TBNC 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet

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TWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL:CELEBRATING 60 YEARS OF SERVICE TO THE LOWER EAST S IDE

TABLE OF CONTENTS

04FOREW0RD

05 06INTRODUCTION

07 16NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY

17 18TIMELINE

19 38THE NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL

39 42TIMELINE

43 50TWO BRIDGES TODAY

51 54TIMELINE

04

Id like to say something about the evolution of an organization you grow up through planning. A child grows up when it begins to grasp the importance of planning the rest of its life. Two Bridges evolved as an organization when we started planning for the future of our neighborhood.

We knew we had a very important role to play when we created the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Plan. It was new to us; we did not know if we could successfully design a community within our own neighborhood. It was probably the greatest opportunity to grow that the Council ever had, and the people who were involved were poised to receive that challenge. The plan took years to create and implement. When authorities created hurdles, the Council fought back. And when the authorities backed down, because the Council was the people and was backed up by the people, the community began to realize its power.

This is just one of many fundamental brushstrokes to the canvas upon which we emerge on the advent of our 60-year anniversary.

As you will read, the story of the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Plan and other chronological mile-stones of our organizations rich history are exquisitely laid out in the following pages. Over one year of research by City Lores Molly Garfinkel and Two Bridges staff and board past and present has culminated into the production of this commemorative booklet. Each piece of presented information con-tributes tints, hues, shades and colors of what finally emerges as a masterpiece of community organizing on the Lower East Side.

The strokes of what that masterpiece looks like today were applied by the genius of the Councils early leaders like Dick Duhan, Father Donald Johnston, Harry Liebowitz, Frank Mosco, Joe Pinto, Natalie Sosinsky and Gardenia White, whose magnificent contributions to the Councils development shall not go unnoticed. Their visions about building up community life at the time were mere folly, but which now are vibrant, abiding realities you can never, ever eradicate.

You will also learn of the leadership of those so synonymous of the Council we know today; those who so firmly mounted that canvas to the wall of the 21st Century: Vicky Amter, Goldie Chu and Frank T. Modica. How much we miss them and how lonely the walk forward is without their wisdom, skills, humor and daily encouragements.

Today, Two Bridges Neighborhood Council stands as a vivacious organization immersed in planning an accessible and equitable East River waterfront com-munity along South Street for all Lower East Siders. We are also thinking of innovative ways to stabilize the permanently affordable, integrated stock of housing the Council is steward of, with a pledge to foster and build even more. To this end, we remain forever grate-ful for our long standing partnership with Settlement Housing Fund, which has led to building the neigh-borhood that became Two Bridges. Like big sisters, and over a span of nearly a half century, they held our hand in planning and building the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area. Over time they have honed our experience, built up our trust and confidence until we reached our full maturity; until we came into our own. And now we walk together, arm in arm. Thank you Clara Fox, Carol Lamberg, Susan Cole; and welcome Alexa Sewell.

In all, Two Bridges history points to our future, a future committed to an enduring mission of com-munity-based programs and projects to those either arriving at the twilight of life itself, or to successive generations that are right behind, our youth. And there is a reason why the Council is so focused on youth. This is, after all, the communitys greatest resource. Our kids could never be served sufficiently without enriched after-school programs that have a particular focus on the arts and sciences, further supported through our recently founded STEM education and Music programs. We pride ourselves upon this focus, for it is recognition and an affirmation that the human-ities must be integrated into the soul of community life.

Thank you all for journeying with us during these most fruitful years.

FOREWORDby Victor J. Papa, President/Director

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 2015

Cover of the Two Bridges Self-Renewal Plan, 1960. Courtesy of the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

Council has supplied planning acumen, activist zeal, and dedication to the continuing mission of self-renewal both for the neighborhood and the Council itself.They have sponsored community recreation, recon-ciliation, and education programs; created affordable housing, recreational facilities, supermarkets, and schools; defended tenants rights; designated historic districts; organized relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy; and promoted recreational access to the East River Waterfront.

Created with foresight and intention, the Self- Renewal Plan was a flexible mechanism rather than a definitive solution to neighborhood evolution. Taking the plan as modus operandi, the Councils long-stand-ing success lies in its ability to remain nimble and humbly responsive to the changing needs of the surrounding area. Its activities have taken on a broad range of local issues, and the organization stays vital by regularly renewing its programs to be attentive to the immediate state of the neighborhood. For six decades, Two Bridges has acted, pivoted, planned, and pushed forward in tandem with the surrounding community. We hope that this essay captures the dexterous, trail-blazing spirit of the Two Bridges neighborhood and Council, past and present. Surely that spirit will galvanize and guide the Council and the community it serves for many decades to come.

INTRODUCTION

In 1960, Two Bridges Neighborhood Council published the Two Bridges Self-Renewal Plan. The document, developed over the course of five years, benefited from the input of hundreds of citizens as well as representatives of numerous neighborhood organizations and institutions. It was a unique and dramatic demonstration of how an organized, well- defined neighborhood, with support from a unifying agency, can mobilize and revitalize itself to meet its own needs. More than a proposal for affordable housing, the plan deliberately sought a comprehensive approach to community rehabilitation that encom-passed housing, health care, improved race relations, education, recreation, and commerce. With coordination from Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, local citizens and institutions created a road map for redesigning, redeveloping, and improving their community while avoiding displacement, unnecessary hardship to residents, or drastic transformation of the neighbor-hoods character.

The city accepted the Two Bridges Self-Renewal Plan in 1961. From that moment forward, the Council and community have continuously planned, evolved, and grown from a position of strength. For the last 60 years, the Council has promoted everyday people determining, in grassroots fashion, what the future of their community should be. To achieve this goal, the

It was a unique and dramatic demonstration of how an organized, well-defined neighborhood, with support from a unifying agency, can mobilize and revitalize itself to meet its own needs.

05 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LIntroduction

066 0T H A N N I V E R S A RY

ment in miniature. It is a story that is political, cultural, social, and architectural. It begins in 1626 with the dubious transfer of land control from the native Lenape to Peter Minuit and the Dutch West India Company, and it continues today with community- created affordable housing.

New York Citys development began at the southern tip of Manhattan, where the islands deep harbor fos-tered trade expansion. In 1625, the Dutch West India Company established a European settlement known as New Amsterdam in Lower Manhattan, south of Wall Street. The colony quickly expanded north beyond Manhattans southern edge, and ever since, the area now known as the Lower East Side has been the first stopping-off place for every new ethnic, racial, and religious group arriving in New York City.

The district that became the Two Bridges neigh-borhood was once marsh, meadows, and hills flanked by expansive frontage along the East River. Between 1728 and 1732, the land was incorporated into a farm owned by the Rutgers family, brewers who had arrived in New Amsterdam nearly a century earlier. Hendrick Rutgers amassed a 108-acre estate with money earned in trade and brewing. Rutgers land, which eventually became part of the Fourth and Seventh Wards, was bounded by modern day Division Street, Montgomery

Street, Oliver Street, and Cherry Street. Before landfill expanded the city shoreline, Cherry Street ran along part of the original Lower East Side waterfront. After the Revolutionary War, Rutgers and other investors developed the higher grounds around Rutgers prop-erty into a respectable residential enclave. They also founded the Catherine Market in 1786, which served the city until 1909 and was located at Catherine Slip south of Cherry Street.

Shipping dominated New York Citys economy for well over two hundred years. By the end of the 18th century, the industry favored the East River, which was less prone to freezing than the Hudson. The shoreline around the Fourth and Seventh Wards was a thriving trade center, packed with piers where stevedores ported fish from Massachusetts, cocoa and coffee from the Indies, and sugar and cotton from the South. Shipbuilding along the Manhattan side of the East River spawned related businesses, including foundries, lumber yards, and sail manufacturers, cluttering the East River waterfront, while bars, brothels, and cheap hotels catered to the transient sailor population.

