The Christodora House

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The Christodora House is a historic building in Manhattan’s East Village/Alphabet City area. Originally designed as a settlement house for immigrant land low-income residents in 1928, the Christodora House would help those who came through its doors get settled into a home of their own, providing food, education, and other necessities to its residents. In March of 1986, the Christodora House was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Today, the Christodora House still rents out rooms for residents as a condominium complex.

Images

A view of Christodora House in 2006 ((By The original uploader was David Shankbone at English Wikipedia [CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons))

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

In 1928, an organization called the Christodora House opened a building of the same name with the intention of providing shelter, education, and sustenance to people in hard times in the area. For a time, the building flourished, taking in tenants and providing them with all forms of educational support, as the building included facilities like a gym, a swimming pool, a music school, and a theater. However, after the events of World War II, the Christodora House was maintained less, was repossessed by the city, and fell into disrepair. Despite its dilapidated facilities, the Christodora House was occupied by social groups within the community, making use of the building for office space for a time. However, in 1969, the building’s electrical systems suffered a great deal of water damage, and as a result, the city declared that the building be condemned.

The Christodora House remained condemned and untouched for several years until it was sold in 1975 at auction. The building was sold numerous times after that, and in the early 1980s, Harry Skydell and Samuel Glasser, two real estate investors, renovated the entire building and turned it into a building of luxury condominiums, which opened in 1986. That same year, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 20th. While the Christodora House was still a series of condos, it was host to numerous famous icons. Today, the Christodora House still rents out rooms to renters of all kinds, whether residential or commercial.

Sources

Keohane, Ellen. "On Ave. B, Trying to Turn Community Space into Condos." On Ave. B, Trying to Turn Community Space into Condos. August 2005. Accessed August 11, 2016. http://thevillager.com/villager_119/onavebtryingto.html.