The Tower in the Park, Urban Renewal, and the Middle Class in New York City

undergrad thesis

the tower in the park, urban renewal, and the middle class in new york city: examined through stuyvesant town, kips bay plaza, and the west village houses by ivan gilkes

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TABLE OF CONTENTS introduction p4 how the tower came to be p6 laws of the tower p7 stuyvesant town p10 kips bay plaza p14 west village houses p18 conclusion p22 endnotes, bibliography, photo credits p56

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undergraduate thesis

The Tower in the Park, Urban Renewal, and the Middle Class in New York City: Examined through Stuyvesant Town, Kips Bay Plaza, and the West Village Houses Introduction

Today New York City is home to an assortment of various urban systems. It has been an experimentation ground for the practice of different theories for the United States. Post-war urbanism, and specifically the theory of the “tower in the park,” greatly affects the city today. In order to build in the city center, New York had to engage in a comprehensive clearance of buildings considered out of date. Thus New York City experienced the removal of many of its buildings, and their replacement with new “tower in the park” developments. Most of these developments were built to serve housing. In an effort to retain a middle class that was rapidly moving to the suburbs, the city embarked on a robust plan, through the use of city, state, and federal mechanisms, to build middle class housing using this popular theory. Today, New York City’s housing landscape is shaped by these post-war building efforts.

This paper will determine why the “tower in the park” was determined to be unsuitable for middle-income redevelopment in New York City. It will examine three representative housing plans, Stuyvesant Town, Kips Bay Plaza, and West Village Houses. These will show the shift from “tower in the park”-style developments to alternatives over the course of twenty-five years. By looking at the laws, architectural trends, developments, and criticisms that formed these three projects, this paper will outline the narrative of the decline of the “tower in the park” and urban renewal, and assess the degree to which they served the middle class of New York City.

Stuyvesant Town was a natural choice to initiate discussion of the “tower in the park” model in New York City. It was the first development to effectively combine urban renewal and a “tower in the park” approach within the heart of the city.

Stuyvesant Town was the main training ground for Robert Moses, who went on to facilitate most of the city’s urban renewal schemes through his role as housing coordinator for Title I of the Housing Act of 1949. At the time of its completion, Stuyvesant Town was seen as the most modern development in New York City, and set the mold for redevelopment schemes to follow.

Kips Bay Plaza differs from the typical, for the time, “tower in the park” development, and represents the start of the erosion of Stuyvesant Town’s model. By the time of its renewed planning in 1957, many of the older redevelopment schemes were becoming stigmatized because of their banality. This is due, possibly, to the fact that Stuyvesant Town’s mold not only affected middle-income housing, but also low-income housing so that they were almost indistinguishable on the surface. Kips Bay Plaza represents the beginning of a realization that the formula for redevelopment, which arose primarily due to the financial strictness of laws guiding urban redevelopment, was perhaps too tight. Even further, Kips Bay Plaza will show that there was a rising dissatisfaction with urban renewal and tower in the park developments in general.

West Village Houses

Kips Bay Plaza

Stuyvesant Town

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undergraduate thesis

6 The West Village Houses will be the last redevelopment scheme examined. Despite not being a “tower in the park” program, many of the choices made in the creation of the West Village Houses are direct rejections of “tower in the park” formulas created and implemented prior to its construction. By looking at these rejections, one will be able to see the main dissatisfactions with “tower in the park” urban renewal in New York City. Additionally the history of the West Village Houses reveals New York City’s massive bureaucracy and hurdles that stand in the way of the completion of government-funded projects. This problem justified arguments to hand-over redevelopment to private firms or community interest groups in the 80s. Following the perceived failures of “tower in the park” renewal, housing would be provided through the use of subsidies and allowances rather than direct government funding. The West Village Houses mark the end of an era of government funded mass rebuilding and the beginning of a new type of piecemeal private redevelopment and housing construction in New York City.

How the “tower in the park” came to be

After World War II US cities needed housing. With the end of the war and rising standards of living, cities had a depressed housing supply and a shortage of available units, aggravated by the return of citizens. “The city housing stock was bursting at the seams, with 165,400 families living in cramped with their in-laws, waiting to move into new apartments and houses as soon as they could be built.”1 Additionally city slums were in desperate need of repair.2 Long before WWII, urbanists and housing reformers as varied as Frederick Law Olmsted, Jacob Riis, Lewis Mumford, and Le Corbusier had agreed on one thing: the traditional pattern of street-oriented, gridiron urbanism created unhealthy living conditions.3 With a need for greater densities, tall residential buildings were becoming more common, and people grew accustomed to tower living. At the same time, the theoretical, ideal model taken up by many designers and planners to solve the city’s problems was the “tower and slab in the park,” first delineated by Auguste Perret and made popular by Le Corbusier in his book La Ville contemporaine of 1922 and later La Ville radieuse of 1933. This theory was then adopted by other modernist architects of the time.4 Le Corbusier’s theory was based on the paradox that decongestion of the city could occur by increasing the density of buildings, while at the same time increasing the amount of open space in between buildings. Le Corbusier’s proposal could only be carried out through the demolition of existing buildings in order to clear the city’s center.

Additionally Corbusier put great emphasis on technology’s role in the rebuilding of the city: mass production was key for living en masse.5 The center of Le Corbusier’s city was based on tall skyscrapers intended specifically for business.6 The residents of his city were to live segregated by income: the luxury residences were to be blocks with set-backs Le Corbusier’s Modern City

7 at 120 inhabitants per acre with 15 per cent ground coverage.

Middle-income residents were to live in residential blocks based on a cellular system with 52 per cent ground coverage.7 Low-income residents were to live in garden cities, outside of the central city and in closer proximity to the industrial city.8 Peter Hall writes, “The core of the Contemporary City, clearly, was a middleclass sort of place,” and it is no coincidence that Corbusier’s plan for new cities was used most rigorously (and possibly successfully) in the creation of middle-class housing in the United States and elsewhere.9

East Village Houses

For many, Le Corbusier’s plan was too extreme, but his towers found expression in urban renewal in New York after World War II. As the model spread, towers entered the United States. “The first American proposal, along the lines of [Walter] Gropius’s slab blocks, was made by the firm of Howe and Lescaze between 1931 and 1932 for the Chrystie-Forsythe Street housing project on New York’s Lower East Side.”10 Later, the first high-rise-tower project built in New York City was the East River Houses in Harlem, completed in 1941.11 Slowly the “tower in the park” became the dominant model for urban renewal and redevelopment in the United States as a result of its popularity amongst planners and the way it was written into law.

Laws of urban renewal and the tower

Several laws played an important role in the creation and proliferation of tower in the park schemes in New York City. The first was the Redevelopment Companies Law, which was specific to Stuyvesant Town. In 1942 New York State created the Hampton-Mitchell Redevelopment Companies Law, shortened as the Redevelopment Companies Law. The law’s goal was to attract private enterprise to invest in urban renewal schemes, however its first manifestation was not beneficial enough to companies to make them want to invest. Thus, the state government revised it in 1943. Speculation identified insurance company Metropolitan Life as the unknown company that put pressure on the government to revise the law.12 The resulting Redevelopment Companies Law set out three conditions for a company interested in redevelopment: First, the city would seize the land that a company interested in, deem it blighted and condemn it. The cleared land would then be sold to that company at a reduced price and they could redevelop it as they saw fit. Then the city gave the company tax exemptions on the property for 25 years. After completion of the redevelopment, they would receive a profit limited to 6 percent annually on its total capital investment for the first 25 years.13

undergraduate thesis

8 The Redevelopment Companies Law is inextricably linked to the development of Stuyvesant Town, whose history of conception and construction will follow.

