The New City Architecture and Urban Renewal
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The new city architecture and urban renewal Author Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) Date 1967 Publisher [publisher not identified] Exhibition URL www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2593 The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history— from our founding in 1929 to the present—is available online. It includes exhibition catalogues, primary documents, installation views, and an index of participating artists. MoMA © 2017 The Museum of Modern Art The New City: Architectureand Urban Renewal The Museum of Modern Art, New York It,, aifcil il ^4* itii a, V|«ad|t *5 * |I \m i r >xl Wrfslt?' it WW' mwml i« we & fc#;es^v* r' Uf -T" k r£.,w --!JiiUii s-V « ?w 21'<-M 4 ei ml 6f: ^ii.3B 1 THE MUSEUM OF MODERN , u. Received LIBRARY THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART This exhibition was made possible by the generous support of the folloiving foundations and individuals: The New City: Received The J. M. Kaplan Fund, Inc. Frances and John L. Loeb Foundation van Ameringen Foundation Architectureand Mrs. W. Vincent Astor Mrs. Douglas Auchincloss Urban Renewal An exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York January 23-March 13, 1967 Copyright © 1967 The Museum of Modern Art Library of Congress Catalogue Number 67-28526 1 A Perspectiveon Planning Sidney J. Frigand former deputy executive director of the new york city planning commission Considering that cities have been in existence some In somewhat jarring contrast to this celluloid eight or nine thousand years, urban planning is a reverie is the chromium image of New York that is relatively new field of study. While individual aspects designed in Detroit. Typical of this are the ideas of urban life have been under scrutiny by scholars explored at our World's Fairs, where we are told to for centuries, the city as a totality had eluded us as expect a high-horsepowered Valhalla, with glass-cov a subject for comprehensive analysis. ered bugs whizzing along 36-lane superhighways; All is now changed, however. World-wide popula helicopters whirring overhead like flies over a trash tion movement toward our urban centers is reaching can ; and moving ramps connecting structures shaped avalanche proportions. It is estimated that by the like bagels, mushrooms and Cadillac fins. Omitted year 2000, some 275 million Americans will be liv somehow in this great megalopolitan mish-mash of ing in our cities. This roaring cascade of new people, the future is any indication of what in the world new problems and the complications of old problems these buildings are for. Or, for that matter, what the has swept upon the local scene a new crop of "urban city is for. affairs experts" and, of course, their anti-beings, the I have been somewhat cruel in depicting these urban affairs critics. images, not because there isn't some validity in many The combined speculations of experts and critics of these yearnings, but because they have a delusory have evolved a new art form. Learned tomes and quality that diverts us from the realities of the city searing articles on our cities are being put out each today—and its real promises for tomorrow. I suspect day. Most of them seem to have troubled titles. Words that our civic daydreams are a symptom of impend like "death," "shame," and "necropolis" have be ing maturity. We are growing up as a city, and we come ominous prefixes to the fair municipal name. are now being seized with the same sense of awe And the city of New York, which is built on superla and terror that grips the adolescent who suddenly tives, has become the standard for such critical self- realizes he has come of age and must take on the scrutiny. responsibilities of manhood. As James Morris, an The very size and grandeur of New York seem observant British journalist, noted in his recent book, to have a hallucinogenic effect upon those who seek Cities: New York "is no longer the gauche nouvelle- to project the city's future. There is enough of New riche of her lingering reputation. She has achieved a York to kindle the fires of imagination in every mind civilization if not as mellow, at least as close-knit and —and every mind runs its course of individual tastes, complete as the culture of the old European capi prejudices and dreams. Which New York are we tals. Power weighs heavily upon her shoulders planning for? nowadays, and makes her a rather terrifying place." Is it the glamorous, musical comedy city in which all the women look like Doris Day and wear frilly The Bad Seed aprons over imported Italian knits? Where everyone lives in technicolored duplexes with antiseptic chil The city of New York was conceived as a specula dren, precocious dogs, and dark-skinned servants tive real estate venture by the Dutch, who discovered who are wise, warm and witty, but never seem to at an early date that their raggle-taggle offspring was have families, friends or reasons for being? going to run her own life her way. Others have suggested that a popular fantasy-ver It is amusing to note that the first master plan for sion of Greenwich Village might be the prototype for the city was prepared on April 22, 1625 in Holland, our City of Tomorrow. Here we find a city which, probably by the very same group of planners who as Roger Starr once described it, "is like an old would produce the Great Plan of Amsterdam in 1640. Grace Moore movie." This is the place with lovely This master plan for New Amsterdam was handed old brownstones and happy-go-lucky landlords, an over to the Dutch West India Company for imple cient tenements with joyous people all hanging mentation by an engineer with the improbable name out of the windows singing to the passing truck driv of Cryn Fredericxsz. By the following year the plan ers. It is the city where teenagers say "golly" and was abandoned. From that point on, planning has "gee," where all decisions are made at little town been sitting in the back seat while the city careened hall meetings, and where butchers, bookies and exis into its future. tentialists all join hands and dance among the back The matter of land economics and the topography alley garbage cans. of Manhattan island have also conspired against 2 planned urban development in New York. The slim and drive-ins compete for attention ; and, perhaps of pencil-shaped island was first settled at the very tip. greatest concern, pedestrian rights to the use of the Expansion could take place in only one direction— city are now considered secondary to those of the "out of town." As a result, the demand for coveted auto. Yet, despite its voracious appetite for land, center-city land sent prices soaring. By the time whether it is moving on highways or stored in expen George Washington completed his second term of sive garages, the motor vehicle as we know it today is office, lots at Broadway and Maiden Lane were selling an inefficient means of transportation in our city. for $20 to $22 a square foot. At those prices redevel opment became a more attractive venture than new A Matter of Magnitude development in the hinterlands. The aspect of economic return has dominated the Perhaps the most challenging of New York's char building patterns of the city. Few structures were acteristics in terms of planning are its size, its scope built that did not either represent a business venture and its density. As a city grows larger there appears or a physical expression of wealth—as in the case of to be a geometric progression of complexity. New the Fifth Avenue mansions and town houses which York is more than two Chicagos or four Philadel- proliferated in the latter part of the 19th Century. phias. Statistical comparisons can be dangerous in That so many of these elegant eclectic showplaces making plans and allocating resources. When, for have been razed for new structures is indicative of example, the city decided to attempt an urban re the ruthlessness of the market to satisfy its thirst for newal project near the Bowery, it had to consider profit returns. Even the impregnable Vanderbilt first the problem of homeless men who traditionally clan, which in its heyday housed its cousins and its have frequented the flophouses and the adjoining sisters and its aunts in 60 town houses and mansions streets in this area. This is nothing new to other throughout the city, has surrendered all but a few cities. But the fact that New York can attract some to the Tishmans, the Urises and the latter-day land 17,000 homeless men—a city in itself—meant that an barons. The city's push for front-office lebensraum entire bureaucracy had to be developed to deal with has resulted in the postwar construction of some the problem. 75,000,000 square feet of posh new space, more than We call New York a city, but it is very much a all the existing office space, old and new, in the 22 vast city-state— and a welfare state at that. In popu next largest cities of the country combined! lation, it is larger than any of the Scandinavian nations (whose cities, our critics tell us, are much Space and Motion ahead of us in planning) and larger than 65 percent of all the sovereign nations of the world. Its budget This cannibalistic way of life is not the only fac ary expenditures each year are greater than India's tor which complicates planning in New York.