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The Metropolitan Dimension of Early Zoning: Revisiting the 1916 New York City Ordinance Raphael Fischler

Online Publication Date: 30 June 1998

To cite this Article Fischler, Raphael(1998)'The Metropolitan Dimension of Early Zoning: Revisiting the 1916 New York City Ordinance',Journal of the American Planning Association,64:2,170 — 188 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01944369808975974 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01944369808975974

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The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Metropolitan Dimension of Early Zoning Revisiting the 191 6 New York City Ordinance I J I Raphael Fischler

ertain facts seem beyond dispute. On July 25, 1916, the New York The first comprehensive zoning ordi- City Board of Estimate and Apportionment adopted an ordinance nance is generally seen as an exception: to control building volumes and land uses throughout Greater New while the rest of the country adopted C zoning to protect single-family resi- York. The resolution would become a cornerstone in the structure of dential areas, NewYorkdid so to ratio- North American land use regulation. It was the work of the Commission nalize the downtown market in high- on Building Districts and Restrictions and of the Heights of Buildings rise office buildings. This article argues Committee; the latter had first recommended the adoption of differenti- that the resolution was less excep- tional and more mainstream than is ated building regulations in 1913. The New York zoning system com- generally thought, and that its scope bined three use districts: one reserved for housing, one open to was metropolitan rather than local. commerce, and one where industrial activities were tolerated as well; five The authors of the code addressed is- height districts, in which buildings could not be higher than a certain sues that are still at the top of the planning agenda: residential segrega- multiple of the width of the street (from one to two-and-a-half);and five Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 tion and suburban flight from the cen- area districts, with progressively more stringent requirements for the tral city, infrastructure development minimum size of yards and courts and the maximum percentage of the and fiscal balance. A second look at the early work of the New York plan- lot covered. ners shows how varied their objectives As the well known story goes, the Committee on Building Heights were and how applicable their thinking and the Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions had worked still is. under heavy pressure from real estate and business owners who were anx- Fischler is an assistant professor in the ious to put an end to the damages wrought by uncontrolled development. School of Urban Planning at McCill Office buildings in the financial district were losing their light and air to University, Montreal. He does research higher and bulkier skyscrapers, while fancy retail stores on Fifth Avenue and teaches in the areas of land use were seeing their high-class status eroded by the intrusion of tall garment regulation, urban design, and project development, as well as in planning factories. The members of the two commissions-among whom were history and theory. planning pioneers and advocates such as Edward M. Bassett, Robert H. Whitten, and George B. Ford-built on the intellectual and technical Journal of the American Planning foundation laid by Benjamin Marsh, Lawrence Veiller, and other reform- Association, Vol. 64, No. 2, Spring 1998. "American Planning ers who had fought to reduce the congestion of population in Manhattan. Association, Chicago, IL. The commissions' work represented the latest and most ambitious efforts

