
Vladeck City Houses Dedication

( Courtesy of the The Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives in the ILR School at Cornell University. )
This episode is from the WNYC archives. It may contain language which is no longer politically or socially appropriate.
Housing development's namesake (Baruch Charney Vladeck) is honored by his daughter on Thanksgiving Eve, the first day of construction. She reads poems he wrote before his recent death.
Second speaker is likewise not introduced. He honors Vladeck similarly and discusses the history of public housing in the city.
Third unidentified speaker (Mayor La Guardia) references the choir and says he's not in a good mood this evening and then dazzles the audience with a story about chasing lawyers out of his office who said he couldn't build houses. Wagner Act allowed money to be available, Federal Housing Administrator, Nathan Strauss, Red Hook Housing Unit, housing in Harlem, Queens, etc.
Additional information: NYTimes article "MAYOR HAILS WORK ON VLADECK HOMES" Nov 23, 1939 (source of date)
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection
WNYC archives id: 69139
Municipal archives id: LT379
This is a machine-generated transcript. Text is unformatted and may contain errors.
And. I know Thanksgiving Day thirty one years ago. With. One of my goals today thirty was running on time to believe we are here to see the start of construction of the city. To see in the houses that that. Has become a part of America to us his family was Thanksgiving was always a holiday of great significance and it is fitting that I as a spokesman for his family can tonight. To his country to his setting and to the New York City Housing Authority. Times today giving him life again giving him his life. Is not a monument. It is a unity of. The city is giving their birthright under its. Will be able to live to eat. To experience joy and. To carry on their tasks and their pleasures in surroundings. And this was my life that their lives be full of that their rights be recognized and meet and they together should it change their birthright and blah to his life will be real. And those who live in other. Continue. Here. And the other started I see through the. Pack and the closing. I'm thinking of that. Journey. And meeting. Others to. Pull. Together and. Cultivate and. Into reality. Which is just to be. On board and. The construction is increasing and. Thankful. That. This comes to. Marching on I. Am. Not going to. Rush you. I simply. Because I want to be a part of the people that I've participated in. And tribute to my friend Johnny. And I never heard. A more often. And touching tribute. And we're just. Fired. Up. I wish. I could say it. Although I agreed and my heart. Every moment but. I knew. For a long while I knew about his humanitarian. Particularly on the underprivileged. And his. And he loved her elimination. Giving the people particularly don't community aid. And a sanitary place in which to live which they were in. And show it seems to be the. Monument in his memory. Of. This current project the city how. My friend. Some very nice things have been said about me and. I hope that I hope. I do. This particular project. Though more often than a local significance. It has a National should. You know that. To take. And the movement the pioneering effort for low cost housing and the elimination of the. I watch and of our country was initiated right here in the. And so it is the people and the pioneer witness of the Lower East Side that are responsible. For housing projects the day my friends with chop being cut structed in fourteen out of the forty eight states in the union just think of that. It began way back we heard a moment ago five million was a matter of fact. He was my political force I don't know whether you know that I'm not. I always have to do what was wanted me to do as a state legislator and as a federal legislator and I was a whole way I think I use good judgment in following directions. Then I was Jacob Riis. And I would marry him. Then that's Helen Hong. And I know there are a host of others that I should have remembered that I don't recall just now but all of them together were in this great movement which finally resulted in the end I mean the federal legislation. Just let me say that. We have a law on our you know with passion and nine hundred thirty seven which provide for a coordinated system in the political government and the British economy for the elimination of the slums and the construction of decent housing for our people. The slum and. That fight began by the introduction of a bill in my thirty four. And then with all the East Side conference we could get very little action in Congress. Till nine thirty five we had placed public hearings and would begin each side conference Mary. And the mayor of New York came to Washington and began to be agitated by the passage of legislation which would ultimately how was America and all of its people going to be she's not a. They came down again in nineteen thirty seconds. Undaunted courageous. And persist. We were able only in one thousand nine hundred six the passage through one House the Senate. Then we tried again in nineteen thirty seven and not same committee supported by the people of each side with the same. Officials came down again and in nineteen thirty seven received curates report out of the committee in both the Senate and the House we passed it in both houses and it's now along the way and as a result of those efforts my friends not only in the east side here and in other sections of New York what throughout the country want each think that they are limited in their blighted area and giving their people a decent plane in which to live and that all came out all began by the people here of the east side now something is said about the man. I can turn what was said about the man. He had once he is now the leader and of all the municipalities of the country in building better homes while the people of his city. And as he said the other day. Either is