Eugene Sternberg - Housing

Housing

In 1962 Sternberg participated in a competition for the design of Avondale, a large urban renewal project in Denver. His design was the first choice of the Denver Planning Department staff, but was not the one selected by the Planning Commission.

Very little affordable, attractive housing for the elderly was available in Denver and it gave Sternberg great satisfaction to be involved in a number of senior housing projects. East Kentucky Homes, built in 1959, offered a variety of accommodations from studios to 2-bedroom units, and a center with needed facilities for meal service, medical care and community gatherings. It was sponsored by a group of Protestant churches. The firm also designed in 1964 a high rise development on E. 13th Ave. and High St. for DESCI (Denver Educational Senior Citizens, Inc.), an organization of retired Denver public school teachers. The 1962 Geneva Village was a project in Littleton for a national organization of retired head waiters. A high rise senior housing building (1969) for the African American community was part of a planned community development sponsored by Zion Baptist Church.

In 1950, Sternberg became involved for the first time in the design of public housing in Denver. He was consultant architect to Earl Morris, a long-established Denver architect, on the site plan and building design for Sun Valley Homes, a 200-unit project. Sternberg had been an outspoken critic of the Denver Public Housing Authority's projects. He fought strenuously against the rigid and demeaning limitations imposed at the time by the Housing Authority to appease the political opposition of private home builders. Public housing projects had to be built on sites no commercial homebuilder would consider for development. These sites were isolated from other housing, and the buildings had to be designed so as to look worse than the poorest private housing. In spite of these obstacles, Morris and Sternberg did achieve some limited improvements. They introduced duplexes, in contrast to the customary high-rise buildings or long barracks-like row houses that characterized most public housing of the day. The subdivision plan eliminated the conventional grid street pattern, resulting in greater intimacy and safety from traffic for the residents.

In 1954 Eugene D. Sternberg and Associates were commissioned to design Sun Valley Homes Annex, a 220-unit addition to the original Public Housing Project. He regarded this as a development that fell far short of his high aspirations for successful public housing. He had to abide by the same mean-spirited limitations as in the earlier project. Homes in the Sun Valley projects were isolated and had no easy access to public transportation, shopping or community facilities. Many years later, Sternberg felt some vindication when the Denver Housing Authority decided that it had erred in not providing any community facilities for its housing projects. In 1965 he was commissioned to design five community centers - Auraria, Rude Park, Stapleton, Curtis Park, J. Q. Newton - to rectify the error and improve the residents' quality of life. The research for this commission led to the publication of Sternberg's second architectural book, Community Centers and Student Unions, which he wrote in cooperation with his wife Barbara Sternberg.