The Amsterdam projects were among NYC’s first. I’m pretty sure Robert Moses had a hand in their coming about. Built in 1947 they were a partial answer to all the troops that had come home after the war and needed affordable housing. I think they may have been better off leaving the tenements alone, because the projects eventually became isolated neighborhoods within a neighborhood. To this day, you have people who barely leave the projects to shop and it creates a weird type of personality disorder. Just knowing that your entire existence is based on government handouts could make the people feel a bit depressed as the affluent flutter about the perimeter. Rich people walking their kids to private school, pass the projects full of welfare recipients and crack dealers, who glare back unhappily. I know that some people will use the cheap rent to launch a better life for themselves, but most will spend all their days in these experiments from the laboratory of Moses and his minions…
One last gripe about NYC’s housing projects…If they had just put in larger windows, these buildings wouldn’t resemble the virtual prisons which they are. A little more light could have made a difference…
All Photos © Matt Weber
Black and White Street Photographs of New York City by Matt Weber 