Design For Aging-Community

On New York Citys Lower East Side, a new development is rebuilding a community that was lost 50 years ago.

- Laura Raskin

In 1967, New Yorkers who lived near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge in Manhattan were displaced from their tenement homes. The buildings were demolished to make way for an urban renewal project, but it never came. Instead, what became known as the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area sat vacant for five decades.

Last January, thanks to research by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and former tenants, some residents with ties to the original tenements returned to the site and moved into a brand-new 15-story building. Named the Frances Goldin Senior Apartments after a longtime Lower East Side housing activist, the building—designed by Dattner Architects—provides 99 units of affordable senior housing atop a base of social services and amenities.