182 Northern (now Cabrini) Avenue at 182nd Street
New York, N.Y. 10033

Dr. Charles V. Paterno (1877-1946) was the person most responsible for the residential development of the area of Fort Washington along the Hudson River. The Paterno family arrived in New York from southern Italy and became involved in apartment house construction. Paterno trained as a medical doctor, but after his father's death in 1899, became an active builder throughout Manhattan. In 1905, he purchased land along the Hudson River, south of 187th Street, and constructed a grand marble mansion known as "Paterno's Castle." Paterno acquired additional land in the 1920s, on which he erected the picturesque English Tudor style Hudson View Gardens complex in 1923-24, one of New York City's earliest middle-class cooperatives. In 1938-39, after moving to Connecticut, Paterno replaced the castle with the Castle Village apartment complex. This series of five buildings was the first in America to employ the progressive European idea of setting tall residential towers in a park-like setting.