Government
Intervention in Rebuilding the Lower East Side
| For
the most part and for various reasons, the
plan to upgrade the Lower East Side failed.
The state (local, state, and, later, the
federal government) offered subsidies and
incentives to help achieve neighborhood
modernization. In the 1930s, property owners,
developers and some reformers were partially
successful in influencing state urban policy
to subsidize middle-income, rather than low-income,
development. Yet the state also was committed
to building housing explicitly for the
working poor. State urban development policy
was unclear and contradictory in its results
in reshaping the city’s landscape. |
|
In 1935, the New York
City Housing Authority transformed twenty-four
tenements on Avenue A and 3rd Streets into
First Houses, the first housing in the United States
built entirely by the government. The passage of the
1937 United States Housing Act called for the
replacement of slums with new low-income housing. In
1939, the city planning commission under the
LaGuardia administration embraced slum clearance and
the construction of new low rent housing for
virtually all of the Lower East Side.
| In
1949, the Lillian Wald and Jacob Riis Houses
were constructed along Avenue D from East 12th
Street to East Houston Street. |
 The Wald and
Riis Houses. Photograph by Robert Mcfarland.
|
The sites consisted of
several uniform buildings, ten to twelve stories high,
set in open green spaces known as "tower in the
park" style. Several low-income projects were
built in the region of the Lower East Side south of
Houston Street: Smith (1953), LaGuardia (1957),
Baruch (1959), Gompers (1964) and Rutgers (1965). The
construction of enormous housing projects across the
Lower East Side brought 20,000 new residents drawn
from all over the city. The massive construction of
public housing had considerable influence upon the
economic, social and cultural landscape of the Lower
East Side.
Links (click to follow)
Click here to read more about
subsidized housing.
Click here to read about the
apartments of NYC.
Click here to visit the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development.
Images
(click to enlarge)
 Slum clearance housing
proposal for Manhattan.
|
 Here is a photograph of
the Wald and Riis Houses by Robert McFarland.
|
Another photo
of the Wald and Riis Houses.
|
