New York, NY - Urban Archive

South of Union Square

Story

Housing Density: High Rise and High Density

Three examples of very dense high-rise housing developments suggest how the private market might have rebuilt parts of Manhattan for the middle class if the real estate boom of the late 1920s had not ended in the Great Depression. Two were created by the visionary developer Fred French: Tudor City (1927), a 14.5-acre enclave of a dozen towers on E. 42nd Street, and Knickerbocker Village (1934) on the Lower East side, which replaced some of the district’s oldest tenements with modern, but extremely dense, multifamily housing. The other, London Terrace (1930), packed 1,665 units into an avenue-long apartment block in Chelsea. The density of these middle-class developments averaged 463, 800, and 931 persons per acre, respectively.

This story is adapted from an exhibition at the Skycraper Museum. The original version can be seen here.

By

The Skyscraper Museum

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Fred F. French Building

Fred F. French Building

In the 1920s, the growing obsolescence, squalid conditions, and rising vacancies in old-law tenements near booming business district provoked developers to dream of lucrative, high-density private construction. Businessman Fred French believed slum clearance was the key to making central city life appealing to the middle-class. Successful redevelopment – what he called “scientific rebuilding” – would require wholesale demolition to change the entire atmosphere of a neighborhood so it could compete with suburban life.

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45 Tudor City Place

45 Tudor City Place

Underwritten by an investment plan that sold small-denomination stocks that promised solid returns to investors, French quietly assembled hundreds of tenement properties in Midtown’s east side for his Tudor City project.

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25 Tudor City Place

25 Tudor City Place

Clearing for the large hilly site began construction in 1926, and French quickly constructed twelve towers ranging from 10 to 32 stories.

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Tudor City Park

Tudor City Park

The high land coverage and population density were mitigated by the ample open space in adjacent private parks and the quality of the heavily ornamented neo-Tudor buildings. French marketed Tudor City as an amenity-rich alternative for white-collar workers who wanted to “walk to work” rather than endure hours of rail or subway commuting.

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5 Tudor City Place

5 Tudor City Place

Designed for the “average salary earner” and his family, the small but luxuriously finished units were complemented by common facilities and overseen by careful community controls.

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London Terrace

London Terrace

Similarly, real estate developer Henry Mandel used high-rise density and collective amenities as a strategy for London Terrace, which stretched between Tenth and Eleventh avenues on W. 23rd Street. To create his behemoth block, Mandel demolished 80 historic row houses.

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London Terrace

London Terrace

He then multiplied the stories to 22, with 67 percent land coverage.

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London Terrace

London Terrace

With this strategy, Mandel housed a comparable density of turn-of-the-century tenements in modern apartments at an average of nearly 931 people per acre. London Terrace became the densest multifamily housing in the city, and garnered rents of $52-$130 per room.

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