Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant Town

Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village is a large private residential development on the East Side of the borough

Borough (New York City)

New York City, one of the largest cities in the world, is composed of five boroughs. Each borough now has the same boundaries as the county it is in. County governments were dissolved when the city consolidated in 1898, along with all city, town, and village governments within each county...

of Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, and one of the most iconic and successful post-World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

private housing communities. Stuyvesant Town, known to its residents as "Stuy Town", was named after Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...

, the last Director-General of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....

, whose farm

Farm

A farm is an area of land, or, for aquaculture, lake, river or sea, including various structures, devoted primarily to the practice of producing and managing food , fibres and, increasingly, fuel. It is the basic production facility in food production. Farms may be owned and operated by a single...

occupied the site in the seventeenth century. Peter Cooper Village is named after the 19th century industrialist, inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper

Peter Cooper was an American industrialist, inventor, philanthropist, and candidate for President of the United States...

, who founded Cooper Union

Cooper Union

The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...

. The complex, which was planned beginning in 1942 and opened its first building in 1947, replaced the Gas House district of gas storage tanks.

The complex is a sprawling collection of red brick

Brick

A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...

apartment buildings stretching from First Avenue

First Avenue (Manhattan)

First Avenue is a north-south thoroughfare on the East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, running from Houston Street northbound for over 125 blocks before terminating at the Willis Avenue Bridge into The Bronx at the Harlem River near East 127th Street. South of Houston Street, the...

to Avenue C, between 14th

14th Street (Manhattan)

14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street rivals the size of some of the well-known avenues of the city and is an important business location....

and 23rd Streets

23rd Street (Manhattan)

23rd Street is a broad thoroughfare in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is one of few two-way streets in the gridiron of the borough. As with Manhattan's other "crosstown" streets, it is divided at Fifth Avenue, in this case at Madison Square Park, into its east and west sections. Since...

. It covers about 80 acres (323,748.8 m²) of land, a portion of which is utilized for playgrounds and parkland. The development located between 14th and 20th Streets, Stuyvesant Town, has 8,757 apartment

Apartment

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building...

s in 35 residential buildings and with its sister development, Peter Cooper Village – located between 20th and 23rd Streets – the complex has a combined 56 residential buildings, 11,250 apartments, and over 25,000 residents.

The combined development is bordered by the East River

East River

The East River is a tidal strait in New York City. It connects Upper New York Bay on its south end to Long Island Sound on its north end. It separates Long Island from the island of Manhattan and the Bronx on the North American mainland...

/Avenue C on the east, the Gramercy Park

Gramercy Park

Gramercy Park is a small, fenced-in private park in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park is at the core of both the neighborhood referred to as either Gramercy or Gramercy Park and the Gramercy Park Historic District...

neighborhood on the west, the East Village

East Village, Manhattan

The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...

and Alphabet City

Alphabet City, Manhattan

Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the Lower East Side and East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is also known as Loisaida, a Spanglish adaptation of 'Lower East Side'. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter...

to the south, and Kips Bay

Kips Bay

Kips Bay is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. Because there are no official boundaries for New York City neighborhoods, the limits of Kip's Bay are somewhat vague, but it is often considered to be the area between East 23rd Street and East 34th Street extending from...

to the north. The surrounding area to the west is notable for historic Stuyvesant Square

Stuyvesant Square

__notoc__Stuyvesant Square is a park in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located between 15th Street and 17th Street and Rutherford Place and Nathan D. Perlman Place, formerly Livingston Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the...

, a two-block park surrounded by the old Stuyvesant High School

Stuyvesant High School

Stuyvesant High School , commonly referred to as Stuy , is a New York City public high school that specializes in mathematics and science. The school opened in 1904 on Manhattan's East Side and moved to a new building in Battery Park City in 1992. Stuyvesant is noted for its strong academic...

, Saint George's Church, and the Beth Israel Medical Center

Beth Israel Medical Center

Beth Israel Medical Center is a 1,368-bed, full-service tertiary teaching hospital in New York City. Originally dedicated to serving immigrant Jews living in the tenement slums of the Lower East Side, it was founded at the turn of the 20th century. The main hospital location is the Petrie...

History

By the late nineteenth century, the site of the complex had become known as the Gas House district because of the many huge gas storage tanks that dominated the streetscapes. The tanks, which sometimes leaked, made the area undesirable, as did the Gas House Gang

Gas House Gang

The Gas House Gang was a New York street gang during the late nineteenth century.Founded in the 1890s, the Gas House Gang was based in the Gas House district of Manhattan and controlled the area along Third Avenue from 11th to 18th Street...

and other predators who operated in the area. With the construction of the East River Drive

Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive

The Franklin D. Roosevelt East River Drive is a freeway-standard parkway on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan...

