HISTORY,+1920+-+PRESENT


 * SUMMARY OF CORLEAR'S HOOK STUDY AREA FROM 1920 TO THE PRESENT: **

From 1920 onwards, the study area significantly changed in response to the sweeping cultural shifts and technological advances of the times. Several waves of slum clearance, along with the construction of major housing developments, significantly altered the character of the neighborhood. What was once a neighborhood made up of small regularly sized blocks of tenements, was now characterized by a number of superblocks, with only small pockets of the traditional tenements remaining. As new housing was created, the ethnic makeup of the neighborhood also evolved. Social services, in turn, responded.

By the 1920s, Corlear’s Hook was New York’s second densest population center and a significant number of tenements were either severely overcrowded or dilapidated, having been boarded up and abandoned. As a result vandalism was on the rise and the area was again seen as a cause for concern. Alfred Rheinstein, chairman of the New York City Housing Authority, described the area as a “grid of tenements forgotten by the city”, a //New York Times //  reporter referred to it as “a place where ambition died in damp, airless rooms”[1]

In 1926, New York State passed the Limited Dividends Housing Companies Act in order to give incentives for the construction of more affordable housing developments. Municipalities were given the right to condemn land for large-scale construction as well as twenty-year tax exemptions from municipal real estate taxes. The first housing development to make use of this new legislation was the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union (founded in 1927 and under the direction of Abraham Kazan) with the construction of the Amalgamated Dwellings, a 230-unit housing cooperative for union members designed by architects Springsteen & Goldhammer and completed in 1931. This complex takes up the entire block enclosed by Sheriff, Broome, Columbia and Grand Streets, and is characterized by its large central courtyard and “Art Deco” aesthetic.[2]  It  was not until 1939 that a series of slum clearance programs were truly underway so that demolition and tenant relocation became a regular part of life in Corlear’s Hook. Vladeck Houses, the city’s first municipally subsidized public housing project, consists of a twenty-four six-story buildings over four separate blocks, with 1,771 units.[3] The complex was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon (architects of the Empire State Building) and completed in 1941. It is often cited as a precursor to the larger “Unit Plans” for public housing, as it was the first in the area to combine several city blocks into a single development complex.[4] It is innovative in that the individual buildings are turned at angles to each other and to the street boundaries in order to offer better light and air quality to the occupants.[5] Hillman Houses, a “sister” cooperative of the Amalgamated Dwellings designed by architect George N. Springsteen and completed in 1949, was the next large-scale cooperative development in the area. For this complex, four blocks of tenements were cleared and combined for the construction of three twelve-story buildings with a total of 807 units. In addition, a convenient shopping center, four-story parking garage, large garden and playground were created which linked opening, this complex was enormously desirable, the number of applicants far exceeded the number of available units and nearly one thousand families were turned away.[6]

Throughout the 1950s, 60s and 70s, larger and taller housing developments were constructed, which expanded on the model put forth by the Hillman Houses. The East River Housing Cooperative, designed by architect Herman J. Jessor and completed in 1956, was the first project in New York City to qualify for slum clearance funds under Title I of the Federal Housing Act. Thirteen acres (ten blocks) were combined for the erection of a total of four, twenty and twenty-one story towers providing 1,672 units. . At the time of their construction, these towers were the tallest reinforced concrete apartment structures in the United States Nearly ten acres of the site were devoted to playgrounds, gardens and parking facilities as well as a central heating plant and a two-and-a-half story commercial shopping center and community auditorium. Similar to Hillman Houses, applicants for the cooperative far exceeded the number of available units. Nearly five thousand applicants, two-thirds of them from the study area, were submitted for 1,672 apartments.[7]

Large housing developments continued to be constructed throughout the area until 1997 with the completion of the Two Bridges Tower, a concrete slab construction, which provided 198 units of mixed-income housing with on-site social services and various other activities such as after-school and summer camp programs for tenants.[8] Each new complex built reflected contemporary ideas for the design and subsequent use of large-scale housing developments that emerged during this time from those modeled after Le Corbusier’s “Tower in the Park” to suburban-like developments such as “Two Bridges Townhouses”, completed in 1985. Prospectuses for housing developments constructed in the study area from this period, reveal the evolving ideas about slum clearance – namely, that the preferred method for neighborhood improvement was to demolish and begin entirely anew – as well as ideas about the design for ideal housing unit and desirable living conditions.[8]

The ethnic character of the study area changed alongside the architectural changes of the neighborhood. Traditionally an immigrant neighborhood, the population of the study area in 1920 was roughly seventy-five percent first, second and third-generation Jewish and twenty-five percent comprised of African Americans and first and second generation Irish and Italian New Yorkers[9]. By the 1970’s, the population of this area became largely immigrant and first generation Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, as well as a significant population of immigrant and first-generation Chinese.[10] Populations of Jewish and Irish New Yorkers still live in the study area, although their numbers have significantly decreased over the past several decades.