The future Two Bridges area experienced a post- Revolutionary War building boom until the 1820s, when a large segment of the shipping industry was

Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library. "Map of the Rutger's Farm as it existed in 1784" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1874. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/622f2060-450f-5a9e-e040-e00a18067a1e

relocated to the west side. Upper and middle class families moved away, and the area was left to sailors and working class tenants. By the mid-19th century, local maritime commerce was replaced by light and heavy industry operating from neighborhood houses and factories along South Street. Blocks were lined with tenements and occupied by European immigrants. Irish escaping the Potato Famine of 1840 were the first to arrive, and large numbers of first northern, then southern, Italians joined them by the late 1880s. Germans and Ashkenazi Jews settled in the Lower East Side in the 1840s, and Eastern European Jews immigrated en mass between 1881 and 1924. Commu-nities of Greeks, Basques, Armenians, and Slavs also established themselves in the Two Bridges area.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the neighbor-hood reached peak residential density and became associated with its majority immigrant population a mosaic of ethnic groups who lived, worked, and played among the tenements, churches, settlement houses, groceries, barbershops, bakeries, warehouses, social clubs, pushcarts, and sidewalk stands.

However, the working-class neighbors were cast as uniformly undesirable by planners and private real estate moguls who hoped to profit from the areas social and physical rehabilitation. As the 1924 Immigration

Two Bridges Neighborhood Council is embedded at the core of an uncommonly heterogeneous metropolitan community, the boundaries of which have remained fluid to accommodate changing demographics in an evolving city. The current service area roughly includes the land between the Brooklyn (1883) and Williams-burg (1903) Bridges, and north from East Broadway into Chinatown and Little Italy. When the Council was formed in 1955, it was named for the two bridges bracketing its then core advocacy area: the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges; at that time the neighborhood included Italian, Puerto Rican, Jewish, Chinese, African American, Greek, Basque, Armenian, and Slavic enclaves.

Today, the neighborhood is still richly multicultural. It is also architecturally variegated, boasting tenements, public schools, religious architecture, recreational facilities, low- and middle-income housing ranging from towers to row houses, and impressive infra-structure. The Council has done much work toward conserving and celebrating the communitys many cultural heritages, and even while developing much of the contemporary affordable housing, it has worked hard to preserve the neighborhoods historic fabric and legacy.

The history of the Two Bridges neighborhood is, to a large degree, the story of New York Citys develop-

NEIGHBORHOOD HISTORY

07 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LNeighborhood History


By the beginning of the 20th century, the neighborhood reached peak residential density and became associated with its majority immigrant population a mosaic of ethnic groups who lived, worked, and played among the tenements, churches, settlement houses, groceries, barbershops, bakeries, warehouses, social clubs, pushcarts, and sidewalk stands.

Pike Street and Henry Streets, New York, 1936. Photo by Berenice Abbott.



Act reduced the previously reliable flow of poor new immigrants into the country, demand for the areas old tenement housing decreased correspondingly. Vacancy rates rose, and after the 1929 Multi Dwelling Law imposed more rigorous tenement housing regulations, many landlords boarded up their properties or had them demolished. Parkways and other public transpor-tation projects enabled (or forced) many of the Lower East Sides long-standing ethnic groups to relocate to the outer boroughs, where new waves of speculation offered up-to-date housing stock. The vacancies and outmigration called into question what could and should be done with the Lower East Side slum.

Toward this end, the neighborhood experienced the first in a series of major physical alterations in the 1930s. Following the success of Midtowns Tudor City, developer Fred F. French amassed fourteen and a half acres between the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges. There he planned to build Knickerbocker Village, a middle-class residential complex that would eventually accommodate 1,590 residents. However, the 1929 stock market crash thwarted Frenchs plans, and as he failed to secure private funds, French was forced to appeal to New York State for financial assistance. Fortunately for him, the New Deal provided capital for some of the earliest government subsidized housing developments. In 1932, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) was established as an independent federal agency authorized to provide loans to private developers erecting housing as part of slum-clearance initiatives. The short-lived RFC only made two loans, one of which was in the sum of eight million dollars to New York City toward Frenchs Knickerbocker Village. With funding from the Public Works Administrations Housing Division (which took over for the RFC) and the New York State Board of Housing, Knickerbocker Village was New York Citys first urban housing project erected with the help of federal government monies.

When Congress empowered the RFC to make loans on slum clearance, French decided to build his project on one of his worst holdings the site formerly known as Lung Block, a reference to the areas high tuber-culosis mortality rate. Lung Block was surrounded by Catherine, Monroe, Cherry, and Market Streets, and included the now demapped Hamilton Street. Thirty years prior, Tenement Housing Department

commissioner Robert W. DeForest recommended the same area for clearance. At that time, the presence of six hundred fifty families stayed the demolition of the Lung Block.

Frenchs redevelopment of the neighborhood notwithstanding, the Lower East Side was hardly a tabula rasa. Significant numbers from the older cultural groups had stayed behind, much to the dismay and confusion of reformers. Beyond the prohibitively time and resource-consuming burden of finding new housing, immigrant communities had forged deep attachments to their homes and local cultural centers. The 1933 development of Knickerbocker Village displaced almost four hundred low-income households, only three of which were able to move to the new complex. Most of the local families from the Lung Block moved back to the neighborhood and into Old Law tenements located near each other. Half of those moved into apartments without toilets, and one-third to apartments without hot water.

Situated between Cherry, Catherine, Monroe and Market Streets, the Knickerbocker Village complex is comprised of two twelve-story perimeter block buildings with only forty-six percent site coverage. A concrete playground separates the two low-rent housing units, each of which surrounds its own introverted courtyard. The fortress-like faade is foreboding, but crenellated exterior walls permit maximum light and air circulation. In the early 1940s, the development was considered the cream of the crop, with furnished lobbies, a telephone intercom, and elevators appointed with brass details. This new housing the first multifamily elevator building in the neighborhood brought a large number of middle class Jews into the community.

While the Depression put many development schemes on hold, New Yorks developers, planners, and business elites kept Lower East Side redevelopment visions at the fore. But local residents began canvassing for housing reform in the face of evictions and foreclo-sures. They successfully rallied against area-wide zoning that lacked provisions for maintaining or creating true affordable housing. By 1939, it became difficult for developers to assemble usefully substantial land holdings for large-scale middle-class housing. Mayor Fiorello La Guardias City Planning Commission

NATALIE SOSINSKYFORMER CHAIR OF TWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS EDUCATION COMMITTEE AND BOARD VICE PRESIDENT

on Two Bridges Origins

Two Bridges started when my oldest son was in the baseball Little League. Thats actually how it started; it was just a neighborhood thing with Harry Leibowitz and Frank Mosco. They had the concept of the Little League involving all of the churches and organizations in the neighborhood. My kids were part of the Lower Manhattan Republican Club team. And there was Transfiguration Church, and St. James, and St. Josephs, and many others. All of the churches were involved. And from this, it just kind of evolved. We would get together for meetings about the Little League and all of a sudden it was, Well, why shouldnt we have something more than that? We had Geoff Weiner, who was at Hamilton-Madison House, and we started to talk about the possibility of involving the community in all different kinds of things. I became chairman of the Education Committee. And then we had a Housing Committee, and we had a Sports Committee. And it was like our own little city down there. It was in a very enclosed area Smith Houses, Knickerbocker Village, and the surrounding area. It blossomed, and we decided to make it into Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, and we were the first of the neighborhood councils.

We were brilliant! Yes we were. Thats right. We were brilliant. We were all so very involved in our community. Everybody wanted to make sure that the neighborhood was safe for our kids. It was as simple as that. And we started to talk, and think, and wonder what had to be done. No one told us we figured it out. We were pioneers. We were pioneers in a neighborhood that needed people to be together. Thats all.


126 0 T H A N N I V E R S A RY

LEFT:

Knickerbocker Village rises behind riverfront tenements and warehouses, n.d. Courtesy of the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

TOP/BOTTOM:

James Street, n.d. Courtesy of the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.

East Side News, 1952. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Seward Park Branch, Lower East Side Heritage Collection.

endorsed slum clearance and new, low-cost housing for large swaths of the rest of the Lower East Side. The future of the area was to be public housing for the working-class.

Enacted as part of President Harry Trumans Fair Deal agenda, the Housing Act of 1949 extended federal support for slum eradication and new construction, including public housing construction. Begun in 1949 and opened in 1953, the Alfred E. Smith Houses was the first public housing project erected in the heart of the Two Bridges neighborhood. The largest such development in the area, the Smith Houses includes twelve 17-story buildings, which house approximately 5,700 people over twenty-one acres. Demolition of the tenements on the Smith site began in 1950, and by 1953, most of the buildings bordered by Madison,

Catherine, and South Streets, and New Bowery (now St. James Place), had fallen to the wrecking ball. The Smith Houses were built by the New York City Hous-ing Authority (NYCHA), and named after four-time New York State Governor Al Smith, who grew up in the Two Bridges neighborhood.