The law set the tone for New York City’s urban renewal plans. Robert Moses’ experience gained through the creation of this law became instrumental in his redevelopment schemes as the head of the City Planning Commission and Slum Clearance Committee. This second committee was created as a result of the Housing Act of 1949.

The Housing Act of 1949 was instrumental in the creation of “tower in the park” housing in New York City. The act was created specifically to make housing, in the city and suburbs, more affordable for the growing middle class. It did this through the combination of government subsidies, loans, and direct finance.14 The act was often called an “omnibus act” due to the sweeping way it changed the government’s role in housing; the Housing Act of 1949 involved the federal government more in the provision of housing than had previous laws.15 Title I, the part of the act most pertinent to cities, was created to prevent the spread of blight and slums and to foster redevelopment. It was the part of the act that was responsible for the proliferation of the “tower in the park” in New York City. Through partnerships between local public agencies and private enterprise, Title I allowed the use of federal loans, grants, and special powers given to the person named the Administrator of the redevelopment project in each city.16 It was the responsibility of the public agency to undertake “the assembly, clearance, preparation, and sale or lease of land for redevelopment.”17 Once sold or leased, the land would be redeveloped by a private company per the requirements set out in the redevelopment plan created by the local authority.18 The plan had to conform to a general citywide goal for development.19 Title I was a chance for many cities to start anew: “Create a tabula rasa, enlarge the dimension of the grid by merging several blocks into one, and replace street walls with freestanding towers on superblocks. This reform recipe had been promoted by modern architects since the 1920s and ultimately was rendered official doctrine by Title I.”20 Title I was essential for the assemblage of the land that would then become the sites of these new developments.

In order for an area to be termed blighted under Title I’s legislation it had to have buildings with varying levels of building or environmental deficiencies: “The six building deficiencies are: defects severe enough to warrant razing; defects not correctable by normal maintenance; minor defects that mean the buildings downgrade the area; inadequate construction or alterations; inadequate or unsafe plumbing, heating or electrical facilities, and ‘other equally significant’ deficiencies….

The eight environmental deficiencies are: ‘detrimental land uses or conditions, such as incompatible uses, structures in mixed use, or adverse influences from noise, smoke or fumes’; overcrowding of structures on the land, excessive density, conversions to incompatible uses such as rooming houses among family dwellings, obsolete building types, deficient streets, inadequate public utilities, and; other equally significant’ deficiencies.” 21

These criteria sought to define sites where the city could eliminate what the government considered to be substandard buildings or dangerous environments.

Once the land was deemed blighted through the evaluation of these conditions, the city agency would purchase the land using a federally granted short-term loan.

After clearance, the land was sold to a private developer at a price reduced by up to two-thirds. The remaining balance was paid for by the city and the Housing & Home Finance Agency. The city also had the option of leasing the land that it purchased. Additionally, if a resident population existed within the blighted

9 area, the redevelopment plan could not begin until they were all relocated.22 If the redevelopment plan was to be residential, which many were, the housing built was required to have rents that were “20 per cent below the lowest figure for which private enterprise can provide decent housing in new or old quarters.”23 To make up for the reduction in price, the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) provided loan assistance. But with this assistance, the development was subject to the FHA’s design review and regulation of apartment elements.24 This way the housing built provided housing to people who could not afford market rate housing but income put them out of the range of low-income housing as well. Despite this stipulation rents could still become much higher than a middle-income family could afford.25 Many cities had problems dealing with the new legislation set up by Title I. Cities created redevelopment plans, cleared and prepared land to only be faced by the fact that they could not find a private company to buy and develop the land already cleared at great expense.26 This was where Robert Moses came in and streamlined the process. Due to the fact that Title I bears many similarities to the Redevelopment Companies Law, Moses was able to use his experience with Stuyvesant Town to devise a plan in which he secured a private developer before relocating the tenants and razing the land. The company would then be responsible for the relocation of the working-class tenants in association with the city (usually aided by the opening of new NYCHA public housing complexes).27 Because a private company was also involved with the creation of the redevelopment plan from the beginning, there were no stipulations with which they could disagree.28 Moses completed seventeen Title I projects: “thus he cleared large sections of the city… and replaced them with large orderly complexes in the ‘towers-in-a-park’ style that came directly or indirectly from Le Corbusier’s Plan Voisin.”29 Title I was revised in 1954 to shift the focus from urban redevelopment to urban renewal; meaning that the city would try to improve areas that would not be acquired in slum clearance by improving a neighborhood through the building of a new development or providing assistance in a piecemeal way, as opposed to focusing on clearance.30 This was in line with the developing theory of spot renewal and infill that was gaining popularity and also being incorporated into later revisions of Title I in 1964.31 Despite the fact that Title I made it easier to assemble and clear land for new developments, the resulting developments often had rents that were too expensive to serve the needs of New York City’s middle-income population. Cities throughout the United States were losing their middle class to the more affordable suburbs.

To prevent this the city needed a more beneficial law to build affordable housing.

In New York, this resulted in the creation of the Limited Profit Housing Companies Law, more popularly known as the Mitchell-Lama Law. The law “was designed to promote construction of urban middle-income housing, which neither the public housing program or unsubsidized private developers were producing.”32 It financed up to 95 per cent of the building costs and then put restrictions on the income of its residents.33 The law required that “a family’s “probable aggregate annual income” at the time of admission and during the period of occupancy must not exceed six times the annual rent if there are three or fewer members, and seven times the annual rent if there are four or more persons.”34 By its second decade, the Mitchell-Lama program had begun to influence “tower in the park” design orthodoxy, becoming orientated toward middle-income design standards and higher building budgets.35 The Mitchell-Lama law is responsible for the creation of a very large number of apartments in New York City because it was extremely unrestrictive on the design of the buildings that were built with its financing.36

undergraduate thesis

10 These are the main laws that contributed to the proliferation of the tower in the park in Manhattan through urban renewal. First, the Redevelopment Companies Law initiated the idea that cities could partner with private enterprise in order to rebuild. Second, Title I provided a vehicle through which the city could more effectively finance and streamline the redevelopment process.

And last, the Mitchell-Lama Law finally made housing affordable to the city’s middle-income residents because it was only concerned with the future residents’ incomes and not specifics of design.

Stuyvesant Town: the creation of a mold

Stuyvesant Town was the result of the combination of “tower in the park” housing and urban renewal. Thought not the first “tower in the park” construction in New York City, Stuyvesant Town set the precedent for both later developments of this type and much of the city’s future urban renewal schemes.37 Stuyvesant Town was created in order to fill the need of a growing middle class in the city, specifically veterans returning from World War II. Planning of Stuyvesant Town began well before the war ended, although construction did not start till its end.