Social services and community programs in the study area have continued to evolve as well. The Henry Street Settlement, which originated in the 19th-century reform movements, greatly expanded and increasingly specialized their programs. One such example was the founding of the “Community Consultation Center” in 1946, the Settlements mental hygiene clinic, which offers psychiatric care for community members, one of the first of its kind in the country. Another innovation was the creation of the Abrons Art Center, which opened in 1975 as the first arts facility in the country designed for a predominantly low-income population.[11] Another significant change to Corlear’s Hook during this period was the completion of the downtown section of the FDR Drive in 1942 [12]. Where once there had been working commercial piers along the waterfront, accessible by streets leading down to the river, the neighborhood was now cut off from the waterfront. In direct reaction to this, Robert Moses, then New York City Parks Commissioner, began to draw up and execute plans to take advantage of the new landfill over which the traffic thoroughfare wound. Over the next several years, Moses added several properties along the waterfront, including the East River Park (created DATE), which served to revitalize the area. A few years later, Corlear’s Hook Park was adjoined to the East River Park by a series of footbridges and winding paths in addition to riverfront walkways that extend to the greater Lower East Side and the East Village.[13]

[1]  “Razing Will Start at Corlears Hook”, //New York Times, //  May 8, 1939.  [2] Information taken from Cooperative Village website: http://www.coopvillage.coop/cvHistory.html [3] Buildings are six-stories high and are comprised of about seventy units each. [4]  Plunz, Richard. //A History of Housing in New York City, //  New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. There were 172 buildings containing 1,917 dwelling units on the site of the Vladeck Houses.  [5]  New York City Housing Authority, //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;">Vladeck Houses: A Lesson in Neighborhood History, // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> New York: the City Housing Authority of New York, 1940. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;"> [6] Information taken from Cooperative Village website: http://www.coopvillage.coop/cvHistory.html [7] Information taken from Cooperative Village website: http://www.coopvillage.coop/cvHistory.html [8] 59 of the apartments are reserved for formerly homeless families and 39 for low-income families. [9] The Committee on Slum Clearance Plans, “Corlear’s Hook: Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949”, January 1951 and “Seward Park Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 As Amended”, August 29, 1956. [10] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> Beer, Ethel S., “The Americanization of Manhattan’s Lower East Side”, //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;">New York Times, // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> DATE <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;"> [11] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> Logan, John R., Wenquan Zhang and Richard D. Alba, //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;">Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles. // <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> PUBLISHER = DATE <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 80%;"> [12] Information from Henry Street Settlement Website, www.henrystreet.org [13] The FDR drive is a six-lane parkway that begins just north of the Battery Park Underpass at South and Broad Streets and runs along the entire length of the East River to 125th Street where it becomes the Harlem River Drive. [14] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 8pt;"> Information taken from Corelears Hook Park, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M017 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 29px;"> _

__TIMELINE:__ Blue = Social History, Programs, etc. Red = Immigration trends Green = National/World/etc. events**
 * Black = All housing related laws, development, etc.

1920 - Governor Alfred E. Smith warns of housing shortage in the state. He encourages state to initiate a comprehensive progressive housing policy.
 * 1920

1920 - New York State Law passed permitting cities to abate real estate taxes until 1932 which stimulates more than one billion dollars worth of housing in New York City. Estimated three-hundred million in taxes forgiven as a result of the abatement. Although no income ceilings or rent controls are applied, the city limits the exemptions in order to encourage housing at moderate prices.

1924 - Sunnyside Gardens, a moderate-income cooperative in Queens, is erected. Consists of two, three and four-story apartment buildings with green commons and play spaces in the interior. Architects: Henry Wright, Clarence Stein and Frederick Ackerman.

