Dunbar Apartments, 2816 Frederick Douglass Boulevard: Review and Ratings

Review of 2816 Frederick Douglass Boulevard by Carter Horsley

This important, full-block residential complex at 250 West 150th Street consists of 6, red-brick buildings that was developed by John D. Rockfeller Jr. in 1928 with a total of 536 apartments.

It was the first large co-operative project in the nation that was erected for occupancy by blacks, although in the Depression is became a rental. 

It was named for Paul Laurence Dunbar, a black poet who died in 1906.

It became an official New York City landmark in 1970.

Over the years, its tenants included W. E. B. DuBois, A. Philip Randolph, Paul Robeson, and Bill (Bojangles) Robinson.

The Dunbar is bounded by 149th Street and 150th Street, and by Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard (Seventh Avenue) and Frederick Douglass Boulevard (Eighth Avenue).

In 1927, the apartments won first prize for walkup apartments from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architecture.

Andrew J. Thomas was the architect.  In the 1920s, he designed several "garden" complexes: in Queens. At Linden Court in Jackson Heights, he had clustered low-rise residential buildings around a landscaped court and it was the first development to include parking spaces.  In 1928 he designed a garden complex by a union consortium and completed by John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the Bronx that had been limited to whites.  The next year he completed the Dunbar complex which was limited to blacks.  His last garden project was the Dunolly Gardens in Jackson Heights where he employed corner windows.  He also designed the Princeton Inn Hotel in 1924 that is now the Forbes College at Princeton University.  In 1931 he designed for John D. Rockefeller Jr. the very handsome mid-rise, mid-block Millan House at 115 East 67th and 116 East 68th Streets that is noted for its wonderful ground-floor sculptures of animals.  In a July 14, 2011
"Streetscapes" column in The New York Times, Christopher Gray wrote that "these sleeper buildings are wild and crazy on the outside, but most civilized within."

The complex is across from a subway stop and near Jackie Robinson Park.  It is across the Harlem River from Yankee Stadium.

Bottom Line

A landmark, full-block, low-rise, residential complex in Harlem that was the first large co-operative project in the nation that was erected for occupancy by blacks.

Description

The building has numerous arched entrances. 

The complex is made up of six brownish brick walk-ups of five or six stories, built around a center courtyard. There are wrought iron balconies and window guards, and terracotta and limestone decorative detail.

Amenities

The complex has virtual doormen, a package room, laundry rooms and a large landscaped courtyard.

Apartments

Apartments have large windows, exposed brick, and kitchens have stainless steel appliances, stone counters and subway tile backsplashes. 

Apartment 6J is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer that leads to a 14-foot-long living room, a 10-foot-wide, windowed dining room and an 10-foot-long, windowed kitchen. 

Apartment 2H is a two-bedroom unit with an entry foyer that leads to a 14-foot-long living room, a 10-foot-wide dining room and a 10-foot-long, windowed kitchen. 

Apartment 5F is a one-bedroom unit with a small entry foyer that leads to a 13-foot-long living room, a 9-foot-long, windowed dining room and a 9-foot-long, windowed kitchen. 

Apartment 4G is a two-bedroom unit with a small entry foyer that leads to a 13-foot-long living room and a 9-foot-long, windowed kitchen. 

History

A January 21, 1990 article in The New York Times by Alan S. Oser noted that Ira Kellman bought the complex in 1988 from another entrepreneur who had acquired it from the Goldome Bank for Savings. 

"Goldome had failed in its efforts to bring about a co-op conversion, which a tenant committee fought. The property was sold after $11.8 million in building improvements paid for by the bank. 

"Dunbar Associates - with Mr. Kellman, Gary L. Nave, a real estate owner and manager, and Lawrence Bernstein, an accountant, as general partners - bought the property for $5.65 million, or $10,500 an apartment, of which $3 million was cash. After two years, operations are about breaking even, Mr. Kellman said. 

"...The sidestreets around it are filled with buildings undergoing rehabilitation under the city's 10-year housing plan, a plus for the neighborhood's ability to attract wage-earning new tenants. 

"Long years of stable rents put the complex in dire straits when the inflation of the 70's struck. The downward spiral never led to abandonment, but deferred maintenance caused other problems. So did the lack of an adequate security system, and the innumerable doors off the central courts. 

