Chatham Towers
170 Park Row | also 196 Park Row | Chinatown | built 1965
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The city photographed every building for its tax records around 1940 and again in the 1980s. NYC Municipal Archives.
Written with AI from the source each entry cites, then fact-checked.
- 1962
The last small Title I parcel at Park Row and Worth Street is cleared for Chatham Towers
Robert Moses's Committee on Slum Clearance assembled 26 development parcels between 1949 and 1960, and the last and smallest was an irregular triangle at the southern edge of Chinatown. Its tenements and commercial buildings were slated for demolition, and the site went to the Association for Middle Income Housing, an arm of Shirley Boden's Fund for Urban Improvement. After city approval in 1961, residents were relocated and the site was cleared by the end of 1962.
Source: docomomo-nytri.org
- 1963
Chatham Towers switches from steel frame to poured concrete as construction begins
A 1959 scheme for two 25-story towers had called for steel frames in a glass skin, but by the time construction began in the second half of 1963 the design team, led by George Shimamoto of Kelly & Gruzen, had switched to cast-in-place concrete with load-bearing walls and flat slabs, left exposed throughout. The result reads as a pair of sculpted solids. Closed-cell urethane insulated the concrete exterior, the first such use in New York, after a code change.
Source: docomomo-nytri.org
- 1965
Chatham Towers puts gypsum wallboard in every interior partition and the plasterers' union objects
Chatham Towers was the first Manhattan high-rise to use gypsum wallboard for every interior partition rather than plaster. The Plasterers' Union, naturally opposed, fought back with newspaper advertisements that urged builders to "keep New York plastered." Each of the two towers has five apartments to a floor, 240 in all, and they stand on a parking deck covered by a courtyard designed by M. Paul Friedberg.
Source: docomomo-nytri.org
- 1965
Kelly & Gruzen complete the Chatham Towers apartment buildings on Park Row
The two Chatham Towers buildings, at 170 and 180 Park Row, were finished in 1965 to designs by Kelly & Gruzen. The same firm had designed Chatham Green at 185 Park Row in 1961. The AIA Guide to New York City called Chatham Towers a strong architectural statement that drew both great admiration and great criticism.
Source: Wikipedia
- 1967
The City Club of New York honors Chatham Towers with its Bard Award
In 1967 the City Club of New York gave Chatham Towers, designed by Kelly and Gruzen, its Albert S. Bard Award for distinguished urban design and architecture. The club, founded in 1892, used the awards to honor leading city buildings and to comment on municipal design. That year's winners also included the Lower Manhattan Plan and University Village.
Source: Wikipedia
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