Frances Goldin was born on June 22, 1924 in Springfield Gardens, Queens. Her parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and her father worked for the Interborough Rapid Transit Company (IRT) for most of his career.^[1] Goldin became politically active in her early adulthood while working for the War Shipping Administration. She joined the Communist Party when she was 19 years old, though later left for the American Labor Party. At age 26, she ran for state senate on the American Labor Party ballot, sharing the 1950 ticket with W.E.B DuBois.^[2] Goldin started in tenant activism as a volunteer translator for Yiddish-speaking clients at the Lower East Side Tenant and Consumer Council.^[3] She became active in anti-urban renewal campaigns in the 1950s. In 1959, she co-founded the Cooper Square Community Development Committee and Businessmen’s Association (later renamed the Cooper Square Committee) to organize against the Cooper Square Urban Renewal Plan and the construction of the Lower Manhattan Thruway.

Oral History with Liza Zapol

Village Preservation

232 East 11th Street

New York, NY 10003

Cooper Square Committee Records

Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives

Elmer Holmes Bobst Library

70 Washington Square South

In the late 1950s, Frances Goldin was involved in unsuccessful anti-urban renewal efforts at Lincoln Center and Seward Park, which resulted in the displacement of thousands of residents.^[4] In 1959, when Robert Moses released his Cooper Square Urban Renewal Plan, Goldin co-founded the Cooper Square Community Development Committee and Businessmen’s Association, later renamed to the Cooper Square Committee (CSC). Her co-founders included tenant organizer Esther Rand, community planner Walter Thabit, social worker Staughton Lynd, and Director of the Church of All Nations Thelma Burdick.^[5]

The Cooper Square Urban Renewal Plan called for the leveling of a dozen city blocks from East 9th Street to Delancey Street. The demolitions would include 2,400 housing units and various buildings that would later be landmarked following the passage of the New York City Landmarks Law in 1965.^[6] The yet-to-be landmarked buildings in the urban renewal area include the Metropolitan Savings Bank on East 7th Street and the Nicholas and Elizabeth Stuyvesant Fish House on Stuyvesant Street.

Shortly after CSC’s first meeting, Thabit surveyed residents of Cooper Square’s old-law tenements and small-scale lofts, asking tenants if they would be able to afford Moses’ housing plan. The survey found that 93% of residents would not be able to pay the new rents or co-op buy-ins planned for Cooper Square.^[7] Drawing on Thabit’s expertise as a planner, CSC prepared “The Alternate Plan for Cooper Square'' which sought to prioritize current site tenants for new public housing.^[8] The Alternate Plan proposed clever use of a vacant lot on Houston Street. Construction of public housing would begin on the vacant lot and tenants of a to-be-demolished building would be moved into the new building. The rest of the public housing developments would follow in this checkerboard fashion. As a new building went up, the next would come down, with tenants shuffling over.

In 1961, CSC delivered the Alternate Plan to the New York City Planning Commission and other city agencies.^[9] Receiving no municipal response to their plan, CSC mobilized the neighborhood against Moses’ urban renewal plan throughout the 1960s by leading demonstrations and attending public hearings. Goldin was known for her energizing presence at these events and was especially skilled at building community momentum around their organizing effort. Beyond street-level actions, Goldin brought the issue up to the state level by lobbying weekly in Albany. In 1970, CSC forced a vote by the Board of Estimate on the Alternate Plan and it was adopted as the City’s official plan for the urban renewal area.^[10]

However, the Alternate Plan stalled when President Nixon’s administration pulled federal funding for public housing, leaving CSC without the support of anticipated federal funds.^[11] New York subsequently fell into a financial crisis and municipal support dried up. Even though the Alternate Plan had yet to be realized, CSC succeeded in stopping Moses’ plan to demolish Cooper Square. In 1986, long after the Moses era, CSC published a new plan which detailed a rehabilitation of Cooper Square’s tenements under a mutual housing association, which officially formed in 1991.

Cooper Square Committee

Co-founder

Metropolitan Council on Housing

Founder

Frances Goldin Literary Agency

Founder and Literary Agent

E.M. Hale and Company

Editor-in-Chief