Fourth Ward, Before The Smith Projects: 1921

Clicking to enlarge will make the bath house/gym visible on Cherry and Oliver Street.
Also visible in the middle is PS 114, which would later become Metropolitan Vocational High School. There's also a moving picture studio on 76 Catherine Street, a Salvation Army at 94 Cherry Street and a Horton's Ice Cream place on 28 Oak Street.

A Glimpse Of "The Gym" On Cherry Street In A 1951 Aerial View

As mentioned by Larry Sweetster in the previous post.

Hamilton House: Dedication Of New Site, 1953

above, Marie Embarratto is mentioned. I wonder if it's any relation to?
below from the mcny collection

South Street: 1946

Just prior to construction of the Smith Projects

A Hatful Of Rain

Another gem of info from Gene Reiser was that A Hatful Of Rain was filmed in the Smith Projects.

A Hatful of Rain is a 1957 dramatic film. The movie was a rarity for its time in its frank depiction of the impact of drug addiction.
It stars Eva Marie Saint, Don Murray, Anthony Franciosa, Lloyd Nolan and Henry Silva. The movie was adapted by Michael V. Gazzo, Alfred Hayes and Carl Foreman from the play by Gazzo. Foreman was blacklisted at the time of the film's release. The Writers Guild of America added his name to the film's credits in 1998, 14 years after his death. It was directed by Fred Zinnemann and features a strong musical score by Bernard Herrmann. Diego was asked by Fox to rescore his prelude for the film as the original was considered "too terrifying".
Franciosa was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role.
The setting is a housing project apartment. Johnny Pope is a soldier who returns from the Korean War, where a stay in a military hospital has left him secretly addicted to morphine. His emotional distance (and his tendency to stay out all night) alienate him from the apartment's other residents: Johnny's pregnant wife Celia, and his brother Polo. Celia is convinced that Johnny is having an affair, but of course the truth is far worse. Johnny and Polo's father, John Sr., arrives in town and stays with them in the small apartment, further complicating a tense situation and leading to a dynamic and dramatic climax.

Meyer Berger On The Joy Of Crippled Children

Berger Smith
Jackie was from the Smith Projects. I wonder whether any KVer or Smith person knows who she is?

The French Connection Updated

Don Ellis - The French Connection
Uploaded by zerokomma. - Watch feature films and entire TV shows.

I thought I'd used this clip to "place hold" for some stories of how, despite the cooked statistics, the city and the LES can still be a gritty place
an excerpt from the lowdown

The police may very well "know about it," but they clearly have no interest in discussing what's happening on the streets. This past month, during an interview with The Lo-Down, a precinct captain abruptly ended an interview when the subject of gang violence came up. The Village Voice, apparently, got a similar response:
We asked Paul Browne, the NYPD's spokesman, about these perceptions, and also requested crime stats that might show whether youth crime was indeed surging, but he didn't respond to our e-mail.

an excerpt from the villagevoice

In a Crime-Free City, How Does a Young Gangbanger Represent?, By Graham Rayman
You now live in the safest New York City that has existed since the Beatles came to America. Murders are now so rare—at least for a city this size—that you have to go back to the Kennedy administration to find similar numbers. Just ask Mayor Bloomberg. Like a kind of political Tourette's syndrome, he tells you that's the case every chance he gets. New York is now so tame that old-timers grumble that it's become a boring town and wish openly for at least a little of 1977's grit and grime.
So considering what a patsy your metropolis is now, it's hard to believe any of you are going to be alarmed at what some young people in the Lower East Side are telling us—that actually, for them, this town is still a jungle.
Yeah, we had the same reaction.
Prove it, kid.
There's this one street kid—we'll call him Johnny—who's 18 and lives with his asthmatic grandmother and cousins in a cramped East 12th Street apartment because his father kicked him out of their apartment and his mom left the city. He says he's on probation for five years, which stemmed from a robbery arrest. He says he knocked someone over and took their cash so he could buy lunch. He says he's been jumped and beaten with metal bats. He says he's afraid to walk past certain public housing projects that he considers rival gang territory. He wants to leave the neighborhood, but feels like he has no other option than to stay.
Johnny describes a world of young louts endlessly roaming the streets, of the constant presence of drugs, of brazen instigators who post YouTube videos to make threats and call out other groups and who fill MySpace pages with tough-guy images and over-the-top boasts. These wannabes and badasses associate themselves with the public housing projects they live in, giving themselves colorful names like Money Boyz in the Campos Houses, and No Fair Ones (NFO) in the Smith Houses.

