Parkway Village

The colonial revival homes of this lovely 37-acre residential development–bordered by Main Street, Union Turnpike, 150th Street, Goethals Avenue, Parsons Boulevard, and the Grand Central Parkway–were one of New York City’s first integrated housing developments. Opening in 1947, it was built to house United Nations employees, but others were quickly allowed in. Figures like Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Ralph Bunche, an African American U.N. leader, civil rights leader Roy Wilkins, and famed feminist Betty Friedan all lived there in the early 1950s. One hundred and ten two-story buildings mix with the more than 1,800 trees on the landscaped grounds and provide 685 apartments. The buildings, although apartments, are not laid out on a grid pattern but, as in a suburban “garden city” plan, with plenty of open green space. Parkway Village represented the rarely attained vision of a harmonious multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural community.

Parkway Village opened in 1947 as one of several new housing projects designed specifically to lure the United Nations to New York City. It was designed by Leonard Schultze and Associates, the firm that designed the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Schultze himself had been the chief of design for Grand Central Terminal. The United Nations required that its home city have sufficient housing for its racially diverse staff, so New York City worked with private corporations to build new housing developments. Parkway Village differed significantly from the other complexes like Peter Cooper Village and Fresh Meadows in that it was completely racially nondiscriminatory.

U.N. Secretary-General Trygve Lie and city officials, especially Robert Moses, worked with a group of savings banks to select and develop the site in Kew Gardens, Queens. The banks actually owned and developed the property, then leased it to the United Nations, which limited rentals to the families of U.N. staff and World War II veterans. In mid-1952, 480 of the 685 families were affiliated with the United Nations. When the lease expired in early 1953, Parkway Village became a regular development, albeit an integrated international one.

Many who grew up there remember it fondly. “Parkway was endowed from the beginning with a rather unique international flavor, a flavor which remains to this day, despite the U.N. having ended its affiliation decades ago. As a youngster I got to know kids from Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, Australia, Latin America, and the Caribbean–in other words–literally from every corner of the globe. I was invited to sample their cuisines, learn quite a bit about their cultures, and pick up snippets of their languages…. It was enlightening to see kids from countries and cultures which are traditional rivals–Indians and Pakistanis, Arabs and Jews, for example–playing together, attending the same schools and, if not learning to love and trust one another, at least finding a way to get along in an atmosphere of cooperation and understanding,” wrote Carlos Figueroa, who later followed in his father’s footsteps by taking a job at the United Nations. The U.N. school and nursery school within the development helped create the welcoming atmosphere. (The schools only left Parkway Village in the early 1980s.)

Adults, too, enjoyed living in the strong, diverse community of Parkway Village. In fact, it was so community-oriented that for many years no fences between the homes were built. The U.N. Women’s Guild was active and held luncheons where people gathered and shared international food. Adults also mixed at parties and in welcoming newcomers. The late wife of the late civil rights leader Roy Wilkins (who has a garden named in his honor at the complex), Minnie Wilkins, reminisced in a community newsletter article about moving to Parkway Village in December 1952, “There was a mixed population which made it interesting. My neighbors were French, Chinese, and across the street was a family from Belgium and one from Africa.” The Wilkins lived at Parkway Village into the 1980s. Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, also lived there in the early 1950s. She edited the Parkway Villager newsletter and was involved in a mass “rent fight” in 1952 when the banks that owned the development tried to raise rents but the tenants banded together against any increases. The New York Times reported on the dispute in July 1952, saying that the tenants pointed out that non-white residents would either have to pay for “an exorbitant rental” or face discrimination in other, segregated, developments.

In his background and his deeds, Ralph Bunche is one of the people who best demonstrated how Parkway Village differed from other housing developments. An African American U.N. staff member, Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for negotiating a peace agreement between Israel and surrounding Arab states. At the time, he lived with his family in Parkway Village. (His son reports that they moved from Parkway Village to another house in Queens thanks to the financial award that accompanies the Nobel Prize.) He also worked extensively on decolonization and came up with the idea of using troops as peacekeepers. And, like Roy Wilkins, who was a long-time executive director of the NAACP, he struggled for civil rights in the United States, as well.

While Parkway Village changed a little in the 1960s with the widening of the Grand Central Parkway, the biggest change took place in 1983, when it became a co-op. As residents began owning rather than renting, fences were put up. The U.N. schools left, and land was taken over by a developer. By 2000 the complex was about 85 percent owner occupied and 15 percent rental units. Although there isn’t nearly as large a U.N. presence there as earlier, residents still find it a diverse and friendly place to live. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else,” said Lili Wronker, who has lived there since 1962. Residents tried in 1999 to get New York City to designate Parkway Village as a historic district, but the Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to do so.

Even so, the diversity that helped make Parkway Village special has endured and even spread in Queens. A 1948 New York Times article reported, “The daily marketing trek of Europeans, Africans, Asians and Latin Americans has converted Queens’ Parsons Boulevard from a dingy beat into an exotic thoroughfare.” Such a street is now commonplace in 2004 Queens. The diverse community that truly sets Parkway Village apart remains less common. But as Jimmy Li, the son of a U.N. interpreter, points out, Parkway Village shows that it can be done: “What CEOs try to do, what heads of state dream about; that we already accomplished as children at Parkway. We lived together daily with full acceptance and respect for each other; race, religion and nationality were acknowledged and celebrated.”