Its development was part of Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s mission to build housing to create “a safe and useful investment for some of the funds it holds in trust for its policy owners.”38 However, unlike previous developments Met Life built on the outskirts of the city, like Parkchester, Stuyvesant Town was to attract people back into the city while offering the amenities of a suburb-like setting.39 Very early on, Met Life was interested in the site of Stuyvesant Town, bounded

by First Avenue and Avenue D, the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive, 14th Street, and 20th Street, previously called the “Gashouse District.”40 In order to build in the city, Met Life had to collaborate with the city’s government, something it had previously tried to avoid with its other housing developments. This collaboration took form in the help offered by Robert Moses, the then head of the City Planning Commission.41 Robert Moses, a central figure in Stuyvesant Town’s history, was known for his understanding of and ability to navigate through New York City’s complicated layers of bureaucracy.42 The mayor at the time, Fiorello LaGuardia, gave Moses the mission to attract insurance companies to engage in slum clearance and redevelopment.43 With the creation of the Redevelopment Companies Law, Met Life, through Moses, was given a tool with which to effectively finance their new project. Frederick H. Ecker, chairman of the board of Met Life, was approached by Moses and expressed serious interest in the current site of Stuyvesant Town, in fact Met Life was the only company interested in utilizing the Redevelopment Companies Law.44 On May 20, 1943 the City Planning Commission approved the plan of Stuyvesant Town by a five to one vote. The sole dissension of Commissioner Lawrence M. Orton, as well as much of the early criticism, contended on the failure of the plan to include a public school in the complex.45 Robert Moses countered this opinion saying that a public school or any other community buildings cannot be included because they would destroy

The Gashou

use District

11 the integrity of the plan; replacements to the lost community buildings could be found elsewhere in the surrounding areas.46 In addition, there was criticism that the plan would create a ‘walled city’ because, as the New York Times wrote, it would “present a solid outside wall, affording the passerby no glimpse of the playgrounds and other open spaces within. The enclosed streets will become private and the project owners can forbid access.”47 There was also critique about the nature of the development: whether or not it was private or public. Eventually, the court upheld the right of Met Life to continue with the project.48 When the plan went to the Board of Estimate it passed eleven to five, however this meeting made clear the next major issue that Stuyvesant Town would face: it barred blacks from living in the private development.49 Despite these issues, construction of Stuyvesant Town continued as planned. The razing of the buildings started April 1, 1945, and construction began shortly later.50 The completed buildings were designed by Irwin Clavin, H.F. Richardson, George Gore, and Andrew Eker, all under Gilmore Clarke who was in charge of Department of Park’s landscape design, an authority headed

by Robert Moses. Stuyvesant Town includes 35 twelve- and thirteen-story buildings, consisting of 8,775 apartments to house 24,000 residents. The buildings were designed as double-crosses and arranged around the central oval of the site like spokes and in quadrangles at the edges of the site.51 The modern apartments include “kitchens, baths and dining alcoves. Gas and electricity were covered by the rents. These ranged from $50 to $70 for apartments with one bedroom, $62 to $87 for those with two, and $76 to $91 for those with three.”52 Metropolitan Life received 7,000 applications for the apartments within a day of the announcement that it would be considering applicants, evidence that this was much needed housing within the city.53 The first two tenants moved in August 2, 1947.54 Stuyvesant Town set precedents for many housing developments to follow, as well as for much of the city’s future urban renewal schemes.55 The choice of the “tower in the park” was mostly driven

by Metropolitan Life’s desire to create a suburb within the city, and their previous experience with this style of housing at other developments outside of the city. The superblock and wide-open spaces created from the small footprints of the towers resulted in the park-like open feel within the development. Met Life helped to reorganize the city by replacing dense and what were considered to be obsolete structures with modern towers and open recreation space.

undergraduate thesis

12 Criticism of Stuyvesant Town continued after its opening. Lewis Mumford was one of the first and loudest critics of its design. In his book From the Ground Up, Mumford called Stuyvesant Town “perhaps the greatest and grimmest” of the contemporary housing developments. Mumford criticized the design, density, and emptiness of the open parkland, and the single-use nature of the development.

Perhaps his harshest criticism was the description of its architectural quality as “prisionlike,” likening it to what he calls “the architecture of the Police State” referencing its similarity in layout to the panopticon. On the other hand, he complimented the developments reduction of traffic and access to light and air.56 Criticism from others was associated with “tower in the park” development in general, but Stuyvesant Town residents felt differently. The people of Stuyvesant Town appreciated it as a viable and affordable alternative to suburban living, popular at the time.57 Additionally, the city’s government and planners appreciated Stuyvesant Town because it provided an effective model for slum-clearance and redevelopment.

Stuyvesant Town demonstrated “that urban renewal schemes are sound in sound cities and can be rentable and profitable investments for the big capital pools when the city assembles the land and clears the site. It also suggested that the proper formula for renewal was not tax exemption for high-income families but assemblage of the land coupled with a write-down in land cost. In this respect, it laid the ground work for the new formula of 1949.”58

Stuyvesant Town’s effect on slum clearance and redevelopment was far reaching because it was the first case in which clearance was carried out successfully. In doing so it became the model for the city’s future renewal schemes built using the Housing Act of 1949.

As time went on residents continued to appreciate Stuyvesant Town. The neighborhood was starting to change; previously it was home mostly to families, but by the 1970s the population of the project was decreasing as children moved away from their homes.59 By 1984 25 per cent of its tenants were elderly.60 By 2000 Stuyvesant Town continued to be an affordable and enjoyable place for middle-income families to live, often as old tenants died and were replaced by young families. Tensions began to develop, however, as older residents were paying extremely low rents for large apartments due to rent regulation.61 These tensions came to a head in July 2006 when Met Life decided to sell Stuyvesant Town after undertaking a significant upgrading project worth $300 million.62 The problem for residents was that when any rent-regulated building is upgraded it could become subject to increased rents. Once the rent has been raised above $2,000 per month the apartment can no longer be regulated. Potential buyers of the complex considered this factor to be of great importance; the ability to convert rent-regulated apartments to market rate, and thus make more money was key.

This was critical to the residents as well, who feared unaffordable rents and the possibility of losing their apartments in the future as a result of improvements.63 The scared, but fierce tenants organized a bid to purchase the development for $4.5 billion, and planned to maintain it as an affordable enclave of rentals and coops. Unfortunately, Tishman Speyer Properties and Blackrock investment bank outbid the tenants with $5.4 billion, making it the largest real estate deal in the history of the United States.64 After the purchase, Tishman Speyer sought to remake Stuyvesant Town, removing the middle-class utopian nature and replacing it with the vision of “a postgradplaypen.”65 The company has encountered problems in its transition from old and new

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Stuyvesant Town (l) vs. New York City Housing Authority’s Lilian Wald Houses

tenant unrest, legal battles as a result of their attempts to make m o r e apartments market rate, and a worsening economy.66 If Tishman Speyer does not default on the property first, the change in character will eventually remake Stuyvesant Town so that it will no longer be home to families and the elderly.67 This transition makes sense, however, in the larger context of the city. Stuyvesant Town has been a hold out of the middle-class against gentrification; now residents are finding gentrifiers moving into their community and enjoying it for the same reasons they did.68 After completion, Stuyvesant Town became the mold in which future redevelopment schemes in New York City were created and was especially influential in the procedure through which New York City carried out Title I developments. Thus, its development encountered many of the problems that were to plague slum clearance and renewal plans of the future: Was it fair that the tenants who lost their homes would not be able to afford the apartments built on the land from which they were removed? Was the nature of the development public or private?

Furthermore, Stuyvesant Town ran into many of the problems upon which future “tower in the park” developments would soon be criticized for: Was the single-use of the nature of the development creating neighborhoods devoid of character and vitality? Were the towers too tall, and thus out of scale with their surrounding neighborhood? What purpose did the seemingly arbitrary placement of the towers in their surroundings play? All these questions were to play out in the decline in “tower in the park” urban renewal, culminating in the completion of the West Village Houses.

