About Us - Jacob Riis Houses

The Namesake: Jacob Riis (1849–1914)

31 Jacob Riis (born May 3, 1849, Ribe, Denmark—died May 26, 1914, Barre, Massachusetts, U.S.) was an American newspaper reporter, social reformer, and photographer who, with his book *How the Other Half Lives* (1890), shocked the conscience of his readers with descriptions of slum conditions in New York City. 35 Jacob A. Riis emigrated from Ribe, Denmark to New York City in 1870, at the age of 21. From there, he began a remarkable journey from a working-class immigrant to one of the most influential journalists and social reformers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 28 Like hundreds of thousands of other immigrants who fled to New York, Riis was forced to take up residence in one of the city’s notoriously cramped and disease-ridden tenements. 26 A pioneer in the use of photography as an agent of social reform, Riis immigrated to the United States in 1870. While working as a police reporter for the New York Tribune, he did a series of exposés on slum conditions in tenement photographs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 3 The buildings’ site was once the home of some of the most infamous of the tenement communities that Jacob Riis himself documented, eventually inspiring the housing movement that spurred Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to create the New York City Housing Authority in 1934.

Overview of the Development

1 The Jacob Riis Houses are a public housing project managed by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) in the Alphabet City neighborhood of Manhattan. The project is located between Avenue D and FDR Drive, spanning two superblocks from 6th Street to 13th Street. The project consists of thirteen buildings, between six and 14 stories each, containing 1,191 apartment units.

Pre-Construction History & The Site

8 The NYCHA development is built on top of what was once a 19th century manufactured gas plant notorious for spewing noxious substances. 1 The area to become the Riis Houses was destroyed through urban renewal beginning in August 1943 but construction was delayed because of World War II.

Construction & Funding Challenges

2 Construction of the Jacob Riis Houses began in 1947 and was completed in 1949 following the construction of The First Houses and Vladek Houses, NYCHA’s first two housing projects. 1 The Riis Houses were completed on January 17, 1949 and named for photographer Jacob Riis, who exposed the living conditions of tenement dwellers on the Lower East Side. The housing project was designed by James Mackenzie, Sidney Strauss, and Walker & Gillette. 2 Initially the plan for the Jacob Riis Houses consisted of 13 buildings starting at 14th Street and extending down to 8th Street using federal funds. The city then decided to fund an additional six buildings that extended the boundaries of the complex to 6th Street. However, the project met some conflict in 1946 when the federal government decided to no longer fund the project. After some negotiations, the state agreed to use funding intended for six other housing projects to complete the Riis Houses, citing that construction of the Riis Houses was already underway while none of the other projects had even broken ground.

Architecture & Design

2 Designed by architect James C. McKenzie, Sydney Strauss, and the firm of Walker and Gillette, the brick-clad buildings ranged from seven stories to fourteen. 12 Architects A. Stewart Walker and Leon N. Gillette built their reputations designing sumptuous suburban mansions and elegant downtown office buildings. One of their last projects was the New York City Housing Authority’s Jacob Riis Houses at 152 Avenue D. 2 The site and landscape design of the Jacob Riis Houses not only follows the ideas of Le Corbusier’s “Towers in the Park,” but also seems to draw inspiration from back when the land was open grassland. Unlike the design of the Lillian Wald Houses, located just south of 6th Street, the central park space was clearly defined and the emphasis of the entire complex, making the atmosphere of the Jacob Riis Houses unique. The individual buildings are designed with the elements of the International Style and exhibit geometric shapes, clean lines, and windows set in a grid pattern. Seven of the buildings have an H-shaped footprint and are seven stories tall. The other 12 buildings have a modified X-shaped footprint and are 14 stories tall.

