From my assistant, Blaise:
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| Ilya Bolotowsky's first study for the Williamsburg houses mural, 1936. Photo: www.artnet.com |
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| Photo: www.nyc-architecture.com |
I’ve walked by this corner several times in Williamsburg. It’s hard not to notice this striking structure — so different from neighboring buildings — but I never knew its significance until Jim Clark, one of the artists represented by Corinne Robbins Art & Design tipped us off on the history.
The term housing project often brings to mind disregarded, depressing, style-less concrete structures that are simultaneously sprawling and confining. But in 1936 William Lescaze, a Swiss-born modernist (who later taught industrial design at Pratt Institute), teamed up with Empire State Building architects and, in collaboration with the Federal Public Works Administration and the newly formed New York City Housing Authority, embarked on creating the Williamsburg Houses. It was the first instance not only of modernism in American low-income housing, but a demonstration of innovation and care devoted to a gravely overlooked and underserved population. The result was a revolutionary 12.8 million dollar design bringing European aesthetics and International Style architecture to Brooklyn and the U.S. at large.
The Williamsburg Houses is a 4-story, 1,622-apartment complex covering 23 acres that transformed 12 extremely bleak slum blocks bordered by Bushwick Avenue and Leonard, Maujer, and Scholes Streets. The buildings which house roughly 6,000 people are angled at 15 degrees to the grid to allow for more sunlight in the homes and breezes through the courtyards. The housing is adorned with tan brick and blue tiles and stainless steel canopies over the doorways, and boasts landscaped parks, playgrounds, commercial storefronts, a community center, and a junior high school. The New Deal-era Federal Art Project also integrated art into the collaboration and commissioned two murals, one by Francis Criss who created a marouflage of the L train, and the other an abstract work by Ilya Bolotowsky.
By the 1960s the Williamsburg Houses were in steady decline. While hailed by many critics, it was also criticized for its shoddy construction and problematic design mechanics. In the mid-1990s extensive revivification began at the behest of NYCHA.
The restoration project was deemed “the best public housing project ever built in New York” where, reportedly, the quality of living has drastically improved. By 1993, the Williamsburg Houses were designated a city landmark.
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| Historic aerial view. Credit: www.nyc-architecture.com |
