General Grant Houses
Giant urban housing developments ("projects") like these are fascinating to look at, and they dominate the landscape in pockets of New York City.
These date from 1957 and house some 4500 people.
As an experiment in planned communities, I think most people would say they utterly fail to create anything other than oppressive, lonely, crime-riddled blocks. They break up the natural flow of the city, and push important anchors (shops, restaurants, pubs) to the periphery. At night the empty grounds of these buildings are beyond foreboding.
It's tempting to believe that what was here in the early '50s was a mess of squalid, crowded apartment buildings run by mercenary landlords and rife with crime and violence. By going vertical and taking over management, the city did great things for the residents. In Manhattan, light and greenspace are precious commodities. Somehow I think the real story is less romantic.
As examples of monumental public architecture, though... I think they look really cool. If I can ever pull off any decent night shots, the various colors of light in all those windows gives them a delicate beauty that hardly seems possible when looking at them by day.
These date from 1957 and house some 4500 people.
As an experiment in planned communities, I think most people would say they utterly fail to create anything other than oppressive, lonely, crime-riddled blocks. They break up the natural flow of the city, and push important anchors (shops, restaurants, pubs) to the periphery. At night the empty grounds of these buildings are beyond foreboding.
It's tempting to believe that what was here in the early '50s was a mess of squalid, crowded apartment buildings run by mercenary landlords and rife with crime and violence. By going vertical and taking over management, the city did great things for the residents. In Manhattan, light and greenspace are precious commodities. Somehow I think the real story is less romantic.
As examples of monumental public architecture, though... I think they look really cool. If I can ever pull off any decent night shots, the various colors of light in all those windows gives them a delicate beauty that hardly seems possible when looking at them by day.
