Riverside Park Community

3333 Broadway (formerly Riverside Park Community) is a group of five apartment buildings ranging from 11 to 35 stories at Broadway between West 133rd and 135th Streets, in Manhattanville, Manhattan, New York City, United States. Completed in 1976, it was the largest residential structure in the United States. Together, the five buildings include 1,193 apartment units. The present manager of the property is the Urban American Management Corporation.

The building was built on a lot covering approximately 285,000 square feet (26,500 m²) in the Manhattanville section of Harlem. To the west of the buildings lies the West Side Highway (NY 9A) and beyond that the Hudson River. To the east of the site is Broadway. Across West 133rd Street to the south is the Manhattanville Bus Depot, and across West 135th Street to the north of the development lies a row of early-twentieth-century brick tenement buildings.

The architect of record was Max Wechsler of Max Wechsler & Associates. Two architectural consultants to Wechsler were Richard Dattner and Henri A. LeGendre. The New York Times credited Dattner and LeGendre as the architects who designed the housing complex. Seven days later, the Times printed a letter to the editor, from Max Wechsler, proclaiming that his firm was in fact the lead design team on the project and Dattner and LeGendre "served as consultants only." Richard Dattner claims to have served as the lead designer for Riverside Park Community, along with the 1800-student Intermediate School 195 at the base of the school and apartment complex.

The facade is a typical brick cladding system. The tenement housing surrounding the site is decorated with classically derived ornament, which the Riverside Housing lacks. There is very little ornament or applied decoration on the brick and concrete facade of the building.

The front facade (where the main entry exists) is pulled away from Broadway to create an entrance. This design was due to the Zoning Resolution of New York City, which required a certain percentage of open space for approval. The building provided a small public plaza at the corner of West 135th Street and Broadway equipped with benches, concrete tables and trees for shade. These were removed in the 2000s once the building left the Mitchell-Lama program, and the plaza was completely reconstructed in 2015 to a more contemporary design.

3333 Broadway is built using concrete foundations and a concrete structure. The floors are built of concrete slab, and they are exposed through the facade. The interior communal spaces have similar modernist elements, with floor-to-ceiling windows, rounded columns and terrazzo flooring throughout. The five buildings are connected using expansion joints, so that when the buildings move, they will not cause damage to each other or fail structurally. The buildings incorporate expansion joints to alleviate damage that could be caused by the average loads placed on a building.

This building was the remnant of an ambitious 1968 master plan by architect Richard Dattner developed by Grayco Development and sponsored by the Negro Labor Community and Columbia University. Occupying the entire area north of W. 125th St., south of W 135th St. and west of Broadway--including the riverfront along the Hudson, the plan called for 3,000,000sf of classroom and related spaces for Columbia in a large base, with two circular residential towers containing 3,000 units over this base. Along the Hudson River a series of buildings would house a Museum of Black Culture, a marina, and recreation facilities. The 1968 community riots over Columbia's plan to build a gymnasium in Morningside Park stopped this original project.

Designed by architect Richard Dattner, the original plan for 5 buildings arranged in a semi-circle at varying heights facing West 133rd Street was revised to a structure of five straight segments varying in height from 11 to 33 stories. The plan also included an intermediate public school for 1,800 children and playground facilities. Riverside Park Community was constructed under the Mitchell-Lama program, a state-run program created in 1955 that provided low-interest mortgage loans and property tax exemptions to landlords who agreed to provide low-income residents with affordable housing at below-market-rate rents. This project was sponsored and backed by the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Pension Fund/A. Philip Randolph, President, then led by Joseph Overton, head of the Negro Labor Committee.