Working-Class Utopias: A History of Cooperative Housing in New York City

409 Pages·2022·33.199 MB·English

by  Robert M. Fogelson

WORKING-C LASS UTOPIAS

WORKING-C LASS
UTOPIAS
A HISTORY OF
COOPERATIVE HOUSING
IN NEW YORK CITY
ROBERT M. FOGELSON
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2022 by Robert M. Fogelson
Princeton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the
intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the progress
and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global
exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to
reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission.
Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work
should be sent to [email protected]
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
99 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX
press.princeton.edu
Front cover: Groundbreaking ceremony at Co-op City, 1966. Kheel Center for
Labor-Management Documentation & Archives, Cornell University Library.
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fogelson, Robert M., author.
Title: Working-class utopias : a history of cooperative housing in New York City /
Robert M. Fogelson.
Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2022] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022006725 (print) | LCCN 2022006726 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780691234748 (hardback ; alk. paper) | ISBN 9780691237954 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Co-op City (New York, N.Y.)—History—20th century. |
Housing, Cooperative—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. |
Housing policy—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. | BISAC:
ARCHITECTURE / Urban & Land Use Planning | HISTORY / United States /
20th Century
Classification: LCC HD7287.72.U62 N536 2022 (print) | LCC HD7287.72.U62
(ebook) | DDC 334/.109747275—dc23/eng/20211110
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006725
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006726
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
Design and composition by Julie Allred, BW&A Books
This book has been composed in Macklin
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Aurora Sosa Alvarez and Miguel Sosa Alvarez
and
the memory of Fannie Fogelson and Bessie Richman

CONTENTS
Prologue, 1
1 The Origins of Cooperative Housing, 9
2 Cooperative Housing after World War II, 41
3 The United Housing Foundation, 74
4 Co-op City, 107
5 A More or Less Auspicious Start, 138
6 Fiscal Troubles, 168
7 Carrying Charges, 196
8 The “Second Front,” 224
9 “No Way, We Won’t Pay,” 254
10 The Great Rent Strike, 285
Epilogue, 326
Acknowledgments, 335
Notes, 336
Index, 368
Image Credits, 384

PROLOGUE
O
n November 24, 1968, several thousand New Yorkers assembled in a re-
mote section of the northeast Bronx known as Baychester to celebrate
the dedication of the world’s largest housing cooperative. A joint effort of or-
ganized labor, New York State, and New York City, it was called Co-op City.
And it was being built on 300 acres near the intersection of the Hutchinson
River Parkway and the New England Thruway. A huge green- and- white-
striped tent— “as big,” wrote one observer, “as a football field”— was rented
to accommodate the crowd, many of whose members had already bought
apartments in what Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller described as “a whole
new city within a City.” After they filed in, Monsignor Joseph T. V. Snee, ad-
ministrator of the Catholic Center of Co-op City, gave the invocation. The
governor and a handful of other dignitaries made speeches. The Cardinal
Spellman High School Band played the national anthem (and other familiar
pieces). Six families were presented with symbolic keys to the community.
And Rabbi Solomon I. Berl, spiritual leader of Young Israel of Co-op City, of-
fered the benediction. As everyone who attended the festivities knew, Co-op
City was far from finished. Only one of the high- rise apartment houses was
ready for occupancy. And the first eighteen families would not move in for
another two weeks. Indeed, it would be more than three years before its 35
towers, ranging from 24 to 33 stories, and 236 three- story townhouses were
fully occupied. But there was still much to celebrate, not the least of which
was how much progress had been made in the three years and nine months
since Rockefeller unveiled the plans for Co-op City.1
Presiding over the dedication of Co-op City was Jacob S. Potofsky. A tow-
ering figure in the labor movement, Potofsky was president of the Amalgam-
ated Clothing Workers of America, a post he had held since 1946, when he
1