Early Residents & Demographics

3 Immediately after World War II, returning GIs and soaring construction costs created a housing shortage, and NYCHA gave preference to the veterans. When Jacob Riis Houses opened, the tenants reflected both the racial composition of the surrounding neighborhood–white ethnic immigrant families–and the more integrated makeup of the United States Army. 3 Housing officials chose residents according to the race of the surrounding neighborhood. The policy continued until the civil rights movement forced NYCHA to establish an office to “assure a fully integrated tenant body” in 1958. 3 The 19 red-brick towers of the Jacob Riis Houses lining Avenue D look much as they did when they opened in 1949. Many families have come and gone in the 1,768 apartments, but 13 of the original families are still there.

The Landmark Playground (1965–1966)

2 Before 1965, the park space that extended between the buildings in a central “mall” was underutilized. The grass portions were fenced off and were unable to be used. However, in 1965, the Jacob Riis Houses became the major topic of discussion amongst professional planners, designers, politicians, and the general public because of plans to redesign the open park space. 1 The playground was designed to have four “outdoor rooms” for a variety of activities and was designed by Pomerance & Breines with M. Paul Friedberg & Associates as landscape architects. 6 A canonical park at Riis Houses followed in 1966 by M. Paul Friedberg. 1 Later that year, it received a First Honor Award for design excellence by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The design of the open space evolved from prior designs made by the same two firms at the Carver Houses and Straus Houses. Four new playgrounds throughout the city were modeled from it in 1967. 1 In 2018, its playground was inspected by NYCHA and found to be hazardous.

Critical Reception

2 Although many saw the Jacob Riis Houses as a blessed change from the condition of the neighborhood beforehand, others, like the notable critic Lewis Mumford, saw the complex as a perpetuation of the issues that had faced low-income housing throughout the centuries. They were seen more as isolated communities that marginalized the poor instead of idealistic views of the self-sustaining “city within a city.”

Notable Residents

7 Frank Morales, born in 1949 to Puerto Rican and Peruvian parents, grew up in the Jacob Riis Houses on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, where early involvement in local Boys’ Club programs facilitated his access to private schooling. He later pursued ordination as an Episcopal priest and engaged in housing activism, including squatting initiatives and advocacy for the homeless. 7 Hector Monsegur, known by the online pseudonym Sabu and born in 1983, lived in a sixth-floor apartment in the Riis Houses after being raised primarily by his grandmother in the same Lower East Side projects. As a key figure in the Anonymous hacking collective, he orchestrated cyber attacks on entities including the Church of Scientology and Stratfor before cooperating with the FBI as an informant in 2011.

Hurricane Sandy (2012) & Aftermath

1 During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the development was hit by a storm surge that left it without electricity and other services. In 2018, NYCHA received a grant for $71 million to fund necessary infrastructure repairs from Sandy anticipated to begin in 2022. Upgrades include: emergency generators, electrical distribution equipment, waterproofing of structures and finishes, upgrades to sewer/storm management systems, new roadways, pedestrian lighting, rehabilitation of building entrances and lobbies.

The 2022 Arsenic Water Scare

21 On September 1, 2022, NYCHA received re-sampled test results from an outside vendor that indicated the presence of arsenic levels beyond safety thresholds in the drinking water supply at Jacob Riis Houses. An initial sample received on August 29, 2022 had indicated the presence of arsenic and a re-sampling was ordered. 16 The city’s housing authority said it had found traces of arsenic in the tap water at the Jacob Riis Houses in the East Village. According to editorial partner The City, NYCHA made this discovery two weeks ago, but tenants only found out Friday night. 23 Eight days after warning tenants of NYCHA’s Jacob Riis Houses not to drink the water after tests showed arsenic in it, City Hall officials reversed course on Friday evening, facing an auditorium full of 300 angry tenants to proclaim that the lab results from the housing authority’s water quality test vendor were wrong and that there is no arsenic. 21 The City ultimately confirmed that unsafe levels of arsenic are not, and were never, present in the water supply at Jacob Riis Houses. The initial test results indicating unsafe levels of arsenic in the water are false, and the laboratory that produced those results issued a statement on September 9 confirming this fact. 20 The firm Environmental Monitoring and Technologies issued a “full retraction” of the results and released revised results. The lab further admitted it had introduced arsenic into the testing samples on its own. 19 A series of bureaucratic blunders triggered the 2022 debacle over the ultimately debunked tests that claimed arsenic was in the water at the Jacob Riis Houses and resulted in nearly $500,000 in “unnecessary costs” to taxpayers, according to investigations by NYCHA’s federal monitor and the city Department of Investigation. 17 The residents of Jacob Riis Houses, with the help of Dare to Struggle, came together to form an organization, Rogue Residents – Jacob Riis, a fighting organization of tenants who want to take on NYCHA and the city to stop the displacement of people living in public housing through collective struggle.