Stuyvesant Town was not considered dreary originally, but the proliferation of “tower in the park” developments afterwards caused great dissatisfaction with this and other developments built in this mold. Despite the dissatisfaction, Stuyvesant Town has always been and continues to be a safe and comfortable place to live because it is a middle-income neighborhood popular, in its early to mid life, with families. On the other hand, Stuyvesant Town does lack the vitality of many other New York City neighborhoods as a result of its single use nature and banality compared to more architecturally diverse neighborhoods. Its construction and history anticipated problems of future “tower in the park” and urban renewal schemes because it provided a model for many to follow like the later public housing complexes built by NYCHA and Title I developments.

undergraduate thesis

14 Kips Bay Plaza: the erosion of slum clearance and the “tower in the park” Kips Bay Plaza, also known as Kips Bay Towers, was built as a result of the NYU-Bellevue Title I Redevelopment initiated in 1954. The NYUBellevue Slum Clearance Plan under Title I of the 1949 Housing Act was the twelfth proposed Title I project in New York City.69 Its location is a three-block area bounded by First and Second Avenues and 31st and 33rd Streets. It was intended to be housing for the doctors and nurses of several new nearby hospitals: New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the Veterans Administration Hospital and the NYU Medical Center and School of Medicine, being developed at the time.70 Previous to clearance, the site was occupied by what the city in its Master

Plan of Sections Containing Areas for Clearance, Redevelopment and Low Rent Housing deemed to be “blighted residential structures with an admixture of commercial and retail uses, some in converted structures.”71 The 1950 census determined that 1,497 people lived on the site with more than 1.5 persons per room.

This put the density of the three-block area at “600 persons per net acre of residential use.”72 The goal of the original plan was to replace the substandard and crowded buildings with a residential complex.73

The original plan as developed by S. J. Kessler & Sons in partnership with University Center, Inc. was to include six separate towers interspersed with parking lots, landscaping, and playgrounds.

However, this plan did not go through. Due to unpaid taxes by University Center, Inc., William Zeckendorf’s company Webb & Knapp was hired by Robert Moses to replace University Center, Inc and renamed the project Kips Bay in 1957.74 Zeckendorf was particularly proud of the redesigned plan by I. M. Pei, in-house architect of Webb & Knapp at the time: “Here we created something new in city housing– a sense of place and unity with buildings, gardens, and play areas– and have ever since been proud of what resulted.”75 At Kips Bay, Pei designed two long slabs pulled to opposite edges of the site, creating a dynamic plan. Pei thought this reduction from six towers to two slabs would “help take the project-itis out of it.”76 Between these two long buildings, Pei included a public garden that was to be “both tranquil and urban, protected and permeable.”77 On the other sides of the block, the design included a low-strip shopping center and a

Kips Bay Plaza W

Window Module

15 dormitory for the NYU Medical center. Due to the strips, “the ‘park’ was woven into the urban context. Yet from within, the planting gave the feeling of isolation and respite from the city.”78 The two towers are both 410 feet long and twenty-one stories tall. They contain twenty-seven units per floor, and thus 560 units per building and 1,120 units in the development in total putting the density at about 1000 people per acre.

What is unique about the structure is its poured-in-place modular concrete design that Pei developed while working on this project. “The Kips Bay Plaza structure was developed from a basic 5’-8” window module.” When repeated, in multiples of two or three, it creates rooms with widths of 11’-2” and 16’-8”.79 In addition to forming the façade of the building, this concrete module serves as the load-bearing column of the building, and its width and depth is reduced as the building increases in height at the fifth and tenth floors.80 The gridded nature of the façade does not reflect the spatial divisions of the interior.81 The grid is relieved at the ground floor, terminating in columns spaced at a width of 17’ or three modules.82 The result of this is to give the effect of buildings that have lightly touched down on the earth.

83 During the summer months the lobby can be opened to the garden at the center of the development.

The project’s construction was tense because of financial restrictions imposed on it, as a Title I development. Pei described “It’s a science, not an art, but not a logical science, at that… a strange arithmetic. It took me six months even to begin to understand it.”84 For example, one financial hurdle he overcame was the funding for balconies. According to the FHA guidelines balconies counted as a room, and thus developers were able to receive more funding for their building if they included them. Feeling that balconies were not appropriate for cities, Pei was able to convince the FHA (aided by his position on its advisory board) that the window enclosures acted as balconies and received the additional loans.85 Nonetheless, Kips Bay Plaza was plagued by financial tightness, and thus the development was subject to cost cutting through the choice of cheaper substitutions over specified objects, specifically the ventilation systems.86 Also, the final concrete finish Pei wanted was not given due to the already high price of the concrete. Despite the tough situation, the result of Pei’s work was a pair of architecturally distinct buildings that received much praise for the quality of their design.

undergraduate thesis

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Le Corbusier’s Unité d’Habitation

In 1961 the first slab at Kips Bay Plaza opened, the second opened in 1963 eighteen months after the first. The total cost was $22,000,000 and its rents were $130 per month for an efficiency apartment and $359 per month for a threebedroom apartment, both unaffordable for its intended audience.87 The buildings were praised for being architecturally distinct in comparison to other apartment buildings being built at the time. In a retrospective on Pei, Paul Goldberger wrote about three of Pei’s projects including Kips Bay Plaza: “None of these are among his very best works, but they all show a disciplined intelligence struggling, and succeeding, at the task of forcing design quality into the economic straitjacket of speculative real-estate development. As real-estate projects, all three of these remain head and shoulders above their contemporaries.”88 The final result at Kips Bay Plaza was the creation of two towers, with the principles of the “tower in the park” but not in the mold that was enjoying popularity in New York City as a result of Stuyvesant Town’s success. One could say that Kips Bay Plaza came closer to realizing Corbusier’s thoughts on housing at the time than any other building in New York City. The renovated design strategy of the complex served to set it apart from other Title I developments while at the same time, remaining in the confines of its financial specifications. Possibly, these design advancements put rents out of the range of the middle-income tenants it was built for.89 About ten years after its completion, Webb & Knapp sold the development to the Alcoa Corporation in 1972 because they were no longer willing to pay its high maintenance fees.90 Despite this, the buildings were maintained well and between 1980 and 1981 converted to a condominium building. The company Kips Bay Towers Inc., formed by residents, purchased the development for $40 million.

The condos were sold to residents and outsiders: an 11th floor, four-bedroom apartment was listed for between $110,300 for the tenant and $183,000 to an outsider.91 There was a conflict as a result of the conversion due to the fact that Kips Bay Towers were built as a public and city-funded Title I project, and enjoyed a forty-year-long fixed-rate mortgage.92 Along with the condominium conversion, the public park was closed in 1983, changing the open nature of the complex.93 A court settled both of these issues, deeming the conversion and closure of the park allowable. Today condominiums at Kips Bay Plaza sell for between $600,000 and $800,000, evidence that this is no longer a home for the middle-income resident of New York City.94

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Today Kips Bay Plaza remains a private condominium development. Its garden, once urban and permeable is now only tranquil and protected. Its design still sets it apart from its neighborhood and other “tower in the park” developments in New York City. Kips Bay Plaza stands as one of the more successful “tower in the park” housing schemes, as it is a highly desirable place to live. It seems to function in its neighborhood well because it is an exception to the rule of the grid but, at the same time, its design reinforces the grid; the buildings at Kips Bay Plaza echo the lines of the grid and act somewhat as a, once permeable, perimeter block as opposed to being scattered throughout the site in an arbitrary geometric pattern.

Because it is a relatively smaller development, as compared to Stuyvesant Town, the sense of monotonous banality is nonexistent at Kips Bay Plaza. As a “tower in the park” development, Kips Bay Plaza is a success. Kips Bay Plaza inspired “innumerable upper-middle and upper-income slab block projects… indicating that at least for some socioeconomic groups, the “tower in the park” could function well urbanistically, given sufficient attention to design details.”95 Kips Bay Plaza also reveals some of the problems with the urban redevelopment.

