As controversial renovations come to New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) developments, their exterior facelifts pose existential questions: Does replacing the brown brick facades that are synonymous with “the projects” signal improved conditions and eliminate stigma, or threaten the survival of the very concept of public housing? As some residents organize to preserve public housing as they know it, they are reclaiming the traditional esthetics as a symbol of public housing’s enduring value. Jayah Arnett, who grew up in the George Washington Carver Houses in East Harlem, had similar goals in mind when she started My Projects Runway as a pandemic project, collecting family photos and stories from public housing residents on Instagram and the My Projects Runway website to tell an intimate story of life there.
Since then, My Projects Runway has undertaken several collaborations with the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM), started in 2007 with the mission to combat stereotyped and racialized narratives about public housing. NPHM is set to open shortly in the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes in Chicago (the other 31 buildings that formed part of that city’s first public housing development were demolished in the early 2000s). The new museum will feature model apartments, historical objects, and art commissions, while its archives, including oral histories, can be accessed far beyond its walls. For a project called “Feeling at Home,” Arnett invited NYCHA residents to submit images of their “stylish public housing interior” to the museum. Soon, visitors waiting for tours of apartments or to enter the collection galleries, will be surrounded by images and recollections of the domestic scenes and settings we share below. The unique installation will include seats with cushions upholstered from the same fabrics that appear in the photos, covered, appropriately, in plastic. In the words of NPHM’s Executive Director Lisa Lee, it will be a display of “style as an act of resistance,” and, for a museum audience that may have little sense of what it looks like to grow up poor, a lesson that they will find “the same care and intention that people bring to their homes and lives” anywhere.
Behind the unassuming and conventional exteriors of public housing project buildings, behind the deferred maintenance and enduring stigma, there are apartment units with unique, enthralling, and expressive interiors. Non-residents may see a building from the outside and make assumptions about those who have a long history of calling its apartments home, not realizing that within is a rich culture of homemaking and interior design displayed and shared by neighbors. In every building, people decorate hallways for the holidays like the front of a suburban home or remodel their spaces in unexpected ways.
In 2020, I began collecting and preserving photographs, stories, and testimonies from New York City’s public housing, extending from its start in the 1930s to the present day. My Projects Runway is a digital platform that is committed to challenging mainstream narratives about public housing and highlighting the stories and individuality of residents through family archives. Residents and former residents of public housing can submit their photographs and recollections through an open call on social media and directly to the My Projects Runway website. The archive celebrates the creative imagination and brilliant efforts of public housing residents to create a lot from a little. The homes that residents create with wall paint, hand-stitched fabrics, and other decoration transform the monotony of brick facades, tiled hallways, and concrete structures.
Our homes are expressions of our personalities, our values, our family structures, and our individual styles. Archives preserve stories that future generations can hold onto and pass down. You don’t think about the couch, the curtains, the way Grandma or Mom had the kitchen set up, until you wake up one day and realize your tiny apartment was a home filled with memories, smells, people, and love that will forever be frozen in time with an image.
Since 2022, My Projects Runway has been partnering with the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) in Chicago, using open calls and oral history recordings to bring the long history of New York City public housing residents into the museum’s archives. The contributions below have been chosen from six family archives to be displayed permanently at the museum, showcasing both the culture of interior design and the importance of family archives in the history of New York City’s public housing.
Mama’s house was always my first home. A place where for every holiday the family would finally see each other all at once. A place filled with culture and rhythm. We heard Spanish music during Sunday morning cleans while still in bed. A Latina household labeled as the hood, but entering Mama’s house was the entrance to a home filled with nothing but endless Puerto Rican dishes, love, and Mama’s words of wisdom.
– Sanaya Lydia Jimenez, Wagner Houses, Harlem (Resident 1999–2014)
Home is wherever my mami is, which happens to be a 13th-floor NYCHA building in Brooklyn. The feeling of home could be felt when sitting on my mami’s plastic couch. This centerpiece was plastered with ’90s geometric patterns and a nostalgic plastic covering that crinkled and stuck to your skin every time you sat on it. I always wondered why Mami was insistent on keeping her couch covered. The older I get, the more I deeply understand the gift of preservation.
– Mariah Espada, Bushwick Houses, Brooklyn (Resident 1998–2022)
I moved to the Lower East Side from Guinea in 2002. I joined my grandparents, who had been in public housing since the late 1980s. In 1984, the Guinean military seized power and ransacked their neighborhood. My grandparents brought their home away from home with them. Whenever I think of my home, I can smell my grandmother’s traditional Guinean meals. I can hear my grandfather speaking in his native tongue. I can see the thick bed sheets, old school curtains, and the yellow fluorescent ceiling lights. This building will always be my home, no matter where I go.
– Aicha Cherif, Rafael Hernandez Houses, Manhattan (Resident 2002–2018)
Angélica Cirino had a special impact on the community, and her family. She traveled from Puerto Rico to New York in the 1950s and made a life in the projects that felt like home. She made lifelong friends and raised her kids and grandkids in her apartment. We are now her wildest dreams and will never forget apartment 9H. Thank you, Grandma, for your strong contributions to who we are.
– Jayah Arnett, George Washington Houses, East Harlem (Resident 1960–2022)
The Beautiful Miss Peggy, a legend in the Queensbridge Houses. My mom, Miss Peggy, moved into Queensbridge in 1973 when I was three years old, bringing me into the community that would go on to shape my career and my life. This was one of my favorite Christmases and that was my favorite couch.
– Roxanne Shanté, Queensbridge Houses, Queens (Resident, dates unknown)
Aree T. Allen was born July 9, 1972, at St. Luke’s Hospital and raised in the NYCHA Frederick Douglass Projects. Aree faced many uncertain challenges growing up in the projects. However, with hard work and dedication, Aree continued to serve his community by finding a career at the NY Mount Sinai Hospital as a lab technician. He served for a total of 20 years, where he completed much research for cures.
His mission in life was to lead a purposeful life. On November 16, 2020, Aree lost his life to COVID-19. He was only 48 years old. Although he departed at a young age, he left a legacy of teaching our youth that one can achieve one’s destiny regardless of upbringing with hard work and perseverance.
– Allen family, in honor of Aree Allen, Frederick Douglass Houses, Harlem (Resident 1972–1995)
All images copyright the authors, courtesy of My Projects Runway
