VIRTUAL ISTANBUL HERITAGE(S)

Abstract

This paper centers on Parkchester, a planned community located in the Bronx, New York City. Built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company in the early 1940s, Parkchester was built for middle-class families, and only permitted White people to live in the community. Parkchester was designed with a utopian, garden-city vision in mind, the perfect blend of the urban and suburban. Most notably, hundreds of Works Progress Administration (WPA)-era sculptures dot the buildings throughout Parkchester, and many have fallen into disrepair due to lack of resources allocated to their preservation. As of 2020, over 300,000 people call Parkchester home, but its architectural and cultural significance is rarely acknowledged in the same way as comparable developments in New York City. Additionally, the complex is not landmarked, despite attempts made to elevate Parkchester’s status. This paper asks: why? Through interdisciplinary research comprised of site visits and analysis of text and image, both historical and contemporary, this paper examines how transparency—or lack thereof—shapes New York City’s landmarking process. The Landmarks Preservation Commission’s decisions are often opaque, and this opacity affects which communities receive landmark recognition. Parkchester’s deteriorating WPA-era sculptures shed light on the consequences of lack of landmark designation: public art created through a federal program to support artists and enrich public life is now decaying. This paper invites readers to examine how we decide what parts of the city, and whose stories, are worth preserving.