This paper is dedicated to Co-op City, The largest cooperative housing in the united states.

Kingsley Aborampah

Mr. Serhiy Metenko

Metropolis – Writing Section – CCNY – FIQWS

26 November 2022

                                              Co-op City

The largest cooperative housing complex in America possibly in the world.

Figure 1 (Co-op City 1992) area view of co-op city

In this chronology, I will explain the most essential events which led to the development of Co-op city. Co-op city is an important site in New York and the Bronx history because for the past 50 years Co-op city has been crowned the largest cooperative housing complex in the United States. it is also home to more than 60,000 New Yorkers.

Pre-History Time of the Lenape Tribes, 1,100.

In the year 1,100 before the European settlement. The Bronx and most parts of New York were habited by Native American tribes. The Lenape, also known as the Lenni Lenape or Munsee and the Delaware, were the earliest New Yorkers. Lenape means “the Real People” in their language; to their neighbors, they were known as the “Ancient Ones,” recognized as the oldest of the northern Algonquin tribes. They resided in a historic homeland that spanned from the edge of modern-day Connecticut to Delaware, covering

almost all of New Jersey and most of New York. The Lenape People in this region lived in Wigwams, log houses, and tiny bands, traveling from place to place with the seasons and following the available food supplies. They were hunters and gatherers, using bow and arrow and spear to hunt, and were certainly well versed with the region’s fruits, berries, leaves, and nuts. However, there were at least three Lenape communities who lived in New York City, these three communities were the Wiechquaeseck, the Rechgawawank, and the Manahate. The Manahate community lived in Morden day Manhattan while the Wiechquaeseck and the Rechgawawank lived in the upper side of Manhattan including Harlem and the Bronx.

In the late 1500s following European settlements The Lenape tribe fought against various European Groups from the Dutch, British, French, and Swedish in other to protect their precious land. However, at times of peace, the Lenape and the Europeans established friendly relations and traded goods and services. But due to the large migration of European countries war broke out and it forced the Lenape to migrate further west.

Freedom Land U.S.A

Fast forward to the 20^th century, New York has evolved to be the largest city in the United States due to industrialization, trade, and urbanization. In 1959 an undeveloped 305-acre property of swampland became a spectacle that represented freedom and the American dream, this spectacle was Freedom land U.S.A., located in the northeast section of the Bronx. Freedom land U.S.A. was an American history theme amusement park that featured more than 40 attractions including the Lenape history themes. Its construction required thousands of trucks to fill in the swampland. Bulldozers created new surfaces and built mountains. They made channels to make lakes and rivers. Freedom land was landscaped with 10,000 trees, 35,000 shrubs, eight miles of navigable lakes and streams, and over 10 million gallons of water to fill in their Great Lakes. Eighty-five acres were transformed into the shape of the continental United States. This gave visitors the feeling of being at a different time in American history with the attractions and the landscape. Freedom land gained the nickname the Disney land of the east, but freedom land was larger in both size and capacity compared to Disneyland.

Unfortunately, Freedom land’s $65 million dollars cost and the size of the park, made customer retention difficult, attendance fell and by the first year of the park opening, the park was $ 7 million dollars in debt. In 1964 the park filed for bankruptcy. The dream was too big for the owners to find it. In the end, Freedom land became available for another project. The new hope was Co-op City, Co-op City was created to provide a new kind of Freedom land for middle-class New Yorkers.

Co-op city

Following the fall of Freedom land, U.S.A construction plans for Co-op city began the next year 1965. However, Co-op city was under different companies’ supervision such as Mitchell-lama, Riverbay Corporation, and The United Housing Foundation. The project was built by United Housing Foundation, a real estate investment trust in New York. Abraham Kazan is known to help build the Amalgamated Houses in the northeast Bronx in 1927. Under his leadership, in 1951, sixty-two labor unions and civic groups united to form the United Housing Foundation (UHF). Their goal was to build and promote cooperative housing. With political support, UHF started construction on Co-op City in 1965. UHF formed a wholly-owned subsidiary, Community Services Inc., to build the complex. The complex would then be managed by Riverbay Corporation. For Co-op City to become a reality and fulfill its dream, the project required the right architect. That architect was Herman Jessor. As a Russian immigrant, Jessor’s architectural philosophy embodied the hopes and dreams of eastern European Jews. His work epitomized the socialist ideals of liberty and equality embraced by the cooperative movement. At the same time, New York city was under cancer endangering the survival of the city, this cancer was slums, and slum clearance was a necessary operation to keep the city alive. People needed open space, air, and light; Co-op city provide all three. Co-op city became the answer to slums. The swampland was made into suitable land for development by bringing in five million cubic yards of sand from Pelham Bay by boat and then pumping it through a pipe, this raised the entire area by 14 feet. It was supported by 50,600 pilings extending down into bedrock. The first building built was a huge power plant and it spread about 170 miles of heating and air conditioning piping and 112 miles of hot water piping. Later 35 high-rise buildings and 236 three-story townhouses were built. Living 60 acres of green land, the building themselves only take up twenty percent of the land the rest is parks and other developments. Totaling 15,372 residential units, the residences have 130,000 windows, 4,000 terrace doors, 179 elevators, and 8 garages designed to hold more than 10,000 cars. The complex also has 15 houses of worship, six nursery schools, and daycare centers. This city within city has three shopping centers with a total of about 150 stores and 40 offices rented by doctors, lawyers, and other professionals. Each center has a supermarket, a barber shop, clothing stores, and all the necessary supplies a city inside a city needs. There are four basketball courts and five baseball diamonds. In addition, Co-op City has its own education park. The education park houses three elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. Tenant owners, known as co-operators, began to move into Co-op City from December 1968 until March 1972. By August of 1972, there were more than eight thousand families on the waiting list. The complex attracted mostly Jewish, Irish, and Italian families who lived in different areas of the Bronx, such as Tremont, Fordham Road, and the Grand Concourse. The initial the population of co-op city was 75% Jewish. In 1975 Co-op city residents organized a rent strike. Due to the rise in rent price and other costs, the original maintenance and carrying charges of $27.32 per room rose to $31.71 in 1970, to $38.06 in 1973, and to $42.81 in July 1974. With the strike, the residents believed that they were creating a miniature democracy. The residents also known as co-operators would work together in building the kind of community they wanted. During the strike, eighty percent of the residents held back their monthly maintenance payments, amounting to more than $20 million. The strike was the longest and largest in United States history. On June 29, 1976, residents gathered to celebrate the end of the strike. In the end the strike grated funds from New York State and the UNF, 10 million was given to Co-op City to help tenants cut interest rates to 4 percent. In the 70s to the 90s parts of the Bronx especially the south saw a steep decline in population, fires, drugs, and crime rose and caused urban decay, but the co-op city functioned due to the co-operator’s commitment and collaboration.

