Eddie Carmel was a Palestinian-American actor, singer, sideshow performer, writer, salesman, comedian and poet who had a pituitary gland disorder that caused him to grow upwards of 7 feet tall. He was very passionate about singing and acting and formed his own rock-and-roll band called Frankenstein and the Brain Surgeons. He released two 45 records. He was known as an incredibly kind and compassionate person with a big heart.

Photographer, Diane Arbus visited the family and conducted the photo shoot above in 1970. Eddie and his parents lived on Elgar Place in Co-op City.

Co-op City (short for Cooperative City) is a housing community located in the Bronx, New York and as of the 2010 census, it is the largest housing cooperative in the world. The site of Co-op city used to be an amusement park in the early 1960s called Freedomland U.S.A. And construction of the housing community wasn’t started until 1966. It consists of 35 high rise buildings and seven clusters of townhouses with a total of over 15,000 residences. (I’m well aware that my pictures are very amateur, haha. It was the best I could get at the time)

The first two pictures of Eddie Carmel with his parents were taken at their apartment in Co-op City in the Bronx, New York by famed photographer, Diane Arbus. The last two photos are ones I took of Co-op City on a recent trip to New York.