Rochdale Village, Queens  Rochdale Village (pronounced ) is a housing cooperative and neighborhood in the southeastern corner of the New York City borough of Queens. Located in Community District 12, Rochdale Village is grouped as part of Greater Jamaica, corresponding to the former Town of Jamaica. It is adjacent to four other Queens neighborhoods: St. Albans to the east, South Jamaica to the west, Locust Manor to the north, and Springfield Gardens to the south across the Belt Parkway. Rochdale is about off the Queens/Nassau border and about north of the John F. Kennedy International Airport. Rochdale Village was named after the English town of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where the Rochdale Pioneers developed the Rochdale Principles of cooperation. The architect's concept of Rochdale Village was an attractive community covering 122 blocks that would provide the residents with a park-like setting and facilities of suburbia, within the limits of the Urban Jamaica Area. Rochdale Village was designed to be a "city within a city" when it was planned beginning in 1939, in order to boost tourism to the surrounding area also including Springfield Gardens, Rosedale, and Laurelton. The property is the former site of Jamaica Race Course, which was the area's only tourist site and was operated by the Metropolitan Jockey Club and its successor, the Greater New York Association (now the New York Racing Association.) When the NYRA decided to renovate Greater Jamaica's other track, Aqueduct Racetrack (in South Ozone Park), it also decided to close Jamaica Race Course when the Aqueduct Racetrack's improvements were finished. Jamaica Race Course was shut down in 1959 and demolished. Rochdale Village was developed under the Mitchell-Lama Housing Program to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income families. The architect, Herman Jessor, was inspired by the Le Corbusier model. Construction soon proceeded at a rapid pace on the new community in Queens. When Rochdale Village opened, it was the largest private cooperative housing complex in the world until Co-op City in the Bronx was completed in 1971. Rochdale Village was originally between 10 and 20 percent African American and 80 to 90 percent white. This caused controversy before the start of construction, as black people could not participate in Rochdale Village's construction. The Rochdale Village complex was supposed to be the model for mixed-race housing in the U.S., but then became symbolic of the Civil Rights Movement, which was ongoing during the complex's construction; for instance, twenty-three protesters were detained for disrupting the construction in 1961, including William Booth, the future head of mayor John V. Lindsay's Human Rights Commission.