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Affordable New York: Phipps Houses

The names of Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick are well known in New York City and beyond for Carnegie Hall and for the Frick Collection. Though the institutions built by these two steel magnates are important to the city’s cultural identity, the organization built by their lesser known (but just as wealthy) associate, Henry Phipps, has had and continues to have, a more material effect on the lives of New Yorkers. His legacy, Phipps Houses, is the oldest non-profit developer of affordable housing, erecting its first buildings in 1906 and actively developing and managing properties today.

By

Museum of the City of New York

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First Phipps Houses/Kips Bay Plaza Apartments

First Phipps Houses/Kips Bay Plaza Apartments

Phipps, originally a bookkeeper who had himself grown up in a Pittsburgh tenement, gained between $50 and $70 million (accounts differ) when Carnegie Steel and J.P. Morgan merged. Concerned about the welfare of the city’s poor, he initially set aside a relatively small portion of this fortune–$1 million–and began Phipps Houses’ first development, on East 31st Street between First and Second Avenues, now the site of Kips Bay Towers.

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First Phipps Houses/Kips Bay Plaza Apartments

First Phipps Houses/Kips Bay Plaza Apartments

The three six-story buildings opened to tenants in 1906 and featured an interior courtyard to provide natural light and ventilation, and dramatic four-story archways that served as community spaces and, as Christopher Gray wrote in his 2003 Streetscapes column in the New York Times, “to keep the residents away from the corrupting influence of the street.”

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Phipps Houses

Phipps Houses

Work began almost immediately on a new development on West 63rd Street between Amsterdam and West End Avenues. Then known as San Juan Hill, the surrounding neighborhood was predominantly populated by African Americans, many of whom had recently come to New York to escape the Jim Crow south and seek better economic opportunities, and who met with intensive housing discrimination.

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Phipps Houses

Phipps Houses

The buildings on West 63rd were intended for and populated by black tenants, in contrast to the all-white buildings on 31st Street. Phipps Houses sold this Midtown complex in the 1950s in order to finance other developments. The buildings are still standing, with a two-story addition.

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Phipps Garden Apartments

Phipps Garden Apartments

The organization didn’t begin its next project until a couple of decades later: Phipps Garden Apartments on the border between Woodside and Sunnyside, Queens, opened in 1931, with a second, adjacent development opening in 1935.

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Phipps Garden Apartments

Phipps Garden Apartments

Unlike the Manhattan projects, the Garden Apartments were intended for middle income white collar workers, were larger, and featured amenities like radio aerial outlets in the living rooms and sound proofing.

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Phipps Garden Apartments

Phipps Garden Apartments

Four- and six-story buildings housing 472 apartments surrounded extensive interior park-like gardens designed by landscape architect Marjorie Sewell Cautley. Public space was set aside in the buildings for things like a social hall and nursery programs, and Phipps Houses constructed a playground across the street.

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