, now the "FDR Drive", the area began to improve. By the 1930s, all but four tanks were gone and, while shabby, the area was no more blighted than many parts of the city after the years of the Great Depression

Great Depression

The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

Before the construction of Stuyvesant Town, the neighborhood contained eighteen city blocks, with public schools, churches, factories, private homes, apartments, small businesses, and even relatively new modern-style apartment buildings. In all, 600 buildings, containing 3,100 families, 500 stores and small factories, three churches, three schools, and two theaters, were razed. As would be repeated in later urban renewal

Urban renewal

Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...

projects, some 11,000 persons were forced to move from the neighborhood. In 1945, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

called the move from the site "the greatest and most significant mass movement of families in New York's history." The last residents of the Gas House district, the Delman family, moved out in May 1946, allowing demolition to be completed shortly thereafter.

Due to a housing crisis which had been growing since the Depression, Stuyvesant Town was already being planned as a post-war housing project in 1942-43, some years before the end of World War II

World War II

. A provision was made that the rental applications of veterans would have selection priority. The complex was developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

Metropolitan Life Insurance Company

MetLife, Inc. is the holding corporation for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, or MetLife, for short, and its affiliates. MetLife is among the largest global providers of insurance, annuities, and employee benefit programs, with 90 million customers in over 60 countries...

, and was based on its earlier development in The Bronx, Parkchester

Parkchester, Bronx

Parkchester is a residential neighborhood geographically located in the south central Bronx, New York City. The neighborhood is part of Bronx Community Board 9...

, which was completed in 1942. The same companies and developers also built Riverton

Riverton Houses

The Riverton Houses is a large residential development in Harlem, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The project was proposed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in 1944, and largely served an African American population, in contrast to Met Life's Peter Cooper Village—Stuyvesant...

, which was completed around the same time.

Metropolitan Life president Frederick Ecker said of Stuyvesant Town in its initial offering that it would make it possible for generations of New Yorkers "to live in a park — to live in the country in the heart of New York." On the first day the company received 7,000 applications; it would receive 100,000 applicants by the time of first occupancy. The complex's first tenants, two World War II

World War II

veterans and their families, moved into the first completed building on August 1, 1947. In 1947, rents ranged from $50 to $91 per month. Current rents range from $2500+ for a one bedroom apartment to $7000+ for a 5 bedroom unit.

Controversy

Stuyvesant Town was controversial from the beginning. Although nominally a private development, it was championed by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses

Robert Moses

Robert Moses was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, Rockland County, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is sometimes compared to Baron Haussmann of Second Empire Paris, and is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of...

, who has been called the "dominant force in [the] creation" of both Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. At the behest of Mayor La Guardia

Fiorello H. LaGuardia

Fiorello Henry LaGuardia was Mayor of New York for three terms from 1934 to 1945 as a liberal Republican. Previously he was elected to Congress in 1916 and 1918, and again from 1922 through 1930. Irascible, energetic and charismatic, he craved publicity and is acclaimed as one of the three or...

, Moses sought "to induce insurance companies and savings banks to enter the field of large-scale slum clearance." It was enabled by various state laws and amendments which permitted private companies to enter what was previously a public field of action.

The new public-private partnership

Public-private partnership

Public–private partnership describes a government service or private business venture which is funded and operated through a partnership of government and one or more private sector companies...

, and the contract entered between the city and the developer, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, were the source of much debate. Among the issues at stake were use of the power of eminent domain

Eminent domain

Eminent domain , compulsory purchase , resumption/compulsory acquisition , or expropriation is an action of the state to seize a citizen's private property, expropriate property, or seize a citizen's rights in property with due monetary compensation, but without the owner's consent...

for private purposes; the reversion of public streets and land, such as public school property, to private ownership; the 25-year tax exemption granted by the contract; and the rights of the company to discriminate in selecting tenants.

When the $50 million Stuyvesant Town plan was approved by the City Planning Commission on May 20, 1943 by a five to one vote, discrimination against African-Americans was already a significant topic of debate. Councilmen Stanley M. Isaacs and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. sought to introduce a provision into the contract that would prevent racial or religious discrimination in tenant selection. This provision was not accepted, with those rejecting it, including Robert Moses, arguing that the company's profitability would be harmed and that opponents were "obviously looking for a political issue and not for results in the form of actual slum clearance." In the years after it opened, blacks were barred from living in the complex, with Metropolitan Life's president, Frederick H. Ecker, stating that "Negroes and whites do not mix." Lee Lorch

Lee Lorch

Lee Lorch is a mathematician and was an early civil rights activist, who is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at York University in Toronto, Canada.-Background:...

