Park West Village Tenants Association Records

The Park West Village Tenants Association Records document the organized activities of tenants in the seven buildings of the Park West Village on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The collection contains administrative files of the Park West Village Tenants Association (PWVTA), including board meeting notes, agendas, and membership lists. Materials in this collection document PWVTA's negotiations with building owners and real estate companies regarding various housing issues between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Topics they address include discussions over the construction of a road through the complex in 1993, the conversion to condominiums, and a battle over rent reductions and major capital improvements that lasted from 1993 to 2005. Several boxes in the collection relate to the work of individual members of PWVTA, many of which held leadership positions within the organization. The collection also contains ephemera produced by the PWVTA, which includes flyers for meetings and events, tenant association newsletters, and other ephemeral more generally related to tenants' rights.

Two boxes of materials donated in 2016 include documents related to the work of Park West Village historian and former PWVTA president Winifred Armstrong. These materials date from the late 1980s to 2000 and consist of tenant association newsletters (1993-1997), flyers, pamphlets on tenants' rights, correspondence with real estate agencies, tenant association memoranda, and membership and contact lists from the late 1980s. Other materials include notes, correspondence, memos and bulletins, and internal documents related to the conversion of buildings at 392 and 400 Central Park West into condominiums, campaigns in support of rent controls, and tenant complaints to building managers in the 1980s.