Castle Village

Castle Village is a cooperative apartment complex located in the Hudson Heights neighborhood of the Washington Heights area of New York City. The buildings are one of many resident-owned apartment buildings in Hudson Heights. Most Castle Village apartments feature spectacular views of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge (I-95), and New Jersey.

For historical reasonsFact|date=May 2008, New York City apartments owned by their residents are typically held through cooperative corporations rather than condominiums. Although some cooperatives in New York City had been subsidized housing, Castle Village never was. A few of its residents, however, are still renters because they haven't moved out since the conversion to a cooperative in 1985. [Department of Buildings. "Board of Inquiry Report: Castle Village Retaining Wall Collapse April 2007," p. 3. [http://nyc.gov/html/dob/downloads/pdf/castle_village_report.pdf] ]

Castle Village stands on seven and a half acres ["About Castle Village," Castle Village. [http://www.castlevillage.com/aboutcv.htm] ] , which was the site of a castle built by real estate developer Charles Paterno in 1906. Paterno replaced his castle with a five building apartment project that opened around 1939. The buildings are located on Cabrini Boulevard between 181st Street and Alex Rose Place (often referred to as 186th Streets). The architect George Fred Pelham, Jr., designed the buildings to be one of the earliest apartment towers to employ reinforced concrete construction. In 1939 the monthly rents (including gas and electricity) were from $66 for 2 rooms to up to $165 for 5 rooms. Each floor contains nine apartments, eight of which have river views. [Willensky, Elliot, and White, Norval. AIA Guide to New York City, p. 466. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1988.] Pelham Jr.'s father, George Fred Pelham, was the architect of two other apartments in Hudson Heights, Hudson View Gardens and The Pinehurst ["History of The Pinehurst," The Pinehurst Co-Operative Apartments. [http://www.thepinehurst.org/history] ] , at Fort Washington Avenue and West 180 Street.

Architectural influences

The design of the towers was influenced by medieval keeps in Europe.The cross design of the towers and the "towers in a park" layout was later used in most of New York's social and affordable housing. The labor movement owned United Housing Foundation built tens of thousands of cooperative apartments using a similar layout. The reinforced concrete construction was also copied in cooperative developments. Private rental housing, like those built in Parkchester and Stuyvesant Town residential developments followed the architectural design, but substituted the concrete frame for a cheaper steel frame construction.

Retaining wall

The garden facing the Hudson River was, on May 12 2005, the site of a retaining wall collapse. In a massive landslide, the 75-foot-tall wall, completed in 1925 and supporting the Castle Village backyard, buried the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway and six parked cars. The collapse stopped traffic on the highway for several days, and an entry ramp to the highway remained closed for almost two years. No one was injured. The reconstruction of the wall and garden, performed by Kiewit Constructors, was substantially completed in October 2007. The access road to the Henry Hudson Parkway below the wall was re-opened in March 2008.

Neighborhood education

In addition to city schools, several private schools enroll students from nursery school through a post-doctoral fellowship. University education includes Yeshiva University and Boricua College. The medical campus of [http://www.columbia.edu Columbia University] hosts the [http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/ps College of Physicians and Surgeons] , the [http://dental.columbia.edu College of Dental Medicine] , the [http://www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu Mailman School of Public Health] , the [http://www.nursing.columbia.edu School of Nursing] , and the [http://sklad.cumc.columbia.edu/gsas Graduate School of Basic Sciences] , which offers doctoral programs in biomedical sciences. These schools are among the departments that comprise the [http://www.cumc.columbia.edu Columbia University Medical Center] , whose full name is the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center.

Private primary and secondary schools include Mother Cabrini High School, The School of The Incarnation, and the [http://earlycollege.cuny.edu/ourschools/schools/citycollege.php City College Academy of the Arts] , a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Other private schools include the Herbert G. Birch School for Exceptional Children and [http://www.mcns.org Medical Center Nursery School] .

In addition, the complex is zoned to a public school in the New York City Department of Education: [http://schools.nyc.gov/OurSchools/Region10/M187 P.S. 187 Hudson Cliffs] for grades Kindergarten through 8.

References

* "Paterno Castle to be Demolished," New York Times, August 7, 1938
* [http://nyc.gov/html/dob/downloads/pdf/castle_village_report.pdf "Board of Inquiry Report, Castle Village Retaining Wall Collapse,"] NYC Department of Buildings, April 2007

External links

* [http://www.castlevillage.com/aboutcv.htm Official site]
* [http://www.castlevillage.com/theapts.htm Floor plan]
* [http://www.seroy.com/sys-tmpl/1939/view_all.nhtml Original marketing material]
* [http://www.seroy.com/sys-tmpl/june22002/ Photographs from garden]
* [http://www.washington-heights.us/history/archives/dr_charles_v_paterno_48.html Dr. Charles V. Paterno]
* [http://www.thepinehurst.org/history History of the Pinehurst]
* [http://hhoc.org/ Hudson Heights Owners Coalition]