The Manhattan Valley Townhouses consist of 74 moderate income publicly assisted condominium units. The project's namesake is a neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, home to the landmark New York Center Hospital, Luxury housing on Central Park West, tenement buildings and public housing projects of the 1950's. The building site is immediately surrounded by private owned 19th century townhouses.
The design intent was to create housing that reflects the New York row house tradition yet works within the economic constraints required by the housing programs.
The result is a single building which maintains the continuity of the urban block, while creating an individual identity for each "house" by alternating facade types. These "houses" are composed of elements which include variations of brick color, gabled parapets, bay windows, porticoes, stoops, cast stone details and garden courts. The corner buildings serve as bookends to frame the composition. The symmetry of the Manhattan Avenue facade reinforces the concepts of individual "houses" assembled to form a larger identity. The Manhattan Valley Townhouses reinterprets the scale, rhythm, and texture of the New York row house heritage in light of vastly different contemporary conditions.