The “Tower in the Park” in New York City (1930–1965): A Comparative Analysis between Cooperative and Public Housing

Abstract

This paper analyses the success of “towers in the park” in New York City by comparing cooperative and public housing’s physical aspects over the middle decades of the twentieth century through the work of two architectural firms that spent their careers designing affordable housing complexes: Herman Jessor and Frederick G. Frost. To do so, four pairs of projects were explored in more depth, belonging to four stages in the history of this typology. The analysis concludes that systemic differences between these types of housing were determined by funding and policy while showing that these architects’ design approaches were quite similar.