Completed in 1973, this “city within in a city” has 15,372 apartments, around 70,000 rooms and is home to over 45,000 residents, down from 60,000 at its peak. It is the largest cooperative apartment complex ever built. It’s also the world’s largest NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community).
The neighborhood is served by three shopping centers, six schools, 15 houses of worship, two newspapers, and a police force. It even has its own Comic-Con. There is everything you could need, which is good because it is a hard place to get to and out of. Residents are optimistic that will soon change as a $2.8 billion retrofitting of an existing Amtrak route along the Hells Gate line will connect the area to Penn Station.
Co-op City is built on infilled marshland. Years before the arrival of the Dutch settlers, the Siwanoy tribe harvested shellfish from the tidal flats of the Hutchinson River. The river gets its name from Anne Hutchinson, an excommunicated religious leader from Massachusetts who, along with six of her children, was massacred by the Siwanoy, casualties of an ill-advised war started by then Director-General of New Netherland, William Kieft.
If you are so inclined, you can visit the site of the massacre, Split Rock, where, as legend goes, Anne and her daughter Susanna unsuccessfully tried to hide during the Siwanoy attack. The rock itself is located on a triangle between the New England Thruway and the Hutchinson River Parkway.
There used to be a plaque.
Four blocks of houses along Givans Creek refused to move when the surrounding area was developed.