Toxic Soil Contamination

8 Public housing tenants first learned about toxic contamination underneath the Riis Houses in 2005. The NYCHA development is built on top of what was once a 19th century manufactured gas plant notorious for spewing noxious substances. 8 Riis Houses is the only NYCHA development built on top of a former manufactured gas plant. Its 2,500 residents have since lived on what is essentially a toxic waste site, with contaminants lingering in the soil below, particularly in the northern sections above E. 11th St. where the massive gas holder tanks and the coal-burning plants once stood. 8 The results released in a 2005 report were clear: a wide variety of cancer-causing toxins existed at different depths from 12 feet below to within two inches of the surface. A plan to clean up the contaminated soil was finally proposed by Con Ed four years ago, but not one cubic yard of dirt has been removed since. 9 Environmental attorney Joel Kupferman described the situation at the Jacob Riis Houses as “environmental apartheid,” noting the number of poor and people of color at Jacob Riis Houses, who he feels are neglected by NYCHA.

Physical Needs & Infrastructure Challenges

7 The Jacob Riis Houses, completed in 1949 as part of NYCHA’s post-World War II expansion, have provided subsidized apartments to low-income families amid chronic urban housing shortages, accommodating approximately 2,500 residents in 1,191 units. Income-based rents, capped at 30% of household earnings through federal operating subsidies, have ensured long-term affordability for working-class and welfare-dependent tenants. 7 Residents of Jacob Riis Houses have reported chronic issues with leaky roofs and mold proliferation, contributing to a system-wide NYCHA work order backlog. Average completion times for complex leak repairs requiring skilled trades reached 136 days in 2023, with overall NYCHA repair delays extending to 415 days by February 2025. 9 NYCHA said Jacob Riis’ “$940 million-plus capital need will be addressed while all resident rights and protections are preserved.”

The PACT Vote (2025): Residents Vote to Stay Public

6 Following the conclusion to a landmark vote, Jacob Riis Houses will stay public. NYCHA residents there have voted to remain in Section 9, instead of converting their public housing campus into a privately managed community under PACT, the same mechanism NYCHA and Related are using to flip Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses. 6 Eddie Rodriguez is a member of both Cuala Foundation and Rogue Residents; and Zulay Velazquez is the founder of Concerned Tenants at Jacob Riis, and also Riis Houses’ new president elect. Rodriguez said their “work on the ground showed time and again that not only do residents care about keeping public housing public, but they want to be part of helping to find solutions.” 6 NYCHA spokesperson Michael Horgan stated that “residents from Jacob Riis Houses have elected to keep their development under the traditional Section 9 model. NYCHA does not currently have the ability to address the extensive physical needs at Riis, estimated at over $940 million, with the financial resources available in the Section 9 program.”

Legacy & Significance

7 Built between 1947 and the early 1950s as part of NYCHA’s expansion under influences like Robert Moses, the 1,191-unit complex perpetuates the legacy of reformer Jacob Riis by bearing his name, a nod by New Deal figures including Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to his exposés on Lower East Side squalor. This naming underscores how early 20th-century documentation of poverty shaped postwar policy, positioning such projects as emblems of progressive intervention in housing markets. 2 In the decades leading up to the present day, the residents of the Jacob Riis Houses are really what have shaped the development and made it unique. They took ownership of their homes and neighborhoods despite all the odds against them, thankful for what they had but always looking towards the future. In the past ten years the Jacob Riis Houses and its residents have weathered the storms of September 11, a recession, and Super-storm Sandy.

