Abraham E. Kazan (1889–1971) is considered the "father of U.S.
cooperative housing".
Biography
Abraham Kazan was born in 1889. Growing up as an eyewitness to appalling tenement conditions, Kazan believed that housing was a vital obstacle for the average person. The problem, as he saw it, was more pronounced in urban settings. Large numbers of people lived within cities, either to be closer work or to be able to share space with multitudes of people who would help contribute to the monthly rent.
As the president of the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) was a United States labor union known for its support for "social unionism" and progressive political causes. Led by Sidney Hillman for its first thirty years, it helped found the Congress of Ind ...
(ACW) Credit Union, Kazan understood that most people, rich and poor, usually considered a home as “purely a product of his own efforts.” Yet, unlike all other routine necessities, owning a home required a sizable initial investment that was usually beyond that of those with moderate means or salaries. He felt that this made newly constructed buildings often out of reach for the poorer earners, causing harsher social and moral conditions with the tenement communities where the poorer people lived in tightly congested clusters.
Kazan did not believe that good housing conditions would guarantee normal, healthy people and families, but he was convinced that substandard housing does directly and adversely affect health, morale, and the social conditions of those who live there within it. Open spaces were important for healthy children, and he believed that lack of quality conditions would result in child delinquency, crime, disease and a host of other social and health crises that would fester.
To try to address this problem he developed the idea of cooperative housing—not merely to create a residential building or complex, but complete cooperative villages. The resulting communities had co-op shopping centers, with supermarkets, pharmacies, credit unions, optical centers and playgrounds.
He earned distinction for his work of integrating sections of New York City through affordable cooperative housing. Today, more than 100,000 people live in homes built by his efforts.
He took his cooperative idea even further and succeeded in federating the "Co-op Supermarkets" into a larger collective in order to give the markets competitive abilities to contend with the established chains. Kazan also inspired the building of co-op electric generating plants to bring down the price of power. Over the past two decades, most, if not all of the Co-op Supermarkets in New York City have been sold to the larger chains.
His life's work was recognized in many ways, as he became the first person in New York City's history to have a street named for him in his lifetime (
Abraham E. Kazan Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan).
Kazan's Cooperatives
One of the first housing co-operative developments in the United States, started in 1927, was
Amalgamated Housing in the Northwest
Bronx
The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...
. Kazan founded this development and was its President for 40 years, its Manager for thirty, and a resident. The Amalgamated, as it is known, is still a thriving co-operative community.
Among other developments Kazan was responsible for are his early projects, Amalgamated Dwellings, Hillman Housing, Seward Park Housing and East River Housing on the
Lower East Side of Manhattan, known as
Cooperative Village
267px, Hillman Housing buildings on Grand Street as seen from the East River towers. Amalgamated Dwellings is seen between the second and the third tower
Cooperative Village is a community of housing cooperatives on the Lower East Side of Ma ...
prior to its fragmentation. Later developments, under Kazan's
United Housing Foundation {{unreferenced, date=September 2019
The United Housing Foundation (UHF) was a real estate investment trust in New York that constructed numerous cooperative housing projects, including Rochdale Village in Queens and Co-op City in the Bronx.
Pu ...
(UHF),
History of Co-ops
include the Penn South
Penn South, officially known as Mutual Redevelopment Houses and formerly Penn Station South, is a limited-equity
on the ...
community in the Chelsea
Chelsea or Chelsey may refer to:
Places Australia
* Chelsea, Victoria
Canada
* Chelsea, Nova Scotia
* Chelsea, Quebec
United Kingdom
* Chelsea, London, an area of London, bounded to the south by the River Thames
** Chelsea (UK Parliament consti ...
area of Manhattan, Warbasse Houses (Brooklyn), Rochdale Village (Queens), and Co-op City
Co-op City (short for Cooperative City) is a cooperative housing development located in the northeast section of the borough of the Bronx in New York City. It is bounded by Interstate 95 to the southwest, west, and north and the Hutchinson River ...
in the Bronx, the largest co-operative development of its kind.
See also
* List of New York City housing cooperatives
A partial list of housing cooperatives in New York City.
Projects originally built as housing cooperatives
* Alku and Alku Toinen, started in 1916 by Finnish immigrants
* Hudson View Gardens (1923–25), Hudson Heights, real estate developer ...
References
External links
Many of Kazan's projects were built by Architect Herman Jessor
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kazan, Abraham E.
1889 births
1971 deaths
American cooperative organizers
Activists from New York City