an excerpt from the Villager

Mothers are ganging up to fight youth violence on East Side. A spate of violent incidents in the East Village over the past three months has prompted two women to tackle the problem of gangs and violence the only way they know how — as mothers.
Aida Salgado, 40, and Maizie Torres, 42, are now partners against crime in a new organization they have founded called Mothers in Arms. The initiative aims to get parents more involved in ensuring that their children are safe and are engaged in constructive activity, such as after-school programs and recreational activities, to deter them from joining local gangs.
The Police Department did not make available statistics on gang-related activity. But the fatal stabbing of Glenn Wright, 21, by an alleged gang member at the Baruch Houses on Sept. 12 was one recent incident that served as a harsh reminder that gang violence still exists in the neighborhood.
“We want to get parents more involved and educate them about these matters,” said Salgado, who suspects that many parents are in the dark about their own children’s activities. “They need to know where their children are and who they hang out with.”
Salgado’s and Torres’s own sons grew up in an environment dominated by gangs. The mothers say many of their sons’ friends are gang members. Resisting the peer pressure to join gangs is a major challenge for both of their children. But through Mothers in Arms, the women hope that parents will play a more active role in preventing their children from getting involved in violence.

Who's Who In Alfred E. Smith Projects History

Back in August I got an email from Nancy Sing-Bock, a Smith Projects' alumnus, about an email thread concerning Woodstock

I had asked my mother permission to go to Woodstock. What a fool I was. I should have just went.

in the email she mentioned another ex "Smith-ite"

I have been in touch with Ethel Zai who grew up in 388 Pearl St, a Smith girl. She is 1/2 Chinese and 1/2 Mexican. Our fathers came from the same village in China. We are unofficial cousins. I have forwarded her the KV link. She was one of three girls and had 2 stepbrothers. She is also a principal in Hastings.

There must be something about the Smith Projects producing school principals?
Lily Din Woo, a JHS 22 and life-long friend of KVer Susanne Spitzer (Pelly), is also a well respected principal in Chinatown. I don't know if she hails from Smith as well.
Anyway I managed to get in touch with Ethel (Zai-Fiorello) through Nancy and she has been added to the growing KV family. By coincidence our paths must have crossed while I was working in CSD1 on the Lower East Side. We know many people in common.
From Ethel

Hi David, Yes, I'd love to join. I actually attended P.S. 177 for K,1,2 then transferred to P.S. 1, then to Transfiguration on Mott Street. My family grew up in the Smith projects since 1952. We lived in Orchard Street before then. I'm so happy to say that I made it out of the projects, had many wonderful experiences and some not so good. I'm now in Westchester and found out about your site through my "cousin" Nancy Sing, both our dads were from China. I'm a Principal in a Westchester School District. I started teaching on the Lower East Side, then went to Harlem, then Orange County NY and now here! Keep in touch.

Smith Reunion 3

On Saturday I brought along many of the pictures of the Smith Houses' construction posted back in March They were a big hit. I left them with Herbie as a present for taking good care of me.

Smith Reunion 2

Above a group shot of many of those that were there last Saturday. I didn't know any of them, but there were many folks who we mutually knew. Earlier when I came looking for Donald Singletary I asked Herbie (bottom left of photo below) if he had seen him. Before he answered yes or no he insisted on getting me something to eat. Winds up I missed Donald by a few minutes. I left at 3:30 and he came shortly after.

Anthony Monaco At The Smith Reunion

Anthony told a story about the singer Johnny Maestro who was always reluctant to reveal that he grew up in the Smith Projects. I'm trying to make believe I know something about Doo-Wop. Anthony and his mom now live in Knickerbocker. He used to live on Oliver Street in the house that Al Smith lived in, #25.
from Joe Bruno:

In the original Crests, there were 5 people, Johnny Maestro, Patricia Van Dross, two black guys, J. T. Carter and Tommy Gough and Hal Torres, a Puerto Rican, who I thought was from Smith too.
When the Van Dross', Luther and Patricia, moved out of Smith the group became just 4.
Notice, Luther changed his name to one word instead of the original 2 words.
Johnny Motts was a mailman for awhile. And he did sing with a group called The Neighborhhood in the 80's. All guys from KV - Ross Aschutto -- a cop--, Frankie Fischetti, who lived under me at KG5, and Stevie Randazzo, the actor. They used to rehearse in Frankie's apartment, and I used to bang on the floor, telling them to shut the ...up. It's 2 in the ........ morning. I was kidding of course. Johnny quit in the early 90's and a guy named Carlo, from the 6th Ward, took his place. Not as good as Johnny Motts, but not bad.

Smith Houses Reunion Group: August 22, 2009

Smith Houses: August 22, 2009

I wandered into this event. I was looking for the Smith Reunion group and was encouraged to join a group called Creflo Dollar's World Changer's Church. What's the deal with that?
I did some research. Check out this youtube video and this site

Class 5-5, PS 2: 1961

Frank Shih saw Donald Singletary's comment on this previous post and said...

