Bronx tenants launch campaign to buy hip-hop birthplace

Tenants of a Bronx affordable housing complex known as the birthplace of hip hop are teaming up with pioneer hip-hop artist DJ Kool Herc and Senator Charles Schumer to raise money through an online fundraising website, www.save1520.org. The tenants at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue want to purchase the property and stop its sale to developer Mark Karasick. The tenants must raise $14 million to purchase the building, a non-negotiable price set by Karasick, AMNY reported today.

In the mid-1970s, DJ Kool Herc , born Clive Campbell, began to define the emerging hip-hop genre by spinning records for parties in the basement of the 100-unit complex. Tenants say the building is a hip hop monument as well as an affordable place to live. The building, built in 1969 as part of the state’s Mitchell-Lama program, has been designated as eligible for listing on the national and state registers of historic places. TRD