Kips Bay Towers is a 1,118-unit, two-building condominium complex in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, New York. The complex was designed by architects I.M. Pei and S. J. Kessler, with the involvement of James Ingo Freed, in the brutalist style and completed in 1965. Originally known as Kips Bay Plaza, the project was developed by Webb & Knapp as middle-income rental apartments, but was converted to condominiums in the mid-1980s.
The complex occupies an area of three city blocks, or approximately , bounded by First and Second avenues and East 30th and 33rd streets and includes two residential high-rise buildings each with 20 floors. Additionally, there is a three-acre private garden between the two towers featuring landscaped lawns as well as recreational spaces. Kips Bay Towers is home to more than 4,000 residents.
History
NYU–Bellevue project (1952–1957)
Early plans The development originated as a slum clearance project under Title I of the federal Housing Act of 1949. In the mid-1940s, when the new site for the New York University-Bellevue Medical Center was being planned on the east side of First Avenue between East 30th and 34th streets, leaders from New York University (NYU) indicated that there would be a need for the city to clear the slums on the west side of First Avenue. At a conference held in January 1949 to preview updated plans for the new medical center, City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses said "west of this area a great deal remains to be done" and revealed that discussions were taking place for the development of a state housing project on First Avenue opposite Bellevue Hospital, which would be a start in making improvements in the area to the west.
In November 1952, the city's Committee on Slum Clearance Plans, which was also headed by Moses, announced plans to survey the area bounded by First and Second avenues and East 30th and 33rd streets for the purposes of condemning the land and redeveloping the site with middle-income housing. NYU-Bellevue Medical Center provided $25,000 for the survey. The medical center had a particular interest in the urban renewal project as it was facing a shortage of housing for staff and personnel at its new complex located on First Avenue across the street from the proposed redevelopment.
Initially referred to as the NYU–Bellevue project, the original plans called for redeveloping the three-block site with five 14-story residential buildings containing a total of 840 apartments along with stores along Second Avenue, a six-story professional building on First Avenue, and a 160-space parking garage. About three quarters of the land would be left open and used for landscaped areas, playgrounds, or parking. To create the superblock between First and Second avenues, the city would swap its ownership of 31st and 32nd streets in exchange for widening the streets along the perimeter of the site.
Land clearing The blocks proposed for condemnation contained 108 residential buildings occupied by 1,366 families; most of these were Old Law tenements built before 1900. Other residences on the site included the first Phipps Houses, at 321–337 East 31st Street, designed by Grosvenor Atterbury in 1906. The project would also involve the razing of 168 stores, several garages and lofts, a laundromat, a dairy, and a stable, as well as the Nathan Straus branch of the New York Public Library. The New York City Planning Commission and New York City Board of Estimate approved the project in August 1953 and February 1954, respectively. After the land was condemned by the city, it was sold in December 1954 to University Center, Inc., the private sponsor of the project, which was a group of 93 investors headed by David Moss. James H. Scheuer unsuccessfully sought to sponsor Moss's project; he alleged that his sponsorship offer was ignored.
By June 1956, only seven buildings on the site had been razed and Robert Moses called for the developer to move faster or relinquish its contract. Delays to the project were attributed to the original sponsor's difficulty in obtaining a mortgage for financing; the large number of investors had also made it difficult to gain consensus in putting up more of their own money until a mortgage was secured. Apart from the usual difficulties of finding new housing for the displaced tenants, the project sponsor was also faced with the challenges of relocating a flock of 100 homing pigeons that resided atop a tenement at 328 East 33rd Street. The developers of the superblock had failed to pay taxes, and the New York City government was looking to take control of the site. At the time, a master plan for the site was being drawn up by Gordon Bunshaft and other architects at the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
Kips Bay Plaza (1957–1972)
Construction
The Committee on Slum Clearance Plans ultimately forced University Center, Inc. to surrender the NYU-Bellevue project, which was taken over by Webb & Knapp in June 1957. Bunshaft initially advised I. M. Pei of Webb & Knapp's architectural team against taking over as the development's architect, and Pei agreed, calling it "just another housing project". William Zeckendorf, the head of Webb & Knapp and one of Pei's frequent collaborators, nonetheless assigned Pei to the project. In addition to changing the name of the project to Kips Bay Plaza, Webb & Knapp modified the site plan to reduce the number of buildings, electing to construct two 20-story apartment towers on the north and south sides of the superblock. The buildings were oriented so they faced away from each other. Pei said that, by reducing the number of buildings and adding a large open space between the structure, he hoped to "take the project-itis out of" Kips Bay Plaza (referring to the fact that public housing developments were colloquially referred to as "the projects"). These changes also created additional space for gardens and parks.
