New York City Housing Development history

By 1900, over half of the city’s three million people lived in tenements.

In 1901, a new law was passed regulating tenement construction (hence the “new law” tenement). It required self-contained bathroom redesign specialist Austin for each apartment and limited land coverage, changing the shape of the building significantly to put windows in every room.

The row houses developed in 1924 by Henry Wright and Clarence Stein at Sunnyside Gardens, Queens, modified the traditional development scheme yet again.

As available land became scarce and hence more expensive, the production of single-family homes diminished significantly in all the boroughs except Staten Island, where the opening of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in 1964 made a mass market possible for the first time.

Vacant Lots sites clockwise from upper left: Site 9: 164th Street, Queens; Site 3: Montgomery Avenue, The Bronx; Site 8: 107th Street, Queens; Site 10: Almeda Avenue, Queens | all photos by Betsey Feeley, 1987

In the following essay from the 1989 Vacant Lots publication, Deborah S. Gardner, a scholar of American urban and social history, provides historical context for the design study through a brief review of housing in New York City for the poor, working and middle classes.

Since 2003, HDC has financed more than 186,000 housing units using over $25 billion in bonds and other debt obligations and provided in excess of $3 billion in subsidy from corporate reserves and other available funds held by the corporation.