The fact that Pei was already using terms such as “project-itis,” referring to lowincome projects, suggests that designers and the general public were dissatisfied with the mold created by Stuyvesant Town; modern and attractive buildings for the middle-class were no longer allowed to look like the repetitive brick towers built there. Kips Bay Plaza was successfully innovative in terms of design. On the other hand, Kips Bay Plaza failed to be financially successful because it generated rents out of the range of the middle-class. This, ironically, could be said to be a result of the financial strictness of Title I. The boundaries created by Title I funds placed a burden on Kips Bay Plaza that prevented it from being what it could have been. Additionally its design innovations raised prices due to experimentation with new methods.

undergraduate thesis

18 West Village Houses: renewal on its head

turning

urban

Towards the end of the 1950s Title I slum clearance and redevelopment began to lose steam, and a pivotal event in the 1960s would halt slum clearance in New York City. This was the dispute that occurred over the city’s proposal for a Title I redevelopment in Greenwich Village. To understand this conflict one must understand the new theory that caused this type of redevelopment to fall out of favor, and additionally the unique pressures of the Greenwich Village neighborhood.

The urban historian and writer Richard Plunz describes the debate over and ensuing creation of the West Village Houses as a “microcosm of the issues which framed the national pathology involving the culture of urban history.”96 Jane Jacobs, an editor of the magazine Architectural Forum, published her influential book The Death and Life of Great American Cities in the year 1961.97 Jacobs believed that for a city to survive and flourish it must be diverse. In her book she outlined the four generators of diversity: multiple functions or mixed uses of neighborhoods, blocks that are short in length, buildings that vary in age, and a dense concentration of people living in a neighborhood.98 All four of these principles go against the prescriptions of “tower in the park” modernism. Mixed-use neighborhoods deny functional zoning. Short blocks deny the superblock. Buildings varying in age deny the idea that all buildings should be up to date and modern. And lastly, Jane Jacobs calls for acute density that denies many of the ideas of utopian modernism, which seek to relieve congestion and moderate density. In essence Jacobs writes a polemic against modernist planning– the dominant practice of planning in New York City, and the world, at the time.

In the same year as her book’s release, the city announced a plan for a Title I redevelopment in the Far West Village on February 20.99 The city identified the area to be redeveloped because the neighborhood was deemed as improperly used for commercial, residential, and industrial purposes. The city felt that the mixed uses should be separated, by moving the residents to the eastern portion of the site and the commercial and manufacturing to the western portion of the site.100 Residents, aware of previous urban renewal plans, feared the creation of a bulldozer and “tower in the park” plan that would wipe out what they considered to be a vibrant and beautiful neighborhood. Officials tried to reassure the residents of the neighborhood that the old slum clearance approach, popular with Moses, had been abandoned; that the redevelopment would let buildings in good condition remain and would not start until a full survey of the

19 neighborhood was completed. This method of spot renewal had actually been used by the city was advocated by changes in Title I, however few residents of Greenwich Village believed that type of renewal would occur here.101 The local response was swift as residents quickly rallied against the plan announced

by Mayor Wagner.102 A group of 30 residents quickly formed The Committee to Save the West Village with Jane Jacobs as its head; they then began to organize resistance.103

By March of 1961 the committee had already started its own survey in order to prove that this area was not blighted. The survey asked questions about rent, occupancy, size, and facilities of apartments and houses in the neighborhood, as well as tax assessments to prove that this area was in fact not decaying.104 Eventually the committee gathered enough opposition to change the mind of Mayor Wagner who withdrew his support for the redevelopment plan in September of 1961.105 As a result, the City Planning Commission dropped the plans in a unanimous vote on January 31, 1962.106 After a successful resistance, the Committee to Save the West Village institutionalized itself as the West Village Committee and committed itself to the creation of an alternative housing plan for the neighborhood.107 In May of 1963, after an extensive amount of survey and research, the West Village Committee revealed its plans for a housing development that embodied many of the thoughts of Jane Jacobs and rejected the city’s previous urban renewal efforts.108 The plan, developed by Perkins and Will with lead architect J. Raymond Matz, was based on infill and the West Village Committee’s motto “Not a single person-not a single sparrow-shall be displaced.”109 The plan added 475 units to the West Village without the demolishing of any existing buildings in the neighborhood.110 The price of this development was to be $8,501,440 and added 300 units more than the $37,000,000 Title I development previously planned.111 The new plan rejected large-scale redevelopment in several ways: All of the buildings were to be built as infill, integrating them into the existing neighborhood and respecting the scale of neighboring buildings instead of creating a new and separate neighborhood.112 The proposed buildings were to be mixed-use, including spaces for commercial activity, a rejection of the single-use development of previous schemes.113 And the design included a sense of irregularity, being congruent with the feel of the neighborhood and rejecting the arbitrary regimentation of tower-inthe-park housing schemes.114

undergraduate thesis

20 In aversion to high-rise constructions, the buildings would be built as five and six storey walk-ups, not including elevators considered wasteful of space.115 Additionally, the buildings would include a clear division of private outdoor and public outdoor areas- an obvious rejection of the open “park.” Residents would have their own private courtyards or gardens, while the general public could make use of public plazas and sitting areas, created as a result of the irregular layout of the buildings on the street.116 Lastly, in a commitment to diversity, the development included various sizes of apartments and was expected to house people with a variety of incomes and ethnicities, a truly mixed development.117 Financing of the development, which was cheaper in comparison to the proposed Title I plan, was to be through a combination of public financing, using Mitchell-Lama, and private financing from the International Longshoremen’s Association for whose members one third of the apartments would be reserved.118 The cost of the development would be kept down in several ways: firstly almost all of the square footage was devoted to living space; there are no elevator corridors and little circulation space besides the stairs.

Secondly, all of the ground was put to use, there is no empty space left behind.

Lastly, the construction costs were predicted to be low because the buildings are not high-rises.119 It was also planned that the individual buildings could be built over time and did not have to be built all at once, as was typical of redevelopment schemes.

If Jane Jacob’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities was an attack on modernism, the West Village Houses were an attack on all of New York City’s slum clearance plans, redevelopment schemes, and “tower in the park” housing developments rolled into one redevelopment/improvement scheme. If completed as planned, it could have possibly been the model for the future government financed redevelopment, however the construction of the West Village Houses was plagued by delays and squabbling that cast a shadow over the finished development.

The most damaging critique was based on the fact that the proposed buildings were to be walk-ups. The United Housing Federation suggested that they were reverting to tenements of the 19th Century.120 The City Planning Commission did its best to move slowly on the project, but this changed when Mayor Lindsay took office and replaced the previous housing administrator, James Felt under Wagner, with Jason Nathan.121 By 1969 the plan was finally approved by the City Planning Commission, despite many of its members concerns about the exclusion of elevators.122 By this time, the cost of land and construction had already risen and the project required an increased $14.6 million loan.123 There were additional problems, from a lawsuit based on William Zeckendorf’s claim of control over most of the land and his own $250 million proposal for middle- and upper-income

21 housing, to problems with the lack of black or Puerto Rican members in the City Planning Commission.124 When the plan finally went to the Board of Estimate on November 13, 1969 it was approved by a vote of 13-to-4.125 Opposition focused on the lack of incinerators in the buildings, wooden floors-thus non-fire proof construction, and the continuing criticism about the lack of elevators. In addition, critics pointed out that the location was in a loud, busy, and potentially dangerous industrial area.126 But after the vote, the construction of the development began with the newly approved $14.6 million loan.127 After the extensive delays, the West Village Houses opened in 1974.128 Their final cost was a much higher $25 million as opposed to the originally planned $8,501,440 and later $14.6 million; additionally there were only 420 units, reduced from the planned 475 spread out in 42 buildings.129 The finished product was not as aesthetically pleasing as the original renderings by Perkins and Will.

