Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village ( ), colloquially known as StuyTown, is a large post-World War II private residential development on the east side of the New York City borough of Manhattan. The complex consists of 110 red brick apartment buildings on an tract stretching from First Avenue to Avenue C, between 14th and 23rd Streets. Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village is split up into two parts: Stuyvesant Town, south of 20th Street, and Peter Cooper Village, north of 20th Street. Together, the two developments contain 11,250 apartments.
Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village was planned, beginning in 1942, and opened its first building in 1947. It replaced a neighborhood known as the Gas House district. The complex has been sold multiple times, most recently in 2015 when it was sold to Ivanhoé Cambridge and Blackstone for $5.45 billion.
Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village is part of Manhattan Community District 6, and its primary ZIP Codes are 10009 and 10010. It is patrolled by the 13th Precinct of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).
Geography Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village is bounded by First Avenue on the west, 23rd Street on the north, Avenue C on the east, and 14th Street on the south. The complex covers about of land in total, including parkland. Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village contains 11,250 apartments in 55 buildings, which have 110 separate street addresses.
The buildings south of 20th Street are known as Stuyvesant Town, or "Stuy Town". They were named after Peter Stuyvesant, the last director-general of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, whose farm occupied the site in the 17th century. The buildings north of 20th Street are called Peter Cooper Village, named after the 19th-century industrialist, inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper, who founded Cooper Union.
Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village abuts the Stuyvesant Square and Gramercy Park neighborhoods on the west,Community Board Six – District Profile, map , accessed August 3, 2018 the East Village and Alphabet City to the south, and Kips Bay to the north. The surrounding area to the west is notable for a historic two-block park surrounded by the old Stuyvesant High School called Stuyvesant Square, Saint George's Church, and the Beth Israel Medical Center, which closed in 2025.
History
Gas House District In 1842, one gas storage tank was erected at East 23rd Street and the river, quickly followed by the construction of other gas tanks. By the late 19th century, the site of the complex had become known as the "Gas House District" because of the many gas storage tanks owned by Consolidated Gas Company that dominated the streetscapes. The tanks, which sometimes leaked, made the area undesirable to live in, as did the Gas House Gang and other predators who operated in the area., p.190
The population was predominantly poor, at first largely Irish, and then German and Jewish American. Later, Slovaks and other Eastern Europeans were the dominant ethnic groups, including a large population of Armenians who lived in the upper Twenties between First and Lexington avenues., p.190
Crime in the district was endemic. When Alexander S. Williams was promoted to police captain on May 31, 1872, and assigned to the area, he met the gangs' violence with equal force of his own, putting together a brute squad that beat up gangsters with clubs. He commented: "There is more law at the end of a policeman's nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme Court.", p. 999
With the construction of the FDR Drive, the area began to improve. By the 1930s, all but four tanks were gone, and, while shabby, the area was no more blighted than many parts of the city after the years of the Great Depression.
Before the construction of Stuyvesant Town, the neighborhood contained 18 city blocks, with public schools, churches, factories, private homes, apartments, small businesses and even relatively new modern-style apartment buildings. In all, 600 buildings, containing 3,100 families, 500 stores and small factories, three churches, three schools, and two theaters, were razed. As would be repeated in later urban renewal projects, an estimated 3,000 families and 11,000 persons were forced to move from the neighborhood.Roberts, Rosamond G. 3000 Families Move to Make Way for Stuyvesant Town, Tenant Relocation Bureau via Citizens Housing and Planning Council. Accessed February 9, 2026. "Yet, nine months before the bulldozers came on the scene, 3000 families lived here. Before their homes could be razed and the site prepared, 3000 families had to be moved.... Never before had a housing development required 11,000 people to move at one time -- never before had there been such a housing shortage in New York City." In 1945, The New York Times called the move from the site "the greatest and most significant mass movement of families in New York's history." The last residents of the Gas House district, the Delman family, moved out in May 1946, allowing demolition to be completed shortly thereafter.
