Tudor City Turns 21

Tudor City Marks 21st Birthday was the headline that ran in the New York Times on December 8, 1946. It recounts the early days when Leonard Gans assembled the land package by buying out the assorted tenement owners. This is the key information: 

"In only thirty-five days I and half a dozen associates had purchased for the builder an area of nearly 200,000 square feet," Mr. Gans commented. "Only the refusal of the meat packers to sell their slaughter-house properties prevented Tudor City from spreading out even further along the river. . .

"Purchases for Tudor City began in November, 1925, with the acquisition of a few tenements at the easterly end of Prospect Place ‒ a mere 35,000 square feet ‒ but Mr. French's imagination and the scope of his project grew day by day. . .

"Many of the properties had been in the same ownership for years, and while many sellers received prices beyond anything they had previously hoped for, Mr. French commented at the time that the average cost was less than half what he had paid for some sites on lower Park Avenue a little earlier. . .

"About one-third of the original land is still is available for improvement, and the present management advises me that they expect to carry out additional building operations when conditions permit. Some day no doubt the project will house close to the 10,000 persons which was the population forecast by Mr. French in his announcement twenty-one years ago."

The project only saw one more building, however, No. 2 Tudor City Place, which opened in 1956 and added 334 units.