"More Than a Roof": Building Community Centers for Children in New York City Public Housing

• In Event: Studying the Multidimensionality of Education Policy in Historical Perspective

Abstract

Since its establishment in the 1930s, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) has built spaces designated as the community center in most of its developments. Whether relegated to basement rooms or given their own freestanding building, adequately staffed or left empty, these centers became a ubiquitous element of public housing design in New York City and presented new settings for children to spend their time. By 1957 15,000 children participated in community center activities, led by local non-profits, every month. This paper examines the history of children’s activities at community centers in New York City public housing from the 1930s to 1960s, including how the negotiations between city agencies, non-profit organizations, and resident families shaped these centers. NYCHA’s community centers illuminate an intersection of housing policy with the daily experiences of education and socialization that children sought out or were exposed to by adults.

NYCHA community centers exist at the intersection of housing, education, and welfare histories. Although numerous historians have written about these threads of urban history, they rarely discuss the community centers, which can, uniquely, bring all three threads together. In addressing this gap, this paper builds on histories of non-classroom sites of education, including settlement houses, scouting, museums, daycares, and more. It also shows how the educationalization of social problems, that historians document in the expansion of the school’s role over the 20th century, impacted out-of-school programs, too. The category of after-school or community center programs is an important frame for historical analysis, especially amidst recent growth in the out-of-school time field over the last 30 years that increased philanthropic commitments to children’s programs and pushed community-based programs to align with school reforms. Bianca J. Baldridge’s claim that contemporary community-based educational spaces are “sites of contestation over race, power, and ideology” is enhanced with a deeper understanding of the history of such spaces, and debates over who would run them, who they were for, and why.

This paper is based on archival materials from NYCHA and from the organizations that were tasked with operating the community centers, including activity plans, fundraising documents, staff correspondence, and newspaper articles. In addition, oral histories from existing projects, such as the Bronx African American Oral History Project and the Center for Brooklyn History Oral History collections, reference NYCHA community centers, and give a sense of how participants saw the centers as part of their neighborhood or as an experience of growing up in New York City. These sources illustrate the educational (defined broadly) opportunities and experiences community spaces could provide as well as the limits of an under-resourced project.

Author

• Rachel Klepper, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Presenting Author