Apartment Houses, East River, c. 1930

Narrator: In Apartment Houses, East River, Hopper painted a housing complex based on some that he had sketched near the Macombs Dam Bridge in the Bronx. These complexes were part of a trend in urban development that was new at the time, a replacement for cramped tenement housing.  

Andrew Berman: The idea being you build these big taller buildings. That opens up more space that everybody can sort of share or enjoy with more light, more air, et cetera. It's cheaper.

Narrator: Andrew Berman is Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation. 

Andrew Berman: It really was kind of the beginning of what you saw then throughout the twentieth century, which was the sort of paradigm of the tower in the park, which, you know, I could imagine that Hopper would have mixed feelings about. You know, on the one hand, sort of on paper, it's a better place. But especially when new, at this sort of larger scale, I would imagine that it would seem sort of somewhat intimidating and inhuman.