Parkchester Information Network

Originally posted by Jane Rosenberg

By 1964, Parkchester already had African-American residents. <div> </div> <div>I lived in Parkchester from 1941 to 1958. It is true that, at that time, Parkchester had no African-American residents, what we and the movie "Doubt" then called Negroes. It was also understood that Parkchester had a "sundown" policy, by which African-Americans who worked in Parkchester were expected to have left by sundown.</div> <div> </div> <div>However, in 1957 New York City passed our nation's first fair housing law, under which it was no longer permitted to exclude renters because of race. It should be noted that Parkchester pre-screened all renters of whatever race by visiting their current residences to observe their housekeeping practices. My mother was one of those obsessed housekeepers, so we got in.</div> <div> </div> <div>In any event, by 1964, when I was serving the children of Parkchester as their French teacher at Junior High School 127, it would have been plain to the casual observer that a fair proportion of Parkchester's children were, in fact, African-American. So, the character played by Viola Davis could well have been a resident rather than a maid, if the writer had only asked me about this instead of assuming that there had been no change in the discriminatory policies all the way up to 1964.</div> <div> </div> <div>One thing the movie got wrong, ironically, was to feel that they had to provide leaves at great expense in order to show that it was autumn. In 1964, Parkchester employed legions of maintenance personnel precisely to keep the lawns free of leaves by raking them off and to do other kinds of lawn maintenance work. The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company would NEVER have allowed the lawns to be ruined by being covered with leaves. </div> <div> </div> <div>Note the posts and chains along all the grassy areas. These were to enforce the "Keep off the grass" policies, as were the uniformed "Parkchester Police" whose main function in my childish eyes was to take your name and report your having walked on the grass to your parents.</div> <div> </div> <div>I visited Parkchester recently, and was appalled to see that the playgrounds were padlocked on a Friday afternoon. Also, there is absolutely NO visitor parking in the residential areas, so that my husband and I had to risk being towed in order for me to "take a walk down Memory Lane."</div> <div> </div> <div>Also, sadly, the formerly elegant St. Claire's Restaurant, just off the Oval, is now a Burger King.</div>

Originally posted by Jillian

<p>..... The humorous aspect of the Condominium’s effort to set the stage was that our staff <u>thoroughly cleaned the area</u> for the scene and <u>then had to “borrow” several hundred bags of leaves</u> from the Parkchester North Apartments and Condominiums to make the background look like late autumn!...... <br></p> <div></div>

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