Victor J. Papa, Two Bridges current President and Director, grew up on James Street, one block north of the Smith Houses site. It was a very small street, he says, but it was a whole world. It had everything. It had a candy store, an undertaker, a florist, a fix-it-shop, TV-fix-it-shop, and a church, and the school. We were in a corner building and I remember growing up in that apartment and watching the demolition of the neighborhood just east, which is now Alfred E. Smith Houses. And I remember the pile drivers and the



When they asked Geoffrey Wiener, Sr., director of Hamilton-Madison House, for help, he suggested that they create a neighborhood committee to address these problems.

The condemnation of long-standing residences to make room for incoming, unfamiliar tenants created tension between old and new neighbors.

noise. Papa recalls that the city condemned thousands of tenements occupied by neighborhood residents, many of whom relocated beyond the Lower East Side. The worst word my mother was always afraid of was condemned. As kids we didnt really know what that meant. The condemnation of long-standing residences to make room for incoming, unfamiliar tenants created tension between old and new neighbors.

Other public housing developments constructed in and around the Two Bridges neighborhood include the Vladeck Houses (1940), the LaGuardia Houses (1957), and the Rutgers Houses (1965). Mid-century discriminatory housing policies elsewhere in the city forced minority households to move to areas like the Lower East Side, which had the largest concentration of government-subsidized housing projects below 96th Street. By the late 1950s, African American, Puerto Rican, and Chinese families integrated into Two Bridges existing Jewish and Italian enclaves. Two Bridges had become a neighborhood of distinct working-class communities with limited communication between groups, or with the rest of the city.

By mid-century, Hamilton-Madison House, founded in 1898 and the areas largest long-standing settlement house, primarily served the local African American and Puerto Rican communities, and did its best to introduce and integrate these new neighbors with the old. However, racial tensions mounted, and fighting gangs representing the various ethnic groups dominated the streets. Parents were overwhelmed by the dangerous social climate, as well as the deteriorating quality of local schools and recreational facilities. A group of community representatives attempted, to no avail, to get the city to institute local remedial reading classes, and they organized to fight the citys proposal to do away with Coleman Oval, the neighborhoods only playing field. When they asked Geoffrey Wiener, Sr., director of Hamilton-Madison House, for help, he suggested that they create a neighborhood committee to address these problems. The committees later success in saving Coleman Oval and creating a reading program lead to the establishment of Two Bridges Neighborhood Council.

Smith Houses, n.d. Courtesy of the Social Welfare History Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries.


17 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I L 186 0T H A N N I V E R S A RY

1625 Dutch West India Company establishes New Amsterdam in Lower Manhattan

1683 Shearith Israel purchases cemetery at Oliver Street and St. James Place

1600 1700 1800

1801 Church of the Transfiguration established

1820 New York Citys Shipping industry moves to the Hudson River; upper classes leave 4th and 7th Wards, so area becomes working class

1836 St. James Church established

1840

Irish Potato Famine brings sizeable Irish community to New York City

1840S

Wave of German immigrants arrive in New York City

1850S

Asheknazi Jews arrive in the Lower East Side

1728-1732 Rutgers family incorporates 108-acre estate in the future 4th and 7th Wards

18TH CENTURY Shipping drives New York Citys economy, and the 4th and 7th Wards along the East River are part of a thriving trade center; area experiences a post-Revolutionary War building boom

1786 Catherine Market founded on Catherine Slip, south of Cherry Street

1795 Mariners Temple Baptist Church established

1860S

Large numbers of Italian immigrants settle in Lower Manhattan

1863 St. Teresa Church established

1881 Eastern European Jews begin arriving in New York City en masse

1883

Brooklyn Bridge constructed

1889 Educational Alliance established

1897

Mariners Temple Baptist Church organized

1898

Madison House is founded

and soon led a campaign to replace one of the area elementary schools. For six years, the committee dispatched delegation after delegation to City Hall. In 1964, monies were finally re-appropriated, and construction of P.S. 126 Jacob Riis School began.

The Education Committee also dedicated substan-tial energies to advocating for neighborhood parents. Its Parent Development Program was meant to empower adults whose children were being suspended or even expelled from local schools without due process. Culpable principals strong-armed or ignored area parents, many of whom lacked formal education, worked low-wage jobs, and spoke English as a second language. School hearings became a serious challenge, as overwhelmed adults were often too embarrassed to speak up with a heavy accent. The Parent Development Program assisted these families by holding trilingual workshops on how to help with homework, and how to effectively communicate with educational professionals to advocate on behalf of their children. Ultimately, the Parent Development Program developed into a discrete agency, and with funding from the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity, established its own storefront office on Market Street.

Two Bridges Sports Committee quickly became the symbol of progress toward racial integration, and

The Parent Development Program assisted these families by holding trilingual workshops on how to help with homework, and how to effectively communicate with educational professionals to advocate on behalf of their children.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, neigh-borhood councils have served as training grounds for citizens to learn the machinations of democratic government, and to exert influence on elected officials to improve underserved districts. The movement to create neighborhood councils began with concerns over conditions in working class urban environments. In cities across the country, voluntary associations formed to help residents rehabilitate and take control of their communities. Many tried to involve residents, and often focused on a single problem to resolve. World War I and World War II stimulated civic participation in the form of war bond drives, defense campaigns, and scrap collections, and the interwar period saw the rise of the adult education movement, which promoted active participation in government.

In 1955, local residents founded Two Bridges Neighborhood Council in effort to encourage individ-uals and organizations to assume greater responsibility for improving race relations and securing public services for the neighborhood. The community group quickly formalized into a dynamic framework for citizens to engage with and guide efforts to change their physical and social environment. Membership was open to neighborhood residents and businesses, as well as public and private organizations and

institutions. From the start, the Council committed to equal opportunities and responsibility in local affairs for all participants, and it was buoyed by encourage-ment and support from locals. The Council would soon become affiliated with the Lower East Side Neighbor-hood Association (LENA), an area-wide organization of neighborhood councils and institutions, with which it collaborated on resolving district-wide issues, most prominently, the development of the new Gouverneur Hospital.

As Geoffrey Wiener served as the Councils first president, remedial reading courses were hosted at Hamilton-Madison House. The reading initiatives success catalyzed the formation of an Education Committee, which, with members recruited from local parents associations, implemented an afterschool program at one of the area public schools. Over the years, leaders including Goldie Chu, Gardenia White, Natalie Sosinsky, Marguerite Datt, and Esther Gollivan established a strong, multi- racial coalition of community parents whose children attended local schools. Many of the members were also on the board of the neighborhoods Mobilization for Youth center, an organization founded to prevent juvenile delinquency and address gang conflict and drug abuse. They were a force to be reckoned with,

Two Bridges Remedial Reading Committee, Two Bridges News, 1965. Courtesy Larry Liebowitz.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL

19 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LThe Neighborhood Council


GARDENIA WHITEPARENT DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM CO-DIRECTOR

on the Parent Development Program

Im originally from South Carolina. But I spent most of my years in New York. I was part of a migration from the South to the North for better employment and better education. I got to New York in 1953, and we lived in Harlem for a couple of years. During that time we were living in tenements, and I had three small children who I wanted to move to the housing projects for a better home. I moved to the Lower East Side in 1956, into the Alfred E. Smith projects. It was a wonderful experience. I enjoyed living on the Lower East Side, and I enjoyed living in the Alfred E. Smith projects.

I got involved with Two Bridges probably around the 1960s. It was early on in the Councils existence. I was involved with a church in the neighborhood called the Mariners Temple Baptist Church, which is where I met Margaret Zipsie, who was involved with Two Bridges. And because I worked with her at the church, she informed me about Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, who were setting up a parent educational program. Thats how I got involved.

Two Bridges got a grant from the federal government to do a summer program for elementary school children. And part of that also was to do some work with parents, to get them more involved. Two Bridges set up successful workshops for parents on Fridays during the summer. When that particular part of the program was over, they had some money left. The Council said, You know, we would like to continue doing something for parents. So they started a program called the Parent Development Program, and I was hired as an aide. This opportunity actually launched me into getting a college degree and a career in education. It was wonderful working with the parents. We would have workshop with them, and visit them in their homes. We would find resources for them, and do whatever they were interested in. We really got parents motivated and involved with their school system, and they really made a difference for their children and their childrens education.

