Harlem River Houses

About

The Harlem River Houses is a New York City Housing Authority public housing complex between 151st Street, 153rd Street, Macombs Place, and the Harlem River Drive in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The complex, which covers 9 acres (3.6 ha), was built in 1936-37 and opened in October 1937 – one of the first two housing projects in the city funded by the Federal government – with the goal of providing quality housing for working-class African Americans. It has 574 apartments.

The complex was designated a New York City Landmark in 1975 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. In 2014 the complex was designated a Special Planned Community Preservation District, a zoning category created in 1974 "to preserve and protect ... superior examples of town planning or large-scale development." The success of the project can be attributed to its formal, classically influenced design, to the project's focus on attracting a wide variety of tenants, not just the indigent, and to its "generous budget and high aspirations for quality."