Real Estate History – 1943: White-only Stuy Town plan approved –

The city’s Board of Estimate approved land and tax breaks for Stuyvesant Town even after the developer said the housing project would be for white residents only, 70 years ago this month.

Board members voted 11 to 5 to give a 25-year tax exemption and the use of eminent domain to assist Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in building its $50 million development on Manhattan’s East Side.

The controversial decision came after a hearing that lasted three and a half hours; more than a dozen in the room spoke against Met Life’s ban on black applicants.

Just days before the vote, Met Life Chairman Frederick Ecker had told the New York Post: “Negroes and whites do not mix.”

Law prohibited discrimination in public developments but not in private ones. And despite the city’s involvement, Stuyvesant Town was considered a private project.

Stuyvesant Town’s first apartments opened in 1947. Two years later, the state’s highest court backed Met Life against three black World War II veterans who sued for the right to live in the development. In 1951, the city banned discrimination in all housing projects.