In an interview, Pei recalled that Zeckendorf "was willing to gamble with me on using concrete" in Kips Bay Plaza's construction, at a time when most apartment towers used brick. Pei had originally wanted a large sculpture by Picasso placed in the open space at the center of the site—an area that was once accessible to the general public—but Zeckendorf told Pei that he could have either the sculpture or fifty saplings. Pei chose the trees, and the Picasso sculpture was instead installed at University Village, another complex designed by Pei. The plan for the site also included a shopping center along Second Avenue with a movie theater, a professional building on First Avenue, and a 250-space underground parking garage. The professional building would have housed ten stories of medical offices. Because Pei had a reputation for being a perfectionist, contractors initially either refused to submit bids for the project or submitted overly high bids, forcing Pei to simplify his plans.
After the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) approved $8,436,000 in mortgage insurance for the project, a groundbreaking ceremony for the long-delayed project was held on March 31, 1959. Julian H. Zimmerman, a commissioner of the FHA, characterized the project as "a stone and steel testimonial to the workability of the FHA program for upgrading center city areas". A last-minute change to the plans was approved in January 1960; the revised plans increased the number of rooms in the development from 3,360 to 3,680 and provided more land for the professional building. Zeckendorf later recalled that the towers proved that "housing need not be monstrous".
Completion and early years The south tower opened in December 1960 with the showing of model apartments to prospective tenants. Five designers were hired to decorate model apartments in a Danish, Italian, English, Japanese, or French style. Webb and Knapp hired Herbert Charles & Co. at the beginning of 1961 to rent out the apartments; within four months, 375 units had been rented out. The movie theater in the shopping center was designed to be a "luxury" showcase of first run films; it opened on October 16, 1962, when it hosted the double premiere of Requiem for a Heavyweight along with the Criterion Theatre.
Meanwhile, Webb and Knapp and London–based firm Second Covent Garden Property Company Ltd had formed the Zeckendorf Property Corporation in late 1961 to take over ownership of the development. To provide additional financing to complete the project, the Zeckendorf Property Corporation sold Kips Bay Plaza to the Alcoa Corporation in October 1962. Advertisements for the project continued to carry Webb & Knapp's name until July 1963. The south tower was almost fully occupied by the end of 1962; only a small number of three-bedroom apartments remained unoccupied. Work continued on the north tower and the shopping center along Second Avenue. With the exception of a 36-story apartment building that was completed in 1974 at the southeast corner of Second Avenue and East 34th Street, Kips Bay Plaza did not prompt the development of other new projects in the surrounding area, in part because of the presence of hospitals to the east, a middle-class neighborhood to the west, and the ongoing Bellevue South urban renewal project to the south. The New York Times, in a 1979 interview with Zeckendorf's son William Zeckendorf Jr., said Kips Bay Plaza had been a "fashionable" development that replaced "one of the worst slums in the city".
Kips Bay Towers (1972–present)
1970s and 1980s In October 1972, Kips Bay Plaza and the adjacent shopping center were purchased from Alcoa by a group led by William Zeckendorf Jr., who paid over $20 million for the complex. The younger Zeckendorf said he had a "great belief in the future of the New York City residential market"; the purchase took place seven years after his father's company Webb & Knapp had gone bankrupt. As part of the change in ownership, the name of the residential towers was changed from Kips Bay Plaza to Kips Bay Towers. Starting in November 1972, the new owner, Kips Bay Towers Inc., issued revised leases to existing tenants who were seeking to renew their leases. The firm sued a tenant who had refused to sign her revised lease; a New York City Civil Court judge ruled in 1975 that the leases had been revised improperly and that Kips Bay Towers Inc. had to repay up to $500,000 to several hundred tenants who had signed leases. The Lee National Corporation bought a majority stake in Kips Bay Towers Inc. in 1979, with plans to convert the buildings into condominiums. Lee paid a reported $40 million for the complex itself and upgraded the buildings for $2 million. NYU had considered purchasing Kips Bay Towers in 1978, which it intended to continue operating as a rental property, but was advised against doing by so primarily due to the strength of the complex's tenant association.
Kips Bay Towers Inc. presented a preliminary condo offering plan to residents in late 1980. Existing tenants had to agree to buy at least 35% of the apartments before the condo offering plan became effective. Over 800 tenants pledged not to buy into the condominium plan, fearing that the condos would be unaffordable and that the buildings would be replaced, prompting Lee to lower prices for existing tenants. The condo offering plan became effective in November 1981, but the conversion was bogged down in litigation with holdout tenants. The garden and playground within Kips Bay Towers, which had been open to the public since the complex had opened, was fenced off and made accessible only to residents in 1983, due to security concerns about the increasing homeless population. This spurred backlash from the surrounding community.