3333 Broadway (formerly Riverside Park Community) is a group of five apartment buildings ranging from 11 to 35 stories at Broadway between West 133rd and 135th Streets, in Manhattanville, Manhattan, New York City, United States. Completed in 1976, it was the largest residential structure in the United States. Together, the five buildings include 1,193 apartment units. The present manager of the property is the Urban American Management Corporation.[1]
Site
The building was built on a lot covering approximately 285,000 square feet (26,500 m2) in the Manhattanville section of Harlem. To the west of the buildings lies the West Side Highway (NY 9A) and beyond that the Hudson River. To the east of the site is Broadway. Across West 133rd Street to the south is the Manhattanville Bus Depot, and across West 135th Street to the north of the development lies a row of early-twentieth-century brick tenement buildings.
Design
The architect of record was Maxx Wechsler of Max Wechsler & Associates. Two architectural consultants to Wechsler were Richard Dattner and Henri A. LeGendre. The New York Times credited Dattner and LeGendre as the architects who designed the housing complex. Seven days later, the Times printed a letter to the editor, from Max Wechsler, proclaiming that his firm was in fact the lead design team on the project and Dattner and LeGendre "served as consultants only." Richard Dattner claims to have served as the lead designer for Riverside Park Community, along with the 1800-student Intermediate School 195 at the base of the school and apartment complex.
Facade
The facade is a typical brick cladding system. The tenement housing surrounding the site is decorated with classically derived ornament, which the Riverside Housing lacks. There is very little ornament or applied decoration on the brick and concrete facade of the building. The exposed slabs at each floor give the building a horizontal element, likely to contrast the immense vertical nature of the structure. This detail is typical of housing design in the 1970s and was inexpensive to build, not to maintain, and the exposed slab was prone to heat loss due to a lack of insulation. The windows were designed to lay perfectly flush within the exterior walls.
The front facade (where the main entry exists) is pulled away from Broadway to create an entrance. This design was due to the Zoning Resolution of New York City, which required a certain percentage of open space for approval. The building provided a small public plaza at the corner of West 135th Street and Broadway equipped with benches, concrete tables and trees for shade. These were removed in the 2000s once the building left the Mitchell-Lama program, and the plaza was completely reconstructed in 2015 to a more contemporary design.
Features
3333 Broadway is built using concrete foundations and a concrete structure. The floors are built of concrete slab, and they are exposed through the facade. The interior communal spaces have similar modernist elements, with floor-to-ceiling windows, rounded columns and terrazzo flooring throughout. The five buildings are connected using expansion joints, so that when the buildings move, they will not cause damage to each other or fail structurally. The buildings incorporate expansion joints to alleviate damage that could be caused by the average loads placed on a building.
History
Designed by architect Max Wechsler, the original plan called for 5 buildings arranged in a semi-circle at varying heights facing West 133rd Street. The plans also included plans for a public school, a medical building, a pharmacy and playground facilities for 1,800 children. The community was constructed under the Mitchell-Lama program, a state-run program created in 1955 that provided low-interest mortgage loans and property tax exemptions to landlords who agreed to provide low-income residents with affordable housing at below-market-rate rents. This project was sponsored and backed by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Pension Fund/A. Philip Randolph, President.
At a cost of $54 million, the Educational Construction Fund developed this project as the first phase of a total renewal of the area between West 125th Street and 135th Street, from Broadway to Riverside Drive. When the property opened in spring 1976, the director of sales received over 9,000 applications in the rental office. At the time, a family of five had to meet a basic income requirement of $13,000/year to qualify for housing. Federal subsidies, however, made it possible for people with incomes less than that which was required to obtain housing in the building. In 1976, a one-bedroom apartment cost $228/month and a two-bedroom apartment cost $272.
In 2005, after the loan was paid off, the then landlord Jerome Belson [2] opted to exit the program as per the guidelines of the Mitchell-Lama program which legally permitted that "any owner can withdraw from the program after 20 years upon paying off the mortgage".[3] At the same time, BSR, the management company for 3333, sold the property to Cammeby’s Realty Corp. for $85 million.[2]
In 2007, Cammeby’s sold the property as part of a larger portfolio for $278 million to Urban American Management. Since that time, Urban American has spent more than $80 million upgrading and modernizing, including 15 new elevators, new windows and upgraded apartments. It also increased the energy efficiency of the complex, including a conversion from oil to natural gas, LED lighting, new boilers and a 500kW co-generation system. In addition to these carbon reduction projects, Urban American in 2021 replaced all 8,000 window openings across the 1,199 units with casement windows. Urban American also fully modernized all 15 elevators. These two projects were intended to further enhance quality of life and cut carbon emissions.