Jacob Riis Houses remains one of Manhattan’s most historically significant public housing developments — named for the very man whose groundbreaking journalism about Lower East Side tenement conditions helped inspire the creation of public housing in New York City. Over 75 years since its completion, the development continues to grapple with aging infrastructure, environmental contamination, and the fundamental question of how to fund the massive repairs needed — while its residents have forcefully asserted their determination to keep their homes publicly owned and managed.

Jacob Riis Houses — NYCHA, Manhattan, NY

The Man Behind the Name

9 Riis Houses is named after Jacob Augustus Riis (1849–1914), a Danish-born American journalist whose reports on living conditions in city slums led to improvements in housing. 10 The buildings’ site was once the home of some of the most infamous tenement communities that Jacob Riis himself documented, eventually inspiring the housing movement that spurred Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia to create the New York City Housing Authority in 1934.

Location

Construction & Completion

5 Construction of the Jacob Riis Houses began in 1947 and was completed in 1949, following the construction of The First Houses and Vladeck Houses, NYCHA’s first two housing projects. 5 Initially, the plan for the Jacob Riis Houses consisted of 13 buildings starting at 14th Street and extending down to 8th Street using federal funds. The city then decided to fund an additional six buildings that extended the boundaries of the complex to 6th Street. 5 However, the project met some conflict in 1946 when the federal government decided to no longer fund the project. After some negotiations, the state agreed to use funding intended for six other housing projects to complete the Riis Houses, citing that construction of the Riis Houses was already underway while none of the other projects had even broken ground.

Urban Renewal & Site Preparation

1 The area to become the Riis Houses was destroyed through urban renewal beginning in August 1943, but construction was delayed because of World War II.

Architecture & Design

5 Designed by architect James C. McKenzie, Sydney Strauss, and the firm of Walker and Gillette, the brick-clad buildings ranged from seven stories to fourteen. 5 The individual buildings are designed with the elements of the International Style and exhibit geometric shapes, clean lines, and windows set in a grid pattern. Seven of the buildings have an H-shaped footprint and are seven stories tall. The other 12 buildings have a modified X-shaped footprint and are 14 stories tall. 5 The site and landscape design of the Jacob Riis Houses not only follows the ideas of Le Corbusier’s “Towers in the Park,” but also seems to draw inspiration from back when the land was open grassland. Unlike the design of the Lillian Wald Houses, located just south of 6th Street, the central park space was clearly defined and the emphasis of the entire complex, making the atmosphere of the Jacob Riis Houses unique.

Size & Residents

9 Riis Houses has 13 buildings, 6, 13, and 14 stories tall, with 1,188 apartments, completed January 17, 1949, on 11.73 acres. 4 The Jacob Riis Houses, completed in 1949 as part of NYCHA’s post-World War II expansion, have provided subsidized apartments to low-income families amid chronic urban housing shortages, accommodating approximately 2,500 residents in 1,191 units as of recent assessments. 10 The 19 red-brick towers of the Jacob Riis Houses lining Avenue D look much as they did when they opened in 1949. Many families have come and gone in the 1,768 apartments, but 13 of the original families are still there.

Management & Administration

4 NYCHA, a public benefit corporation created by state law in 1935 and overseen by a seven-member board appointed by the mayor, manages the Jacob Riis Houses as part of its portfolio of 335 developments comprising approximately 175,000 apartments housing over 400,000 low-income residents citywide. 4 Riis Houses falls under NYCHA’s Manhattan operations, with day-to-day administration handled through a dedicated property management office at 454 East 10th Street, led by an on-site housing superintendent responsible for coordinating maintenance, rent collection, and tenant services.