Today Co-op city is still the largest cooperative housing complex in the United State. In December 2018, the co-op city celebrated its 50^th anniversary, symbolizing a beacon of affordability, diversity, and corporativism. While the Bronx is New York city’s greenest borough and is a representation of Urban and Suburban life. Co-op city, however, experienced a big change in demographics 59% of Co-op City residents identified as Black, 29% identified as Hispanic, 6% identified as white, 3% percent identified as Asian, and 4% identified as other races. This is due to different races not succumbing to racist believes and programs put in place to make minority families eligible to live in the complex. Co-op city costs also increased from the initial $250 million cost to 436 million, mainly because of structural defects and inflation. At times fires break out, and high winds sometimes cost damage to the property. However, Co-op city is under minor development with new buildings, parks, and another facility under construction.

The Future

The future can be unpredictable, but when considering the future of a co-op city, it rests on the management and the resident. I believe Co-op city will continue to be important to the Bronx and New York City residents. I predict that in the future Co-op City will incorporate Morden architecture where little land can provide homes for thousands, leaving more green areas and spaces for its resident.

Figure 5 (Soa.syr.edu) future urban housing.

As of right now, Co-op city is 55 years old the builds are in suitable condition, however, there are still acres of land waiting for a future project. With recent advancements and technology, I can see co-op cities incorporate ideas and designs like Saudi Arabia’s line where a city is designed to have no cars, or streets and produce renewable energy to prevent climate change. Furthermore, with New York city’s population, every growing cooperative living like co-op city can help bring people of different races together and help solve a lot of issues in our society, such as crime, poverty, slums, and many more. With cooperative living the power rest on the residents.

Bibliography

Affordable New York: A Housing Legacy. Museum of the City of New York. Exhibition          September 18, 2015- February 7, 2016

Amalgamated Housing Cooperative. Bronx: Amalgamated Housing Corporation, 2002-2014. http://www.amalgamated-bronx.coop/about.html

Ballon, Hillary and Jackson, Kenneth T., eds. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Blanchfield, Caitlin, “Cooperative City, Cooperative Community,” The Architectural League’s Urban Omnibus – The Culture of Citymaking. http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/05/cooperative-city-cooperative-community/

Carter, Malcolm. “Huge Co-op City Houses 50,000 in Bronx Area: ‘Paradise’ or ‘Hideous’?” The Washington Post, January 9, 1971.

Casari, William A., “Concourse Dreams: A Bronx Neighborhood And Its Future.” CUNY Academic Works, 2008. http://academicworks.cuny.edu/ho_pubs/8

Center for Urban Research. New York City demographic shifts, 2000 to 2010 The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), 2011. http://www.urbanresearchmaps.org/plurality/#nabes

“Freedomland to Become Apartmentland.” Newsday, February 10, 1965

Gauding, Madonna. “The Amalgamated: a socialist-inspired housing co-op in the Bronx.” Occasional Planet, May 31, 20011, http://www.occasionalplanet.org/2011/05/31/the-amalgamated-a-socialistinspired-housing-co-op-in-the-bronx/

Schuman, Tony. “Labor and Housing In New York City – Architect Herman Jessor and the Cooperative Housing Movement.” The Architectural League’s Urban Omnibus – The Culture of Citymaking. New Jersey Institute of Technology, http://urbanomnibus.net/redux/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/LABOR-AND-HOUSING-IN-NEWYORK-CITY.pdf

United Housing Foundation and Co-op City. Co-op City Times. Bronx: United Housing Foundation. Editions: 1968 – 1978, and December 10, 1983

Woodfill, Barbara M. New York City’s Mitchell-Lama Program – Middle-Income Housing. New York: The New York City Rand Institute, 1971