And at one point, Goldie and I became the co-directors of the Parent Develop-ment Program, and it was a trilingual program. It was made up Hispanic, Chinese, and African American neighbors, and we always had staff to help with this. Everything we did was in three languages. Every flier that went out, every, every thing, was in three languages. We did it! And it was so interesting. You know, we were organizing on the ground, door to door to get signatures, or just to talk with the people about what was happening with local education. We would go to factories, because at that time there were a lot of factories in the community, and thats where many of the parents were. If we would go to see a Chinese family, I would take a Chinese worker with me to translate. If we went to speak to a Puerto Rican family, wed take someone who spoke Spanish. And it was not a hard thing to do. It was just natural, so thats what we did.

PAUL KURZMANTWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL STAFF DIRECTOR 1964-1967

on Two Bridges News

We had a Two Bridges Neighborhood Council newspaper. This wasnt a Lower East Side news-paper, this was the Two Bridges Neighborhood Councils own newspaper. We printed it in a formal manner. Today you could do all these things on a desktop, but in those days you had to use hard, hot type at a printer. And wed get special prices, because somebody at our committee meetings always knew somebody. My uncles second cousins first wifes mother knows a guy, and shell get it for you. And wed have it!

It was great because it really looked like a newspaper. The usual small font and everything, all printed by a hard press. We worked with a local printer whose shop was down in a basement, somewhere off of Pine Street. It was one of those places that if you didnt know it was there, you didnt know! In those days, everything had to be done by people. First you got your galley proofs. And then you got your page proofs, and so forth. I would usually do only the page proofs. I wanted the community to do the rest, because it was their newspaper. The heads of all of the committees wrote articles, and then there would be neighborhood events listed, and occasionally politicians would contribute articles, or ads. The two ministers at the Baptist Church were the chairs. Reverend Younger, and the assistant pastor, Reverend Chapman. Reverend Younger was extremely com-munity-minded and extremely involved. He was the head for many years until he passed it on to Rever-end Chapman, who also served as the editor. And I always made sure that the assistant editor was some-body from the neighborhood, so that lots of people got a chance to participate.

CARMINE TABONENEIGHBORHOOD RESIDENT AND SUMMER IN THE CITY COORDINATOR

on Two Bridges Little League

I started playing baseball when I was ten. It was such a different time because youd run to school at 8 oclock in the morning, and youd just play a game! Youd have a spaldeen, and youd play for 45 minutes or so until the bell rang, and then youd go inside the school. Id run across the street to the proj-ects, grab a sandwich for lunch, run back out, play until 1pm (cause we had an hour for lunch), and then at 3 oclock, Id play outside for a while more until I went in to do homework. I mean, we did play things like Johnny on the Pony, and skellies. That was sort of the filled bottle caps that you kind of hit between boxes. A lot of handball and punch ball and games like that.

When I turned ten, St. James sponsored a team as part of the little league run by Two Bridges. So I joined, and the teams that I remember were Educational Alliance, Mariners Temple, St. Joseph, Hamilton-Madison House, St. Christophers, and there were many others. Mariners Temple was essen-tially African American kids, and St. Christophers was mainly Puerto Rican kids. St. James was Italians and Irish. This was how you got to know other kids in the neighborhood, and it created a real sense of camaraderie. And even as a young kid I thought that was pretty great.

226 0 T H A N N I V E R S A RYT W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LThe Neighborhood Council

21

Community Councils and Community Control, were published in 1970. In it, Weissman notes:

The successes of any one committee in the council cannot be divorced from the successes or failures of other committees. The newspaper helped the education committee, which helped the housing committee. Through the education committees constant appearances at City Hall over the years, it made city officials aware that a Two Bridges neighborhood existed and that the Council was not another of those fly-by-night citizens groups that die as fast as they were born. When in 1960 the Housing Committee began its push for an urban renewal plan, the city planning commission was already aware of the activities of Two Bridges. (Weissman, p.60)

Before the Council was formed, the neighborhood did not have its own name; Two Bridges was selected by members of the Councils Housing Committee to encourage neighborhood cohesion and, possibly, to enhance the credibility of the Two Bridges Self- Renewal Plan. For its part, the Housing Committee was engrossed with the onerous task of creating consensus around the Self-Renewal proposal. It hosted countless public meetings to discuss community concerns about city domination of the urban renewal process, as well as fears that integration of residents wishes would be diminished to mere promises and platitudes. The Council also held numerous meetings with city officials. Given that the federal government was to provide a significant portion of funding for the Two Bridges urban renewal process, and that the immediate planning would fall under the citys juris-diction, there was a significant chance that the com-munity would be denied meaningful input and control.

indeed, by 1963, the lead banner at the sports parade read, Side by Side for a Better East Side. Headed by local volunteers Frank Mosco and Harry Liebowitz, the Little League became a forum where children of all races, ethnicities, and income levels got to know each other, as well as parents from the other constit-uent communities. According to Papa, The Little League was exciting because it activated churches, settlement houses, political clubs, and guys like the doc at the local drugstore to get involved by sponsoring their own teams. It formed a very dynamic, competi-tive environment in the community where people got very excited about teams, parades, and awards ceremonies. Often hundreds of people came to watch the children play.

The Council also published a community newspaper, Two Bridges News. Edited for many years by Reverends George Younger and Chapman, the ministers of Mariners Temple Baptist Church, Two Bridges News

was an eight-page quarterly featuring articles about Council programs, debates related to neighborhood issues, historical and editorial essays, Little League schedules and scores, and advertising space for local businesses and politicians. A local Boy Scout troop distributed it free to neighborhood families. According to Papa, The newspaper was also meant to introduce new families to the existing community. The prob-lem with the community was that these people were moving in, but they were unknown and different. Well, Two Bridges looked at that and said, Maybe we should write a profile about the new families so that you do know something about them. I think that was very innovative. Two Bridges News became a major asset to the Council, and to many in the neighborhood, it represented the Councils influence.

Social worker Harold H. Weissman studied the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council from 1962 to 1963. His observations, compiled into a book entitled

TOP/BOTTOM:

Two Bridges Little League, Two Bridges News, 1965. Courtesy of Larry Liebowitz.

Two Bridges News, 1961. Courtesy of the University of Minnesota, Social Welfare History Archives.

RIGHT:

Chairman Joseph Pinto addresses the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council on the need for housing of low and middle income families, recreational areas, improved and expanded hospital facilities, and assistance in the narcotics problem, circa 1961. Courtesy of Stephanie Pinto.



The housing committee had already attended and contributed to nearly every meeting on Southbridge Towers, Chatham Green, and Chatham Towers. The Council and community were involved in protests supporting the integration of the building trades union during the construction of the Rutgers Houses, as well as a motion to designate a portion of Rutgers Houses as senior citizen-protected housing. As Paul Kurzman, Two Bridges staff director from 1964 to 1967 recalls, By then we werent used to being anybodys window dressing. But there was a feeling that the forces were so large. And the amount of money was so big. And the hand of the federal government would be so direct that the community would lose influence and would be patronized in the urban renewal process. We had to prevent that from happening.

In 1961, the city approved the Self-Renewal Plan largely because the Council was able to present a united neighborhood front to city agencies. The plan provided for the construction of middle- and low- income housing, shopping, and community facilities on a site east of the Manhattan Bridge in the old industrial zone along South Street, where new buildings could be constructed without demolishing old ones and displacing residents. That year, the Council won the Metropolitan Committee on Plannings Planning Award for its originality. In 1964, the City Planning Commission adopted a portion of the Self-Renewal proposal, and assigned it as a priority for federal study funds as an urban renewal area. The following year, the Council was designated as urban renewal sponsor. Approval and sponsorship were considerable achievements, but the hard work was just beginning. Over the next several decades, Two Bridges Neighbor-hood Council would encounter scores of barriers to bringing its plans to fruition.