"...At one point, an $11.8 million rehabilitation was undertaken by the city and the mortgagee, the Goldome Bank for Savings. But tenants resisted a plan to convert the building to a co-op, which would have increased their monthly costs. 

"Subsequently another owner, Edward I. Penson, head of a management firm that also managed the Vandeveer apartments in central Brooklyn, tried to run the development as a rental. But he had trouble raising financing and decided eventually to sell. 

"Vacancies had been accumulated for years in hope of a conversion. Dunbar Associates also has conversion as a long-term goal, but it has spent money to put the vacancies in shape....The Dunbar pays low taxes because the rehabilitation work done in the 80's qualified for abatments under the J-51 program. 

"Mr. Kellman said he is hopeful that the development can also be run successfully as a rental. With improved rent collections, evictions of long-delinquent tenants and rentals of vacancies, the monthly income has greatly improved. 

"...at best, it is hard to run the Dunbar apartments successfully as a rental. In 1988 the 140 rent-controlled apartments were renting for an average of $40 a room a month, and the 340 occupied rent-stabilized apartments rented at an average of $80 a room. At $40 a room, a controlled tenant in a five-room apartment would be paying $200 a month. Housing managers estimate that it costs about $90 a room a month - or about $360 a month for a four-room apartment - just to operate and maintain a building, without either taxes or debt service. 

"....For the new owner, the hope lay in vacancies, and what they could command on the market. There were 56 vacancies when Dunbar Associates bought the property. There have been 70 more since, through turnover and court action against long-term rent delinquents. 

"Now, with the renting program, there are 120 new tenants in the upgraded apartments, paying close to $160 a room per month, or roughly $650 for a four-room apartment and $750 to $800 for a five-room. Incoming tenants typically earn $25,000 to $40,000. If there is normal turnover, new vacancies should average about 25 a year, Mr. Kellman said. 

"The ability of the Dunbar to attract tenants able to afford those rents encourages the owner to think that a conversion is possible. They would be better off, he claims, devoting $60 or $70 a month of their housing budget to mortgage payments, building a stake in their housing, rather than pouring it all into rent. 

"Meanwhile, Dunbar Associates investors have yet to see any return on their money, he said, although $500,000 was returned to them at the time of the refinancing. 

"They have gotten a $9 million mortgage on the property from the Ensign Savings Bank, however. The loan included money usable only for certain building improvements. One has already been done: $220,000 was spent to remove 2,400 linear feet of asbestos. 

"There is $1.3 million left for landscaping and window replacement. The Dunbar has 4,200 old windows. There also is a problem with the landmarks agency. To meet the strict specifications of its window code, the Dunbar would have to spend $1.2 million for custom-extruded windows. Robert Ecker, vice president of Ecker Manufacturing Corporation of Mount Vernon, N.Y., a leading manufacturer and installer of replacement windows, said that only smaller buildings, typically in prestigious neighborhoods with higher-income tenants, have been buying new windows that meet the Landmarks Commission's standards. 

'''The metal frames must match the rolls and curves of the old wood frame beneath it,'' Mr. Ecker said....To do it at the Dunbar Apartments would result in costs that the tenants can ill afford, Mr. Kellman said. The most he is willing to pay for window replacement is $800,000, or about $185 a window. The owner is still negotiating with the commission's staff, which only in recent months has shown a disposition to compromise. But the two sides are still apart. Meanwhile, many tenants have drafty windows. 

Most of the rest of the budget for improvements is to be used for landscaping in the rundown central garden court, the pride of the development in the early days...." 

A February 19, 1978 article in The New York Times by Dee Wedemeyer recalled that "at Christmas, there was always a tree in the courtyard of the Dunbar Apartments, and caroling." 

"In the warmer seasons," it continued, "there were flowers tended by gardener. Matthew Henson, who accompanied Admiral Peary to the North Pole, would sometimes sit on a stoop telling children stories about his adventures. People would come from near and far to tour the apartment complex, which was hailed in its day as a forerunner of what housing in Harlem should be like. 

"...Today, beneath the plaque commemorating Mr. Henson, Stick 150 has left his mark in red paint. The sidewalks need repairs. The boiler needs upgrading. Roofs need such extensive repairs that some top-floor apartments have had to be vacated. And, as it became 50 years old this month, the Dunbar changed ownership again. 