Donald Singletary sent me this blog. This is incredible. I was in Vigilante's IGC class. Was that fourth grade? I went to P.S.2 for the second half of fifth grade, I think. I went on to JHS 12. I remember Carlos and Bruce the most. I also remember a Maria who was unstoppable in the spelling bee. Other names are familiar as well--Rochelle Murphy, Eddie Moy.
Billy Owens and I were really close at one point. We both lived in the Smith Projects and our parents even met once. Though we went to separate JHS and HS we were friendly through high school. I tracked down his brother (Isaac) several years ago and learned of Billy's (and his parent's death). Billy was married and had a child.
If some of you went to fifth grade in P.S.2 a teacher there--Leslie Kandell--that Donald mentioned has tracked down most of her class (including me). Go here to see the picture of the class and the article she wrote for the NY Times: I'm the one in the top row, third from right. Would love to be in touch. Contact me at fhmshih@gmail.com. If you know anyone in this photo, or anyone who was at P.S. 2 (Lower East Side) in the early 1960's, please help Leslie Kandell (Fieldston graduate, and teacher in photo) find them. Contact lkandell@aol.com with any information or ideas.

Above is the photo, (I enlarged it) from the site that Frank referred to. Below is the text from that site: It was written in 2003. What a story!

A Reluctant Reunion, By LESLIE KANDELL
ADDING what I've heard to what I'm sure of, I can now account for the whole front row of my class photo, and a couple of children in the middle and rear. By ''my class,'' I mean one of the fifth grades in Public School 2 on the Lower East Side, where I taught when John F. Kennedy was president.
I found that old photo after a friend transferred to a CD the decaying reel-to-reel tapes I had made when I lugged my newfangled recorder into the classroom just for fun. The CD, rising from the tapes' ashes, revealed a young teacher talking and singing with students and rehearsing ''Lonesome Train,'' the folk oratorio that was our class play.
Getting the children together again, to hear the CD and share memories, sounded like a great idea. With naive enthusiasm, I set out to round them up. After a series of dead ends, I'm thinking it's easier to find a witness in a protection program. New York City schools don't track their graduates, although Caroline Kennedy, in her new role as fund-raiser for the city's Department of Education, says she hopes to form an alumni association of some kind. But for now, the one doing the homework is me. Class records from before the computer era are unavailable. Colleagues are retired. Everyone I knew in the administration is dead. I don't find my kids on Classmates.com or through directory assistance. Private detectives want the moon -- Social Security numbers and girls' married names.
I wish my former students could reconnect -- with being 10, with what they once learned, with forgotten friends. During my search, someone suggests that I'm the one looking to recapture my youth. It's true: as I grow older, I become a nostalgia-seeker, a retriever of memories. Shared history makes time fall away. The bond forged by knowing someone early in life should endure. Perhaps I'm the one learning the lessons.
ONCE, long before P.S. 2 was built, the Lower East Side teemed with immigrants who arrived with nothing, sometimes not even their own names. Their children, among them the Irving Berlins, the Danny Kayes, the Al Jolsons, took advantage of free education and worked their way out of poverty, pointing with pride to the picturesque pushcarts and tenements of their beginnings.
But by the late 60's, the streets had an aura of incipient danger -- ''West Side Story'' with less charm and more drugs. It wasn't a neighborhood where boys fled the Vietnam draft by going to college or Canada. They left high school and went into the service. Not all came back.
I study the smiling boys in the class photo sitting cross-legged down front. (Notices were sent home, and the children who weren't going to doll up just didn't come that day.) Left to right: Chinese, Italian, Hispanic, Greek. In other rows more of each, and blacks, Poles, a Hawaiian -- the original Rainbow Coalition. But n my day at P.S. 2, teachers were busy scooping batches of students into the next grade and forgetting them, as they forgot us.
Eddie (front row, far left) joined a gang and Mike (far right) thinks Eddie is long dead (I certainly can't find him). A few are listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and I find two other death certificate matches. (Someone thinks Gary P. is dead, too, but about 35 years ago he looked me up and visited along with his fiancee. He wanted me to know that after reform school and prison, he had a job paving sidewalks and was taking night courses in algebra so he could be a construction manager. So I believe he's out there somewhere.)
Andrew (front row, red jacket) now lives in Minnesota. He had won a merit scholarship to Brown University from Seward Park, where most P.S. 2 graduates go but only 28 percent of entering freshmen graduate. (At Stuyvesant, within walking distance, it's 93 percent.) The number of Seward Park applicants admitted to Brown in the last decade is zero. I call Andrew. ''Maybe the best thing you did was show us what's out there,'' he tells me.
When Mike hears my name on the phone, he growls, ''Get out of here'' with inflections right out of ''The Sopranos.'' He startles me back when I ask, ''How old are you now, Mikey?'' I am ready to hear 30, but he's 52. (Surely that's older than I am, isn't it?) When I say I remember him as a perfect child, he shouts to his family, ''Hey, the teacher says I was a perfect child!''
When I find Effie, now an artist, she has a very old bone to pick: ''Do you remember when you took us on a trip to the Cloisters?'' Sort of. ''And you lost your watch?'' Oops. ''Well, you made us all look for it.'' I regret spoiling her trip. I remember that the watch had been a gift from my father. I speak of my worry over the loss, and my fear of disappointing him. Mollified by an unexpected apology, she speaks of her own father's savage temper. She goes on to recall being the narrator in the class play, and mentions my interest in the cello, the first time she noticed that a teacher could have a life beyond school. She has never had a reunion experience, and is suspicious at first.
We finally meet. She listens to the tape, and we talk and talk. ''You're not going to make me leave now, are you?'' she says after the afternoon is gone. No I'm not. We figure out a few more names on the photo. Later, she makes a date to meet with Mikey.
I ask Mike if he will get hold of classmates so we can get together. ''No,'' he says, ''I wanna meet witcha alone.'' I would have put on a pleasant expression on the way up the subway steps, but Mike is too quick not to guess that, and evidently wishes to see my face when I recognize him. He is down on the platform watching for me. We are both dazed. We sit in a downtown Greek diner, where he knows the owner, for three and a half hours, during which time we have one cup of coffee that we don't want. I remember Mike as someone I could rely on to get a job done, a stable child. ''Nam'' was devastating for him. What he saw there, and did, left him with post-traumatic stress disorder, documented in a government file as ''permanently unemployable'' because of ''episodes of unprovoked violence.'' So he goes to the V.A. hospital and lives on disability he would give up in a heartbeat for a decent job. I hear about heroin, armed robbery, prisons, diabetes, liver problems and Agent Orange. He says, though, that when he was in prison, he asked for the job of librarian ''because the morons and maniacs who can't read won't be in there.'' It turns out he writes a little, and what I see has none of the common grammatical errors that annoy me. ''Wonder where I learned that,'' he snickers. I'm beginning to grasp what courage it took to come out to that diner to meet me. I wonder if the sudden appearance of Teacher, assigning him to compare who he was to who he is, isn't a greater danger to him than he is to me. ''We're us,'' Mike says. ''You're them.'' But in those direct eyes I see again the reliable co-captain of the P.S. 2 safety squad -- the other co-captain's name is on the Vietnam wall -- and across an abyss of time and class, we remember each other with love. I'm sure of that. This isn't turning out like any reunion I have ever gone to. It will be a long time before my fifth graders sit in the same room eating cookies, or whatever I was imagining, and listening to that tape. What I've found is less complete but no less compelling. I persuade Mike to read his journal to his veterans' group. ''It's hard, but not impossible,'' he tells me after he has tried it. ''Just when I thought there was no more road, another half-mile showed up.'' And as my search continues, connecting with each of them is like a half-mile showing up for me.
Leslie Kandell, a journalist specializing in the arts, is working on a book about church choirs.