In January 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty in the United States. Between 1964 and 1968, more social legislation was passed than at any other time in American history. The Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Economic Opportunity Act were all enacted during this period with the goals of increased access to resources, rights, and protections for minorities, women, disabled, poor, and other historically disen-

franchised communities. The War on Poverty called for maximum feasible participation of the poor, wherein low-income citizens were to play an active role in the design, administration, and evaluation of local social service programs. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council was perfectly poised to embrace Johnsons paraprofessional paradigm, as it had both preached and practiced inclusion and equality of opportunity since its inception a decade earlier.

As part of the War of Poverty, the Johnson admin-istration established the Office of Economic Oppor-tunity to create and fund social welfare programs like Community Action Programs (CAPs), community- based agencies to help the poor become self-sufficient; Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), the domestic version of the Peace Corps; Head Start, pre-school education for children of low-income families; and Model Cities, an urban redevelopment initiative to improve the quality of life in American cities by channeling federal monies into their neediest neigh-borhoods. In 1965, the Housing and Urban Devel-opment Act expanded federal housing programs and subsidies, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was created to oversee and distribute these funds. The Two Bridges neighborhood benefitted from many of the new programs, as the Councils workforce doubled with the hiring of VISTA workers, and Hamilton-Madison House established the neighborhoods first Head Start program (staffed at one point by Shirley Chisholm). As the sponsor of the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area (URA), the Council would receive significant HUD support, but it would also struggle with the agencys rigid regu-lations and the shifting housing priorities of successive federal administrations.

As elsewhere in the country, the tumult of the 1960s washed over Two Bridges like a wave. In 1967, the Council and the Parent Development Program obtained Ford Foundation support to sponsor one of three demonstration school districts in New York City. Along with Ocean Hill-Brownsville in Brooklyn and I.S. 201 in East Harlem, the Two Bridges demonstration district, which included P.S. 1, P.S. 2, P.S. 42, P.S. 126, and JHS 65, was an experiment in decentralization of power and community control over local schools. The program empowered designated communities to create

The plan provided for the construction of middle- and low-income housing, shopping, and community facilities on a site east of the Manhattan Bridge in the old industrial zone along South Street, where new buildings could be constructed without demolishing old ones and displacing residents.

their own governing boards comprised of parent, resident, teacher, and principal representatives. Governing boards were able to select and hire school personnel, initiate and approve programs, request budget appropriations, and make budget allocations. The Two Bridges demonstration district created jobs and social mobility opportunities for many neigh-borhood participants, particularly women. However, idealistic though they were, all three demonstration districts were ultimately stymied by ambiguous levels of autonomy from the Board of Education, divergent interpretations of democratic community participation, and the bitter 1968 United Federation of Teachers strike.

To a large degree, school control activists were inspired by the civil rights movement, and local and national struggles for democratic rights and dignity. In 1963, the Council had sponsored a successful voter registration campaign for Two Bridges African American and Puerto Rican citizens. The Councils executive board also felt that it was critical for Two Bridges to participate in 1963s March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, as the issue was of critical importance to the neighborhood and the nation. The Council set up registration tables in front of Hamilton- Madison House, and later raised $100 to support the March. Along with leaders of local churches and Hamilton-Madison House personnel, the Council and community sent busloads of residents to join the ranks of the rally. Michael Mickey Schwerner, then a Hamilton-Madison House employee, organized the bus rentals. A year later, Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were killed by the Ku Klux Klan while working on the Freedom Summer cam-paign in Mississippi. Outcry over their deaths threw momentum behind the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the wake of Dr. Martin Luther Kings assassina-tion, the Two Bridges community, including Council director, Dick Duhan, soon-to-be-Council president, Sarah Farley, and Hamilton-Madison House director, Tom McKenna, demanded economic and human rights at Resurrection City in Washington D.C. in 1968. That year, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was finally enacted, abolishing the national origins quota system from U.S. immigration policy, and the federal Fair Housing Act banned discrimi-



nation in housing. Emboldened by these civil rights achievements, the neighborhoods St. Teresa parish founded Its Time, a pioneering tenant advocacy organization that continues today, under the auspices of Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, to defend the housing rights of Two Bridges and Chinatowns minority and low-income residents.

Despite significant civil rights gains, racial tensions persisted and flared nation-wide. In 1967, riots raged in cities across the country. The Council and community also faced each other and battled their demons in the streets but in Two Bridges, efforts to ease the tensions included block parties, street festivals, and public art programs. In 1968 and 1969, the Council and local parishes organized street festivals, what we would call Happenings, Papa says. Catherine Street was closed between Monroe and South Streets to create a space where increasingly diverse neighbor-hood denizens, local churches, and other organizations could gather and get better acquainted. Festival pre- organization meetings at Papas family apartment included African American residents from the Al Smith Houses who were not likely to have gained

access to Knickerbocker Village otherwise.The street events were meant to cause real change,

and were affiliated with the Summer in the City Movement. In 1964, East Harlems Monsignor Robert Fox initiated the Summer in the City movement as a way of addressing the New York Citys structural poverty and racial tensions. With funding from the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity, Summer in the City was a creative Community Action Program that, by 1968, operated fifty-one storefront centers around the city, and employed nearly six hundred workers, many of them artists, nuns and priests. The programs goals included breaking down social barriers, creating local relief networks, and providing residents with creative and professional development opportunities. Summer in the City established community mural projects, credit unions, and adult education courses in the South Bronx, East Harlem and the Lower East Side. In communities with large Spanish speaking populations, youth were engaged to teach Spanish to police officers.

The protests and street gatherings of the 1960s prepared the Council to effectively mobilize in 1970

African American and white Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party supporters demonstrating outside the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey; some hold signs with portraits of slain civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner / WKL. Photo by Warren K. Leffler. Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

SISTER PAULINE CHIRCHIRILLOFOUNDER OF ITS TIME AND FORMER TWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL BOARD MEMBER

on Summer in the City

I went to St. Teresas in the summer of 1965 to work in a day camp. We had a project called Summer in the City, which was marvelous and involved whole families in the neighborhood. It was just around the time of Vatican II, when everything was changing. The president of our community at the time was a real visionary. She let me stay at St. Teresas. I originally went for a month, and stayed 22 years. It was absolutely wonderful. There really wasnt a separation between St. Teresas, the other parishes, and Two Bridges. We worked together and had the same vision, the same hopes, the same ideals. We were there for each other without competing. And it was good because the people realized you were one group together.

Summer in the City was created so that people wouldnt be afraid to be out in the streets, so that when the people came home from work, they wouldnt just sit in their apartments. I was in full habit at the time, and anyone from any background would see me with the children during the daytime, and theyd see me in the projects and in the area in the night. It was beautiful because there was no reason not to share and to all be one.

Most New Yorkers went away for the summer, but our people couldnt afford to. There was no such thing as going away, so Monsignor Fox had the idea, why dont we celebrate summer in the city? He got a government grant to hire artists, musicians, and other personnel to work right in the neighborhood with the people. Various parishes had their own Summer in the City programs, and we in St. Teresas had a huge one. We put tables outside, and the artists were there. When people would pass by, they would be invited to join us and contribute to the artwork. We had musicians who went around, primarily to the housing projects, and they would sit there and play their guitars and sing, and all of a sudden wed have a group of residents joining. People love music, and they love to sing and dance. Its a way of expressing yourself, and it isnt threatening, it isnt anything academic. Its amazing that when people participated and shared, everyone was accepted.



tion of city and state Mitchell-Lama funding, and the Nixon administrations 1973 moratorium on low- income housing subsidies. Although the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 reversed Nixons policy, it took a year for HUD to begin imple-menting its revised provisions for subsidized housing and urban renewal programs, namely the now-defunct Section 8 housing program. Later, HUD funding and height limits further frustrated the process.

According to the late Judith Edelman, founding partner of the Edelman Partnership and lead designer of the Two Bridges URA, these obstacles compromised the original phasing of the buildings construction, and a decade of moving one step forward, two steps back caused the Edelmans and TBHS torturous headaches and many re-visioning sessions. So much happened by expediency of the moment, Edelman noted. What piece of it was available; what funding was available. It was really quite chaotic.

In spite of setbacks, the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area is, by all accounts, an incredible, grassroots success story. In 1973, a group of five neighborhood

ment. The Councils Housing Committee was charged with gaining community support at bi-weekly public meetings, where it familiarized the neighborhood with the designs and tenant selection criteria. The Council also set marketing goals and provided related jobs for community residents.

