Christopher Gray devotes a chapter to the school and notes that "this facade mixes factory modernism with trim, elegant detailing, like ornamental pilasters of serrated brick," adding that "This was the type of styling that was remaking the face of Europe. It seemed revolutionary at the time when the traditional styles still reigned supreme in the United States."

"The same spare modernism was carried out on the interior, where the walls were sand-finished plaster and the concrete beams and cork and brick walls of the gym carry the same decorative value as the slight Art Deco of the auditorium. Although the school has been indifferent to its building over the last several decades, it is still an architectural treat, inside and out," Mr. Gray continued.

The school was founded by Samuel Brearley Jr., in 1884 and opened in a brownstone at 6 East 45th Street. Mr. Brearley died in 1886 and two years later the school's parents commissioned Henry Rutgers Marshall to design a new school to house its growing student body. The new structure, which opened in 1891, at 17 West 44th Street was an impressive Medieval-style structure with an arched entrance. In 1913, the school moved again and built a 10-story neo-Georgian structure on the southeast corner of Park Avenue and 61st Street.

In 1941, the John H. Finley Walk was opened extending the esplanade of Carl Schurz Park a few blocks to the south and providing an overpass extension to the Brearley School.