Castle Village

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Castle Village towers (right) seen from Cabrini Boulevard, looking south from 186 St. Hudson View Gardens on the left.

Castle Village comprises the five large buildings to the left of the George Washington Bridge, as seen from the Hudson River in July 2005. Note collapsed retaining wall under fourth building from left.

Castle Village is a cooperative apartment complex located in the Washington Heights area of New York City. The buildings are one of many resident owned apartment buildings in the Hudson Heights neighborhood in Washington Heights. Apartments feature spectacular views of the Hudson River, the George Washington Bridge (I-95), and New Jersey.

For historical reasons, New York City apartments owned by their residents are typically held through cooperative corporations rather than as condominiums. Many of the cooperatives in New York City are or were subsidized housing, however Castle Village never was.

Castle Village stands on the site of a castle built by real estate developer Charles Paterno in 1906. Paterno replaced his castle with a five building apartment project that opened around 1939. The buildings are located on Cabrini Boulevard between 181st Street and 186th Streets. On the other side of the street is Hudson View Gardens, built as a housing cooperative by Paterno in 1924. The architect was George Fred Pelham, Jr. and the buildings were one of the earliest apartment towers to employ reinforced concrete construction. In 1939 the monthly rents (including gas and electricity) were from $66 for 2 rooms to up to $165 for 5 rooms. The buildings were converted to co-op ownership around 1985.

The garden facing the Hudson River was, on May 13, 2005, the site of a retaining wall collapse. In a massive landslide, the 75 ft. retaining wall, completed in 1925 and supporting the Castle Village backyard, buried the northbound lanes of the Henry Hudson Parkway, burying six parked cars and stopping traffic for several days. No one was injured. As of November 2006, the reconstruction of the wall (being performed by Kiewit Constructors) was well underway, and completion of the project was expected in 2007.

1 Architectural influences
2 Education
3 Reference
4 External links

[edit] Architectural influences

The design of the towers was influenced by medieval keeps in Europe. The cross design of the towers was later emulated in similar towers in Parkchester and Stuyvesant Town residential developments. The reinforced concrete construction has not been copied; most apartment towers in New York have a steel frame construction.