, a City College of New York

City College of New York

The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...

professor, petitioned to allow African Americans into the development and was fired from his teaching position as a result of pressure from Metropolitan Life. Upon accepting a position at Pennsylvania State University

Pennsylvania State University

The Pennsylvania State University, commonly referred to as Penn State or PSU, is a public research university with campuses and facilities throughout the state of Pennsylvania, United States. Founded in 1855, the university has a threefold mission of teaching, research, and public service...

, Lorch allowed a black family to occupy his apartment, thus circumventing the no Negroes rule. As a result of pressure from Metropolitan Life, he was dismissed from his new position as well.

Lawsuits were filed on the basis that the project was public or semi-public, and thus violated anti-discrimination laws for New York City public housing. In July 1947, the New York Supreme Court

New York Supreme Court

The Supreme Court of the State of New York is the trial-level court of general jurisdiction in thestate court system of New York, United States. There is a supreme court in each of New York State's 62 counties, although some smaller counties share judges with neighboring counties...

determined that the development was private and that, in the absence of laws to the contrary, the company could discriminate as it saw fit. The court wrote, "It is well settled that the landlord of a private apartment or dwelling house may, without violating any provision of the Federal or State Constitutions, select tenants of its own choice because of race, color, creed or religion... Clearly, housing accommodation is not a recognized civil right." The suit brought by three African American war veterans was thus settled.

By this date, Metropolitan Life was building a separate-but-equal housing project in Harlem

Harlem

Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

, Riverton Houses

Riverton Houses

. Some years later, the company admitted a few black families to Stuyvesant Town and a few white families to Riverton. Both projects, however, remain largely segregated.

A host of other issues and controversies surrounded Stuyvesant Town's planning

Urban planning

Urban planning incorporates areas such as economics, design, ecology, sociology, geography, law, political science, and statistics to guide and ensure the orderly development of settlements and communities....

and design. From the first debates in 1943, objections were made to the haste with which the project was approved and lack of public participation in the process; the project's population density; the absence of any public facilities such as schools, community centers, or shops in the development; the gated-community, private property character of the complex and the denial of city residents of the right to walk through a part of the city that was once public; and violations of the city's master plan. Lawsuits were brought by property owners of the land, but in February 1944 the Supreme Court of the United States

Supreme Court of the United States

The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...

refused to review the constitutionality of the New York State law that enabled the development, despite the taking of public property for private profit, the granting of tax exemptions, and the public benefits advanced by the developers and their advocates.

2006 sale

On October 17, 2006, MetLife agreed to sell Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village to Tishman Speyer Properties

Tishman Speyer Properties

Tishman Speyer Properties is a real estate building and operating company set up in 1978 by two founding partners, Jerry Speyer and Robert Tishman.-Overview:...

and the real estate arm of BlackRock

BlackRock

BlackRock, Inc. is an American multinational investment management corporation and the world's largest asset manager. BlackRock is headquartered in Manhattan, New York City, New York, United States and is the leading provider of investment, advisory, and risk management solutions...

for $5.4 billion. The sale was expected to close by November 15, 2006, according to documents which CB Richard Ellis

CB Richard Ellis

CBRE Group, Inc. , a Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company headquartered in Los Angeles, is the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm . The Company has approximately 31,000 employees , and serves real estate owners, investors and occupiers through more than 300 offices worldwide...

, a commercial real estate broker representing Met Life, sent to bidders. MetLife hired a broker, who started registering bidders, and intended to name a winner by November 2006. The sale had drawn interest from dozens of prospective buyers, including New York's top real estate families, pension funds, international investment banks and investors from Dubai

Dubai

Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...

, according to the New York Times, citing real estate executives.

New York City Council

New York City Council

The New York City Council is the lawmaking body of the City of New York. It has 51 members from 51 council districts throughout the five boroughs. The Council serves as a check against the mayor in a "strong" mayor-council government model. The council monitors performance of city agencies and...

member Daniel Garodnick

Daniel Garodnick

Daniel R. "Dan" Garodnick is a New York City Councilman representing Manhattan’s 4th District since 2006.-Biography:Prior to running for elected office, Garodnick was a litigation associate at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison...

, a lifelong resident of Peter Cooper Village, attempted to organize tenants and investors to place a buyout bid on the complex. Initially, MetLife deemed the tenants group an unqualified bidder, but, after being pressured by elected officials, the company reversed itself, and distributed bid books to the tenant group; bids were to have been submitted by October 5, 2006. Both the tenants' bid and one by Apollo Group fell short of Tishman Speyer's offer, though the latter came within $100 million of Speyer's $5.4 billion.

