Over the years, Grinnell residents have reach out to each other with many and various types of communication, from early newsletters published during the days before co-oping, to fliers preceding elections (with vigorous support for one candidate or another), to informative newsletters. Since 2007, the Board of Directors has sponsored publication of The Grinnell Newsletter.
Contributor: Matthew Spady
Co-oping was not an easy experience at the Grinnell.  Here is a flier from a rally the Grinnell Tenants Association held in June 1980, a time when they were organized, improving the Grinnell's building systems, and ready to buy the building from the City of New York, only to learn that the United Mutual Savings Bank had taken interest and wanted to buy the building from the city.
Contributor: Vera Sims
Our Photos : Out of the Attic, Grinnell Memorabilia
A page from the Grinnell OPTIMISTCover of a booklet residents prepared about the Grinnell's historyThe Grinnell Gazette, Vol 1, No. 3 (page 1)The Grinnell Newsletter
Apartment have no attics, at least not usually, but that doesn't stop us from saving bits and pieces of our lives, memories tucked away in a hatbox at the back of the closet shelf, or stuffed into the bottom drawer of the china closet, or perhaps even organized neatly in a file cabinet. 

What better time than our 100th birthday to take these items out of storage, dust them off, and share them with each other and our friends?








In 1970, tenants Eric Broudy and Tom Beeler editors of an inhouse newspaper called The Grinnell OPTIMIST, produced a Grinnell Directory containing residents names and contact information along with emergency numbers.  A paragraph in the forward captures the spirit of those days:

The recent "renaissance" of cooperation among tenants bespeaks a way of life that present urban conditions make not only desirable, but perhaps also inevitable for sane city living.  To facilitate cooperation and tenant communication, we offer this Directory to the tenants of The Grinnell.
Contributors: Alta Waldau and Mark Gordon
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The residents of 800 Riverside Drive celebrating community, a unique sense of place, and an architectural gem