Between 1972 and 1997, when the last building in the URA was completed, TBSH succeeded in creating nearly 1,500 units of low- and moderate-income housing, much of which will remain permanently affordable. However, TBSH and the Edelmans had their work cut out for them. Although the citys Board of Estimate approved another revision to the URA plans in April 1972, six months later, a HUD ruling threatened to prohibit construction due to the areas alleged failure to meet approved noise levels. The Council mobilized the community in protest, and after a years delay and intense negotiations, a local congress-man intervened with HUD to get an exception.

Additional delays and disappointments were soon caused by the citys fiscal crisis, lack of communication between relevant municipal departments, the dissolu-

LEFT:

East Side News, 1970. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Seward Park Branch, Lower East Side Heritage Collection.

RIGHT:

Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area site plan, n.d. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

when the New York Telephone Company attempted to raze the block bounded by Henry, Madison, and Market Streets to build a switching station. The demolition would have forced hundreds of low-income families from their homes. In response, Two Bridges 300-member We Wont Move Committee staged a rally and block party on Market Street, protesting eviction by the phone company. Two Bridges Neigh-borhood Council hired its first social worker, organized the community, and devised a plan to save the houses by moving the switching station to a commercial, non-residential location.

Papa recalls, The phone companys attempt to demolish the buildings was striking at the heart of the Two Bridges neighborhood. When I talk about soul, you know how much we loved our neighbor-hood, and any attempt by anyone to change it in any way, certainly as significantly as the phone company proposed to do itthey were going to put the Verizon Building that you currently see right there on Madison Street! That was the beginning of real protest. And it was the beginning of community control in the true sense of the word. I think we were probably blessed to have such a controversy because we were converted to understanding our neighborhood, and loving it and cherishing it, better than ever.

Bolstered by the Madison Street victory, the Council trained it energies on its biggest battle to date: turning the Self-Renewal Plan into reality. In 1970, the Council hired Edelman and Salzman, which became the Edel-man Partnership (now Edelman Sultan Knox and Wood), as architects and planners of the Urban Renewal Area (URA). The following year, the Council joined forces with Settlement Housing Fund (SHF), a non-profit affordable housing developer, to form the Two Bridges Settlement Housing Corporation (TBSH). Moving forward, TBSH would sponsor housing development in the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area. The first agenda item was to determine income mix goals for the Urban Renewal Area. After much back and forth, the two organizations decided to set a goal of 52% middle-income and 48% low- income. SHF, including founder Clara Fox, consultant Roger Schafer, and staff members Carol Lamberg and Susan Cole, became responsible for obtaining financing for the urban renewal sites and for overseeing develop-


HAROLD LUIHAMILTON-MADISON HOUSE STAFF 1964-1967, ASSISTANT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 1967-1971

on the We Wont Move Committee

Well, 1965 was when the big influx of Chinese came in to the area. Chinatown moved down from Henry Street and parts of Monroe where Knickerbocker Village was. But most of the people lived around Henry and Madison, and soon there was a big move for the telephone company to take over the buildings there. It was discovered that the company was going to build a power station in the area, because they had to support Wall Street, which was growing immensely. That was the big fight. It was found out later that the landlords were wear-housing the apartments and forcing people to move out. Two Bridges was very involved. They started forming committees, and the big committee was We Wont Move. I got involved with them personally, as did student volunteers and activists from other community groups, such as the Chinatown Planning Council.

There were a lot of youth, mostly students, involved in the We Wont Move committee who were Chinese. I got to know a lot of them. We came out early in the morning, and demonstrated, and literally broke down doors so that people could move back in. We helped to developed a squatter movement.

I have this outlook now I dont remember any bad things. I only remember good things. You know, I started thinking about all the good things and its just so much fun. Working with Two Bridges, that was growing up time for me in terms of my experience with civil rights and social justice. Growing up in the Lower East Side and Chinatown and being part of it all that was all that I would ever want. I just dont know where I would be more happy. So, Ive been lucky. The whole immigrant experience is something that not many people are privileged to have.

SUSAN COLELONG-TIME SETTLEMENT HOUSING FUND STAFF MEMBER AND COUNCIL BOARD MEMBER

on the Two Bridges Settlement Housing Corporation Team

We worked as a team. Larry Silver, Goldie Chu, Kai Liu, and Vicki Amter were on the board. Those were the old timers... Vicki had a mind like a steel trap. Around numbers she was brilliant. Bossy, and a real old lefty. She was quite something. Goldie was inscrutable, but she was fabulous. She ended up coming on the Settle-ment Housing Fund board as well. She was a mom, and she was an organizer. She was brilliant, and she was tough as nails with a vision. Her vision was integration, and her vision was better schools; thats how she started. She started through the school system. Vicki did as well. Thats how they all met fighting for better schools. And they were adamant about the housing, too. That it be decent, safe, and affordable. That it be well-maintained, always. And Debbie Leung, Two Bridges, the Edelmans, they were all part of that.

We had so many sources of funding on Two Bridges Tower, it was not to be believed. Thats the only way Carol could put the package together. There was not a lot of basic funding, like project-based Section 8, or 236. None of that; it was gone. Two Bridges Tower was a combination of bonds and groans, as Carol called them. So you had to figure out how the rents were going to make it work. Carol was the developer. She was always the developer. I called her Mrs. Milstein. The Milsteins were big-time developers in New York City. And, she always loved the numbers, she loved making it come together, and even dealing with the city agencies. Ann Loeb and I did the asset management for the building. Walking the building from the ground up, seeing construction going into the base of the building. You know, the dirt. We loved it. I never stopped walking. I love that building. And I still go down there once in a while to walk through it.

After the buildings were finished, Two Bridges expanded into real ownership of that entire neighborhood. Its politics everywhere, but they are really committed to making it better. Two Bridges has grown in that role, and has been an important part of the stability of the neighborhood.

326 0 T H A N N I V E R S A RY31 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LThe Neighborhood Council

banks developed the 14-story, 104 unit Hester-Allen Turnkey project with Two Bridges Neighborhood Council as sponsor. Known as 45 Allen Street, it was created through the New York Housing Authoritys (NYCHAs) turnkey program. In 1975, Two Bridges Houses was also completed through the turnkey program. Owned and operated by NYCHA, Two Bridges Houses is a 26-story project bordered by Clinton, South, Cherry, and Montgomery Streets that provides 250 units of low-income public housing and a community center.

Two years later, Lands End I opened at 257 South Street, subsidized through HUDs Section 236 Interest Reduction Program. The 19-story tower included 260 units of Mitchell-Lama rental housing. SHFs Susan Cole remembers that TBSH received thousands of applications for the Lands End I units. Cole worked around the clock and visited prospective tenants in their homes to be able to fill the units within six months.

In 1979, Lands End II offered New York Citys first Section 8 family project. Its two 26-story towers, located on Cherry Street between Rutgers Slip and Jefferson Street, include 490 units of low-income housing. The project offered tax benefits to investors in return for providing housing for low-income families. Tenants pay thirty percent of their income toward rent and the federal government pays the balance.

In 1983, TBSH brought a major supermarket into the underserved Two Bridges neighborhood. The Pathmark & Pathmark Pharmacy were tenant-financed through the Federal Home Loan Bank CIP Program.

That year, the Council also helped create the running track at Murray Bergtram High School, now Verizon Field, located between Cherry and South Streets, and Pike Street and Market Slip. Construction of Two Bridges Townhouses, 57 moderate-income, three-story condominiums began in 1983, and was completed in 1985. Located at 291 Cherry Street, this was one of the few successful projects in New York created under the HUD Section 235 program, which lowered mort-gage payments by providing interest subsidies for moderate-income homebuyers. The City assisted in the projects development through real estate tax reductions and a grant for construction costs.

In 1989, the ten-story Two Bridges Senior Apart-ments opened at 80 Rutgers Slip, providing 109 units

TOP/BOTTOM:

Groundbreaking for Two Bridges Houses, 1973. Courtesy of the New York Public Library Seward Park Branch, Lower East Side Heritage Collection.

Lands End I groundbreaking, 1975, Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

RIGHT:

Lands End II promotional material. Courtesy of the New York Public Library, Seward Park Branch, Lower East Side History Collection.



of housing for the elderly and disabled. Built under the HUD 202 program, the federal and city govern-ments provide subsidies, tax reductions, and loans and to keep the rents affordable. Two Bridges Senior Apartments Services, operated by Hamilton-Madison House, provides on-site social services, meals, and activities.

