Projects by Name

In 1943, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia announced the approval of the design for Stuyvesant Town. Thirty-five 13-story towers of affordable housing were to be created on a 72-acre site near the East River that had been freed for development by slum clearance. Breuer was critical of the chosen scheme and published an alternate proposal in the June 1944 issue of "Pencil Points." He enlisted the help of his Harvard colleague, Martin Wagner, the former head of city planning for Berlin who had built many housing settlements during the Weimar era to calculate the costs. His final plan incorporated chains of double-Y shaped residential buildings which provided cross-ventilation and access to light while increasing revenues from rents and reducing the amount of the site covered by buildings.