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Castle Village 120 Cabrini Boulevard building from west

Castle Village is a five-building cooperative apartment complex located on

Cabrini Boulevard Cabrini Boulevard spans the Manhattan neighborhood of Hudson Heights, running from West 177th Street in the south, near the George Washington Bridge, to Fort Tryon Park in the north, along an escarpment of Manhattan schist overlooking the Hen ...

between West 181st and 186th Streets in the Hudson Heights 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 ...

. It was built in 1938–1939 by

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more genera ...

developer

Charles V. Paterno Charles Vincent Paterno (born Canio Paternò, August 4, 1878 – May 30, 1946) was an Italian-born American real estate developer. He was called the "Napoleon of the Manhattan Skyscraper Builders". Life and career Born in Castelmezzano, in th ...

on the site of what had been the

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

that was his residence, and was designed by George F. Pelham, Jr., whose father,

George F. Pelham George Frederick Pelham (1867 – February 7, 1937) was an American architect and the son of George Brown Pelham, who was also an architect. Life and career Pelham was born in Ottawa, Ontario, coming to New York City when his father open ...

, had designed the nearby

Hudson View Gardens Hudson View Gardens is a cooperative apartment complex located on Pinehurst Avenue and Cabrini Boulevard in the near vicinity of West 183rd and 185th Streets, located in the Hudson Heights subsection of the Washington Heights neighborhood in Ma ...

. The buildings were some of the first

apartment tower A tower block, high-rise, apartment tower, residential tower, apartment block, block of flats, or office tower is a tall building, as opposed to a low-rise building and is defined differently in terms of height depending on the jurisdicti ...

s to employ

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low ultimate tensile strength, tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion ...

construction. Each floor contains nine apartments, eight of which have river views. The complex was initially a rental property, but converted to a cooperative in 1985. A few original tenants still rent.

Architecture

The design of the towers was influenced by medieval European castle

keep A keep (from the Middle English ''kype'') is a type of fortified tower built within castles during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars have debated the scope of the word ''keep'', but usually consider it to refer to large towers in c ...

s. The cross design of the towers and the "

towers in a park The Ville contemporaine (, ''Contemporary City'') was an unrealized utopian planned community intended to house three million inhabitants designed by the French-Swiss architect Le Corbusier in 1922. Plan The centerpiece of this plan was a group of ...

" layout was later used in most of New York's

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and

affordable housing Affordable housing is housing which is deemed affordable to those with a household income at or below the median as rated by the national government or a local government by a recognized housing affordability index. Most of the literature on af ...

. The labor movement-owned United Housing Foundation built tens of thousands of cooperative apartments using a similar layout. The reinforced concrete construction was also copied in cooperative developments. Private rental housing, like those built in

Parkchester Parkchester is a planned community and neighborhood originally developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and located in the central Bronx, New York City. The immediate surrounding area also takes its name from the complex. Its boundari ...

and

Stuyvesant Town Stuyvesant may refer to: People * Peter Stuyvesant (1592–1672), the last governor of New Netherland * Peter Gerard Stuyvesant (1778–1847), lawyer, landowner and philanthropist. * Rutherfurd Stuyvesant (1843–1909), socialite and land develope ...

residential developments followed the architectural design, but replaced the concrete frame with a cheaper

steel frame Steel frame is a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal I-beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame. The developm ...

construction.

Retaining wall

On May 12, 2005, a 75-foot

retaining wall Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides. Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to ...

below the garden that faces the Hudson River collapsed, resulting a massive

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of environmen ...

which buried the northbound lanes of the

Henry Hudson Parkway The Henry Hudson Parkway is a parkway in New York City. The southern terminus is in Manhattan at 72nd Street, where the parkway continues south as the West Side Highway. It is often erroneously referred to as the West Side Highway throughout its ...

and six parked cars. The collapse stopped traffic on the highway for several days, but the clean-up began quickly, and the road re-opened on May 15. However, an entry ramp to the highway remained closed for almost two years. No one was injured. A later study found that the collapse could have been prevented. Reconstruction of the wall and garden, which had been built in 1925 and supported the complex's lawn, was substantially completed by October 2007, at the cost of $24 million. The access ramp to the

below the wall was partially reopened in March 2008. All reconstruction on the wall, including the full opening of the access ramp was complete by November 2010. Castle Village residents lost their suit against the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory t ...

over tax deductions related to the repair.

References

Notes Bibliography * "Paterno Castle to be Demolished", ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' (August 7, 1938)
"Dr. Charles V. Paterno"

External links

{{commonscat, Castle Village, Manhattan
Official Castle Village site

Official site of the Castle Village Owners Corporation

Hudson Heights Owners Coalition
Apartment buildings in New York City Residential buildings in Manhattan Condominiums and housing cooperatives in Manhattan Washington Heights, Manhattan Residential buildings completed in 1939 1939 establishments in New York (state) Multi-building developments in New York City