Introduction		Design

Location

• Location
• Overview
• History: Freedomland
• The Bronx
• New York Times article
• Schools: Truman High School, Northeast Bronx Educational Park, Bronx Science
• Mentioned in literature: Movies, Books, Songs

Co-op City is located in the northeast Bronx, New York. It is an obvious landmark for motorists entering the city from the northeast on Route 1, Interstate 95 (The New England Thruway) or the Hutchinson River Parkway -- a mass of brick towers on the banks of the Hutchinson River.

DEAD LINK. LYCOS.VICINIY.COM MAPS ARE NOW <tbd>

Click here for a Lycos map showing Co-op City.
Click here for a Lycos map showing Co-op City's position relative to New York City.
Click here for a Lycos map showing Co-op City's position relative to Metropolitan New York City and its surroundings.

Map of Co-op City and vicinity

Co-op City is a very large quasi-cooperative/quasi-public middle income housing project, consisting of over 15,000 apartment units in about three dozen high-rise (24-, 26- or 33-storey) buildings and a number of townhouses (3-storey attached garden apartments).

Management is performed by the Riverbay Corporation, 2049 Bartow Avenue, Bronx, NY 10475, (718) 320-3300.

Co-op City was built on land that had been owned by the Freedomland amusement park, in the late 1960s, as a project encouraged by New York State's Mitchell-Lama bill, designed to keep a middle class, and its tax revenues, in New York City, rather than fleeing to the suburbs.

Freedomland actually occupied primarily what is now the Bay Plaza.

Co-op City itself was largely built on reclaimed swamp land.

At one time after WWII the area was proposed as Curtis Airfield.

As the image at right (from a 1947 Hagstrom's Map) shows, the plan made it to paper, but the field was never actually built. (Click image for a larger, but blurry, view.)

TBD

I'll scan them in when I can. The New England (section of the New York) Thruway opened around 1958. Prior to that time the middle of Co-op City (the Greenway) was a marshy creek, no doubt like the other bank of the Hutchinson River, and Givan's Creek took up most of Section 5 and The Historic Village of Baychester. (I hope to put up overlays!)

There was a street grid in the area around Givan Avenue and Rombouts Avenue, including a Hutchinson Avenue which was near the bend of Co-op City Boulevard at Peartree Avenue.

Once I get the maps up I'll ask around to see if these were actual streets or just paper streets.

The Bronx

To subscribe to that list, send a message to BronxRoots-request@rootsweb.com and put subscribe in the body of the message (not the subject line).

Please see my other Bronx links, information, and pictures on my Bronx page.

Reading what the had to say about Co-op City in November of 1994 as a place to live, or about anything else before 1996, will now cost you $2.95.

The Northeast Bronx Educational Park, consisting of Harry S Truman High School, IS 180, IS 181, PS 153 and PS 178, is adjacent to the grounds; some high school students take the bus to The Bronx High School of Science.

Co-op City may be seen at the end of the movie The Seven-Ups and is also the setting for Richard Price's novel Bloodbrothers (The movie based on it, which starred Richard Gere, was not set there; maybe that was Parkchester instead.) It is mentioned in "New York City", by They Might be Giants.

Seen in the opening montage of "Finding Forrester".

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