Stuytown - Stuyvesant Town/peter Cooper Village history

Due to a housing crisis that had been growing since the Depression, Stuyvesant Town was already being planned as a post-war housing project in 1942–43, some years before the end of World War II. A provision was made that the rental applications of veterans would have selection priority.

In 1943, opponents of the proposed Stuyvesant Town housing plan objected to its whites-only policy.

In July 1947, the New York Supreme Court determined that the development was private and that, in the absence of laws to the contrary, the company could discriminate as it saw fit.

A historic building zoning map of StuyTown and the surrounding area from 1955.

The Tenants Association was founded in the fall of 1971 as the Stuyvesant Town Tenants Association.

Since opening in a neighborhood storefront in 1973, we’ve grown into a unique 38,000 square-foot learning facility with outreach programs at nearly 50 sites throughout New York City.

In 1974, a contract between MetLife and the city expired after 25 years.

In 1993 the Tenants Association's name was officially changed to the Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association.

For decades it was a middle-class bastion, owned by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company until 2006.

Tishman Speyer relinquished control of the property in 2010.

As of October 2015, the property was sold to Blackstone Group LP and Ivanhoé Cambridge, the real-estate arm of pension fund giant Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec for about $5.3 billion.