Bay View Houses
The Bay View Houses is a housing project of the New York City Housing Authority in the Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn. It has twenty-three, 8-story buildings with 1,609 apartments. The 34.02-acre complex is bordered by Seaview Avenue, East 102nd Street, Shore and Rockaway Parkways.
Development
Construction on the Bay View Houses began in November 1954 and was completed on June 7, 1956. It was designed for middle-income families to keep these residents from moving to the suburbs. The Bayview Houses was mostly inhabited by low- to middle-income working class New Yorkers.The development was designed in the superblock style which bounds the property with local roads and without roads crossing. The buildings take up roughly 14% of the site to ensure green space, typical of the time. This design ignores the surrounding environment, particularly the view of Jamaica Bay from the buildings. Located in the center of the development is the Bay View Houses Farm, managed by East New York Farms.