1926 - The Limited Dividend Housing Companies Law permits condemnation of sites for housing, requires limitation of rents and profits, allows local tax abatement and sets income limitations for tenants. - Plans filed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, under Abraham Kazan's leadership, to build moderate-income cooperative housing projects under the 1926 law. Largest group of tenants (30%) is drawn from the garment industry. Receives design medal from NYAIA. Amalgamated Dwellings AIA commended the builder for, "...the complete elimination of meaningless ornament & the sincerity with which they used the essential elements of the design to achieve aesthetic results..." (Winslow, Hall & Elsie Woods. //Housing in New York City: A Chronology//. Citizens' Housing and Planning Council of New York, Inc: New York, 1965, p. 9.)

1927 - The Henry Street Music School opens. Through the years it has hosted and produced hundreds of concerts and operas and trained thousands of musicians.

1929 - Multiple Dwellings Law of New York State supersedes the 1901 law as the basic New York City legislation regulating housing standards. Raises standards in hotels and rooming houses as well as residences. (p 10)

1929: October 29: Black Tuesday, beginning of the Great Depression

1930**


 * 1931 - Amalgamated Dwellings Amalgamated Dwellings built.**


 * 1933 - National Industrial Recovery Act is passed, a part of President Roosevelt's New Deal. Creates Public Works Administration (PWA) - Housing Division of PWA took over loan program of Reconstruction Finance Corporation.**
 * 1933 - Knickerbocker Village is built under the Limited Dividend Housing Companies Law using loans from the Federal Reconstruction Finance Corporation.**


 * 1934 - Fiorello H. La Guardia (R) becomes mayor of New York City

1934 - Municipal Housing Authorities Act is passed by the State of New York -** **New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is created immediately thereafter.**

**1934 - Baruch Charney Vladeck founds the Jewish Labor Committee. Group was formed to provide a Jewish presence in the American trade-union movement and to mobilize labor in the struggle against fascism, mainly the rise of Nazism in Europe.**


 * 1935 - New York City Housing Authority dedicates "First Houses" on the Lower East Side (Avenue A and Third Street, 123 apartments)**


 * 1937 - United States Housing Act is passed, acknowledges federal responsibility for the improvement of housing conditions and establishing a pattern of loans and grants to local housing authorities.

1937 - Wagner Housing Act of September 1, 1937

1937 - To combat loan sharks, Settlement members created a Credit Union. To date, neighborhood residents have received over $3 million in loans.

1937 - Ethel S. Beer, in her article "The Americanization of Manhattan's Lower East Side", notes that the population of this area is mostly Jewish and Italians, and smaller populations of Irish and "Negroes".

1938 - State Constitution is amended to permit the state to borrow money and make loans and grants to local housing authorities for public low-rent housing and the clearance and re-planning of substandard areas.**


 * 1939 - New York State Public Housing Law is enacted, and the state borrowed funds for loans public housing and sets aside annual subsidies. Enables the state to build subsidized housing.

1939 - World War II begins **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">**1940

1940 - PARKCHESTER, the first Metropolitan Life Insurance Company "village" opens in the Bronx. The site covers 192 acres and houses 12,000 families. Random, open arrangement of the buildings covr only 27% of the site. Major shopping facilities are included. (Link to Architectural Forum article)

1940 - VLADECK HOUSES OPEN: 24 six-story, brick facade structures. Architects Shreve, Lamb, & Harmon (Empire State Building, Forbes Building, Standard Oil Building, Deutsche Bank, etc.). NYC's first municipally-subsidized housing project. Named after B. Charney Vladeck, an editor, labor leader, & crusader for housing reform. He lived & worked in the Lower East Side & knew many Corlears Hook residents by their first names. Was appointed to the first NYC Housing Authority, founder of the Jewish Labor Committee (1934), and one time general manager of the Jewish Daily Forward.

1940 - The Homeplanning Workshop is founded to help residents of the newly built Vladeck Housing projects and other community members repair furniture and appliances, make clothes, and mend shoes. One of the earliest programs in a public housing facility in New York City, the Workshop continues to serve the neighborhood today.

1942 - Downtown section of FDR Drive opens

1942 - East River Park opened along FDR Drive. [|Park History - NYC Parks & Recreation]

1942 -Section 608 of the National Housing Act permits government insurance of up to 90% of the costs of rental projects. Though successful in stimulating housing (more than 36,000 apartments in New York City), the program will become known as the "windfall" program, and will be discontinued in 1950 as abuses become apparent.

