Knickerbocker Village
 |
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
|
Knickerbocker Village Limited is a lower-middle class housing development located in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City.
Contents |
[edit] Location
The complex consists of twelve 13-story brick buildings surrounding two courtyards at 10-12-14-16-18-20 Monroe Street and 30-32-34-36-38-40 Monroe Street on the Lower East Side, taking up two whole city blocks and bounded by Catherine Street, Monroe Street, Market Street and Cherry Street. Although the location is generally considered to fall in the Lower East Side, it has come to be thought of as part of Chinatown in recent years. It is located a short distance from New York City Hall, the Civic Center Areas and the South Street Seaport.
The complex is actually situated between the Manhattan Bridge and Brooklyn Bridge, a neighborhood, which is sometimes referred to as "Two Bridges". It is located a short distance from the now defunct New York Post distribution plant located at 210 South Street.
[edit] History
The flamboyant real estate developer Frederick Fillmore French began construction of Knickerbocker Village in 1933 and completed it in 1934. Knickerbocker Village was the first apartment development in New York City to receive federal funding (and in fact the first such housing development in the country), having been completed as a project of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which Congress authorized to extend loans to private developers for the construction of low-income housing in slum areas. 98% of the money from the project went to the Knickerbocker Village, and offered 1,573 small apartments primarily to small middle-income families.
The RFC had two contradictory purposes. On the one hand, it was supposed to help revive the construction industry; on the other hand, it was supposed to increase the supply of low-income housing in New York. The first goal won out. Eighty-two percent of the slum families who initially moved into the apartments were soon forced to move back to the slums they had left because of the escalating rents charged by the owners.
When the United States Congress authorized the RFC to make loans on slum clearance projects, Realtor French picked out the worst block in his holdings and ecstatically presented it to Mr. Jones as a worthy subject for clearance. His choice was "Lung Block," so called because of its high tuberculosis mortality rate. On it lived 650 families. On this fester Mr. French proposed to build a low-cost housing project. Mr. Jones agreed to do business, and RFC lent 85% of the required $9,000,000. Average cost of "Lung Block" to Knickerbocker Village was high: $3,116,000, or $14 per square foot. The tax assessment was therefore reduced by two-thirds to bring the monthly room rental down to the $12.50 stipulated by the RFC. Because the average rental on "Lung Block" had been about $5 a room, Knickerbocker Village remained a low-cost housing project only in the minds of the white collar workers, who proceeded to fill it. There was a cooperatively run Nursery School started by young mothers and wives of returning World War II Veterans.
After fifty years, Fred F. French sold the complex to a new ownership in the 1970s that has now managed the complex for nearly thirty years. Over the last fifteen years, the complex underwent extensive renovation and rejuvenation. Almost fifteen million dollars were spent on new windows, new building entrance ways and foyers and waterproofing. The building also has a horticulturist who maintains the extensive gardens in the courtyard located in the center of the building and around the grounds. The complex also offers the "Hamilton Madison House Knickerbocker Village Senior Service Naturally Occurring Retirement Community" (NORC) that offers services and activities for the building's increasing elderly population.
Currently, the tenants are in the midst of a legal battle, as the landlord/corporation attempts to end the middle income protections under Article IV, in place since the complex was built. The landlord/corporation instead urges rent stabilization, which does not offer the same protections or the same promise of sustainment over a long period of time. The landlord/corporation also seeks to raise rents despite $5 million that the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation—the state post-9/11 rebuilding agency—granted to the owner last year to keep rents low. This matter has been appealed.
[edit] Notable residents
Knickerbocker Village was home to a very diverse group of tenants that included civil servants, small business owners with stores on nearby Orchard or Hester Streets; and others who were lucky enough to get an apartment there during the housing shortage that followed World War II.
The opera star, Judith Raskin and Mark Toby, author of the autobiographical novel The Courtship of Eddie's Father, were residents of Knickerbocker Village in the 1950s.
Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg, who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union and later executed, lived on the eleventh floor.
[edit] Further reading
- City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America' by Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom, Edition 6
- A History of Housing in New York City by Richard Plunz