Early Tenancy & Demographics

10 Immediately after World War II, returning GIs and soaring construction costs created a housing shortage, and NYCHA gave preference to veterans. When Jacob Riis Houses opened, the tenants reflected both the racial composition of the surrounding neighborhood — white ethnic immigrant families — and the more integrated makeup of the United States Army. 10 Housing officials chose residents according to the race of the surrounding neighborhood. The policy continued until the civil rights movement forced NYCHA to establish an office to “assure a fully integrated tenant body” in 1958.

Neighborhood Life

10 Although Alphabet City was one of the country’s toughest neighborhoods during the 1970s and 1980s, original tenants also remember a neighborhood of community gardens, jazz clubs, and families that looked out for each other’s children.

Park Redesign (1965–1966)

5 Before 1965, the park space that extended between the buildings in a central “mall” was underutilized. The grass portions were fenced off and were unable to be used. However, in 1965, the Jacob Riis Houses became the major topic of discussion amongst professional planners, designers, politicians, and the general public because of plans to redesign the open park space. 5 Aided by a $900,000 grant from the Vincent Astor Foundation, landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg created a new design that made the park space accessible to everyone.

Critics of the Development

5 Although many saw the Jacob Riis Houses as a blessed change from the condition of the neighborhood beforehand, others, like the notable critic Lewis Mumford, saw the complex as a perpetuation of the issues that had faced low-income housing throughout the centuries. They were seen more as isolated communities that marginalized the poor instead of idealistic views of the self-sustaining “city within a city.”

Hurricane Sandy (2012)

1 During Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the development was hit by a storm surge that left it without electricity and other services. In 2018, NYCHA received a grant for $71 million to fund necessary infrastructure repairs from Sandy, anticipated to begin in 2022. Upgrades include: emergency generators, electrical distribution equipment, waterproofing of structures and finishes, upgrades to sewer/storm management systems, new roadways, pedestrian lighting, and rehabilitation of building entrances and lobbies.

Environmental & Toxic Contamination Concerns

8 Public housing tenants first learned about toxic contamination underneath the Riis Houses in 2005. The NYCHA development is built on top of what was once a 19th century manufactured gas plant notorious for spewing noxious substances. 8 Some of the test results “indicated that surface soil surrounding Jacob Riis Buildings Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 contains elevated concentrations of PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) … greater than the reported Manhattan background levels.” 8 A plan to clean up the contaminated soil was finally proposed by Con Ed four years ago, but not one cubic yard of dirt has been removed since.

Ongoing Maintenance & Infrastructure Challenges

4 Residents of Jacob Riis Houses have reported chronic issues with leaky roofs and mold proliferation, contributing to a system-wide NYCHA work order backlog that averaged over 73,000 unresolved mold and leak requests as of December 2024. Average completion times for complex leak repairs requiring skilled trades reached 136 days in 2023, with overall NYCHA repair delays extending to 415 days by February 2025. 4 Elevator maintenance poses additional challenges, as NYCHA replaced only two elevators across its entire portfolio from 2018 to 2022, leaving high-rise units at developments like Riis vulnerable to frequent outages.

Affordability & Long-Term Significance

4 Income-based rents, capped at 30% of household earnings through federal operating subsidies, have ensured long-term affordability for working-class and welfare-dependent tenants, enabling multi-generational occupancy in a market where private rents often exceed 50% of income for similar demographics. 4 Historical occupancy rates near 99% across NYCHA developments, including Riis Houses, reflect sustained demand and the project’s role in averting displacement during economic downturns, such as the 1970s fiscal crisis and post-2008 recession, when waitlists for public units numbered in the hundreds of thousands citywide.

In summary, Jacob Riis Houses (sometimes written as “Jacobriis Houses”) is one of Manhattan’s most historically significant NYCHA developments, completed in 1949 in the Alphabet City neighborhood of the Lower East Side. Named after the pioneering journalist and social reformer Jacob Riis, it has housed thousands of working-class and low-income New Yorkers for over 75 years, while facing serious ongoing challenges including environmental contamination, chronic maintenance backlogs, and debates over its future under public or private management.