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Peter Cooper Village, New York City — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Peter Cooper Village is a post-war residential enclave on Manhattan's East Side, the northern half of the Stuyvesant Town complex in New York City.
About Peter Cooper Village
Where to stay in Peter Cooper Village
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Peter Cooper Village sits almost entirely on its own redbrick blocks, so most visitors bed down in the busier neighborhoods that press against its edges. Choose by which border you want. West of First Avenue the streets run toward Gramercy Park and its hotels, while south of 20th Street the East Village and Alphabet City spread out with smaller rooms and later nights.
Kips Bay lies a few blocks north.
About Peter Cooper Village
What are the main landmarks in Peter Cooper Village?
Here the complex itself is the sight. Peter Cooper Village fills the ground between 20th Street and 23rd Street with tall redbrick towers set among lawns, a planned landscape that reads as one enormous courtyard rather than a street grid. Cooper Union stands to the south.
West of First Avenue, the leafy fence of Stuyvesant Square marks the walk toward Gramercy, and beyond Avenue C the FDR Drive traces the East River.
What is the history of Peter Cooper Village?
The project grew out of the housing shortage that followed the Second World War. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company planned the towers, and the first completed building opened in 1947 as the northern companion to the larger Stuyvesant Town. The name honors Peter Cooper.
That 19th-century inventor and philanthropist founded Cooper Union, the school whose free instruction still carries his name across the East Village to the south.
Where is Peter Cooper Village?
Peter Cooper Village runs from 20th Street north to 23rd Street on Manhattan's East Side, bounded by First Avenue on the west and Avenue C toward the East River in the east, with Stuyvesant Town directly to the south.
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Updated July 2026