Paul Goldberger, who also wrote about the West Village Houses, said, “These buildings in the West Village… are really ordinary.”130 In fact, the “ordinariness” of the buildings’ exterior was a result of the architect’s focus on the apartments plans, as well as the delays, bureaucracy, inflation, and rising construction costs.131 Possibly because of the interest in creating a stable neighborhood, the completed West Village Houses opened as a housing cooperative as opposed to a MitchellLama rental development.132 Due to the higher price of construction, the rates at completion were $5,253 for the purchase of a one-bedroom apartment and $10,421 for the purchase of a four-bedroom duplex; the maintenance fee per room was about $107, as opposed to the predicted $28-$30.133 There was no rush of people seeking to live there when leasing of the apartments was opened.134 In the final project, low-income housing was not included- making the project a solely middle-income development, and there was even criticism that it was middleincome by a stretch.135 This criticism turned out to be true. After one year of sales, the city was looking to foreclose on the project because they had not recuperated the money from its $23.9 million loan.136 The financial problem revived the debate about the impracticality of walk-up apartments at this time. Critics said that potential residents would be skeptical of the tenement-like character of the buildings and also not want to live in a neighborhood where there were industrial uses.137 The side for the development blamed the high costs on the delays of approval and construction during a time of great inflation and sluggish economy as the reason for the now unaffordable apartments.138 However delay was not an option, as the city was losing money; the decision was made to convert the development into rentals averaging $85 per room per month, including utilities.139 By converting the development to rentals, the city was able to recuperate some of the lost money

undergraduate thesis

22 and retain middle-income rents by entering it into the Mitchell-Lama program, as first intended.140 In addition to the changes in the financial structure of the development, improvements were made through the landscaping of the courtyards and plazas as well as various interior improvements. By August 20, 1976 there were only 50 units available.141 In 2004 the development went back to being a cooperative after tenants learned that their rent could possibly be raised by as much as 300 per cent when it would be taken out of the Mitchell-Lama program.142 The neighborhood had greatly changed since the completion of the cooperative; New York City saw the loss of its industrial base, and the Far West Village had become an expensive and quiet neighborhood.143 In the conversion to an affordable co-op, apartments that would normally get $1.5 million at market rate were sold to previous renters for as little as $165,000 and as much as $330,000.144 If dreary in exterior finishing, the West Village Houses have succeeded in remaining a middle-income development in the middle of a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Today the West Village Houses remain an example of diversity in a neighborhood that is becoming homogenous as it gentrifies.

The West Village Houses were realized as a shadow of their original intention. The completed development successfully respected the scale of the neighborhood and did not cause the displacement of any residents or shops. But the buildings were austere and apartments hard to fill at first. In the opposition to the austerity of the tower in the park model they gave an equally austere response. The difference however was the fact that they successfully integrated into an existing vibrant neighborhood instead of destroying it. The West Village Houses were groundbreaking because they demonstrated that urban renewal and the provision of modern housing could occur without the destruction of what already existed.

The West Village Houses perform well today because of the neighborhood they were built in. Through the rejection of a “tower in the park” redevelopment, this scheme was able to maintain the gridded street pattern that enables the West Village to function. There is diversity at this site in terms of commercial and residential use and also a great range in age of buildings surrounding the renewal scheme. The completed project revealed that the city’s own departments were not interested in understanding the needs of highly local communities whose condition they often sought to improve with redevelopment schemes. The West Village Houses are evident of a movement in which community development as well as a mixture of public and private sponsorship was used for the building of housing in cities, as opposed to an effort devoid of the community’s voice.145 This small-scale movement has been changed some but is still the dominant movement in the building of housing in New York City, especially in terms of middle-income or affordable housing.

Conclusion

At the end of this twenty-five year period, “tower in the park” developments and urban renewal met their end. Looking back today the success and failure of Stuyvesant Town, Kips Bay Plaza, and the West Village Houses is a complicated issue. Each development performs well on a certain level and fails on another.

These levels can be broken down into three dominant categories: urban renewal, provision of middle-income housing, and design.

In terms of urban renewal Stuyvesant Town remade an entire neighborhood. The result was a single use suburban-like neighborhood. Stuyvesant town was not like

23 an urban city when completed, but in a suburbanizing world this was attractive to some. Kips Bay Plaza remade an area smaller than Stuyvesant Town. It was a placed in a neighborhood that was greatly changed by urban renewal, with hospital complexes and the nearby United Nations complex. Kips Bay Plaza was not the sole factor in the transformation of the neighborhood, but definitely a contributor.

The West Village Houses did not cause any extreme change in the neighborhood it was built in. It was undisruptive and deferred to its surroundings.

Included in urban renewal is the issue of tenant removal, a problem the West Village Houses avoided all together. Kips Bay Plaza and Stuyvesant Town were not fair because they took homes of lower income residents and did not replace them. In the end only Stuyvesant Town significantly changed the neighborhood it replaced. But after their completion, they were subject to the upturns and downswings of Manhattan and New York City. Today these developments and the neighborhoods they are in are thriving due to the gentrification of Manhattan, not the positive or negative influence induced by their construction.

In terms of the provision of middleincome housing, Stuyvesant Town and the West Village Houses were successes.

Stuyvesant Town was affordable from inception and Met Life helped it stay true to that promise. Only the change in ownership has caused

undergraduate thesis

24 Stuyvesant Town to stray from its intended mission. The West Village Houses encountered financial set backs when being built, so it was originally out of the price range of the middle class, but by being entered into the Mitchell Lama program it became affordable. Today it remains a middle class enclave in the midst of an expensive neighborhood. Kips Bay Plaza, in comparison, failed to provide middle class housing from the date of its completion. Its conversion to a luxury co-op building has effectively removed it from the reach of the middle class.

The provision of middle-income housing is linked to the involvement of the government in the construction of these developments. All of them were built as a partnership between the private and public sector. However, when completed, public involvement withdrew. The developments were still subject to the stipulations and laws that allowed for their construction, but after a certain point they moved fully into the private realm. Affordability appears to decline as freedom from government requiements and involvement increases.

Today all of these developments are privatized. Their affordability is no longer an option for outsiders, but remains for those that have lived there since or recently after the years of their completion.

The question of the viability of the “tower in the park� comes back to the questions posed by Stuyvesant Town: Was the single-use nature of the development creating a neighborhood devoid of character and vitality? Were the towers too tall and out of context and scale with their surroundings? What purpose did the arbitrary placement of the towers play?

The single-use nature of Stuyvesant Town and its followers quickly came to be seen as banal.

Though Stuyvesant Town includes a retail strip, the interior of the thirty-five tower complex is disorienting, monotonous, and essentially antiurban. Kips Bay Plaza makes the same mistake, but there is a key difference. Because it is small and only two slabs it is not disorienting, monotonous, or anti-urban. The size of the superblock contributes to the existence or lack of urbanity.

The context of these two developments is also different. Stuyvesant Town exists alone; the streets surrounding it separate it from the surrounding neighborhoods rendering it an island.

Kips Bay Plaza exists in a neighborhood where there is a mixture of taller buildings. It stands out but it works in the neighborhood it is in.

25 The orientation of the buildings is a design factor that affects the success of these buildings. The seemingly arbitrary organization of Stuyvesant Town exists because it looks good on paper and is easy to control. On the ground the complex is confusing and repetitive. The site plan at Kips Bay Plaza, on the other hand, serves to reinforce the grid. The plan is simple but dynamic and pays respect to its surroundings. Though it breaks away from the low-rise high ground cover precedent that existed there, the site plan weaves Kips Bay Plaza back into its neighborhood.

The West Village Houses are special because they avoid all of these potential design problems by reverting to an older proven style of urbanism. The development itself is characterless, but by being in a charming and architecturally diverse neighborhood it borrows from its neighborhood’s richness. By being five and six stories it fits into a neighborhood known for its low-rise character. Also the placement of the buildings on the street respects the neighborhood while creating outdoor spaces for communal and private use.