1942 - New York State Redevelopment Companies law is passed with the aim to clear substandard areas and redevelop them for residences. The developer's return on his investment is limited. The city may condemn property and grant tax exemption

1943 - Chinese Exclusion Act is lifted. Chines given small immigration quota (105?)

1945 - World War II ends

1946 - Robert Moses named City "Construction Coordinator"

1946 - Now called the Community Consultation Center, Henry Street's Mental Hygene Clinic, one of the first of its kind in the country, is founded to bring psychiatric help to the community. It currently serves over 500 people each year.

1947 - Stuyvesent Town built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company under the Redevelopment Companeis Law

1948 - Pete's House is dedicated as a youth center. Located at 301 Henry Street to be a center where young people of all faiths and races and national origins can meet in friendship and goodwill. It has since been combined with an adjoining structure and together they house the Henry Street Settlement's Youth Services and the administrative offices of the Home Care Program.

1949 - Hillman Cooperative Houses Hillman Houses

1949 - Title I of the National Housing Act encourages municipalities to acquire substandard areas and sell them below cost for redevelopment by private investors for residential use.

1950

1951 - Fresh Meadows, a development housing 11,000 people in a combination of two 13-story and 137 two-and-three story buildings opens in Queens. Built by New York Life Insurance Company. Suburban-like density of 17 families per acre. Mumford acclaims Fresh Meadows as the "middle ground between congestion and sprawl" (citation needed)

1952 - Henry Street alumni creat the Good Companions Senior Programin order to provide companionship and activities for the elderly. In 1967, the program becomes a Federal Government pilot project to determine the effectiveness of multipurposesenior centers. As a result of the project, federal legislation is passed to fund nutrition centers for the elderly throughout the country.

1952: Housing Authority Police Department is formed with 47 original officers. They remained a separate entity until they merged with the NYPD in 1995.

1954: Robert Wagner (D) becomes mayor of New York City

1955 - Limited-Profit Housing Companies Law (Mitchell-Lama): aids construction of middle-income housing by making possible low-interest loans from the city or the state, tax exemption and site condemnation. Profits and tenant's incomes are limited.

1956 - East River Housing Cooperative completed: EAST RIVER HOUSING COOPERATIVE

1956 - Joseph Papp (1921-1991), founder of Shakespeare in the Park and the Public Theater, staged Julius Caesar at the ampitheatre in East River Park in 1956. The program has since been moved to Central Park, but is a NYC staple in the arts community.

1957 - LaGUARDIA HOUSES OPEN: 9 buildings, 15-16 stories. Designed by Hyman Isaac Feldman (an addition completed in 1965 was designed by Emanuel Turano). Named after Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia, the 99th mayor of NYC who created the NYC Housing Authority. Continuously worked with President Roosevelt to gain federal funding for NYC projects.

1957 - Fair Housing Practices Law is passed by New York City (the nation's first)

1957 - Henry Street helps create the eperimental Mobilization for Youth, which brings together Lower East Side resources to attack jouvenile delinquincy. It provides the foundation for future federal poverty programs during the 1960s.

1960

1960 - US Census of Housing classifies 20% of New York City's housing inventory as substandard or deteriorating.

1960 - Seward Park Housing Cooperative completed: SEWARD PARK HOUSING COOPERATIVE

1960 - Robert Moses resigns from the Mayor's Committee on Slum Clearance.

1961 - Jane Jacobs publishes //Death and Life of Great American Cities//

1961 - New York City - Passage of new zoning resolution which encouraged use of towers and large open spaces.

1963 - Gouveneur Gardens Co-op opens. Was to be the Mary K. Simkhovitch Houses, a public housing project.

1964 - New York World's Fair

1964 - Bridge Apartments open: a four-building complex housing 960 families. First middle-income housing development to use air rights.

1964 - "New units completed have exceeded 30,000 in every year since 1957. The 60,000 new units, completed in 1963 was the largest figure since the building boom of the 1920s when the annual completions exceeded the 100,000 figure for several years." (Citation: //New York City Housing Statistics Handbook,// 1964).

1965 - New York City Landmarks Law enacted

1965 - Rutgers Houses B-255_Rutgers Housing

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">1966 - Corlears Junior High School Built

1966 - John Lindsay becomes Mayor of New York City

1967 - Housing and Development Agency (HDA) is approved by City Council - Consolidated all NYC Housing agencies into one large agency. Demise of the "tower in the park" one important focus for the new agency.

1968 - Quota for Chinese immigrants is raised. Population of Chinatown explodes.