On January 22, 2007, a class action lawsuit was filed against MetLife, Tishman Speyer Properties and their associates on behalf of the market rate tenants of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The suit claimed that MetLife was improperly charging tenants "market rate" rents while at the same time receiving real estate tax benefits from the City of New York under the J-51 program, which requires property owners to maintain apartments as rent stabilized

Rent control in New York

Rent control in New York refers to rent control and rent stabilization programs in New York State, USA. Each city may choose whether to participate or not, and , 51 municipalities participated in the program, including Albany, Buffalo and most famously, New York City, where over one million...

during the period in which they are receiving benefits. The lawsuit asked for a monetary award of between $215 million and $320 million in rent overcharges and damages. Furthermore, it called for the market rate apartments to be reverted to rent stabilization until the expiration of the J-51 benefit period, sometime after 2017.

On January 24, 2010, Tishman Speyer Properties gave up control of the properties by handing the complex to creditors, thereby avoiding a bankruptcy

Bankruptcy

Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

of the site.

Security

The complex has its own public safety force, most of whom are sworn peace officer

Peace officer

A law enforcement officer , in North America, is any public-sector employee or agent whose duties involve the enforcement of laws. The phrase can include police officers, prison officers, customs officers, immigration officers, bailiffs, probation officers, parole officers, auxiliary officers, and...

s. While they are not permitted to carry firearms, they do carry batons, pepper spray

Pepper spray

Pepper spray, also known as OC spray , OC gas, and capsicum spray, is a lachrymatory agent that is used in riot control, crowd control and personal self-defense, including defense against dogs and bears...

, and handcuffs. As peace officers, they have full law enforcement powers, and they patrol the property in specialized vehicles.

As of late March 2009, security cameras have been installed and activated in all Stuyvesant Town buildings. In addition, sensors have been installed on the roof doors to prevent unauthorized access. The requirement of photo ID card-keys was introduced in 2008. The parking garages along Avenue C, 20th Street and 14th Street have also implemented a key-card access system and installed security cameras.

Town & Village newspaper

The community has its own newspaper, Town & Village, also known as "the T&V". It was first published in 1947 and has been published every week since, covering news in Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, Waterside Plaza

Waterside Plaza

Waterside Plaza, formerly a Mitchell-Lama Housing Program-funded rental apartment complex, is located on the East River in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan, New York City.- Overview :...

, and Gramercy Park

Gramercy Park

. The paper was founded by Charles G. Hagedorn and as of the late 2000s is published by Hagedorn Communications. Town & Village is independent and not affiliated with the ownership of the complex.

Notable residents

David Axelrod
David Axelrod (political consultant)
David M. Axelrod is an American political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known as the top political advisor to President Barack Obama, first in Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and later as chief strategist for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Following...

– political consultant
David Brooks
David Brooks (journalist)
David Brooks is a Canadian-born political and cultural commentator who considers himself a moderate and writes for the New York Times...

– New York Times political columnist
Chris Burke
Chris Burke (actor)
Christopher Joseph "Chris" Burke is an American actor, living with Down syndrome, who has become best known for his character Charles "Corky" Thacher on the television series Life Goes On.- Early Years :...

– actor
Mary Higgins Clark
Mary Higgins Clark
Mary Theresa Eleanor Higgins Clark Conheeney , known professionally as Mary Higgins Clark, is an American author of suspense novels...

– mystery writer
Daniel R. Garodnick – New York City Councilman
Alexis Glick
Alexis Glick
Alexis Glick is an American television personality who was an anchor of Money for Breakfast and The Opening Bell on Fox Business Network , as well as the channel's Vice President of Business News...

– news anchor
Michael Higgins
Michael Higgins (actor)
Michael Patrick Higgins was an American actor who appeared in film and on stage, and was best known for his role in the original Broadway production of Equus.-Early life:...

– actor

William Lombardy
William Lombardy
William James Lombardy is an American Grandmaster of chess, writer, teacher, and one-time Catholic priest.- Life and career :...

– International Grandmaster of Chess
Frank McCourt
Frank McCourt
Francis "Frank" McCourt was an Irish-American teacher and Pulitzer Prize–winning writer, best known as the author of Angela’s Ashes, an award-winning, tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood....

– Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Lee Lorch
Lee Lorch
Lee Lorch is a mathematician and was an early civil rights activist, who is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at York University in Toronto, Canada.-Background:...

- mathematician and an early civil rights activist
Drew Nieporent
Drew Nieporent
Drew Nieporent is a New York City restaurateur. His company Myriad Restaurant Group owns and operates numerous restaurants, many of which are known for their celebrity clientele, and in some cases celebrity co-owners. Many are known for their difficulty in obtaining reservations...

– restaurateur
Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser
Paul Reiser is an American stand-up comedian, actor, television personality, author, screenwriter and musician. He is most widely known for his role on the long-running television sitcom Mad About You.-Early life:...

– comedian and actor

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

History

Controversy

2006 sale

Security

Town & Village newspaper

Notable residents

See also

External links