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Cooperative Village is a community ofhousing cooperatives on theLower East Side ofManhattan,New York City. The cooperatives are centered onGrand Street in an area south of the entrance ramp to theWilliamsburg Bridge and west of theFDR Drive. Combined, the four cooperatives have 4,500 apartments in twelve buildings.
The cooperatives were sponsored, organized and built bytrade unions, theAmalgamated Clothing Workers of America andInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, as well as theUnited Housing Foundation, a development organization set up by the unions in 1951.[1][2]
The cooperatives followed strictRochdale Principles, with one vote per member, irrespective of the nominal value of hisshares. Resale of shares was restricted; members moving out of the apartments had to sell their shares back to the cooperative at the buying price, minus aflip tax. After the original financing structures governing the apartments were phased out, beginning in 1986, the shareholders of each cooperative decided, in separate votes in 1997 and 2000, to abandon thelimited equity rules and free the resale of shares, in some cases increasing the value of apartments fivefold.[3] To keep the maintenance fees low for original tenants, many of them retirees, a high flip tax is charged, up to 25% of the gross sales price for "first sales" and up to 15% for "second sales". In a similar instance, the shareholders at thePenn South sister cooperative in theChelsea section of Manhattan voted to continue operating under limited equity rules.[4][5]
TheAmalgamated Dwellings, one of the oldest housing cooperatives in theUnited States, was the second cooperative sponsored by theAmalgamated Clothing Workers of America, after the successfulAmalgamated Cooperative Apartments inthe Bronx. The six-storyArt Deco building with 236 apartments was designed by the architectsSpringsteen &Goldhammer and was completed in 1930 at the site of a former printing plant. The building covered one city block, with a protected garden in the center. The design was intended to provide directsunlight to all rooms, something that was missing from the typical Manhattantenements. The cooperative also had alibrary, anauditorium, anursery, and agym. The apartments were priced at $500 a room, with monthly maintenance fees, including repayment of the mortgage, at $12.50 a room.
TheHillman Housing Corporation was the third cooperative sponsored by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. The cooperative, located on Grand Street betweenKazan Plaza andLewis Street on two sides of the Amalgamated Dwellings buildings, consists of three twelve-story buildings with 807 units. A garden links Hillman Houses to each other and to the Amalgamated Dwellings.
Construction was begun in November 1947 and was completed by 1950 at a total cost of $9.1 million. The design is attributed to Springsteen & Goldhammer, withHerman J. Jessor responsible for much of the work. Four slum blocks with 65 tenement buildings were torn down to clear the site for the development. As banks were unwilling to provide loans to the cooperative, financing was provided by theMutual Life Insurance Company.
The cooperative is named afterSidney Hillman, founder and first president of theAmalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Each of the three Hillman houses is named after a cooperative or labor leader:
TheEast River Housing Corporation was one of the firstdevelopments of the newly formedUnited Housing Foundation and was financially sponsored by theInternational Ladies' Garment Workers' Union. A mortgage loan was insured by theFederal Housing and Home Finance Agency. Construction work was begun in November 1953 and completed in 1956. The cooperative has 1,672 apartments in four 20- and 21-story towers on an open lot facing theEast River.
The project was designed byGeorge W. Springsteen and his new associate,Herman J. Jessor, who would go on to design many other UHF projects, includingCo-op City. The buildings followed the"towers in a park" concept introduced to the U.S. in the late 1930s by theCastle Village towers inHudson Heights in upper Manhattan. The Castle Village layout, with cross-shaped towers placed diagonally to the cardinal directions optimized to give each apartment a maximum view, was used by most post-warsocial andaffordable housing in New York City. Springsteen's derivation, used already at Hillman Houses, connects three of these towers side by side. The East River towers also share thereinforced concrete construction and red brickfacade with Castle Village. At the time of construction the 21 story towers were the highest reinforced concrete buildings in the U.S.
Each of the four East River houses is named after a labor leader:
Seward Park Housing Corporation is located in the triangle between Grand Street andEast Broadway, and abuts the New York Citypublic park that shares its name. The buildings, designed byHerman Jessor,[6] share the general design of the East River Houses, with four towers facing the Lower East Side. Each of the twelve semi-attached towers has seven or eight apartments on each floor around a central stairwell and corridor.
Construction work was begun in 1957 and finished in 1959 at a total cost of $23,258,392.75.[6] A mortgage loan fromBowery Savings Bank andpension funds of the United Hatters, Cap & Millinery Workers, International Union as well as Brotherhood of Painters, Decorators and Paperhangers of America covered $18 million, with about 25% of the costs paid as equity by the 1,728 cooperative members.[citation needed]
In January 1999, in the wake of a collapse in the parking garage,[7] New York City building inspectors suspected there could be a potential flaw in Jessor's "honeycomb" design of the massive garage roof. The roof had been built to support a vast playground/park above, with trees and grass upon hundreds of thousands of pounds of soil. After the collapse on Friday night, January 15, 1999, theNew York City Department of Buildings opened an investigation into other Jessor projects to test for durability.[6] The investigation did not turn up any major design flaws, and cited convergence of many elements including several days of warm rain, followed by quick freezing, thawing, and refreezing, along with a stoppage in the drainage system combined with minor cracking of the concrete in the roof and the immense weight above. After a four-year lawsuit, the Greater New York Insurance Company, insurer for Seward Park Housing, lost their nonpayment case to the cooperative, and $18 million for the damages. After the insurer won a subsequent appeal, the insurer and coop settled in 2010 with the coop returning $3.25 million to the insurer.[8]
The buildings are known for their murals byHugo Gellert in asocialist realist style.[citation needed] Each of the murals depicts a "progressive" hero with an associated quote:
Frances Madeson's 2007 comic novelCooperative Village is set in the co-operative.[10]
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