As Published in the New York Times, Sunday November 23, 2003
REAL ESTATE DESK

Streetscapes/Henry Phipps and Phipps Houses; Millionaire's Effort to Improve Housing for the Poor

By CHRISTOPHER GRAY

The steel magnate Henry Phipps built one of the most expensive houses in New York on Fifth Avenue in 1905, a low, broad Renaissance design of marble with a wide garden and driveway. But he simultaneously established a namesake organization devoted to housing for the poor and working class. Although his house is long gone, most of the projects of his creation, Phipps Houses, still survive, and now the organization is preparing a book on its work -- which is still going on.

In 1901, Phipps sold his holdings in the Carnegie Company -- which he owned with Andrew Carnegie -- to J. P. Morgan for more than $50 million. He had lived in Pittsburgh, and in 1904 he built a town house at 6 East 87th Street -- ample in size, but nothing compared with the great mansion he began in 1905 across the street at the northeast corner of 87th and Fifth. Designed by Trowbridge & Livingston, who had also designed the St. Regis Hotel at 55th and Fifth, the new marble house was set well back on its 100-by-175-foot plot.

At the same time that Phipps was planning his own luxury, he became involved with the lives of the less fortunate. He had been concerned about the problems of tuberculosis -- which to any turn-of-the-century reformer meant dealing with slums, because the poor ventilation and cramped quarters of the typical tenement were considered a major contributing factor in the disease.

Working with Elgin R. L. Gould, an advocate for model tenements, Phipps established a $1 million fund for building the model tenements that would be called Phipps Houses. He said he wanted a 4 percent annual return on his investment because he wanted to demonstrate to builders of conventional tenements that money could be made producing housing with reasonable standards of ventilation and comfort. At the time there were 80,000 tenements in New York City.

The first Phipps Houses were at 321-337 East 31st Street, three six-story tenements between Third and Second Avenues, completed in 1906 and designed by Grosvenor Atterbury, who had also designed Phipps's original 87th Street house (now the Liederkranz Club). At a typical rent of $1.25 a room per week, or $14 a month for a three-room apartment, they were more expensive than the usual $10 a month other tenement tenants were paying. Atterbury's 31st Street complex had 142 apartments of from two to five rooms, each with its own bathroom, and a finished courtyard to improve ventilation and avoid the typical dank back-alley look of such housing. Earlier model tenements had been spare in exterior expression, but Atterbury, with the goal of better ventilation of the interior court, gave his a heroic four-story-high archway.

His building prototype, with its varied brickwork and window patterns, overhanging tile roof and elaborate central roof pergola, was entirely new for New York. The ground-floor entrance courts were designed to serve as social centers, to keep the residents away from the corrupting influence of the street. But Phipps Houses made every attempt to avoid the aura of high-mindedness. An early brochure said: ''This enterprise is not a charity. Tenants are not asked to accept anything free. All that they pay for in their rent they will receive.''

In the same year that the 31st Street buildings were opened, the Phipps Houses fund began a new project, four six-story buildings at 233-247 West 63rd Street. Designed by Whitfield & King, these were much more conventional than the 31st Street row. The simpler design was probably an attempt to cut costs.

The 63rd Street apartment buildings were built primarily for blacks, who suffered greatly from housing discrimination. And the 1910 census documented the racial segregation of the two projects.

On East 31st Street, most heads of households were native born, but many were of German, Finnish, Swedish, Canadian and Italian heritage, and the building was all white. On West 63rd Street, part of a section of Manhattan that in those days was called San Juan Hill and had many black residents, all but two of the tenants were black.

A typical tenant was the steamboat steward Joseph Craig, 36, classed as ''mulatto,'' who was born in Trinidad and arrived in the United States in 1891. Another was the horse breeder Daniel Moore, 43, born in Missouri and married for six years to Tilly Moore, 30, born in Cuba and in the United States since 1892; she worked as a domestic.

In 1907 the magazine Brickbuilder predicted that Mr. Phipps's initial investment would be like ''a living organism,'' quickly producing a new generation of model tenements erected on the same enlightened models.

In 1912, Phipps Houses did build a third group of buildings, at 234-248 West 64th Street, backing up onto the 63rd Street buildings and also almost entirely for black tenants. These were retrograde designs, following the barracks-like pattern of earlier model tenements, just plain buff brick with no decoration. But the expected new generation of model Manhattan tenements did not arrive, and according to ''Phipps Houses,'' a 1980 study by Roger Starr, the organization's trustees did not even meet from 1912 to 1919. IN those days, the model tenement movement was criticized by some who said that it was actually reaching middle-class tenants, and that perhaps because of the somewhat higher rents, it missed its real targets, the poor who lived in the traditional dank and ill-ventilated tenements.

Phipps Houses continued to run the 31st, 63rd and 64th Street complexes, but it did not build again until 1931, when it put up Phipps Garden Apartments in Sunnyside, Queens, an intelligent and idealistic complex. Rather than trying to solve the housing problem of the inner city -- which was the goal in 1905 -- the Sunnyside apartments sought to draw its residents to an entirely new environment.

In the 1950's, Phipps Houses built and operated staff housing for New York Hospital. Over the next few years, Phipps Houses let the 31st Street houses go in a condemnation proceeding for the new Kips Bay Plaza (now Kips Bay Towers) and sold the 63rd and 64th Street complexes, in part to finance other housing developments, like the more than 1,600-unit mixed-income Henry Phipps Plazas complex from 25th to 29th Streets and First to Second Avenues.

Only the 63rd and 64th Street buildings still stand. They are now conventional apartment buildings, and a more recent owner has added two floors to those on the 63rd Street side, which now sprout metal and glass canopies. One-bedroom apartments rent for about $1,800 a month.

Phipps Houses now owns and manages 4,000 apartments and manages an additional 8,800; its annual operating budget is $50 million. Current projects include La Casa de Felicidad, at Third Avenue and 157th Street in the Bronx, which consists of 85 apartments for those over 62.

John Fox, a longtime trustee of Phipps Houses and chairman of its finance committee, is writing a study of the organization's first century. He said he expects to finish next year. Why was the 1905 plan of Phipps Houses to reform the New York tenement market not successful? Mr. Fox said his research indicates that tenement developers were looking for returns of 15 to 20 percent a year, and were not at interested in idealistic proposals that offered only 4 percent.

Published: 11 - 23 - 2003 , Late Edition - Final , Section 11 , Column 1 , Page 7 Correction: November 30, 2003, Sunday The Streetscapes column last Sunday, about Phipps Houses, which was established to improve housing for the poor, misstated the location of its first development. It was at 321-337 East 31st Street, between First and Second Avenues, not Second and Third.