Welcome to Patterson Houses

When Mike Abner’s family moved to Patterson houses as at age 9, he initially found it “terrifying”. Coming from the lawns and tree-lined streets of Marble Hill, the complex of 15 tall buildings stretched across several square blocks was a lot to take in. “I wasn’t used to that area or those people.” He said. “It was crazy to me…hectic.” 

But Patterson Houses quickly became home to Mike. He made friends, took up basketball, track, and later singing. When he moved there in the early 60’s,  author Allen Jones had been living in Patterson since his birth, and the project’s opening, in 1950. In his memoir The Rat That Got Away, he wrote, “There was an electric atmosphere in the Patterson Houses at this time that, in the course of my long life, I’ve rarely found anywhere else” Sitting on an area that Jones described as once “extremely run down”,  Patterson Houses was erected and quickly became a bustling urban community. Urban renewal efforts, which bulldozed large stretches of the Bronx, and the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway caused massive displacement, and project like Patterson sought to fill that housing void. It was one of several “tower-in-the-park” housing projects erected by NYCHA in Morrisania-Claremont, Melrose, Mott Haven and Morrisania the era. Jones described the buildings in the 50’s as “modern, attractive, and safe”.

Victoria Archibald-Good, longtime Bronx resident and sister of basketball player Tiny Archibald, echoes Jones’ and Abner’s warm feelings toward Patterson. “We could sit out on the benches all night until the sun came up and nobody would bother us. Everybody in the building knew who we were, and they’d look out for us. Everybody looked out for everybody.”

These days, housing projects across the city bear the stigma of being dangerous or impersonal places to live. This narrative could not be further from the narrative Abner tells of Patterson during his youth, however: “Something about the South Bronx that’s a beautiful thing was, living in the projects, everybody knew everybody.” Mike said. “People say “Oh, you live in the projects?” That’s cause it’s raggedy and terrible now. Back then, it was “neighborhood.” Not “the hood”. It was the neighborhood. Everybody knew each other—it was, ‘Good morning!’, ‘Hello Mrs. So-and-so!’ ‘Oh that’s Miss Johnson’s boy!’ It was like that.”

So how did Patterson go from “the neighborhood” to, as of 2017, the lowest-graded public housing project in the city? In part, because these communities--and all the warmth and support that came along with them--were harder to form under the decisions of a city government which gravely misunderstood (or disregarded) the neighborhood and its needs. Their prescriptions for the neighborhood’s growing maladies only made things worse when in reality, the ingredients for the South Bronx’s success were in its people and communities all along. As we see with Dreamyard, those communities are growing and thriving again in a big way.