Saving the CHPC Archives




Over these last seven decades, we have amassed a vast and unparalleled archive of primary source documents, including:

  • Early drafts of FDR's New Deal housing programs
  • Surveys and reports, from the 19th century onwards, that led to the creation of the Tenement House Act, the establishment of the Tenement House Department, the subsequent creation of the Department of Housing and Buildings, and its later separation into two distinct agencies
  • Surveys and reports that set out the details of the work of these departments
  • Personal correspondence between CHPC board members and prominent public figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Robert Moses, Fiorello LaGuardia, Al Smith, and William O’Dwyer
  • Rare government reports and memoranda
  • Legislative debates
  • Original site planning and neighborhood analysis for housing developments from the 1930s to the 1960s; particularly public housing
  • Surveys from all decades detailing NYC neighborhood populations
  • Original marketing brochures for developments
  • The first tenant application forms for a variety of public housing sites and subsequent tenant opinion surveys


As you can see, our archives represent not just a history of CHPC, but a history of the struggle for a more prosperous and livable city.




Our Goals

Our recent move to new offices has revealed how extensive and unique this collection is. Despite limited staff and a highly restrictive budget, our main aim is to reopen this valuable resource for academics, doctoral students, and other researchers.

Please join us to save our archives for future generations.

Your interest along with a renewed commitment from CHPC’s board and staff will ensure that the collection is preserved, maintained, and external access restored.  Your donation will help with the following critically important tasks:

  • Scanning and digitizing the rarest, most fragile documents
  • Creating a digital catalogue for the books, reports, and other materials
  • Rebinding books and reports as necessary
  • Storing the collection appropriately for long term preservation
  • Providing greater access to the resources
  • Promoting the archives through cooperative partnerships


For more information contact Sarah Watson at library@chpcny.org.


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A Gem from CHPC’s Archives

The Mystery of the I-Cards Revealed


Over one million index sized cards from the early 1900’s are still filed away in the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development’s borough offices. The cards carefully document, apartment by apartment, observations from the City’s earliest code inspectors at the Tenement House Department (1901-1937).

Known as the I-Cards, they provide a detailed and fascinating look at the conditions that people lived in at the turn of the 20th Century.  Yet the meaning and purpose of the I-Cards had, until now, been all but lost to generations of city workers.  Some believed they were “Information” cards, others that they represented what the inspectors could observe by “eye.”

A look into CHPC’s archival library, however, explains clearly the purpose of the I-Cards, including what the “I” actually stood for.  They were “Improvement” cards which indicated what structural improvements buildings required in order to meet the standards of the Tenement House Act of 1901.  The new act was an innovative public policy that mandated modern standards of habitability and sanitation while also providing a clear method of enforcement through the newly established Tenement House Department.

The practices and experiences of this new city agency were extensively, and with great detail, described in the department’s first annual report which covered the years 1902-1903.  Its two volumes are notable for their detail, clarity, openness, extensive data analysis and lovely prose, rarely seen in more modern government reports.

To read the original chapter on I-Cards click the link above or the photo below.




(Note: HPD is currently digitizing its I-Card collection which will be accessible from their website www.hpd.nyc.gov in April 2008.)
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Previous Gems from CHPC’s Archives

Survey of Vacancies in Class-A Multiple Dwellings 1933

In March and April of 1933, the NYC Tenement House Department hired 800 emergency workers including unemployed architects, engineers, and real estate professionals.  Over the course of two months, the team surveyed an astounding 128,344 Class A Multiple Dwelling Units.

What they found was shocking.  Click on the link above or the picture below and what you’ll find is that vacancy rates were an incredible 14.4 percent—thousands of apartments literally sat empty.  Meanwhile, the ranks of the homeless on New York City’s streets continued to grow, unable to afford the rent for these vacant units.

This study, found in our archives, was the first to lay the groundwork for the Pack Law which was passed as an amendment to the Multiple Dwelling Law (§248) to permit the conversion of Class A Multiple Dwellings to SRO units in 1939.