The Harlem River Houses is a

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 ...

public housing Public housing is a form of housing tenure in which the property is usually owned by a government authority, either central or local. Although the common goal of public housing is to provide affordable housing, the details, terminology, def ...

complex between 151st Street, 153rd Street, Macombs Place, and the

Harlem River Drive The Harlem River Drive is a 4.20-mile (6.76 km) long north–south limited-access parkway in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It runs along the west bank of the Harlem River from the Triborough Bridge in East Harlem to 10th Avenue i ...

in the

Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street (Manhattan), 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and 110th Street (Manhattan), ...

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 ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The complex, which covers , was built in 1936-37 and opened in October 1937Radford, Gail. "Harlem River Houses" in – one of the first two housing projects in the city funded by the Federal government – with the goal of providing quality housing for working-class

African Americans African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

. It has 574 apartments. The complex was designated a

New York City Landmark The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) is the New York City agency charged with administering the city's Landmarks Preservation Law. The LPC is responsible for protecting New York City's architecturally, historically, and cu ...

in 1975 and was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1979. In 2014 the complex was designated a Special Planned Community Preservation District, a zoning category created in 1974 "to preserve and protect ... superior examples of town planning or large-scale development." The success of the project can be attributed to its formal, classically influenced design, to the project's focus on attracting a wide variety of tenants, not just the indigent, and to its "generous budget and high aspirations for quality."

History

As originally planned, public housing in New York City was segregated. After the

Harlem Riot of 1935 The Harlem riot of 1935 took place on March 19, 1935 in New York City, New York, in the United States. It has been described as the first "modern" race riot in Harlem, because it was committed primarily against property rather than persons. Harl ...

, there was pressure to improve housing for African Americans, but no general attempts were made to desegregate public housing. The Harlem River Houses were one of two projects which, for the first time, used Federal funds to construct public housing in New York City as part of

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

's "

New Deal The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Cons ...

" social program. The project was built by the Housing Division of the

Public Works Administration The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recove ...

at the cost of $4.5 million, a site owned by the Rockefeller family, which demanded twice the amount which Federal land acquisition guidelines would normally allow to be paid. Eventually, community protests pushed the project ahead, and the property was taken by

eminent domain Eminent domain (United States, Philippines), land acquisition (India, Malaysia, Singapore), compulsory purchase/acquisition (Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, United Kingdom), resumption (Hong Kong, Uganda), resumption/compulsory acquisition (Austr ...

at the price of $1 million. The other project constructed at about the same time was the

Williamsburg Houses The Williamsburg Houses, originally called the Ten Eyck Houses, (pronounced ) is a public housing complex built and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. It consists of 20 buil ...

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, intended for whites. The construction and opening of the two projects attracted national attention. ''See also:'' When the project was completed, 11,000 people applied for the 574 available apartments. As of 1987, about 3 dozen of the tenants were part of the original group. When it opened, the project had child care, health care and a public community room on site. Rent in 1937 was $21.00 a month, and by 1939 was between $19.38 and $31.42 per month. During the

Reagan Administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following a landslide victory over D ...

, the rent was raised from 25% to 30% of a family's gross income.

Architects

Archibald Manning Brown was the chief architect for the project. Other contributing architects included Will Rice Amon, Richard W. Buckley, Frank J. Forster, Charles F. Fuller, Horace Ginsbern, and John Louis Wilson Jr. one of the first African American architects to be registered in New York State. Historians believe that Ginsbern, who had previously worked on the design of garden apartments along the Grand Concourse in

the 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 ...

, was responsible for the project's overall layout. The landscape architects for the project were headed by Michael Rapuano. The primary sculptor involved in the design of the Harlem River Houses was Heinz Warneke, assisted by T. Barbarossa, F. Steinberger.

Richmond Barthé James Richmond Barthé, also known as Richmond Barthé (January 28, 1901 – March 5, 1989) was an African Americans, African-American sculptor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Barthé is best known for his portrayal of black subjects. The ...

created the

frieze In architecture, the frieze is the wide central section part of an entablature and may be plain in the Ionic or Doric order, or decorated with bas-reliefs. Paterae are also usually used to decorate friezes. Even when neither columns nor ...

''Green Pastures: Walls of Jericho'' for the project, however they installed in 1941 at Kingsborough Houses, a mostly white project.

Design

Each building in the complex is four or five stories tall and is set around landscaped open areas which include lawns, wide walkways, and recreation areas; around two-thirds of the project's land is open space. Those buildings with an additional story are built on a lower level, giving all buildings the same overall height. They are built from red brick, and have very little trim. The project is divided into three groups of buildings, two of which are west of

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard Seventh Avenue – co-named Fashion Avenue in the Garment District and known as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard north of Central Park – is a thoroughfare on the West Side of the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It is sout ...

(Seventh Avenue), and one of which lies east of the avenue and west of the

. All lie between West 151st and 153rd Streets. The two western groups are each arranged around a large plaza, while the eastern group is more linear. The formal layout is "reminiscent of a European park." The 9-acre Harlem River Houses are said to be the most successful public housing in New York City. The architects designed modern, spacious buildings which, according to architecture critic

Lewis Mumford Lewis Mumford (October 19, 1895 – January 26, 1990) was an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a wr ...

, provided:

the equipment for decent living that every modern neighborhood needs: sunlight, air, safety, play space, meeting space, and living space. The families in the Harlem Houses have higher standards of housing, measured in tangible benefits, than most of those on Park Avenue.

Another contemporary critic said of the complex:

The whole, in detailing, looks tired – as if the creative drive and the creator's pleasure, which had sailed so triumphantly through the period of general planning and design, had suddently failed when it came to the last, completing touches. Harlem River Houses is so generally beautiful that one longs for it to be perfect. What might have been great architecture is merely - very good.Hamlin, T. E. in ''Pencil Points'', quoted in

Notable residents

* (Robert Parris Moses)(1935-2021), Major civil rights activist originally with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi and key player in Freedom Summer and voting rights advocacy. Originator and developer of the Algebra Project. NY Times 25 July 2021 * Lemoine Deleaver Pierce (1934–2015), educator and mediator

References

Notes

External links

*Wolf, Eric
"Black History Month, with a Tribute to John L. Wilson Jr. and the Harlem River Houses"
Black History Month Celebration. 2000. LaGuardia & Wagner Archives. (October 2, 2006) *

Harlem River Houses The Harlem River Houses is a New York City Housing Authority public housing complex between 151st Street, 153rd Street, Macombs Place, and the Harlem River Drive in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The complex, which cov ...

, United States Housing Authority. 1937
Harlem River MapHarlem River II Map
{{Authority control Residential buildings in Manhattan Residential buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Manhattan Public housing in Manhattan Residential buildings completed in 1937 Harlem Treasury Relief Art Project 1937 establishments in New York City