Herman Jessor

Jessor was born in the Russian Empire. He arrived with his family in the United States at age 12, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan, and then the Cooper Union School of Engineering. During school, he worked as an engineer.

He was a young architect on the staff of architect George W. Springsteen, of Springsteen & Goldhammer, when that firm engineered the first limited-equity cooperative in New York City, the Amalgamated Housing Cooperative in The Bronx, in 1927. Jessor subsequently worked with Springsteen on the design on the Hillman Housing CorporationTony Schuman, "LABOR AND HOUSING IN NEW YORK CITY Architect Herman Jessor and the Cooperative Housing Movement", Appendix and was the architect for phase two of the United Workers Cooperative Colony;{{Cite web |url=http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/1992UnitedWorkerCoop.pdf |title=New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission: United Workers Coop (1992) |access-date=2009-04-24 |archive-date=2016-03-03 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160303221843/http://www.neighborhoodpreservationcenter.org/db/bb_files/1992UnitedWorkerCoop.pdf |url-status=dead }} East River Housing Corporation [possibly with Springsteen again, depending on the source],AIA Guide to New York City, 5th edition, Page 105 Seward Park Housing Corporation; Rochdale Village[http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/historical_signs/hs_historical_sign.php?id=7921 NYC Parks Dept. on Rochdale] in Queens and the Penn South complex in Chelsea, Manhattan.[http://www.lesonline.org/cv/LABOR%20AND%20HOUSING%20IN%20NEW%20YORK%20CITY.pdf Schuman, Tony. "Labor and Housing in New York City - Architect Herman Jessor and the Cooperative Housing Movement"], New Jersey Institute of Technology In one of his largest undertakings, Jessor was the major designer of Co-op City, the 15,500-unit cooperative development in The Bronx.{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}}

Jessor was married to the former Eva Jaffee. He died in Manhattan on April 8, 1990.[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CEEDF153CF933A25757C0A966958260 "Obituary: Herman Jessor, 95, New York Architect For Co-op Buildings"], The New York Times, April 10, 1990

Jessor became known for ensuring working-class families had proper social amenities in their daily lives. He included entrance foyers, eat-in kitchens with windows, and bedrooms with cross-ventilation, so working-class families without air-conditioning could benefit from natural breezes. At the time Jessor was an architect, air-conditioning was especially expensive. He eschewed the typical railroad flat design, which required walking through one room to get to the next, favoring a design where rooms were accessed from a common hallway, providing more privacy to the residents.

Jessor was a close ally of such labor unions as the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Many of the buildings he worked on were funded with the help of these unions.

In January 1999, in the wake of a collapse in the Seward Park Housing parking garage,[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E5D61630F934A25752C0A96F958260 Herszenhorn, David M. "Flooded Plaza Collapses Into Garage on the Lower East Side"], The New York Times, January 17, 1999 New York City building inspectors suspected there could be a potential flaw in Jessor's "honeycomb" design of the massive garage roof. The roof had been built to support a vast playground/park above, with trees and grass upon hundreds of thousands of pounds of soil. After the collapse on Friday night, January 15, 1999, the New York City Department of Buildings opened an investigation into other Jessor projects to test for durability.[https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990DE4DF1530F93AA25752C0A96F958260 Bagli, Charles, V. "Spotlight on Architect's Work In Wake of a Garage Collapse"] The New York Times, January 19, 1999 The investigation did not turn up any major design flaws, and cited convergence of many elements including several days of warm rain, followed by quick freezing, thawing, and refreezing, along with a stoppage in the drainage system combined with minor cracking of the concrete in the roof and the immense weight above. After a four-year lawsuit, the Greater New York Insurance Company, insurer for Seward Park Housing, lost their nonpayment case to the cooperative, and $18 million for the damages.{{Citation needed|date=April 2009}} After the insurer won a subsequent appeal, the insurer and coop settled in 2010 with the coop returning $3.25 million to the insurer.{{Cite web|url=http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2010/05/seward-park-co-op-and-insurance-company-settle-garage-collapse-lawsuit.html#more-10601|title = Seward Park Co-op and Insurance Company Settle Garage Collapse Lawsuit | the Lo-Down : News from the Lower East Side}}

• List of New York City housing cooperatives

{{commons category}}

{{reflist}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jessor, Herman}}

Category:1895 births

Category:1990 deaths

Category:20th-century American architects

Category:American cooperative organizers

Category:Russian Jews

Category:Stuyvesant High School alumni

Category:Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States