housing complex on the land. The Gross-Morton Company had also made an offer to buy the land, but it was not accepted. The New York Life Insurance Company chose Ralph Thomas Walker as the chief designer, and it signed a contract with the George A. Fuller Company, which had built the Flat Iron Building, to construct the apartment buildings. Construction cost the New York Life Insurance Company $35,000,000, . New York Life Insurance Company donated land on 69th Avenue at 195th Street to the city so it could build a school. In 1947, the New York City Board of Education awarded contracts of over $1,800,000, , to construct P.S. 26, an elementary school with a capacity of 1,494 students. On April 21, 1947, ground was broken for the school's construction. The school, P.S. 26, also known as the Rufus King School, opened in February 1949. P.S. 173 opened soon afterwards, in September 1949, at 69th Avenue and Fresh Meadows Lane. P.S. 173 was originally supposed to be built on the site of Utopia Playground one block west, but the school had been relocated due to opposition from Robert Moses, the New York City parks commissioner. The first twenty families moved into the Fresh Meadows Housing Development on September 2, 1947. As a result of housing segregation, New York Life Insurance Company did not allow black individuals to live in the Fresh Meadows Housing Development. It was also built to house local World War II veterans. The complex and its eponymous shopping center were among the first in the United States designed primarily to accommodate automobile traffic rather than pedestrian traffic. Apartment rents were between $74 and $108 per month, which included gas and electricity. In 1949, architectural critic Lewis Mumford described the Fresh Meadows housing complex as "perhaps the most positive and exhilarating example of large-scale community planning in this country." The construction of the final residential building, a 20-story apartment building at 67th Avenue and 192nd Street, was completed and ready for occupancy in May 1962. At the time the building's construction ended, 11,000 people were living in the Fresh Meadows Housing Development. New York Life Insurance Company built a 12-acre shopping center on 188th Street at Horace Harding Expressway. The shopping center was planned to include a Bloomingdale's, a movie theater, Canterbury Shops clothing store, Mary Lewis, Ormond Hosiery Shop, Woolworth's, Miles Shows, Buster Brown children's shoes, Selby