A history of housing in New York City

Along with the new grid, a system of subdivision divided the gridiron blocks in lots. Row houses covered only 50% of the lots, leaving the other half available for a rear-yard. In order to satisfy the housing needs of the poor, “back building” filled these rear-yards, sometimes just leaving a small airshaft in between buildings.

New Laws were created to set some minimal standards to improve the living in tenements. The New Law of 1901 enlarged the air shafts of the tenements, creating new floor plans.

For the upper-class, high-rise apartment buildings already had an internal courtyard to improve the standards for light and air. These luxurious buildings were built alongside the eastern and western borders of Central Park.

The Flagg-type plan, with wider light slots, was the first philanthropic project to be build. Later variations on the Flagg-type plan introduced the open stairs, which allowed more light and air to penetrate into all rooms.

 

Around 1915, the evolution from the small airshafts to the internal courtyards now took a step further to a new housing type “the garden apartment” (for the middle- and upper-class). Using only 40% of the lot for the actual building.

The first of these gardens were only created for aesthetic appeal, but after the 1920’s they became a social meeting place for neighbors. The garden apartments were one of the most livable housing types in New York due to the balance between the build are and the open space. These garden apartments were, however, mostly located outside Manhattan.

At the same time in Europe, Auguste Perret, Le Corbusier and others wanted to give every tenant an equal amount of sun, space and green in their “Cities in the Park”. Because they designed vertical housing towers, there was al lot of land left for parks.

The first implementation of these ideas in Manhattan were Perimeter blocks with an interior garden, but in the beginning they still looked more based on the garden apartments than on the Towers in the Park.

In the 1930’s, the government occupied itself with housing. The Williamsburg Houses, which were the first Public Housing Project, already looked a bit more like the cities in the park, but were more garden apartments with a bigger garden.

After WOII, there was a large need for middle-class housing. “The cities in the park” ideology was the most economic answer for the mass production that was needed. One of the examples is Stuyvesant Town, completed in 1949.

  

But the Tower in the park idea became problematic, especially the increasing crime-rate in the surrounding parks. They also didn’t satisfy to the need for single-family housing.

While criticism on the Tower in the Park increased, new proposals were made to reconstruct the existing towers in the park through the introduction of new, low-rise continuous buildings in the parkland.
An alternative was, for example, the suburban Levittown on Long Island. The suburb provided mass-produced, inexpensive single-family housing.

In the 1980’s small-scale housing design became widespread in the outer boroughs. Federal subsidies were used to construct low-cost single-family row houses. For example Nehiamiah Houses in Brooklyn: a typical housing unit with rear yards and parking in front.

The idea was that the city’s housing needs could be solved with these small houses projects.

Bron: Richard PLUNZ, A history of housing in New York City, Columbia University Press, 1990.