JHS 65: Class 9-2, June 1966

Compliments of Donald Singletary

The Heinz Bauer above is 67 years old and is the 349th richest person in the world

Fortune: inherited and growing
Source: publishing
Net Worth: $2.6 bil
Country Of Citizenship: Germany
Residence: Hamburg , Germany, Europe & Russia
Industry: Media/Entertainment
Marital Status: married, 4 children
Education: University of Hamburg, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Third generation to run Verlagsgruppe Bauer, mass-media company founded by his grandfather 1875. The $2.2 billion (sales) group publishes everything from TV guides to special interest publications like Auto Zeitung (cars) and Kochen & Geniessen (cooking), to magazines like Neue Post and Das Neue Blatt. U.S. titles include First for Women, Woman's World and InTouch. Sells in 13 countries including Mexico, Russia and China.

in answer to Donald's comment below. I'm just kidding, but wouldn't it be a hoot if he was

Smith Projects Illustrated Construction History

from the Laguardia-Wagner Archives
Smith History 1

Publish at Scribd or explore others: History england freemasonry

Land Swap In Smith Projects' Construction

Looks like Mr. Golden may have gotten a good deal in the land swap. 235-9 Bowery is at Prince Street. Three lots for $72,000, not bad. I bet he may have had friends in high places. Speaking of land deals. It's interesting that Councilman Weisberger may have owned 72 Catherine, which got torn down to build the Smith Houses around 1949-50. The building was less than 30 years old. Maybe the price was right. I'll ask his son.

March 23, 1953: Day Care Week At The Smith Projects

1951: Smith Project Protest For Trafiic Light

1948: Smith Projects Ground-Breaking