Planning Due to a New York City housing shortage that had been growing since the Depression, Stuyvesant Town was already being planned as a post-war housing project in 1942–43, some years before the end of World War II. A provision was made that the rental applications of veterans would have selection priority. The complex was developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, and was based on its earlier development in the Parkchester neighborhood of the Bronx, which was completed in 1942.Warshawer, Gabby. "Parkchester Wins Following as 'Hidden Secret'", Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2014. Accessed December 27, 2023. "Parkchester, the large apartment complex in the Bronx, was originally constructed by Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. as a middle-class city-within-a-city under the same precepts that guided the development of the insurance giant's more-famous project in Manhattan—Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.... MetLife built the 129-acre complex between 1938 and 1942 on land that had been used as a Catholic residence for neglected and abandoned children." The same companies and developers also built Riverton, which was completed around the same time.
In January 1945, Metropolitan Life mapped out its post-war plans for 6,000 residents of Peter Cooper Village, which would stretch east of First Avenue, between 20th and 22nd streets, while efforts were made to acquire land north of 22nd Street. The project would be an extension of the previously announced Stuyvesant Town."Plan New Housing For 'Gas House' Area", New York Daily News, January 4, 1945. Accessed December 27, 2023, via Newspapers.com. "Instead, its place will be taken by a new low-rent housing project, plans for which were announced yesterday by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. The new community, to be known as Peter Cooper Village, will house 6,000 persons. Under present plans it will extend from 20th to 22d St., between First Ave. and the East River Drive, with negotiations still underway for the acquisition of an additional block east of Avenue A, between 22d and 23d Sts. The project will supplement the Stuyvesant Town area, from 14th to 20th St., between Avenue C and First Ave., already designated by Metropolitan for a postwar housing community."
Metropolitan Life president Frederick H. Ecker said of Stuyvesant Town in its initial offering that it would make it possible for generations of New Yorkers "to live in a park – to live in the country in the heart of New York." On the first day the company received 7,000 applications; it would receive 100,000 applicants by the time of first occupancy. The complex's first tenants, two World War II veterans and their families, moved into the first completed building on August 1, 1947. At the time, rents ranged from $50 to $91 per month.
Controversy
Stuyvesant Town was controversial from the beginning. In 1943, the National Association of Housing Officials described the fight as "a battle up to now lacking only in beer bottles and murder." Although nominally a private development, it was championed by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who has been called the "dominant force in [the] creation" of both Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. At the behest of Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Moses sought "to induce insurance companies and savings banks to enter the field of large-scale slum clearance."Moses, Robert. Stuyvesant Town Defended ", The New York Times, June 3, 1943. Accessed December 27, 2023. It was enabled by various state laws and amendments which permitted private companies to enter what was previously a public field of action."[For] projects such as Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, Riverton and Concord Village ... though the money that built them was supposedly private money, the tax abatement that Moses arranged for them would, when totaled over the years, insure that the public investment in them would dwarf the private, and the powers that Moses used to make possible not only their construction but the assemblage of their sites – eminent domain, street closings, utility easements – were all public." ()
The new public-private partnership, and the contract entered between the city and the developer, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, were the source of much debate. Among the issues at stake were use of the power of eminent domain for private purposes; the reversion of public streets and land, such as public school property, to private ownership; the 25-year tax exemption granted by the contract; and the lack of any restrictions on the company prohibiting discrimination in selecting tenants.Staff. "Stuyvesant Town Approved By Board; Form of Contract and Plans for Housing Project Pass Estimate Body, 11–5; Opponents Charge Bias; Nathan and Morris Oppose the Proposition on Ground That Negroes Would Be Barred", The New York Times, June 4, 1943. Accessed December 18, 2016. ""The chief objection voiced by more than a score of speakers was that the contract contained no clause that would prevent the Metropolitan company from discriminating against Negroes in renting. Those holding this view contended that since Metropolitan had been granted the right of eminent domain as well as a 25-year tax exemption on the improved property, the project was public in nature and should be protected from discrimination."
When the $50 million Stuyvesant Town plan was approved by the City Planning Commission on May 20, 1943, by a five to one vote, discrimination against African-Americans was already a significant topic of debate. Councilmen Stanley M. Isaacs and Benjamin J. Davis Jr. sought to introduce a provision into the contract that would prevent racial or religious discrimination in tenant selection. This provision was not accepted; those who rejected it, including Robert Moses, argued that the company's profitability would be harmed, and that opponents were "obviously looking for a political issue and not for results in the form of actual slum clearance."
In the years after it opened, Black people were barred from living in the complex. Metropolitan Life's president, Frederick H. Ecker, stated that "negroes and whites do not mix". He also believed that integrating Stuyvesant Town would depress demand for, and hence valuation of, other real estate in the area.