1968 - Henry Street's Day Care Center opens to serve the culturally diverse families of the Lower East Side with learning and enrichment for very young children.

1970

1971 - Seward Park URA filed: B-352_Seward Park URA

1971 - Two Bridges Houses opens.

1972 - The Urban Family Center, one of the first transitional housing facilities for homeless families, is founded. To date, it has helped more than 8,000 families move into permanent housing.

1972 - NYPD 7th precinct opens in Corlears Hook. It is the second smallest precinct in NYC, only covering .62 square miles.

1972 - The new Gouveneur Hospital opens in Corlears Hook now called Gouverneur's Healthcare Services.

1973 - Seward Park Extension filed: B-351_Seward Park Extension

1974 - Henry Street launches its Summer Youth Employment Program. The program offered work experience, labor market orientation, and work-based learning projects to 100 youth aged 14 to 21. Today, the program trains and finds employment for more than 600 young people every summer.

1975 - The Arts for Living Center (now called the Abrons Arts Center) opens. First Lady Betty Ford, Mayor Abraham Beame, former Mayor Robert F. Wagner, and the National Endowment for the Arts Chair Nancy Hanks attend the dedication ceremony. The Center is one of the first arts facilities in the nation designed for a predominently low-income population.

1977 - Henry Street Settlement opens one of the first publicially funded battered women's shelters in New York City.

1977 - Lands End I

1978 - The Arts-in-Education program begins serving students throughout the New York City Area. The program sends artists into schools and provides curriculum-related performances to support the educational goals of schools in diverse neighborhoods.

1979 - Lands End II

1980 1981 - The Family School is founded to provide specialized day care services for Urban Family Center pre-school residents. Additionally, the CCC develops the first onsite nursary for staff children, which is later used as a prototype by corporations for childcare.

1981 - Pathmark opens. It is the area's first supermarket & was developed by Two Bridges Neighborhood Council in partnership w/Settlement Housing Fund. The partners invited Pathmark to participate because area residents had no adequate market to shop for food. Has provided the community with over 200 jobs.

1985 - Two Bridges Townhouses completed. 57 moderate-income condominiums. One of the few successful projects created under the HUD (US Housing & Urban Development) Section 235 program, which lowered mortgage payments by providing interest subsidies for moderate-income home buyers. The City assisted in the project's development through real estate tax reductions and a grant for construction costs.

1989 - Two Bridges Helen Harris Senior Residences completed. Provides 109 units of housing for the elderly & disabled. The federal and city governments provide subsidies, tax reductions, and loans to keep the rents affordable.

1990

1990 - The Expanded Horizons Program is initiated to give young people access to the guidance and assistance needed to gain entry to college.

1990 - The Asian-American Outreach Program funded by the Rockefeller Foundation enables many people in the growing Asian community of the Lower East Side to be introduced to the Abrons Arts Center through visual arts exhibits and performances.

1991 - Helen's House opens as a sixteen-unit facility to reunite homeless mothers with their children. The building is named in honor of Helen Hall who followed Lillian Wald as Head Worker of Henry Street Settlement between 1933 and 1934.

1997 - Two Bridges Tower completed. Final project to be developed in the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area. 198 units of mixed-income housing & an adjoining row of small shops. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council & Settlement Housing Fund developed & now own this 21-story project. 59 of the apartments are reserved for formerly homeless families, and 39 for low-income families. On-site social services & activities are provided for its tennants (after-school & summer camp programs for children, etc.)

2000 - Present__**


 * 2002 - "Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles" by John R. Logan, Wenquan Zhang and Richard D. Alba. States that more recently the population of this area is Puerto Rican and Dominican.

2002 - Beyond housing, NYCHA also invests heavily in the refurbishment and expansion of Community Centers for the residents. All of this work is done with the highest standards for design and quality, which is why the Copper-Hewitt Museum called NYCHA “a model for the construction and rehabilitation of quality, innovative housing and other facilities for low-income families,” in its 2002 National Design Awards, Special Commendation for Corporate Achievement. [|NYCHA - Preserving Public Housing]

2008 - Prospect Plaza, public housing in Brooklyn to be razed [|www.nytimes.com/2010/02/06/nyregion/06demolish.html]

WEB LINKS: [|NYC Dept. of City Planning - East River Waterfront Study] [|History of FDR Drive] [] [|_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED038481&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED038481] [] [|Lower East Side National Historic District Designation Report]

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