"Two weeks ago, the New York Bank for Savings purchased title to the apartments for $110,000 rather than go through a lengthy foreclosure procedure with the previous owners, Dunbar Associates, a partnership in which the general partner is Two Trees and the limited partners include a string of socially prominent investors. 

"On New Years Eve; one of the partners in Two Trees, J. Frederic Byers 3d, the good-looking, 38-year-old son-in-law of William S. Paley, jumped to his death from his East Side apartment building. The police said he left a note mentioning business problems, although it is unknown to what degree, if any, the Dunbar project contributed. 

"The Dunbar has a story rich in black history and white capital. Interwoven in it is the familiar story of many city buildings - rising costs, especially fuel; rent control; the social trends of young couples moving to the suburbs and new neighborhoods, and the tax laws and government programs that induce the wealthy to invest in low income property and provide the financial incentives for rehabilitation." 

The project, the article continued, had been originally financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., who had been approached Urban League about, financing second mortgages in Harlem. But apparently his interest was in construction. In 1926, he bought the five-acre block from 150th Street to 149th Street, bound by Seventh and Eighth Avenues, from William Vincent Astor. 

"According to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, which designated the site a landmark in 1970, the Dunbar was Manhattan's earliest large garden apartment complex, the first large cooperative built for blacks, and a prototype structure for both the public housing projects of the Depression years and for later middle-income housing. 

"...In the complex there was a bank, now the site of a butcher shop; a legal aid bureau; vocational and placement services; a kindergarten, and a nursery where today there is a daycare center. 

"...As the Depression worsened, tenants lost their jobs and were unable to keep up payments. If they had to move out their original equity was returned to them, and at the end of 1932, a one‐year moratorium on mortgage payments was declared. 

"In December, 1936, Rockefeller foreclosed the mortgage and transferred the property from the corporation to himself. In 1937, he sold the apartments to a private corporation. The New York City Society of the Methodist Church became the owner in 1992; in 1963, the I.E.S. Realty Corporation. Then in 1971, Two. Trees bought the property for about $300,000 in cash, plus a $550,000 second mortgage and assumed a first mortgage of $1.3 million. 

"Two Trees is a firm with substantial rehabilitation experience. Under “Project Rehab,” the Federal Housing Administration's Section 236 program for low- and moderate-income families, Two Trees has completed two projects containing a total of 311 units in the Morrisania section of the Bronx. Two Trees is also rehabilitating in Queens, under the Mitchell-Lama program, a project known as Kew Gardens Hills, involving 1,269 units, one of the largest rehabilitation jobs of its kind. Two Trees has also converted luxury residences from rentals to cooperatives, including One Fifth Avenue. 

"The current problems at the Dunbar, according to the other partner in Two Trees, David C. Walentas, came when rehabilitation loan from the city's old municipal loan program fell through at the start of the city's financial crisis. Without the loan, he said, the project could not generate enough revenues to meet debt service, pay taxes and keep up with soaring fuel costs. 

"He said that Two Trees had then unsuccessfully sought financing from the city's participation loan program. Under that program, the city lends money at 1 percent and a long-term lender like a bank at market rates. The developer can apply, after the rehabilitation, for restructuring of rents, and tenants who cannot afford the rents can apply for subsidies under the Federal Section 8 program. The developer also gets substantial real estate tax abatement under the city's J-51 program, and investors get a handsome tax shelter. 

"Alexander Garvin, assistant commissioner of rehabilitation and neighborhood preservation for the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, a city agency, said the second loan was viable but fell through because Mr. Walentas had been unwilling to put more equity into the property. The program requires equity of 10 percent. 

"Mr. Walentas denied that Dunbar Associates would not put more equity into the property....About two years ago, Mr. Walentas said, he stopped paying taxes on the property. The second mortgagees began foreclosure, asking and receiving appointment of a receiver, Then the bank began a foreclosure action several months later. Dunbar Associates filed Chapter XII reorganization plan, which, after a bitter fight, was dismissed last month in Federal bankruptcy court. 

"According to the Internal Revenue Service, generally in a forced sale - or even if there had been a foreclosure - the investors could not only lose their original investment but could also have to pay taxes on a sale. For tax purposes, the sale price includes the amount of the mortgages, plus the cash received. If the building has been substantially depreciated - and in some cases it can be depreciated down to zero - the investors could be subject to taxes on a profit. Also, they lose the tax shelter. 

"Mr. Walentas insisted, however, that there had been no rapid “write-offs.”