Nearly a decade later, following an extensive environmental and archaeological review process, Two Bridges Tower opened at 82 Rutgers Slip in 1997. Co-developed and co-owned by Two Bridges Neighborhood Council and Settlement Housing Fund, the 21-story Two Bridges Tower comprises 198 housing units, including 59 apartments reserved for homeless families and 40 units for families earning less than 60% of median income. An additional 97 units are affordable to families earning an average of 80% of median income. The rent-stabilized building will remain permanently affordable mixed-income housing. Every floor is mixed economically and ethni-cally. To serve the special needs of the projects diverse group of tenants, Hamilton-Madison House provides on-site social services. Two Bridges Tower was the last project to be developed in the Two Bridges Urban Renewal Area.

Thanks to the efforts of the Council and Settlement Housing Fund, the neighborhood remains affordable, as well as racially and economically integrated. SHFs Carol Lamberg created the clever financial packages that made affordable development and multivalent integration possible. Lamberg recalls, We were all integrationists. We believed in it and still do. I think the neighborhood, at the time, had some of everybody. And it always had been integrated, and we wanted the buildings to be that way. You had to do outreach, and you had to have an affirmative marketing plan from day one. That meant you had to reach out to the people who were least likely to apply. So youd advertise in the Irish Echo, in the Jewish Forward; I think we were written about more in the Chinese newspapers that I couldnt understand than anywhere else. And youd do presentations at the churches, the community boards. Thats where you got your applicants. And it worked.

CAROL LAMBERGPREVIOUS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SETTLEMENT HOUSING FUND AND CURRENT TWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL BOARD MEMBER

on integration and the Urban Renewal Plan

Two Bridges Dick Duhan, he was the antipoverty guy. He believed in real housing integration. He was highly educated and brilliant. I was quite young and impressionable, and thrilled to be part of this. And at that time, I was naive. I didnt think the income mix was so important. I thought it was so important to get people out of these horrible housing conditions, and it was the poorest people who had the most need. But I learned how wrong I was, because its wonder-ful to have an income mix to provide role models, and it really does lead to upward mobility.

People liked what we were doing with the Urban Renewal Area, so we were able to steer clear of all the factions and the other groups that sparred with each other. That was because of a few reasons. Believe it or not, the location was not considered all that convenient. Its near the F train, but it was way over there. Our proposal sailed through. I think we had good plans; we had a mix, and we didnt have enemies. And, in fact, Vicki Amter, her passion was to make sure local jobs were provided, and we got that done. There were jobs during construction, and then there were 200 Pathmark jobs, at least in the first years of operation. We also talked to the community board at the beginning, so everybody knew what we were planning. We were at some big community board meetings where other projects were being protested, and stink bombs were being thrown around. And then they get to ours, and oh, it just passed. We didnt make a lot of noise because we had a good plan.

And all the federal subsidy programs now, except for the very last one, are either unfunded, or eliminated. And they could have just tweaked the programs to make them work, instead of trashing them wholesale. Starting in 1981, federal support was decimated. Its really tragic that public housing lost its luster, even in New York, which was supposedly the best Housing Authority in the country, if not the world. Just the fact that we used every single program available to us! Its heartbreaking that the programs were all eliminated, because they worked when you had great financing and good people to manage the buildings. Two Bridges had that, so its very special.

Pathmark in Two Bridges, n.d., Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I L

The Neighborhood Council35

Thanks to the efforts of the Council and Settlement Housing Fund, the neighborhood remains affordable, as well as racially and economically integrated.

Two Bridges Tower, n.d. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.




1910 1920 1930 1950

1902 Hamilton House is established

1903

Williamsburg Bridge constructed

1909

Manhattan Bridge constructed

1910 Madonna House established

1923 St. Josephs Church established

1929

Multiple Dwelling Law imposes more rigorous tenement housing regulations. Many landlords board up their properties or have them demolished

1929

Stock Market crashes

1933-1934 Lung Block (Hamilton Street) is demolished and Knickerbocker Village is developed

1933-1938

Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, which focused on relief for the unemployed and poor, recovery of the economy to normal levels, and reform of the financial system to avoid another depression. Creates WPA, Social Security, US Housing Authority, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, and the Farm Security Administration

1950-1953 Demolition of local tenements; New York City Housing Authority constructs Alfred E. Smith Houses

1950 St. Christophers Chapel established

1950S

Puerto Ricans and African Americans settle in the Lower East Side en masse

1954

Hamilton House and Madison House unite into Hamilton-Madison House

1955

Two Bridges Neighborhood Council is formed by representatives of 22 com-munity organizations. The organizations main concerns related to youth gang activity, youth without anything to do, youth being lured into the use of narcotics. Operate from 50 Madison Street The Lower East Side Neighborhoods Association (LENA) is founded as the planning and coordinating agency for LES community needs because the LES has been designated as one of sixteen anti-poverty target areas in the city. LENA has four affiliate neighborhood councils (North East Neighborhood Association [NENA], Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, Good Neighbors Council, and St. Marks Neighborhood Council)

1955

(SUMMER) Two Bridges Sports Committee is founded

1956

(MARCH 12) First meeting of the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council at Madonna House

Two Bridges News is founded

1958-1962

Chatham Green Apartments (Middle Income Co-ops) completed; sponsored by the Municipal Credit Union and NYS Credit Union League


1960

1960 Two Bridges Neighborhood Council (TBNC) includes over 200 private citizens, numerous private member agencies, and cooperating public agencies TBNCs Housing Committee develops a full-scale master plan known as the Self-Renewal Plan for the orderly renewal and development of the Two Bridges community

1961-1963

John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States

1961

(MARCH) LENA and TBNC organize rallies at City Hall in support of building a new Gouverneur Hospital in the community

The Two Bridges Self-Renewal Plan wins the annual Planning Award given by the Metropolitan Committee on Planning

1963

TBNC sponsors successful voter registration campaign for Two Bridges African American and Puerto Rican residents (MARCH) TBNC moves to a small storefront at 99 Madison Street (AUGUST 28) March for Jobs and Free-dom, Washington D.C. political rally calling for civil and economic rights for

African Americans; Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivers I Have a Dream speech

TBNC sets up registration tables, and raises $100 to support the March on Washington

1964-1965 Lyndon B. Johnson launches Great Society domestic programs with the goal of eliminating poverty and racial injustice

1964

(JANUARY 8) Lyndon B. Johnson declares the War on Poverty in his State of the Union Address (JULY 2) Civil Rights Act of 1964 enacted (AUGUST 20) Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 Office of Economic Opportunity established

Monsignor Robert Fox founds Summer in the City as a creative Community Action Program to serve and ease explosive racial tension in the densest poverty areas in Manhattan and the South Bronx TBNCs Education Committee succeeds in replacing a local elementary school with P.S. 126 Jacob Riis School

1965 Summer in the City begins at St. Teresa (AUGUST 6) Voting Rights Act of 1965 (AUGUST 10) Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 (SEPTEMBER 9) Johnson establishes the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development The City Planning Commission adopts a portion of TBNCs Self-Renewal Plan, and assigns it a priority for Federal study funds as an urban renewal area

1966

TBNC is designated as urban renewal sponsor to redevelop the area between the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges to provide low and moderate income housing, shopping, and community facilities

1967

TBNC and the Parent Development Program receive Ford Foundation funds to sponsor the Two Bridges Demonstration School District (APRIL) Plans for $44 million Two Bridges Urban Renewal Project are completed and approved

1968 St. Teresas founds Its Time, a tenant advocacy organization (APRIL 4) Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated (APRIL 11) Civil Rights Act of 1968 expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origins (since 1974, gender; since 1988, disabilities and families with children) (APRIL) Fair Housing Act bans discrimination in housing (MAY 21-JUNE 24) Resurrection City, Washington D.C. (JUNE 30) Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (Hart-Celler Act) enacted, abolishing national origins quota system from American immigration policy

1968-1969

Two Bridges neighborhood sponsors Summer in the City events to unite the community

Officially launched on Earth Day in April 2012, the Two Bridges Tower Community Programs offer a range of weekly activities for residents of all ages. Programs include courses and events focusing on health and wellness, arts and culture, and place- based science education. In its inaugural year, the new programs engaged nearly 1,500 residents and members of the general public.

