The Schickel family hired Marcel Breuer and Associates as architect for a housing project insured by the Federal Housing Administration that they planed to build in Ithaca, New York. The complex designed by Breuer and his associate Hamilton Smith contained 150 residential units intended to house faculty and staff from nearby Ithaca College and Cornell University. Breuer provided two types of housing: a seven-story apartment building raised on muscular piloti and two-story row houses surrounding a playground. Both types of structures were planar with projections and subtle variations in material providing the only source of decoration. The apartment building featured a rooftop garden and projecting concrete sun breaks over the windows and ground floor parking spaces. The row houses harkened back to European models with their cantilered second-story balconies and their garden terraces that provided an extension of the living space into the landscape.