Word: bedford
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bedford-Stuyvesant has one tremendous advantage over Harlem: it does not have the same huge, unsalvagable tenements. There is a vast number of decrepit apartment houses, especially on commercial streets where the ground floor is given over to liquor or grocery stores. But block after block is lined with two and three-family brownstones--housing which was, and in many cases still is, very fine indeed. That's what makes residents and planners sure that rehabilitation programs can work. Enthuses one lawyer who lives in the area, "Man, there are some beautiful homes here...
SENATOR ROBERT F. KENNEDY '48 formally announced the huge Bedford-Stuyvesant program at a mass meeting in P.S. 305. It was a gala occasion, featuring Senator Jacob Javits, Rep. Emanuel Celler, Mayor John Lindsay, Boston's Redevelopment Administrator Edward J.Logue, and a host of other speakers who rambled on long after much of the audience had left...
...Lindsay administration is heavily committed to the project. Declares one city official, "We're ready to put a lot of money in there," and Bedford-Stuyvesant is one of the three neighborhoods for which New Yorks has applied for Model Cities funds. In addition, Lindsay and such top aides as Mitchell Sviridoff, head of the Human Resources Administration, favor the kind of local autonomy that Kennedy wants to see. Says Sviridoff, "Things should be organized out there, planned out there, and run out there...
Nevertheless, the corporations are largely Kennedy's creations, and he will get the lion's share of the credit if the Bedford-Stuyvesant project succeeds. He met with members of the community in February of last year. They told him they had seen a good many politicians drop in and make promises and that they wanted some results. He said he agreed, and he assigned aides in his Manhattan office to begin working with them on a structure for a massive program. He approached Javits and Lindsay--insiders point out that Logue and a good many other big names would...
...with poverty-like giving poor people money through a negative income tax--but he insists that physical renewal and comprehensive planning is a good idea anyway. "Just about every community in this country could use planning like this," He says. "You have to start somewhere, and a place like Bedford-Stuyvesant has the greatest need...