Phipps Houses No. 3

by Jessica Larson

In 1912, San Juan Hill’s fourth model tenement, Phipps Houses No. 3, opened to exclusively Black tenants. Located just behind the lots that held Phipps Houses No. 2, these new residential structures incorporated current trends in tenement design, meant to improve the living conditions of the building’s working-class tenants.

Like model tenements throughout the city, these structures were philanthropically funded projects meant to provide quality housing at either below market or just at market rates. While rent was often comparable to other commercial properties, these model tenements were generally of higher quality and managed by housing corporations invested in maintaining the integrity of the buildings. For San Juan Hill tenants, these structures also offered a rare degree of stability and improved housing. Notoriously, Black tenants in New York City faced incessant discrimination from white landlords, who charged higher prices for worse quality units to Black renters. In San Juan Hill’s model tenements, Black tenants were assured housing that was on par with similar standards for white-occupied model tenements in the city. Henry Phipps Jr., the industrialist and former business partner of Andrew Carnegie, funded Phipps Houses No. 3, and the building was managed by the City and Suburban Homes Company, a limited dividend company that turned a modest profit for investors.

While early residents of the neighborhood who moved into the area around 1900 were predominantly of Southern origin – either they had migrated from the South or their parents had – by 1910, many San Juan Hill residents were immigrants from the West Indies.

The six-story building offered 184 units with apartment arrangements including two-, three-, and four-room options. For a higher price, you could pay to have a private bath in the unit, otherwise washing facilities were included in the basement. In 1912, the rents for the cheapest units began at $3.65 per week. This price was comparable to surrounding buildings’ rents. In the 1920 Federal Census, the demographics of tenants reflected the larger changes in San Juan Hill’s population. While early residents of the neighborhood who moved into the area around 1900 were predominantly of Southern origin – either they had migrated from the South or their parents had – by 1910, many San Juan Hill residents were immigrants from the West Indies. Tenants from states like North Carolina, Virginia, and Texas lived alongside neighbors from St. Kitts, Barbados, and Jamaica. Like most newcomers to the city, regardless of race, the ages skewed on the younger side, though it was not uncommon for grandparents or extended families to live with their families in one unit. Residents’ occupations were also typical of working-class Black New Yorkers. Women were often employed as laundresses, hairdressers, or domestic servants. Men often worked jobs that were considered above poverty levels, such as porters, chauffeurs, or tailors. While these professions did not pay as well as many open to white people of comparable economic status, these jobs were regarded as respectable and stable. Residents were diverse, however, and living in the building offered the potential for upward mobility. In the 1920s, the model tenement boasted prominent residents such as poet Langston Hughes and Augustus Granville Dill, an important sociologist, civil rights activist, musician, and more.

Like the neighborhood’s other model tenements and in keeping with Progressive housing legislation, Phipps Houses No. 3 had steam heat, hot and cold water, and indoor plumbing. As was the arrangement with other City and Suburban Homes Company’s other properties, rent was likely collected by a figure often termed a “women collector.” This woman collector, always white, would visit each apartment once a week to pick up the rent and, often, either formally or informally inspect apartments to verify tenants were maintaining moral and tenancy standards expected of them. Unsurprisingly, this practice was much hated by tenants, who found it paternalistic and condescending. For Black tenants, such power dynamics could be even more precarious.

Phipps Houses No. 3, alongside Phipps Houses No. 2 on the West 63rd Street lots directly behind it, escaped demolition under the urban renewal projects of the 1950s and 1960s that swept aside most of San Juan Hill. The two Phipps-owned projects were sold to private corporations in 1961 and converted into standard commercial rental apartments.

This woman collector, always white, would visit each apartment once a week to pick up the rent and, often, either formally or informally inspect apartments to verify tenants were maintaining moral and tenancy standards expected of them. 

Resources:

 1920 United States Federal Census, New York, Manhattan Assembly District 7, Enumeration District 539, image 12-17/54. Familysearch.com

 The Commission on the Church and Race Relations. Better Houses for Negro Homes. Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America. 1925.

 “Millionaire’s Effort to Improve Housing for the Poor.” New York Times. November 23, 2003: p. 7.  (Nov. 23, 2003): 7

 “New Houses.” New York Age. February 29, 1912: p. 2.

 Rampersad, Arnold. The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902-1941, I, Too, Sing America (second edition). Oxford University Press. 2002.

 Tenement House Department of the City of New York. Report for the Years 1915 and 1916. M.B. Brown. 1916.

Jessica Larson is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Art History, The Graduate Center, CUNY.  She is also the Joe and Wanda Corn Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum & National Museum of American History