Saving the Blennerhasset oral history collection, 2016

Biographical Note

The Blennerhasset is an apartment building located at 507 West 111th Street in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of Manhattan. The six-story building was built in 1903, in a middle-class neighborhood that was rapidly expanding with the expansion of an IRT subway line. In the 1930s area landlords began subdividing apartments, and by the postwar period, many had been turned into single-room occupancy hotels. In the post-war years, the class and ethnic makeup of the neighborhood shifted, and more African Americans and Hispanic people moved into the area. By the 1960s, the neighborhood was known for crime and poverty. At the same time, many well-funded institutions had remained in the area such as Columbia University, the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine, and Saint Luke's Hospital. These powerful neighborhood institutions, led by David Rockefeller, created Morningside Heights, Inc. to redevelop the area. A 1959 study by MHI, was turned into the Morningside General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, which was approved by the city in 1965. The plan stood to displace some eight thousand households. As part of the plan, buildings on 111th and 112th were slated for demolition, so a new Philip Johnson-designed, ten-story old-age home could be built. Residents in the Blennerhasset and neighboring buildings fought back, however. Some buildings on the block were demolished, but the construction was not undertaken and Blennerhasset and other buildings remained. In 1979, Blennerhasset tenants banded together as a co-op to buy the property from its owners to hold off purchase by an outside buyer. As of the 2020s, the Blennerhasset was still a co-op. Gentrification throughout the first part of the 2000s caused many changes to the neighborhood and made the building worth hundreds of times the $71,750 paid by the tenants in 1979

Scope and Contents

The Saving the Blennerhasset oral history collection documents the history of a tenant-owned co-op located at 507 West 111th Street in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of New York City. The interviews have a special focus on two episodes in the building's history. The first is when tenants worked in the late 1960s to fight a city-approved redevelopment plan, backed by Columbia University and others, to level their block to build an old-age home. Narrators describe the social and legal efforts to hold back powerful interests whose urban redevelopment plans stood to displace residents. The second episode is when tenants banded together in 1979 to form a co-op and purchase the building from their landlord before it was sold to an unknown outside purchaser. Narrators discuss the legal process of forming a co-op, financial challenges, and social dynamics within the building. Narrators also describe the neighborhood of Morningside Heights from the 1960s to 2016. Issues addressed include economic and cultural demographics of the area over the decades; crime in the 1960s-1970s; community organizations and activism; and the gentrification of the neighborhood of the 2010s. The collection also addresses life in the building more generally, as narrators recall personalities in the building, maintaining the building, childhood activities on the block, and the camaraderie and challenges of apartment living. The interviews were conducted by Tom Phillips for a 55-page piece called "Saving the Blennerhasset," which is also found within the collection. The collection's interviews are comprised of digital transcripts, paper-based transcripts, and digital audio The collection's narrators are Nellie Bailey, Don Colflesh, Wendell Dorris, George Gabriel, Demi McGuire, and Deland Rivera

Subjects

• Columbia University--History.
• Gentrification--United States--20th century.
• Home ownership--Social aspects.
• Interviews.
• Morningside Heights (New York, N.Y.)--Buildings, structures, etc.
• Morningside Heights (New York, N.Y.)--History.
• New York (N.Y.)--History.
• Oral histories (literary works)
• Urban renewal--New York (State)--New York.

Access Conditions

Copyright by the Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, 2018