Stuyvesant Town’s design fails because of its large size. The West Village Houses prove Stuyvesant Town’s impracticality because of their similarity. They are both banal developments built in the same time period. By being smaller, integrating into an existing neighborhood while split up into different sections, and respecting the historical height of its surroundings, the West Village Houses is successful.

Stuyvesant Town does none of this. Kips Bay Plaza is different. It proves that the “tower in the park” can work when it is surrounded by contrast, intelligently thought through, and well maintained. By being an exception in a varied neighborhood, Kips Bay Plaza’s design is neither out of place or banal. It is actually desirable, unique, and respectful.

The success of these developments is once again complicated.

Stuyvesant Town’s design failure is far outweighed by the social service it has provided for the last fifty years.

Kips Bay Plaza is proof that, when done thoughtfully on a small scale and well maintained, the “tower in the park” can be an attractive place to live. Last, the West Village Houses marks the end of urban renewal. By doing things differently it proved to the city that old buildings are worth saving. The Far West Village today is an extremely attractive neighborhood and owes its continued existence of these humble buildings.

26

endnotes & bibliography

Endnotes: The Tower in the Park, Urban Renwal and the Middle Class in New York City 1.

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Robert Stern, New York 1960, (New York: The Monacelli P, Inc., 1997), 14.

Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing (Cambridge: MIT P, 1992) 175.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (Boston: W.W. Norton & Co., 2007), 96.

Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing,186-187; Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2002), 222.

Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, 222-224.

Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow, (New York: Dover Pub., 1987), 171. ibid., 172. ibid., 166.

Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, 225, 260.

Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing,187.

Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, (New York: Columbia UP, 1990), 243.

Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A, (New York: New York UP, 1970), 22. ibid., 22-23.

Charles Abrams, The City is the Frontier (New York: Harper and Row, 1965), 74-75.

Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing, 178.

Gilman G. Udell, Home Owners’ Loan Acts and Housing Acts (Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1966), 284-288. ibid., 285. ibid., 287.

Ashley A. Ford and Hilbert Fefferman, “Federal Urban Renewal Legislation,” Urban Renewal: The Record and the Controversy, ed. James Q. Wilson, (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. P, 1966) 94.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 96-97.

John Sibley, “’Village’ housing a Complex Issue” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, March 23, 1961) 39.

“Housing Act of 1949-an analysis of what it is, how it works and what it means to the building industry,” Architectural Forum (Boston: Time Inc., August 1949) 84, 172. ibid., 172. ibid., 172. ibid., 172.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 96.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked (Philadelphia: U. Penn Press, 2008), 8.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York,105.

Timothy D. Berg, Reshaping Gotham: The City Livable Movement and the Redevelopment of New York City, 1961-1998 ,(Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company, 2000) 13.

Ashley A. Ford and Hilbert Fefferman, “Federal Urban Renewal Legislation,” 96. ibid., 123.

Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, 288.

“Middle Income Housing” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, July 26, 1956), 15.

Barbara M. Woodfill, New York City’s Mitchell-Lama Program: Middle-Income Housing? (New York: The New York City Rand Institute, June 1971), 12.

Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, 282. ibid., 282 Charles Abrams, The City is the Frontier, 96.

“Stuyvesant Town,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, June 2, 1943), 24.

Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A., 21.

Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A., 25.

Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A., 21.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 96.

Robert Moses, “Stuyvesant Town Defended,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Jun 3, 1943) 20. ibid., 20.

“New Housing Unit is Approved, 5 to 1,” New York Times (New York: New York Times, May 21, 1943) 8.

Robert Moses, “Stuyvesant Town Defended,” 20.

“Stuyvesant Town,” New York Times, 24.

“Stuyvesant Town Upheld by Court,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Mar 18,1944) 15.

For more information on Stuyvesant Town’s struggle for integration one can read the previously quoted Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A., by Arthur Simon.

“Stuyvesant Town’s Plans Filed; 41 Buildings to Cost $26,461,754,” New York Times, (New York, February 10, 1945), 13.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 242-243.

“Stuyvesant Gets First 2 Tenants,” New York Times, (New York, August 2, 1947), 15.

“7,000 Rush Please for Housing in ‘47,” New York Times, (New York, June 6, 1946), 29.

27 54.

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“Stuyvesant Gets First 2 Tenants,” 15.

Charles Abrams, The City is the Frontier, 96.

Lewis Mumford, From the Ground Up: observations on contemporary architecture, housing, highway building, and civic design, (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1956), 109-114.

Robert Stern, New York 1960, 283 Charles Abrams, The City is the Frontier, 97-8 Angela Taylor, “Stuyvesant Town: Residents Are Still Singing Its Praise,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, May 9, 1973) 52 “Project’s History,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Sep 6, 1984) C6 Douglas Martin, “Stuy Town; Urban Dream at Midlife,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Mar 8, 2000) H6.

Michael Sorkin, “Hollowing out the middle: What’s lost when a housing enclave is sold,” Architectural Record, (New York: McGraw Hill Companies Inc., November 2006) 49. ibid., 49. ibid., 49.

Gabriel Sherman, “Clash of the Utopias,” New York Magazine, (New York: New York Media LLC, Feb 1, 2009) 1. ibid., 2, 4. ibid., 8. ibid., 3.

New York Committee on Slum Clearance, NYU-Bellevue Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the 1949 Housing Act (New York: New York, 1954), 1. ibid. 6, Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 269.

New York Committee on Slum Clearance, NYU-Bellevue Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the 1949 Housing Act, 6. ibid. 40, 42. ibid., 40.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 271.

William Zeckendorf, Zeckendorf (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1970), 237.

Carter Wiseman, I. M. Pei, (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 1990), 63.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 272.

Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, 288.

Edward L Friedman, “Cast In Place Technique Restudied,” Progressive Architecture, (New York: Reinhold Pub., Oct. 1960), 160. ibid, 160.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 272.

Edward L Friedman, “Cast In Place Technique Restudied,” 160.

Glenn Fowler, “Kips Bay Plaza Renting to Begin,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Dec. 4 1960) 1.

Walter McQuade, “Pei’s Apartments Round the Corner” Architectural Forum, (Boston, August 1961), 107.

Carter Wiseman, I. M. Pei, 63.

Robert Stern, New York 1960, 288.

Glenn Fowler, “Kips Bay Plaza Renting to Begin,” 1.

Paul Goldberger, “Winning Ways of I.M. Pei,” New York Times, (New York : New York Times, May 20, 1979), 118-119.

Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York, 273.

Robert Stern, New York 1960, 288.

George Goodman, “Conversion Plan Given to Tenants at Kips Bay,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times Company, Nov 23, 1980) 2.

Michael Decourcy Hinds, “Kips Bay Prices Rise 40% After Moratorium,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times Company, Jul 29, 1984) 1.

William G. Blair, “Closing of Kips Bay Garden Draws Fire,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times Company, 1983) 1.

“Home Value Graphs & Charts for 333 E 30th Street,” Zillow.com (Zillow, 2008) http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/charts/61966730_zpid,1year_chartDuration/.

Richard Plunz, A History of Housing in New York City, 289. ibid., 308.

Christopher Klemek, “From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities’,” Journal of Urban History, (Washington D.C.: Sage Publications 2008), 311.

Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, (New York: Vintage Books, 1992) 150-151.

John Sibley, “’Village’ Housing a Complex Issue,” 35. ibid., 39.

Sam Pope Brewer, “City Reassures ‘Village’ Groups,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Mar 18, 1961) 28.

John Sibley, “’Village’ Housing a Complex Issue,” 35.

Christopher Klemek, “From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities’,” 313.

Sam Pope Brewer, “’Villagers’ Seek to Halt Renewal,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times,

endnotes & bibliography

28

105.

106.

107.

108.

109.

