page_title: Penn South
section_title: Construction
hierarchical_section_title: Penn South / History / Construction
caption_attribution_description: Buildings of the Penn South housing cooperative development along Ninth Avenue north of West 25th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City.
context_page_description: Penn South, officially known as Mutual Redevelopment Houses and formerly Penn Station South, is a limited-equity housing cooperative development located between Eighth and Ninth Avenues and West 23rd and 29th Streets, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. The complex has 2,820 units in ten 22-story buildings. Penn South is so named because of its location southwest of New York Penn Station.
context_section_description: Early on in the construction process, supporters of Penn South wanted to include "Chelsea" in the name, in order to better integrate it with the surrounding community. The New York state government awarded $2.42 million toward the Penn South project in April 1960. The construction of the development was funded by a 20-year, $23 million mortgage, to be repaid between 1962 and 1982 at a rate of 5.125%. In May 1960, it was announced that the historic Grand Opera House on 23rd Street would be demolished to make way for Penn South. The theater burned down in a fire the next month. RKO Pictures later constructed a new theater called Chelsea West Cinemas in Penn South near the site of the old opera house, now used by the School of Visual Arts as the SVA Theater.
  Construction was delayed in July 1961 by a month-long strike by concrete-mixing workers. By that time, the ILGWU had hoped to complete and sell half of the apartments in Penn South, but were only able to find tenants for a quarter of the apartments.
  A dedication ceremony was held on May 19, 1962. President John F. Kennedy addressed the workers on the project, with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller in attendance. Kennedy praised organized laborers for their work on the Penn South project, and cited the development as an example of what could be accomplished when laborers collaborated with public and private developers. That October, some tenants were prevented from moving into their units due to a union dispute regarding sink installations. The Carver Federal Savings and Loan Association, an African-American-run bank, opened a branch in Penn South in 1963, marking the first time that an African-American-run bank had been allowed to operate in a non-African-American neighborhood in New York City.
caption: Penn South buildings along Ninth Avenue
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