i170 MA JOURNAL - SPMNG 1998 THE METROPOLITAN DIMENSION OF EARLY ZONING

of municipalities to control the design of buildings areas. Thus, two other historians explain, the ordi- and the use of land. Already, fire codes in many cities nance “aimed primarily at rationalizing the landscape forbade timber construction within a central zone; rather than at excluding ‘undesirables’ (like zoning housing codes regulated building volume and design laws elsewhere)” (Ward and Zunz 1992, 8). Although for multi-family residences; Boston’s height restric- the New York City code did contain important pro- tions differed from one part of the downtown area to visions for protecting residential areas, those were the other; New York State allowed for the creation of secondary to the regulations about downtown cop- residential areas in its second-class cities. But the New mercial property. “The story of zoning in New York,” York City ordinance went further: it was the first com- Weiss concludes, “is primarily the saga of the growth prehensive zoning ordinance, that is, the first ordi- of the Manhattan skyscraper” (Weiss 1992a, 47)’ nance that applied both use and bulk restrictions to From this perspective, New York zoning was the the entire municipal territory. brainchild of property and financial interests working Yet history, and certainly the history of zoning in to regularize real estate markets and to foster the de- particular, are products of interpretation and hence velopment of the corporate city. This is the vision that the subjects of disagreement. According to William prevails, implicitly or explicitly, in the classic works of Munro, leader of the National Municipal League, “the S. J. Makielski, Jr. (1966) and Seymour Toll (1969), as zoning idea came not from the property owner but well as in the more recent essays ofMarc Weiss (1992a; from the officials of city administration, and its first 1992b). The accounts of these historians are thorough advance was with the purpose of helping public ad- and detailed; the events they relate, however, take ministration by making it more orderly, diminishing place in a circumscribed spatial arena, downtown its difficulties, and reducing needless outlays” (Munro Manhattan, and revolve around a limited set of issues, 1931, 203). Writing at the same time as Munro, the mainly the regulation of office and loft development.z lawyer W. L. Pollard cited the reduction of “friction In thus narrowing their vision, the authors highlight and strife” in urban environments (Pollard 1931, 33); the uniqueness of the situation from which the 1916 he also emphasized the uglier side of the zoning effort, ordinance emerged and bring back to life some of the pointing out that “racial hatred played no small part individuals and groups who left their imprint on in bringing to the front some of the early districting American urban history. ordinances which were sustained by the United States But history comprises more than the masterful re- Supreme Court, thus giving us our first important alization of particular objectives. Zoning made its way zoning decisions” (17). In our own era, Richard Bab- so quickly into so many municipal codes throughout cock has stressed the class bias inherent in zoning, ar- North America in large part because it meant different guing that “far from being a ‘negative tool’ zoning has things to different people (Scott 1971,192-3). Though been a positive force shaping the character of the mu- real estate and business interests played a leading role nicipality to fits [sic] its frequently vague but neverthe- in the inception and diffusion of zoning, planning ad- less powerful [social and political] preconceptions,” in vocates, professional reformers, and public officials particular those about the sanctity of the single-family were other key parties in the formulation and adop-

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 home and the segregation of rich from poor (Babcock tion of municipal regulations (Revel1 1992). Within 1966, 123). the legal profession, those “who were instrumental in With respect to the 1916 code of New York City, the enactment and judicial approval of American zon- however, there has been little disagreement. As formu- ing laws . . . were a mixed group, with mixed motives” lated by Marc Weiss, the consensus is that “New York‘s (Power 1989,ll). Stabilizing real estate values and fos- pioneering zoning law stands as an anomaly in United tering economic growth, protecting residential areas States urban history because its basic, political, and and reinforcing spatial segregation, limiting the in- regulatory thrust had its roots in a very different issue fluence of political machines and institutionalizing than the mainstream of the early twentieth century scientific city planning- these and other goals besides zoning movement” (Weiss 1992a, 47). Throughout the were all central to the program of public regulation country, the most fervent early supporters of zoning (Randle 1990). In New York City as well as in other were developers and homeowners who sought to cities, the zoning movement drew energy from the shield higher-income residential neighborhoods from struggle for political and institutional reform, a strug- the intrusion of lesser uses and people. This is what gle in which “upper and middle class reform activists, Weiss calls the “Los Angeles model” of zoning. In New prominent business leaders, spokesmen for minority York, on the other hand, the most vocal proponents ethnic or racial groups, dissident Democrats and Re- of zoning were real estate men who wanted to protect publicans” uneasily and temporarily joined forces property values in Manhattan’s better office and retail (Shefter 1988, 145). From this second perspective, the

