United Workers Cooperatives

United Workers Cooperatives
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
NYC Landmark #LP-1795
Location	2700-2870 Bronx Park E, Bronx, New York
Coordinates
Area	5.4 acres (2.2 ha)
Built	1926
Architect	Springsteen & Goldhammer; Jessor,Herman J.
Architectural style	Tudor Revival
NRHP Reference #	86002518
NYCL #	LP-1795
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	September 11, 1986
Designated NYCL	June 2, 1992

United Workers Cooperatives, also known as Allerton Coops, is a historic apartment building complex located in the New York City borough of the Bronx, in New York, United States. The complex includes three contributing buildings and five contributing structures. The Tudor Revival style buildings were built during two construction campaigns, 1926-1927 and 1927-1929 by the United Workers' Association. The buildings feature half timbered gables, horizontal half-timbered bands topped with sloping slate roofs, corbelled and crenellated towers, and picturesque chimneys.

The complex was built by the United Workers' Association, most of whose members were secular Jews with Communist political leanings who were engaged in the needle trades. The association sought to improve the living standards of its members, many of whom lived in squalid conditions in the tenements of the Lower East Side. It bought a plot of land in an undeveloped section of the Bronx, near the open space of Bronx Park, and envisioned a community of socially and politically engaged residents who would each have an equal say in the running of the complex, regardless of the size of their apartments or the prices that they paid for them. The complex had classrooms, a library, and other amenities and activities that were uncommon in other cooperative complexes that were built for profit. Though considered a social success, the complex failed financially in the Great Depression and was converted to rental housing in 1943. After decades of neglect by a succession of landlords, the complex was purchased and renovated by a new owner in the mid-1980s.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986. It was designated a New York City landmark in 1992.

External links

• United Workers' Cooperative Colony (The Coops), Flickr.com website