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111.

112.

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142.

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Mar 4, 1961), 11 Christopher Klemek, “From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities’,” 315.

Charles G. Bennett, “City Gives Up Plan for West Village,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Feb 1, 1962) 33.

Christopher Klemek, “From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities’,” 316. ibid., 316; Alexander Burnham, “’Village’ Group Designs Housing To Preserve Character of Area,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, May 6, 1963) 1.

Paul Goldberger, “Low-Rise, Low-Key Housing Concept Gives Banality a Test in West Village” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Sep 28, 1974) 31; Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, (New York: West Village Committee, 1963), 5.

Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, (New York: West Village Committee, 1963), 20. ibid., 5. ibid., 11. ibid., 11. ibid., 11-12. ibid., 14 . ibid., 14-15. ibid., 18.

Alexander Burnham, “’Village’ Group Designs Housing To Preserve Character of Area,” 42.

Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, 7.

“West Village Group Defends Walk-Ups,” New York Times, (New York: New Your Times, Jul 24, 1963) 63.

Robert Stern, New York 1960, 249-250.

David K. Shipler, “’Village’ Group Wins 8-Year Battle to Build 5-Story Walk-Up Apartments,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 3, 1969) 35. ibid., 35.

“Hearing Debates Walk-Up Project,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 14, 1969) 31.

“Board of Estimate Votes for West Village Co-op,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, November 14, 1969) 49. ibid., 49. ibid., 49.

Christopher Klemek, “From Political Outsider to Power Broker in Two ‘Great American Cities’,” 325.

Paul Goldberger, “Low-Rise, Low-Key Housing Concept Gives Banality a Test in West Village,” 31. ibid., 31. ibid., 31.

Paul Goldberger, “Low-Rise, Low-Key Housing Concept Gives Banality a Test in West Village,” 31. ibid., 6.

Judith C. Lack, “Dispute Still Rages as West Village Houses Meets Its Sales Test,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 18, 1974), 1 ibid., 6 Glenn Fowler, “Unsuccessful Cooperative Will Now Offer Rentals,” 29.

Joseph P. Fried, “A Village Housing Project Becomes a Fiscal Nightmare,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 8, 1975) 58. ibid., 58.

Glenn Fowler, “Unsuccessful Cooperative Will Now Offer Rentals,” 29.

Josh Barbanel, “The Evolution of Reluctant Capitalists,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, May 15, 2008) 1.

Alan S. Oser, “Upturn for West Village Houses.” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 20, 1976) 17.

Albert Ametaeu, “Victory! West Village Houses to become an affordable co-op,” The Villager, (New York: Community Media LLC, May 26-Jun 1, 2004) 1.

Peter Malbin, “If You’re Thinking of Living In/ The Far West Village; Bohemian, With Hudson Breezes,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Jan 14, 1996) 1.

Josh Barbanel, “The Evolution of Reluctant Capitalists,” 2.

Peter G. Rowe, Modernity and Housing, 228-229.

29 Photo Credits: The Tower in the Park, Urban Renwal and the Middle Class in New York City

Page 3&4 Stuyvesant Town, Illus. in Robert Stern, New York 1960, (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1997).

Kips Bay Plaza from interior garden. “Kips Bay Plaza,” Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners Architects LLP, (New York: Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners LLP, 2009). http://www.pcfandp.com/a/p/5705/s.html.

West Village Houses Today. Illus in Josh Barbanel, “The Evolution of Reluctant Capitalists,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, May 15, 2008) 1.

Page 5&6 Illustration of Le Corbusier’s Modern City, Le Corbusier, The City of To-Morrow, (New York: Dover Publications, 1987).

East River Houses. Illus. in Joel Schwartz, “An Illustrated Guide to Public Housing,” La Guardia and Wagner Archives, (New York: La Guardia and Wagner Archives, 2004) http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/defaultc.htm.

Page 9&10 Stuyvesant Town aerial view. Illus. in Gabriel Sherman, “Clash of the Utopias,” New York Magazine, (New York: New York Media LLC, Feb 1, 2009) 1.

The Gashouse District Illus. in Joel Schwartz, “An Illustrated Guide to Public Housing,” La Guardia and Wagner Archives, (New York: La Guardia and Wagner Archives, 2004) http://www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/defaultc.htm.

Stuyvesant Town site plan. Illus. in Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A, (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 28.

Stuyvesant Town apartment plans. Illus. in Arthur Simon, Stuyvesant Town, U.S.A, (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 29.

Page 11&12 Lillian Wald Houses and Stuyvesant Town: public housing in the form of Stuyvesant Town Illus. in Robert Stern, New York 1960, (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1997).

Page 13&14 Kips Bay Plaza site plan. “Kips Bay Plaza,” Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners Architects LLP, (New York: Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners LLP, 2009). http://www.pcfandp.com/a/p/5705/s.html.

Kips Bay Plaza poured-in-place concrete system. Edward L Friedman, “Cast In Place Technique Restudied,” Progressive Architecture, (New York: Reinhold Pub., Oct. 1960), 160.

Page 15&16 Kips Bay Plaza façade. “Kips Bay Plaza,” Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners Architects LLP, (New York: Pei, Cobb, Freed & Partners LLP, 2009). http://www.pcfandp.com/a/p/5705/s.html.

Comparison of Kips Bay Plaza and Unité d’Habitation by LeCorbusier completed in 1952. 2009.

Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 13 Apr. 2009 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/615396/Unite-dHabitation.

Page 17&18 West Village Committee’s plan for the West Village Houses. Illus. in Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, (New York: West Village Committee, 1963).

Proposed facades for the West Village Houses. Illus. in Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, (New York: West Village Committee, 1963).

Typical apartment plan in West Village Houses. Illus. in Perkins & Will, The West Village Plan for Housing, (New York: West Village Committee, 1963).

Page 19&20 West Village Houses after opening day. Joseph P. Fried, “A Village Housing Project Becomes a Fiscal Nightmare,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Jul 23, 1974) 41.

Un-landscaped exteriors of the West Village Houses. Joseph P. Fried, “A Village Housing Project Becomes a Fiscal Nightmare,” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Aug 8, 1975) 58.

Page 21&22 Washington and Charles Streets. Google Maps, 2010 Google. http://maps.google.com/ maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=charles+and+washington+streets+new+york&sll=37.0625,95.677068&sspn=37.683309,58.798828&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Washington+St+%26+Charles+St,+New +York,+10014&ll=40.733974,-74.008345&spn=0.001102,0.001794&z=19&layer=c&cbll=40.734074,74.008494&panoid=ZWjuInJ4cnzeN-_j7tDK3A&cbp=12,310.5,,0,8.5 Kips Bay Plaza aerial view. Illus. in Robert Stern, New York 1960, (New York: The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1997).

Stuyvesant Town revamped for new clientel. Illus. in Gabriel Sherman, “Clash of the Utopias,” New York Magazine, (New York: New York Media LLC, Feb 1, 2009) 1.

Page 22&23 West Village Houses on Washington Street looking south. Illus. in Paul Goldberger, “Low-Rise, Low-Key Housing Concept Gives Banality a Test in West Village” New York Times, (New York: New York Times, Sep 28, 1974) 31. *if not credited photo is personal.

30

endnotes & bibliography

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May-1 Jun. 2004: 1.

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1961-1998. Ann Arbor, MI: Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company, 2000.

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Controversy. Ed. James Q. Wilson. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1966. 71-125.

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Fowler, Glenn. “Unsuccessful Cooperative Will Now Offer Rentals.” New York Times 22 Mar. 1976: 29.

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York Times 14 Jan. 1996: 1.

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and civic design. New York, NY: Harcourt and Brace, 1956.

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Act. New York: New York City, 1954.

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