MANHATTAN

Welfare Island

SITE: Welfare Island (Roosevelt Island)

ACREAGE: Total - 147 Residential - 45

EXISTING ZONING: R7-2

SITE PREPARATION: UDC development now in construction; occupancy expected in 1975.

## FACILITIES/

SPECIAL FACTORS: New on-site schools to be provided; Goldwater, City and Coller Hospitals already located on site; cluster housing has enabled UDC to develop maximum open space. Other facilities such as police station, fire station, to be provided on Island. "Motorgate" garage for 2,500 cars will be built at end of Welfare Island Bridge, with minibus access to rest of Island: Is this enough parking?

ACCESS: Future 63rd Street subway to Queens and Manhattan; interim tramway system proposed until subway completed; automobile access by Queens-Welfare Island bridge and extremely congested Queensboro Bridge; proposed minibus system for on-site transportation; no cars allowed beyond Motorgate.

ENVIRONMENT: Public access to waterfront made a high priority; innovative-pneumatic solid-waste disposal system.

RETAIL AND COMMERCIAL: On-site commercial space planned; marketability of office space and economic vitality of retail space in question.

## DENSITY AND SCHOOL NEEDS:

<table><thead><tr><th>Zoning<br>Possibilities</th><th>Number<br>of Units</th><th>Students<br>Generated<br>K-4/5-8</th><th>Overload-<br>Underload<br>K-4/5-8</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td rowspan="2">R7-2</td><td rowspan="2">5,000</td><td>1,300</td><td>+200</td></tr><tr><td>700</td><td>-600</td></tr></tbody></table>

06

107

We have tried to create not a flat plan, but a three- or four-
dimensional image of a new kind of town—not a very big town,
by the standards of the 1970s, but a very different sort of town.

Our Island Town will be:

* A community, not a housing project.

* A low-rise and middle-rise housing group where every inhabitant can see a tree, a river, a park and yet live a totally urban life.

* A safe place for children to live—because there will be a minimum of traffic, a maximum of pleasant walking.

* A Town Center "where the action is"—a place that will be physically attractive, pedestrian, river edged.

* And a tight, dense group of buildings, surrounded by parks and water.

We are grateful to the Trustees of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the exhibition they have arranged of our plan for "The Island Nobody Knows." That exhibition is being held at The Metropolitan Museum from October 9th through October 23rd, 1969.

Philip Johnson and John Burgee, Architects

CONSULTANTS:

ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN: Professor Henry Russell Hitchcock

STRUCTURAL ENGINEERS: Ammann & Whitney

MECHANICAL AND UTILITIES ENGINEERS: Burns & McDonnell Company

TRANSPORTATION ENGINEERS: Allan M. Voorhees & Associates

LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS: Zion & Breen

WATERFRONT AND BULKHEAD ENGINEER: Clarence F. Wicker

HOUSING ADVISORS: Seymour Jarmul & Bernard Brizee, Architects