Riverside Park Community

History

Designed by architect Max Wechsler, the original plan called for 5 buildings arranged in a semi-circle at varying heights facing West 133rd Street. The plans also included plans for a public school, a medical building, a pharmacy and a playground facilities for 1,800 children. The community was constructed under the Mitchell-Lama program, a state-run program created in 1955 that provided low-interest mortgage loans and property tax exemptions to landlords who agreed to provide low-income residents with affordable housing at below-market-rate rents. This project was sponsored & backed by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Pension Fund/A. Philip Randolph, President.

At a cost of $54 million, the Educational Construction Fund developed this project as the first phase of a total renewal of the area between West 125th Street and 135th Street, from Broadway to Riverside Drive. When the property first opened, in Spring 1976, the director of sales received over 9,000 applications in the rental office. At the time, a family of five had to meet a basic income requirement of $13,000/year to qualify for housing. Federal subsidies, however, made it possible for people with incomes less than that which was required to obtain housing in the building. In 1976, a one-bedroom apartment cost $228/month and a two-bedroom apartment cost $272. Today, the rents for those apartments start at $1,750 and $2,250, respectively.

In 2005, after the loan was paid off, the then landlord Jerome Belson controversially opted the community out of the program. Per the guidelines of the Mitchell-Lama program, "any owner can withdraw from the program after 20 years upon paying off the mortgage". At the same time, BSR, the management company for 3333, sold the property to Cammeby’s Realty Corp. for $85 million.

Following the withdrawal from Mitchell-Lama, a class action lawsuit was brought against the current owner by many of the building's tenants, alleging that they were not properly notified of the rise in rental costs and for systematically harassing them to move out and make room for tenants who can afford to pay higher rents. The case was dismissed without merit. At the time of its development, the area surrounding the site of the Riverside Park Community consisted primarily of low-rent tenement housing and mixed-use commercial/residential building types that made up much of Broadway in West Harlem.

Since the previous owner of the property opted out of the Mitchell-Lama program, some housing advocates asserted that as many as 300 residents moved out of the building in the course of three years and some tenants are concerned that the building will no more be affordable. In 2008, "a group led by the Legal Aid Society filed a class-action suit in State Supreme Court against the building's owner, arguing that a provision requiring that the property remain dedicated to low and moderate income housing had been removed by the City and the prior owners without proper public notice, and that this was a major contributing factor to the efforts to force residents out." The State Supreme Court dismissed the case, citing that all claims, including those of harassment, were without merit. All attempts to appeal that decision have also failed. The president of one of the building's tenant associations, Alicia Barksdale, asserts that many of the tenants believe that it is not fair for them to ever have to move, regardless of the changes in the neighborhood.

In 2007, Cammeby’s sold the property as part of a portfolio for $278 million to Urban American Management, nearly triple the previous value. No longer under Federal regulation, the new management company aims to house the local college students from Columbia University and other young professionals.

Architect

The principal architect was Max Wechsler of Max Wechsler & Associates. Two architectural consultants to Wechsler were Richard Dattner and Henri A.LeGendre. The New York Times credited Dattner and LeGendre as the architects who designed the housing complex. Seven days later, the Times printed a letter to the editor, from Max Wechsler, proclaiming that his firm was in fact the lead design team on the project and Dattner and LeGendre “served as consultants only.”

Max Wechsler & Associates also built a high-rise residential building at 300 East 34th Street in the 1970s. He practiced architecture in New York City throughout his whole career. He died on September 23, 1993.

Site and context

At the time of its inception, the site of the Riverside Community Housing complex was mainly made up of multifamily tenement housing. West Harlem suffered from street crime at the time, and New York City in general was facing the monumental trend of suburban flight. Urban planners, politicians, and developers alike were pushing to finance projects such as 3333 Broadway to keep middle-income families from moving out of the city.

The building was built on a lot covering approximately 285,000 square feet (26,500 m²) in the Manhattanville section of Harlem. To the west of the buildings lies the West Side Highway (NY 9A) and beyond that the Hudson River. To the east of the site is Broadway. Across West 133rd Street to the south is the Manhattanville Bus Depot, and across West 135th Street to the north of the development lies a row of early-twentieth-century brick tenement buildings.

Materials

The tenement housing surrounding the site of 3333 Broadway typically is decorated with classically derived ornament, while the Riverside Housing is clearly designed in the modernist tradition. There is very little ornament or applied decoration on the brick and concrete facade of the building. The exposed slabs at each floor give the building a horizontal element, likely to contrast the immense vertical nature of the structure. This detail is typical of housing design in the 1970s and was inexpensive to build, not to maintain, and the exposed slab was prone to heat loss due to a lack of insulation. The windows also read as windows and nothing more, as they were designed to lay perfectly flush within the exterior walls. The interior communal spaces have similar modernist elements, with floor-to-ceiling windows, rounded columns and terrazzo flooring throughout.

The front facade (where the main entry exists) is pulled away from Broadway to create an entrance. This design was most likely due to the Zoning Resolution of New York City, which calls for specific building height to setback ratios. Nonetheless, the setback of the building entrance creates a sort of public space at the corner of 135th and Broadway.

3333 Broadway is built using concrete foundations and a concrete structure. The facade is a typical brick cladding system. The floors are built of concrete slab, and they are exposed through the facade. The five buildings are connected using expansion joints, so that when the building moves they (the buildings) will not push into each other and cause damage to each other or fail structurally. The buildings themselves (as is the case with all tall buildings) utilize the method of incorporating expansion joints to alleviate damage that could be caused by the average loads placed on a building. These forces refer to the dead loads of the construction materials themselves, the live loads of the people and things that may be brought into the building, and the wind loads that occur at the exterior of the building.