Park West Village (PWV) was created in the late l950s and early l960s as part of a government-subsidized urban redevelopment plan. PWV’s role was to provide affordable rental apartments with fresh air, good light, and attractive landscaped grounds for middle-income people. The government, under the l949 Federal Housing Act's Title I (Slum Clearance and Urban Development), reimbursed the developer for the cost of the land, the buildings to be demolished, and the demolitions. The developer, Webb & Knapp, Inc., entered into a redevelopment plan with the city that included a covenant not to commence "change in the project" for 40 years without prior approval of the City Board of Estimate and the City Planning Commission.

In the early 1960's PWV was bought by Alcoa. In l972 PWV was bought by Harry Helmsley. In 2000 PWV was sold to Lawrence Gluck and Joseph Chetrit.

There are seven buildings with about 2,500 apartments in PWV. Four buildings are in the 97th to 100th street super-block between Central Park West (CPW) and Columbus Avenue; they have a CPW address. The other three buildings are in the 97th to 100th street super-block between Columbus and Amsterdam avenues; they have a Columbus Avenue address.

Until l987, all PWV apartments were rent-stabilized. In l987, the buildings at 372 and 382 Central Park West were converted to condominiums; the buildings at 392 and 400 CPW became condos in 1991. The first two conversions had been opposed in the state courts by the PWVTA, the Board of Estimate, and the State Attorney General, on the ground that condo conversion was an illegal change in land use, but the courts ruled in favor of the landlord. The four condo buildings still include rent-stabilized tenants who lived there before condo conversion and chose not to buy their apartments, as well as individual owners and tenants who rent at non-stabilized rates from owners. The rent-stabilized apartments in the condo buildings are still owned by the owners of the rest of Park West Village, Lawrence Gluck and Joseph Chetrit. [to top]

PARK WEST NEIGHBORHOOD
HISTORY GROUP

Additional material on the history of Park West Village is included in the Neighborhood History Collection at the New York Public Library (Bloomingdale Branch), 160 West 100th Street. These materials were organized by the Park West Neighborhood History Group, and are available for reference in the Neighborhood History Research Drawer in the back of the Library.

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MORE PWV HISTORY

A History of Park West Village
(Excerpted from a longer article by Carter Horsley)

Despite early notoriety, this large complex—known initially as Manhattantown, then as West Park Apartments, and finally as Park West Village--became one of Manhattan’s most attractive new developments and a focal point for the renaissance of the Upper West Side above 86th Street. It took more than a decade for the project to come to fruition in 1960, and the controversies and scandals surrounding it ultimately led to a rethinking of the “slum clearance” programs of the era.

The seven red-brick slab towers that constitute Park West Village were designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and were built by two companies, Webb & Knapp (owned by William Zeckendorf) and Alcoa (Aluminum Company of America). These companies and the architects were not involved in the scandals. They were brought in to rescue the project in 1957.

The project, conceived in 1949 by the West Side Housing Committee, a coalition of seven local civic organizations, was driven forward by the imperious master builder Robert Moses, the city’s construction coordinator and the chairman of the city's Committee on Slum Clearance. In 1951, Moses sent to the Board of Estimate a plan to clear a large Upper West Side site bounded by Central Park West, Amsterdam Avenue and 97th and 100th Streets. Part of the plan called for eliminating 98th and 99th Streets within the site and widening the north and south perimeter streets. The city took over the site in 1952 under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949.

The site was occupied by tenements, garages, and apartment buildings, some of them used for single-room-occupancy (SRO) rentals. Moses eventually had 4,212 “slum” apartments on the site vacated and demolished, to be replaced by more than 2,500 apartments.

But it took a long time for Moses to realize his goal. When the original sponsor, Caspert and Company, took possession of Manhattantown the state rent control regulations prohibited evictions for slum clearance unless the new buildings contained more housing units than were being destroyed. The regulations had to be amended. Meanwhile, many tenants, knowing that they could not be evicted, refused relocation offers made by the owners. The owners also encountered difficulties when they applied for FHA insurance for the mortgage loans needed for any new construction, though the local FHA office eventually agreed to process an application. These problems were made worse when the rampant corruption in Manhattantown was publicized in superb investigative reports by Gene Gleason and Fred J. Cook in the World Telegram & Sun and at hearings in 1954 of the Senate Committee on Banking and Finance. The Gleason-Cook articles also revealed how the owners profited from the delays, as they continued to collect rents from the tenants who remained in the condemned properties while not maintaining them to any decent standard.

Meanwhile, several civic groups, including the Women's City Club, criticized the plan for its handling of the relocation of residents of the site. Critics also argued that the city's current residents would not benefit because the new apartments would not only be too expensive for them to afford but would significantly reduce the number of housing units on the site. After the corruption charges were aired in the Senate, Mayor Wagner banned the initial private participants in Manhattantown, including architect Melvin E. Kessler, who held equity in the project and whose fees had been misrepresented in public filings, from work in any of the city’s Title I projects for five years. Moses's own deals with developers reeked of cronyism but remained free of public criticism.

In 1954 the Citizens Housing and Planning Council proposed a new “neighborhood conservation” approach to urban renewal, and in 1955 Mayor Wagner came forward with a “vest pocket” redevelopment that emphasized small rather than huge redevelopment schemes. Slum clearance and urban renewal plans were no longer to be considered easy panaceas.

In 1957 the city instituted foreclosure proceedings on the Manhattantown properties and sold them to a new sponsor, Webb & Knapp. In July 1957 the project was renamed West Park Apartments, and soon after it became Park West Village.[to top]