In 2015, I stumbled across the Amalgamated Housing Co-Operative in the Bronx, the northern-most borough of New York City. As a long-time housing worker, campaigner and trade unionist, I was intrigued by homes of such obvious quality that, I learned, had been built through the efforts of the labour movement. My interest deepened when, in 2021, I lived in the Bronx for six months as a Fulbright Scholar. I discovered that the Amalgamated was one of several housing co-ops developed in the 1920s by union members in the textile industry, many of them first generation immigrant Jewish socialists. They went on to build 40,000 homes insulated from the volatile housing market by their co-op status, most of which remain as housing that working class New Yorkers can afford.

As ever, such achievements were won through collective struggle. But if one person can lay claim to that legacy, it is Abraham Eli Kazan (1888 – 1971). With further research, I realised that Kazan did not have a biographer, despite having left an indelible mark on his adopted city. I decided to fill that gap.

In January 2024, thanks to a bursary from the SSLH, I travelled to snowy Ithaca, a small city in New York state, about 200 miles north-west of Manhattan. Ithaca is the home of Cornell University, an ‘ivy league’ institution, but one that includes the Industrial and Labor Relations School (ILR), which holds an extensive labour movement archive in its Kheel Center.

One of the first of hundreds of documents I handled in my week there was an IOU for $100,000, signed by Kazan, dated 13 October 1927, in favour of The Forward, the left-leaning Yiddish-language newspaper that, at the time, had a daily circulation of 300,000. The Forward had agreed to lend the money to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), through which Kazan was developing the homes in the Bronx I first visited in 2015 and which gives the co-op its name.

The documents I read at Cornell illustrate the power, ambition and impact of New York’s 20th Century labour movement. Kazan was a relatively obscure, unassuming figure, but he associated with better know leaders like Sydney Hillman, the long-time leader of the ACWA and David Dubinksy, from its rival International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU). Kazan also worked with and against people from outside the trade unions. In the late 1950s, he was developing another co-op in Coney Island, Brooklyn. On 29th July 1959, Kazan wrote to his near contemporary and similarly influential sometime ally, Robert Moses, the ‘master builder’ of New York City, complaining about a rival for the Brooklyn site, the father of an infamous son, Fred Trump

The work of Kazan and his comrades was not restricted to housing. Simultaneously, they used the unions to cultivate cultural activities. At the various co-op sites, there were extensive arts and education programmes, some of which survive. Although it would be wrong to completely absolve them of the deep racism of US society, particularly around housing, the union housing co-ops made efforts to promote integration, such as at another of its developments, Rochdale Village in Queens (named in honour of the co-operative pioneers from the Lancashire town).

After a week in Ithaca, I spent several days in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the source of many of Kazan’s accomplishments. After arriving in the US in 1904, from Imperial Russia, he first settled in Willett Street, also the location of another of the union housing co-ops he inspired. A nearby street was named in his honour in 1969. Just up the road is the imposing former headquarters of the Forward, whose money helped get him started.

One of my main purposes for writing Kazan’s story is to celebrate an example of trade unions finding a practical way to address a key concern of its members – truly affordable, good quality housing. Nearly 100 years later, that issue has intensified, in New York and beyond. There are lessons from the movement’s history that should not be forgotten. My research at Cornell, supported by SSLH, will contribute to a biography of Abraham Kazan I’m writing, due for publication in 2027, coinciding with the centenary of his first housing cooperative.

Since January 2024, Dr Glyn Robbins has been a Senior Lecturer at London Metropolitan University. Before that, he was a housing worker for over 30 years. He is a life-long supporter of the labour movement and is secretary of Tower Hamlets Trades Council.

Find out more about bursaries on offer from the Society for the Study of Labour History.