Sotomayor Houses

• 1. Introduction

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  In Soundview, the Bronx, stands a public housing project called the Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses and Community Center. For decades, the complex carried a different name, the Bronxdale Houses. In June 2010, officials renamed it to honor Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who had spent part of her childhood there. What was daily life like inside a Bronx housing project built in the middle of the twentieth century? And how did this single development become linked to the birth of a music genre, a heavyweight boxer, and a music executive? This documentary follows the buildings, the streets around them, and the people who called them home.

• 2. Raising A Bronx Complex

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  Construction gave Soundview 28 separate apartment buildings, and the complex opened its doors in January 1955. Close to 1,500 apartments filled those buildings, eventually housing about 3,500 residents across the site. Architects Leon and Lionel Levy designed the complex, laying out its buildings across 30.77 acres of the Bronx. Bruckner Boulevard runs along one edge of the property, with Watson, Soundview, and Leland Avenues marking its other borders. Within those boundaries, thousands of families built ordinary lives, unaware that a handful of their neighbors were about to help invent an entirely new sound.

• 3. A Cradle Of Hip-Hop

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  Disco King Mario, a DJ who lived in the development, became a central figure in the earliest days of hip-hop. His presence in the neighborhood placed the complex at the center of a movement that would grow far beyond the Bronx. The Black Spades, a group tied to the same buildings, shared credit for shaping that same emerging sound and culture. Years later, other residents of these same buildings would leave their own mark, from the boxing ring to the executive suite.

• 4. Residents Who Made Their Mark

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  Andre Harrell, born in 1960, grew up to become a rapper and music executive before his death in 2020. Sonia Sotomayor was born in 1954. Disco King Mario was born in 1956 and died in 1994. Bruse Wane, another rapper and music executive, called the same development home. Mitch "Blood" Green, a heavyweight boxer born in 1957, grew up among these buildings. Drag-On, born in 1980, became a rapper and joined the group Ruff Ryders. Drag-On's work with Ruff Ryders carried a Bronx voice from these same buildings into wider hip-hop circles for a new generation of listeners.