Organized by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (ACW), a Manhattan-based socialist labor union, the co-op's original cluster of Tudor-style buildings was erected at the southern edge of Van Cortlandt Park in 1927.

The Amalgamated's delivery of attractive, affordable housing for working-class New Yorkers; its remarkable survival through the Great Depression; and its continued success and growth earned it praise from Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others.

An ambitious labor activist, he sought to apply a version of the Rochdale principles to the urgent need for affordable housing in New York City.

Although the Lower East Side was the center of the union's membership, its overcrowded blocks of aging tenements presented few opportunities for new development.

Instead, Kazan and ACW president Sidney Hillman chose a canvas in the northwest Bronx, on the suburban outskirts of Van Cortlandt Park.