Carpet Cleaning Stuyvesant Town

In order for us to better service all our valued customers, we now offer Carpet Cleaning in Stuyvesant Town (The Stuyvesant Town area of Manhattan).

We understand our customers' needs for a quick response service and we always strive to meet those demands.

So when it comes times for your next carpet cleaning, rug cleaning, rug repair, carpet re-stretching, couch and sofa cleaning in Stuyvesant Town, make sure to call us first. Let us show you why we are the number one choice in Manhattan.

A little History of Stuyvesant Town
Due to a housing crisis building since the Depression, Stuyvesant Town was already being planned as a post-war housing project in 1942-43, some years before the war's end. Provision was made that the rental applications of veterans would have selection priority.

Stuyvesant Town was controversial from the beginning. It was championed by Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who, at the behest of Mayor La Guardia, sought "to induce insurance companies and savings banks to enter the field of large-scale slum clearance" (Moses, Letter to The New York Times, June 3, 1943). It was enabled by various state laws and amendments which permitted private companies to enter what was previously a public field of action. The new public-private partnership, and the contract entered between the city and the developer, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, were the source of much debate.

Among the issues at stake were use of the power of eminent domain for private purposes; the reversion of public streets and land, such as public school property, to private ownership; the 25-year tax exemption granted by the contract; and the rights of the company to discriminate in selecting tenants.

When the $50 million Stuyvesant Town plan was approved by the City Planning Commission on May 20, 1943 by a five to one vote, discrimination against African Americans was already a significant topic of debate. Councilmen Stanley M. Isaacs and A. Clayton Powell Jr. sought to introduce a provision into the contract that would prevent racial or religious discrimination in tenant selection. This provision was not accepted, with those rejecting it, including Robert Moses, arguing that the company's profitability would be harmed and that opponents were "obviously looking for a political issue and not for results in the form of actual slum clearance" (NYT, May 29, 1943). In the years after it opened, blacks were barred from living in the complex, with MetLife's president noting that "Negroes and whites do not mix. Lee Lorch, a City University of New York professor, petitioned to allow African Americans into the development and was fired from his teaching position as a result of pressure from Metropolitan Life. Upon accepting position at Penn State, Lorch allowed a black family to occupy his apartment, thus circumventing the no Negroes rule. As a result of pressure from Met Life, he was dismissed from his new position as well.

Lawsuits were filed on the basis that the project was public or semi-public, and thus violated anti-discrimination laws for New York City public housing. In July 1947, the New York Supreme Court determined that the development was private and that, in the absence of laws to the contrary, the company could discriminate as it saw fit. The court wrote, "It is well settled that the landlord of a private apartment or dwelling house may, without violating any provision of the Federal or State Constitutions, select tenants of its own choice because of race, color, creed or religion... Clearly, housing accommodation is not a recognized civil right" (NYT, July 29, 1947). The suit brought by three African American war veterans was thus settled.

By this date, Metropolitan Life was building a separate-but-equal housing project in Harlem, Riverton Houses. Some years later, the company admitted a few black families to Stuyvesant Town and a few white families to Riverton. Both projects, however, remain largely black and white, as do many housing projects to this day.