Dear Editor:
I was saddened to read that Walter Barry, who with his son Joe founded Hoboken’s Applied Housing, had passed away last month at the age of 99. For those of us who were around in the 1970’s Walter is a legendary figure.
Looking at the city now, it is difficult to imagine what Hoboken was like in those days – a low-budget, largely immigrant town, in economic decline and plagued with dilapidated slums. In many ways it was a microcosm of urban America in that era. The “brownstone revolution,” starting in the mid-70’s, has almost entirely transformed the city. Yet in spite of that, there remains a remarkable diversity of ethnic and economic groups. More than any other single individual Walter Barry can be credited with this outcome. There were literally thousands of people who were able to continue living in Hoboken in buildings rehabilitated by Applied Housing.
I remember being amazed to see entire blocks of slums – the “Tootsie Roll” and “Yellow” flats, and many others – transformed into attractive, well managed and maintained, low-income housing. Where housing “projects” had a negative connotation in most American cities, here they were a source of pride. Hoboken was touted across the country as a model of how subsidized housing could coexist and thrive in a rapidly gentrifying city. Here, somehow, a small measure of social justice would be salvaged from the massive disruption and displacement of the immigrant communities of Old Hoboken.
We old timers know, of course, that Joe Barry was the legal and technical brains of the Applied operation. But Walter was its heart and soul. Much credit goes to those early tenants. There was an “esprit de corps” in those days, a feeling that they were part something important. It was Walter’s vision and inspired leadership that pulled it all together.
This is a truly American story. We are the best country in the world (not perfect, to be sure) at welcoming and integrating diverse immigrant communities into our social fabric and body politic. Thanks to Walter Barry Hoboken stands a little prouder on this score.
Tom Newman