A former family shelter at 1605 Nelson Avenue in Morris Heights, The Bronx is set to be transformed into 129 units of permanent supportive housing under a new initiative by the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and Department of Social Services (DSS). BronxWorks, in partnership with Slate Property Group, has been selected to lead the redevelopment, the first designation under HPD’s 2023 Supportive Housing Request for Qualifications (RFQ).
Originally operated as an 80-unit Tier II shelter, the city-owned site will undergo a full gut renovation to deliver deeply affordable housing, including 91 units reserved for formerly homeless households. The revamped building will also include a licensed early childhood education center accessible to residents and the surrounding community. BronxWorks will provide wraparound services, including case management, mental health support, and benefits navigation to promote long-term housing stability.
Spanning 105,000 square feet, the renovated property will feature ADA-compliant infrastructure, all-electric building systems, and outdoor recreation spaces. Once the rehabilitation is complete, Slate Property Group will transfer ownership to BronxWorks, ensuring the project remains under nonprofit stewardship.
Transit nearby 1605 Nelson Avenue includes the 4 train at 176th Street and Burnside Avenue stations, and the B and D trains at Tremont Avenue.
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Many buildings had become abandoned in Morris Heights (my old neighborhood) by the mid 1970s. The city rehabilitated many of these—a major step in housing preservation that is often overlooked.
This building has so much untapped potential, yet I hope they consider doing more and expand the building. If we are doing a gut-renovation on an empty building and installing elevators we should also be looking at doing a modest vertical expansion as the cost to add another 1-2 floors to the top is a very modest increase to the existing costs while creating new residential space instead of just repurposing existing residential space for new tenants.
A great idea, but not allowed unless they remove all its wood joists and make it a fireproof building. In its current configuration at a non-fireproof residential building (grandfathered as it was built prior to 1968), its as large as it can legally be!
I am certain this place had an elevator as required for buildings over 5 stories. If you go over 6 floors, you needed a water tank on the roof in addition to fireproof construction as already mentioned.
There are many 6 story walkups in the Bronx. They were either built before said code, or got around it by not counting the ground floor as the 1st floor
Hopefully they’ll restore the parapet.
I wish but there’s about a 0% chance of that happening
We’ll see. I tried finding an old tax photo to see what the brickwork looked like to no avail.
Wait are we definitely talking about the parapet, not the cornice? That’s what I really want to see restored.
Im not sure if it had a tin cornice or just a more ornamented masonry parapet before… Cannot find any historical pictures.
Look a little harder, it can be seen if you click around the surrounding dots
It had a decorative masonry parapet typical of 1920s buildings
I have literally never seen a parapet restored once it is flayed off
Lovely building. Wortu making fire proof. Test down everything and leave the brick and windows. Gut it out and rebuild up to modern standards. Build in the infrastructure, insulation SIP insulation and then attach the windows to it. Ass beam braces and Add floors. Just make sure the brick mason can lasts. Don’t keep any old floors, just old beams reinforced by new beams.
You can add more floors expand upward instead of keeping the old stuff inside.
I am not certain the existing brick walls could support concrete slab floors. An internal steel frame would likely be required. The original parapet was fairly plain with only the building line facades having any decoration. These were sort of crenelated with a few inset pre-cast panels. There were far more distinguished examples in the area.
Just reading this. Do you know of any photos online or is that just from memory?
That parapet was still much nicer than a blank brick rectangle. The lunettes + crenulation were important to the visual interest of the facade
So my tax dollars paid for it as a shelter, Now they will pay for it as affordable housing, Lucky me