Two Bridges Neighborhood Councils renewed mission and enhanced capacity helped to strengthen community relations during a critical time. On Octo-ber 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandys nearly 14-foot high storm surge wreaked havoc on the citys essential infrastructure. The human toll was greater, with lives lost, homes and businesses destroyed, and thousands of citizens cut off from food, water, and medicine.

The Lower East Side was among Manhattans most heavily impacted neighborhoods. Particularly devastated were areas along the shore, where high-rise multifamily affordable housing stands on low-elevation fill, barely above sea level. Elderly and infirm residents were trapped on upper floors of high rises when elevators failed or flooded, and pitch-black stairwells discouraged even the able-bodied from taking a chance at access. For four long days, the Two Bridges neighborhood was classified as part of the Powerless

Two Bridges Neighborhood Council continues to serve the Lower East Side through an extensive array of community programs and partnerships. Over the course of the last decade, the Council has evolved into a professionally staffed organization, but true to its grassroots origins, its work continues to center around its core tenets advocating for the creation and pres-ervation of existing affordable housing, tenants rights, and neighborhood conservation through building bridges among the areas diverse communities.

After September 11th 2001, the Council observed accelerated interest and speculation on the Lower East Side, most of which proceeded without regard to conserving the character of the community. In 2002, Kerri Culhane, now Associate Director of Two Bridges Neighborhood Council, proposed that the Council utilize federal preservation policy as a strategy to prevent potential inappropriate land takings in the Two Bridges neighborhood. Culhane was hired by the Council to research and write a National Register nomination for a local historic district.

The Two Bridges Historic District was officially listed on the National Register in 2003. Subsequently, the Council has sponsored the designation of the boundary increase for the Lower East Side Historic District (2004), the Chinatown/Little Italy Historic

In 2010, the Historic Districts Council presented Two Bridges Neighborhood Council with its Grassroots Preservation Award in recognition of its work documenting and celebrating the historic neighborhoods it serves.

District (2009), and the Bowery Historic District (2013). In addition to celebrating and highlighting the areas rich cultural and architectural heritage, preservation of these historic buildings often correlates with the preservation of affordable, rent controlled, or stabilized housing units, and affordable commercial space. As a result of the historic district designations, local property and business owners of over 1,000 buildings now have access to tens of millions of dollars in State and Federal Historic Preservation tax credits. In 2010, the Historic Districts Council presented Two Bridges Neighborhood Council with its Grassroots Preservation Award in recognition of its work docu-menting and celebrating the historic neighborhoods it serves.

Over the course of the 2011, Two Bridges staff and board of directors created a strategic plan to better align the organizations mission with immediate local needs. The plan, approved in December 2011, dramatically increased the organizations capacity and strengthened existing initiatives, while laying the foundation for dynamic programming growth.

Since 2011, the Councils staff has developed an impressive array of new community programs and activities for local residents, most of which operate from the community room in Two Bridges Tower.

TWO BRIDGES TODAY

Marco Polo Festival, 2012. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

43 T W O B R I D G E S N E I G H B O R H O O D C O U N C I LTwo Bridges Today


In spite of lacking office space, electricity, and other basics, the Councils staff worked around the clock to ensure that residents, seniors, and families had food and water in the days immediately following the storm.

Zone one of many areas lacking electricity. Located only a few feet from the waters edge,

the Councils offices were flooded in the storm surge. In spite of lacking office space, electricity, and other basics, the Councils staff worked around the clock to ensure that residents, seniors, and families had food and water in the days immediately following the storm. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council operated an ad-hoc relief site that collected hundreds of pounds of donated food, water, and supplies for the residents of 80 and 82 Rutgers Slip. The Council also joined forces with Hamilton-Madison House to create a support hub for the Two Bridges/ Chinatown area, centered at 50 Madison Street. The joint venture distributed approximately 2,000 meals per day, as well as federally- and volunteer-contributed emergency supplies.

Since well before the hurricane, the Council has led efforts to increase community awareness of environ-mental issues, and of the causes and potential threats associated with climate change. By many accounts, the hurricanes overwhelming impact on the Two Bridges neighborhood was the result of poor, piecemeal water-front planning. The Council is engaging neighborhood

residents to generate ideas for long-term strategies that deal with river health and stormwater runoff.

As a driving force behind the South Street Stake-holders Initiative and founding member of the Lower East Side Waterfront Alliance, Two Bridges Neigh-borhood Council is assessing best practices for local stewardship, and protecting and programming of Manhattans East River waterfront. Through collab-orative initiatives like the Paths to Pier 42 project, the Council and partner organizations Hester Street Collaborative, GOLES, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council are mobilizing local residents to turn a formerly abandoned waterfront pier into the areas next great public space.

As part of its ongoing focus on environmental quality and quality of life, the Council is also currently constructing a rain garden at Two Bridges Tower. When completed, the garden will manage the sites stormwater, and, over its lifetime, keep millions of gallons of combined sewer overflow from entering the citys strained sewer system. This, in turn, will prevent polluted water from entering the East River.

Two Bridges Neighborhood Council hosts a check-in meeting with residents, delivering important updates on both local and city efforts to recover from the storm's damage, November 2012. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

Paths to the Pier launch, 2014. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.


ROXANA M. ANCHERMANAGER OF TWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS COMMUNITY PROGRAM ACTIVITIES

on STEM Education Programs

Its very rewarding to see what our program can offer to local families. In our first year, students learned about ornithology and the local environment, including the microorganisms that live in and sustain our environment. The following year we learned about the watershed, and this year were delving into issues related to environmental justice and green infrastructure. Its so important to have knowledge around that, especially here after Sandy. And I get to see, first hand, how students grow throughout the course of programs. Whether its their reading level, math level, or just gaining an interest in the STEM field. Many now want to become engineers, want to become mathematicians, or math teachers, in the future. Thats what keeps me going in this field.

In addition to providing a play space for children and shaded social space for residents, the garden will have the added benefit of managing particulate matter and heavy metals from the FDR Drive and South Street.

The Councils STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) afterschool and summer camp programs currently provide opportu-nities for students to learn about the local watershed and how green infrastructure can benefit Two Bridges residents. When the rain garden is open, students will test water, air, and soil qualities to see first-hand the positive impact the implementation of innova-tive, green infrastructure has on their environment. Through these initiatives, local youth are becoming advocates for environmental justice.

Two Bridges has also been working on a variety of resiliency efforts for the greater Lower East Side. Together with community members and other local organizations, the Council is incubating Beyond the Grid, a resilient energy and communications network that will efficiently deliver power and evacuation information in the event of the next storm, while providing low-cost and low carbon footprint energy in fair weather through a community-based cooperative business model.

Most recently, the New York State Health Founda-tion selected Two Bridges as one of six grantees of the newly launched Healthy Neighborhoods Fund initiative, providing a powerful opportunity to holistically address the critical need for health and environmental equity in the neighborhood. This two-year grant, established to improve health-challenged neighborhoods, will allow the Council to enhance ongoing programs and catalyze capital investment toward reducing health disparities, while connecting the dots between behavior, the environment, and health outcomes.

Two Bridges is among the last of its kind, both as a neighborhood and an organization. The community is one of the last bastions of affordability in Manhattan. With encroaching development pressure from neigh-boring gentrified areas, as well as increasing threats of sea-level rise due to climate change, Two Bridges geographic location and socio-economic conditions place nearly 40,000 residents in a position of economic and environmental vulnerability. As New York City changes more rapidly and aggressively, there is an increasing need to preserve economic, residential, and environmental sustainability.

But these problems are not new to the Two Bridges Neighborhood Council. Two Bridges is still

Two Bridges campers getting their hands dirty, 2013. Two Bridges Neighborhood Council Archives.

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MICHAEL TSANGTWO BRIDGES NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCILS PROJECT MANAGER

on Two Bridges Today

I love everything about working for Two Bridges. First and foremost, it benefits a community that I love, that I grew up in. So thats the biggest bonus for me, and its work that I truly believe in. I get to give back to the people who I know and love. But I gotta say that its also great because Ive met people at this office who have

TBNC 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet

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Transcript of TBNC 60th Anniversary Commemorative Booklet