Union Cooperative Housing

As part of their effort to improve the lives of their members, New York’s garment unions, later followed by others, used union funds to construct cooperative housing developments in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. This is a view of Amalgamated Dwellings, built in 1930 on the Lower East Side by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. There were other union cooperative housing developments built in the Bronx.

This image is featured in one of the bronze historical plaques installed in Union Square to commemorate the history of labor in the square.  See our exhibit on Union Square.

Photograph from UNITE Archives, Kheel Center, Cornell University.