page_title: Morningside Heights, Manhattan
section_title: Urban renewal
hierarchical_section_title: Morningside Heights, Manhattan / History / Mid- to late 20th century / Urban renewal
caption_attribution_description: Grant Houses in New York City
context_page_description: Morningside Heights is a primarily residential neighborhood in the northern section of Manhattan in New York City. One of the three neighborhoods comprising West Harlem, Morningside Heights is bounded by Central Harlem and Morningside Park to the east, at Morningside Drive; Manhattanville to the north, at 125th Street; the Manhattan Valley section of the Upper West Side to the south, at 110th Street; and Riverside Park to the west, at Riverside Drive. The main thoroughfare is Broadway, which runs north–south through the neighborhood.
  Morningside Heights, located on a high plateau between Morningside and Riverside Parks, was hard to access until the late 19th century, and was sparsely developed except for the Bloomingdale and Leake and Watts asylums. Morningside Heights, along with the Upper West Side, was considered part of the Bloomingdale District until Morningside Park was finished in the late 19th century. Large-scale development started in the 1890s with the construction of academic and cultural institutions.
context_section_description: In 1947, fourteen major institutions in the neighborhood formed Morningside Heights Inc, an urban renewal organization that aimed to reduce poverty and segregation by erecting new housing. Morningside Heights Inc., headed by David Rockefeller, was the first major joint venture between the neighborhood's institutions. Its first project was Morningside Gardens, a middle-income co-op apartment complex between 123rd and LaSalle Streets, Broadway, and Amsterdam Avenue. The project, completed in 1957, was initially occupied by a multi-racial tenant base of just under a thousand families, a third of whom worked at neighborhood institutions. Morningside Gardens drew some opposition, as it replaced an eclectic group of low- and mid-rise housing that was occupied by about 6,000 people, mostly African Americans.
  Another development in the neighborhood was Grant Houses, a New York City Housing Authority public-housing development located to the east of Morningside Gardens, across Amsterdam Avenue. Completed in 1956, it was less successful in racial integration but was praised by local landlords as a deterrent to urban decay. The construction of Grant Houses necessitated the displacement of 7,000 residents.
  The New York Times described the urban renewal scheme in 1957 as "the biggest face-lifting job under way in this city". Prior to the urban renewal projects, most institutions in Morningside Heights considered its northern boundary to be around 122nd Street, but with the completion of these developments, the area between 122nd and 125th Street was added to the popular definition of Morningside Heights.
caption: Grant Houses, one of the redevelopment projects in Morningside Heights in the 1950s
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