Fred F. French
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Fred Fillmore French (1883-1936) was a real estate tycoon. He was born in Manhattan.
He was responsible for building Tudor City, a housing development on Manhattan's East Side for the rising middle class in the 1920s. He also built Knickerbocker Village, a low-income housing development on the Lower East Side between the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge. The Fred F. French Building in New York City is named after him.
French and his company served as the developer and landlord of Knickerbocker Village, and when the tenants were to take possession of their apartments, they found conditions to be unliveable.[1] Facilities were either unfinished or poorly equipped, including non-working elevators, and inoperable laundry rooms.[2] The tenants formed the Knickerbocker Village Tenants Association and started a strike, withholding their rent checks until their grievances were dealt with. The conflict that arose from the tenants' dissatisfaction led to New York City's rent control laws.
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