08/22/2026
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=122113738335369717&set=a.122101610895369717&type=3
In 1916, sixteen Finnish immigrant families in Sunset Park, Brooklyn decided they were done paying rent to landlords who did not answer their letters, so they pooled their savings and built their own building instead. They called it Alku, Finnish for 'beginning,' and it became the first nonprofit housing cooperative in the entire United States. 🏗️
Members paid an initial buy in of five hundred dollars and a monthly fee far below the neighborhood's going rents, and in exchange they got modern heat, electricity, and plumbing in a building they governed themselves through a written constitution and bylaws. The idea spread fast. By 1922 the Finnish community had built twenty co-ops across what locals called Finntown, and by 1947 there were fifty scattered through Sunset Park, planting the seed for a co-op housing model that would eventually spread across the entire city.
Alku and its sister building Alku Toinen still stand today on 43rd Street in Sunset Park, brick and Arts and Crafts detailing intact, and both were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2019. It is easy to walk past them without knowing you are looking at the birthplace of an idea that reshaped how New Yorkers own their homes. Had you heard of Finntown before, or is this the first time this pocket of Brooklyn history has crossed your path? 🧡