going to keep right on until New York as he said is that happened in which to live. And so. I said I was going to make a speech and I'm not only imposing I want to say that don't match be satisfied. With the elimination of us in the building of homes. All there are some other place let us keep longish fight as the president your great president has. Let us continue this fight until all of the slum and the blighted areas of America are removed and we re hot on. The. People of America. Let them call it. The land. They live in gentlemen. I am sure. You are all impressed. Hearing live the life the music. Of the heart. Sang to us. That is. I believe. I heard. A city called Heaven. And I started. To make it my home. I'm not in a particularly. Happy mood this evening. I can't fit. Rather than being here with my. Daddy. The name of Charley. They're entitled to just as we want. This is how we get. And that may be the one mistake. They consulted the lawyer. The lawyer said. Oh. You know what I did. Say what I said. And I told a couple of my. Water bill. And I had to come. And hit the law but I feel like. It was the right it was the fact that money was available. And then the president had a good. Federal Housing. And he had. A couple of friends that he went to Illinois. And he put in my ministry. That if you want to. Come to your city I'll leave the park. At night. And. Housing administrator because he was brave. And that building houses all over this country. Out of the first while. We deal now in the cost of completion. The Red Hook. Housing Unit. House twenty five hundred. We're moving them and at the rate of one hundred families a week we have about one hundred families and. They're completing about one unit a week in turning all of a kind of over to the housing authority. Big League bridge unit if we hear the fifty ninth Street Bridge well also accommodate about twenty five hundred pound. Jamaica houses now under construction in Jamaica and another one of the right. And East Harlem houses. By the way this is good. I received protests we demand out our. Six weeks afterward to prove. That with my. Stuyvesant Bedford. In Brooklyn we resubmitted the application with correct figures and I have assurance that we have. Another in the Bronx submitted that had more to say about that one later on. And here this great project a combination of federal and said. The Federal Housing about fall fit the size of the set of the ten. And that's actually construction. This is November. If it was a top work I wouldn't I wouldn't blame you for not believing this November. More because you've been built not told. And then the first Tuesday comes along and everybody forgets. But these are radically good struck you go off a building. And it's going to be either. One of the most beautiful. Public housing units. In the city. Now one of the speakers stated. That this. LODHI. I'm good boy transformation. Pointed out. Public housing. Women the. Housing Finance five private. And that here. As it should. Be much NEW DAY everybody. Enter the public house. Now the great many things I would have to say. But you know me when I got something here I'm going to say. I'm glad. That some people are realizing. The necessity. Of tearing down some of the laugh like he did on that I can't really. Wrap this he really believes in which they had been last month and putting in their place sanitary safe decent building. And battle back. I want to say. That the savings bank made it in so far out as American city just them saying one thing. You may not get the full significance of that but the savings bank will. We got no help. On display. From the stage. And they came very near. At one time. I wouldn't be myself but that if I did make mention the fact. That you repeat what they're really like I'll talk about. That they need. To be. In so far as the mayor is there and I are on hold maybe. After this ceremony. We just continue to fill. The Bill Maher speakers. Like you want to How's. It Going On. In the beginning. How misleading. Was that I had to hear it. And our first class. West conducting a grade can pain of education. That drive all the left at a. Public college. Will be on that day. This is no longer your home. This is no more propaganda. The rest five total of eleven House in the party. And flag of a. Job You can take this is going to take. There so far they. Bend over fifty million dollars. Now Will. Sixty dollars seventy million dollars more back. I don't want to this week make it all this far. And I am up for you a point. I want my. Town we have Ben boiling at the refuge we. Are going to last thirty days. Only yesterday the housing up already filed an. Application from one of the largest most There it. Housing projects in the history of the country. That's just a coach. And I'm not going to go about it. Until the foundation of the bill back. I said I know why now. And it must be a source of great gratification to you. To see an idea come to a full crew if you. See the great William Frey going to Harlem and college. Or that would pile. When we were discussing this property. When it was a bathroom three or four or five hundred thousand dollars less of all right what are they. And the going say paper of where you're going to get it I don't know. What we got. The houses are under construction. This is something more like houses. Just some it may be out. There something may need a different design. Just some immediate difference. In location. To meet needs something else. And then something else. It just turns. Its focus men women and children. It doesn't the chain and the side of the highway. If the transformation of the people themselves. To live in a. Dingy a part. Of the army. To have a comfortable home. To be able to get a little bit of time when. To be on they want to keep that apart. How it might work. That but we're right back at the end. Of May He was better. And happier. For a lot of men and women I thought it. Was. Obvious he told me your. And I'm not going to make it and it was a I shut. You like a little bit of.