Legacy is a fickle thing, as a cursory look at the life and work of New York architect Herman Jessor will show. From 1925 to 1974, he built some 40,000 homes, dispersed across fifteen union-funded complexes including the Workers Cooperative Colony—or the Allerton Coops as it’s colloquially known—and Twin Pines Village—aka Starrett City, aka Spring Creek Towers. (It seems only suitable that these massive developments, in The Bronx and East New York, respectively, resist singular identities.) At least initially, these vast acreages of common brick (Jessor’s preferred cladding material) were decommodified: Working-class New Yorkers called these places home and operated them cooperatively or through strong tenant control.
Despite his unparalleled curriculum vitae, Jessor does not enjoy a perch in the history the city tells about itself. Thank You, Herman Jessor, a laudatory exhibition mounted in the Third Floor Hallway Gallery at Cooper Union’s Foundation Building over the past month, seeks to rectify that error. Curators Zara Pfeifer and Daniel Jonas Roche are unabashed…