Kips Bay Towers is a large two-building

condominium A condominium (or condo for short) is an ownership structure whereby a building is divided into several units that are each separately owned, surrounded by common areas that are jointly owned. The term can be applied to the building or complex ...

complex in the

Kips Bay Kips Bay, or Kip's Bay, is a neighborhood on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by East 34th Street to the north, the East River to the east, East 27th and/or 23rd Streets to the south, and Third Aven ...

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 ...

with a total of 1,118 units. The complex was designed by architects

I.M. Pei Ieoh Ming Pei
– website of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners ( ; ; April 26, 1917 – May 16, 2019) was ...

and S. J. Kessler,, pp.218-219 with the involvement of

James Ingo Freed James Ingo Freed (June 23, 1930 – December 15, 2005) was an American architect born in Essen, Germany during the Weimar Republic. After coming to the United States at age nine with his sister Betty, followed later by their parents, he studi ...

, in the brutalist style and completed in 1965. The project was developed by

Webb & Knapp Webb and Knapp was a real estate development firm. The company is most famous for developing the Roosevelt Airfield, which was the launching site of the transatlantic flights of Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart. It was also the firm at which ...

. The complex occupies an area of three city blocks, or approximately , bounded by

First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and Second avenues and East 30th and 33rd streets. The complex includes two residential high-rise buildings each with 20 floors. Additionally, there is a three-acre private garden between the two towers featuring landscaped lawns as well as recreational spaces. Kips Bay Towers is home to more than 4,000 residents.

History

The project, originally known as Kips Bay Plaza, was conceived as a middle-income rental project, but was converted to

apartments in the mid-1980s. The project was originally built as a

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

project under Title I of the federal

Housing Act of 1949 The American Housing Act of 1949 () was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. It was part of President Harry Truman's program of domestic legislation, the Fai ...

. Kips Bay Towers was built on the site of the first Phipps Houses, at 321-337 East 31st Street, designed by

Grosvenor Atterbury Grosvenor Atterbury (July 7, 1869 in Detroit, MI – October 18, 1956 in Southampton, New York, Southampton, NY) was an American architect, urban planner and writer. He studied at Yale University, where he was an editor of campus humor magazine '' ...

in 1906. The

Phipps family The Phipps family of the United States is a prominent American family that descends from Henry Phipps Jr. (1839–1930), a businessman and philanthropist. His father was an English shoemaker who immigrated in the early part of the 19th century t ...

had built three six-story tenements with 142 apartments between Second and Third avenues. Phipps allowed the 31st Street houses to go in a condemnation proceeding, ultimately resulting in the construction of the Kips Bay Towers. Architect I. M. Pei had originally wanted a large sculpture by

Picasso Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...

placed in the middle of the development's park, but

William Zeckendorf William Zeckendorf Sr. (June 30, 1905 – September 30, 1976) was a prominent American real estate developer. Through his development company Webb and Knapp — for which he began working in 1938 and which he purchased in 1949 — he developed a ...

, the head of the development company,

, told Pei that he could have either the sculpture or fifty saplings. Pei chose the trees. In November 1981, a plan to convert Kips Bay Towers into condominiums became effective; however, the conversion was bogged down in litigation with holdout tenants. By 1984, approximately 70% of the apartments had been purchased, 50% by existing tenants and the remaining 20% by non-residents. In the mid-1990s, J. D. Carlisle Development Corporation constructed a retail facility along Second Avenue from 30th Street to 32nd Street connected to the Kips Bay Towers complex. The retail construction was built on the site of "Kips Bay Gardens" a park and playground that was owned and operated by the Kips Bay Towers organization. Kips Bay Gardens was constructed at the time of the opening of the "Towers" in the early 1960s and was open to the public till security concerns about the increasing homeless population prompted the privatizing of the park in 1983, leading to backlash from the surrounding community.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * * * * *

External links

*
Real Estate Site
{{I. M. Pei, state=collapsed Brutalist architecture in New York City I. M. Pei buildings Kips Bay, Manhattan Residential skyscrapers in Manhattan Residential buildings completed in 1965