Penn South, officially known as Mutual Redevelopment Houses and formerly Penn Station South, is a limited-equity housing cooperative development located between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and West 23rd and 29th Streets, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The complex has 2,820 units in ten 22-story buildings. Penn South is so named because of its location southwest of New York Penn Station.
History
Planning
Penn South was sponsored by the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union based on a cooperative model promoted by the United Housing Foundation. The ILGWU first proposed a slum clearance project in Chelsea in early June 1956. Later that month, the New York City government endorsed the Penn Station South project. The New York City Committee on Slum Clearance recommended Penn Station South for federal funding in August 1956. However, local residents opposed the development because its proposed site would displace an estimated 7,500 residents. In response, in mid-1958, the Committee modified the plan so that two churches within the future development's site would be preserved. Ultimately, four churches were saved, including the Church of the Holy Apostles, which later became a New York City Landmark and a National Register of Historic Places landmark. The UHF's president, Abraham Kazan, later called the preservation a "mistake" because it had prevented Penn South from being developed earlier.
The site of Penn Station South was eligible for federal funding under the Title I of the Housing Act of 1949. The site was slated for demolition in July 1959. Despite this announcement, one developer started renovating three tenement buildings three months before their scheduled demolition date, in the hopes that these buildings would also be granted exemptions from demolition. In early June 1959, the federal government allocated $12 million toward the project.
The ILGWU acquired title to the land that June 28 and immediately began relocating residents. Residents who already lived on the land filed a lawsuit in an attempt to block the land sale. Groups of residents also organized picket lines and filed affidavits that attested to the hardships caused due to their relocations. In another act of protest, tenants living in the future Penn South site withheld rent payments to the ILGWU, their new landlord. The relocation proceedings were tense: one attorney who represented the protesters received death threats in response to his involvements in the protests. After Manhattan Borough President Hulan Jack received a report about "harrowing" relocations that were done in preparation for Penn Station South, Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr. instituted new rules for Title I relocations around the city. Some former residents alleged that they had been relocated into tenements. Jack created a Citizens Watchdog Committee to oversee the treatment of residents who were being relocated. However, the committee itself disagreed on whether tenants were being treated unfairly during the relocation process. The committee was disbanded in December 1959 due to an inability to resolve these disagreements.
Ultimately, the vast majority of residents moved peacefully. By October 1960, all 2,646 families who had lived on the site had been relocated; they had received bonuses of up to $500, as well as a guarantee of new housing. In addition, as part of an agreement between the ILGWU and the site's residents, 600 of the families who had formerly occupied the site would be given housing in Penn South.
Construction
Early on in the construction process, supporters of Penn South wanted to include "Chelsea" in the name, in order to better integrate it with the surrounding community. The New York state government awarded $2.42 million toward the Penn South project in April 1960. The construction of the development was funded by a 20-year, $23 million mortgage, to be repaid between 1962 and 1982 at a rate of 5.125%. In May 1960, it was announced that the historic Grand Opera House on 23rd Street would be demolished to make way for Penn South. The theater burned down in a fire the next month. RKO Pictures later constructed a new theater called Chelsea West Cinemas in Penn South near the site of the old opera house, now used by the School of Visual Arts as the SVA Theater.
Construction was delayed in July 1961 by a month-long strike by concrete-mixing workers. By that time, the ILGWU had hoped to complete and sell half of the apartments in Penn South, but were only able to find tenants for a quarter of the apartments.