Governor DeWitt Clinton Houses, also known as DeWitt Clinton Houses or Clinton Houses, is a public housing development built and maintained by the

New York City Housing Authority The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a public development corporation which provides public housing in New York City, and is the largest public housing authority in North America. Created in 1934 as the first agency of its kind in the U ...

(NYCHA) in the

Spanish Harlem East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or and historically known as Italian Harlem, is a neighborhood of Upper Manhattan, New York City, roughly encompassing the area north of the Upper East Side and bounded by 96th Street to the south, Fif ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

. Clinton Houses is composed of six buildings, resting on a non-continuous campus with an area of . Five of those (I-V) are 18 stories high, and another (VI) is nine stories high. The six buildings have a total of 749 apartments, which house 1,823 people. Clinton Houses occupies the two blocks that are bordered by East 110th Street to the north,

Lexington Avenue Lexington Avenue, often colloquially abbreviated as "Lex", is an avenue on the East Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City that carries southbound one-way traffic from East 131st Street to Gramercy Park at East 21st Street. Along it ...

to the east,

Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Avenu ...

to the west, and East 108th Street to the south. It also occupies the western half of the two blocks that are bordered by East 106th Street to the north,

to the east,

to the west, and East 104th Street to the south, with the exception of a small part along East 106th Street.

About

The Housing Committee's proposals for the development were held in 1959. At the hearing

Jane Jacobs Jane Jacobs (''née'' Butzner; 4 May 1916 – 25 April 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, theorist, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book '' The Death and Life of Great American Cities ...

accused NYCHA of discriminating against the poor through displacement and embracing architecture oriented for middle-class need advocating instead for retaining the social structure of the community by mixing low-rise buildings in with typical high-rises. The Clinton Houses were designed by Perkins and Will and partially funded federally. It was one of the first vest-pocket properties which retained the city's street grid in response to Jacobs but was in the

tower-in-the-park Towers in the park is a morphology of modernist

style to supply light and air. The development was completed on October 31, 1965. The development was named after

DeWitt Clinton DeWitt Clinton (March 2, 1769February 11, 1828) was an American politician and naturalist. He served as a United States senator, as the mayor of New York City, and as the seventh governor of New York. In this last capacity, he was largely res ...

(1769-1828), who served as

Mayor of New York City The mayor of New York City, officially Mayor of the City of New York, is head of the executive branch of the government of New York City and the chief executive of New York City. The mayor's office administers all city services, public property ...

and

Governor of New York The governor of New York is the head of government of the U.S. state of New York. The governor is the head of the executive branch of New York's state government and the commander-in-chief of the state's military forces. The governor has ...

. As mayor, Clinton fought for free public education, to remove voting restrictions from Catholics, and public welfare. As governor, he helped found the New York public school system, and introduced a bill into the

New York State Senate The New York State Senate is the upper house of the New York State Legislature; the New York State Assembly is its lower house. Its members are elected to two-year terms; there are no term limits. There are 63 seats in the Senate. Partisan com ...

to build a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

connecting the

Northeastern United States The Northeastern United States, also referred to as the Northeast, the East Coast, or the American Northeast, is a geographic region of the United States. It is located on the Atlantic coast of North America, with Canada to its north, the Southe ...

with the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

via

Lake Erie Lake Erie ( "eerie") is the fourth largest lake by surface area of the five Great Lakes in North America and the eleventh-largest globally. It is the southernmost, shallowest, and smallest by volume of the Great Lakes and therefore also has t ...

. In 2014, tenants of the Clinton Houses sued NYCHA for negligence resulting in disrepair and public health hazards. Sylvia Velazquez is currently serving as the Resident Association President for Clinton Houses, and is a member of the Manhattan North District Citywide Council of Presidents.

Manhattan Community Board 11 The Manhattan Community Board 11 is a New York City community board encompassing the Manhattan neighborhoods of East Harlem and Randalls Island. It is delimited by the East River on the east, 96th Street on the south, Fifth Avenue and Mount Mor ...

governs Spanish Harlem, the neighborhood where Clinton Houses is.{{cite web, url=http://www.cb11m.org/node/6, title=Manhattan Community Board 11, work=cb11m.org, publisher=Manhattan Community Board 11, accessdate=18 January 2010, location=New York, url-status=dead, archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20100126181804/http://www.cb11m.org/node/6, archivedate=26 January 2010

References

Residential buildings completed in 1965 Public housing in Manhattan East Harlem Residential buildings in Manhattan

About

See also

References