Fulton Houses

The Robert Fulton Houses were designed by architects Brown & Guenther and were developed as a "vest pocket" site that retains the street grid.^[2] The groundbreaking ceremony was held on October 15, 1962 and the buildings were completed on March 31, 1965. It is served by the New York City Police Department's 10th Precinct.^[3][4]

The housing project is named after engineer and inventor Robert Fulton (1765-1815).

In 2019, amid NYCHA’s capital-repair backlog, the de Blasio administration considered working with private developers to redevelop parts of Fulton Houses. The development is located in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood where median asking rent is $3,462. The plan proposed by the city includes demolishing and rebuilding two buildings and a parking garage in the housing project and replacing them with three larger buildings of which 70 percent would be market-rate and 30 percent would be “affordable enough” for current residents; and to turn over management to a private developer.^[5][6][7][8] Some residents opposed the proposal, arguing that public-housing tenants had limited input in land-use decisions, noting that previous conversions of public housing came with a 57 percent rent increase.^[9] Average monthly rent for residents is $660.^[5]

Development firms Related Companies and Essence Development proposed demolishing and then rebuilding this housing project and the nearby Chelsea-Elliott Houses in early 2023.^[10] In a survey in June 2023, residents of the Chelsea-Elliott Houses and Fulton Houses voted in favor of demolishing the existing towers and constructing a 3,500-unit apartment complex on the same site. At the time, NYCHA officials estimated that the complexes needed about $1 billion in repairs and that it would cost about as much to build new complexes on the site.^[11][12] PAU, COOKFOX Architects, and ILA were hired in early 2024 to design the Fulton Elliott-Chelsea Plan, which would involve converting 2,056 NYCHA apartments into mixed-income units.^[13] Under the plan, six new towers would be built on the two sites before the existing buildings were demolished.^[14] NYCHA's board approved the redevelopment of the Fulton Houses and Elliot-Chelsea Houses in November 2024.^[15][16] The proposed cost for the two projects had risen to $1.9 billion by early 2025.^[17] Opponents sued to prevent the demolition of the buildings; the lawsuit gained notice after their lawyers were caught using generative artificial intelligence in legal filings.^[18][19]

In 2025, NYCHA reported that Fulton Houses included 581 senior apartments, 63 households with a child under age six, 260 households with children aged 6 to 17, 391 single-person households, and 121 households with four or more people.^[20]

• Shawn Wayans (born 1971), actor
• Marlon Wayans (born 1972), actor and comedian
• Keenan Ivory Wayans
• Damon Wayans
• Kim Wayans

• New York City Housing Authority