APA JOURNALmSPRING 1998 1171 RAPHAEL FISCHLER

1916 ordinance is interesting not for its specificity but its passage we find the same social, political and for its inner diversity, not for its uniqueness but for its economic problems that have underlain zoning and mainstream character. Geographically, this perspective planning controversies to this date. The law was com- embraces the outer boroughs as well as Manhattan, prehensive not only geographically but also concep- giving us a view of Greater New York as a whole; con- tually. ceptually, it encompasses issues of suburban develop- This article reviews some of the principal planning ment and social segregation as well as problems of issues that were at stake in the adoption of the 1916 skyscraper and loft development, enabling us to see resolution, in order to show how the zoning work in the ordinance as an experiment in city planning rather New York then was much more similar to other plan- than as a regulatory exercise. ning efforts, both in the early days of the profession The difference between the narrower and the and today, than is generally thought. The important wider historical perspective is nicely illustrated by two issues are familiar still to all students of land use plan- headlines in the real estate section of the New Yo& ning and regulation: the preservation of residential The first one, from April 1913, explained the neighborhoods and the segregation of social groups, work of the newly created Heights of Buildings Com- the management of urban infrastructure, and the mittee: control of municipal finances. Each issue has been touched upon in the historical literature. But each de- COMMITTEE ON REGULATING THE serves greater attention than it has been given, and HEIGHT OF BUILDINGS PLANNING TO calls for analysis within the wider framework of metro- STUDY CONDITIONS IN VARIOUS LOCALI- politan development. Complementing the existing lit- TIES erature on the first comprehensive zoning code by Fifth Avenue and Its Commercial Area Likely to exploring certain connected issues in greater depth Command Prime Attention-Fifteen Structures will help us see that, despite the exceptional status of Over Twelve Stories Now on the Thoroughfare New York City among American cities and despite the from Twelfth to Fifty-ninth Street-Congested passage of time, the 1916 ordinance can serve as a par- Centres off Skyscrapers a Serious Menace-Rob- adigm for American city planning in the twentieth ert Grier Cooke Tells of Business Support to Ob- century. tain a Restricted Maximum Limit.4 The second title, from July 1916, announced the adop- Defining the Problem tion of the “Building Limitations act as recommended Important reforms that have been in the offing for by the Commission on Building Districts and Restric- a long time generally need dramatic events or sudden tions”: changes in order to be placed on the public agenda. Such was the case in New York City (Makielski 1966; NEW PLAN FOR BUILDING HEIGHTS AND Toll 1969). Owners and operators of retail property RESTRICTED AREAS WILL STABILIZE VAL- along midtown Fifth Avenue called for public inter- UES, HOME AND BUSINESS CONDITIONS vention to save their prime shopping district-which Most Important Act for Future Welfare of the

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 they had created on the territory of a formerly majes- City next to Great Rapid Transit Improve- tic residential area- from an ongoing invasion by ments-Skyscrapers Not Barred but Regulated- manufacturing lofts. They were joined in their request Result of Over Three Years’ Study of Municipal by real estate interests (developers, owners, lenders, Needs.s brokers) in the downtown office market, who saw The public awareness of the problem and the enact- good buildings lose their access to light and air, and ment of legal measures were separated not only by sev- hence their rental value, to new skyscrapers built too eral years of hard work, but also by a significant close (Weiss 1992b). Both groups suffered from the enlargement of the scope of public intervention. Busi- same problem: the height of the new buildings drove ness players were powerful, but they were not the only down returns on previous real estate investments. ones on the field; Manhattan skyscrapers and stores, First, tall buildings added more leaseable space than though matters of concern, were far from the only the market could absorb, which caused a drop in rents; ones. The new code was the product of a mixed set of this, in turn, allowed lower-class tenants to rent spaces actors who had tackled a variety of issues. What makes adjacent to higher-class ones (for instance, garment the case of the 1916 ordinance so important to plan- manufacturers locating among chic retailers). Second, ning history is not only the fact that it was the first tall structures forced their neighbors to rely on artifi- city-wide ordinance of its kind; it is also the fact that cial lighting and ventilation, turned streets into dim in the debates going on in New York before and after “canyons,” and created sharp contrasts in scale and

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style in the urban landscape. The problem having been Estimate and Apportionment 1913, 1). What had defined as one of building height, officials responded started as an attempt by influential New Yorkers to to the public outcry by establishing a Heights of obtain public protection from ill-considered private Buildings Committee. Its work would set the basis for development was quickly submerged into a much the future zoning ordinance. larger effort, by property interests as well as by profes- In fact, the Heights of Buildings Committee soon sional reformers and municipal officials, to develop a focused on much more than building heights. Its comprehensive scheme of land use and building regu- members understood that the problem of tall build- lation. In the view of Marc Weiss, “Fifth Avenue . . . ings was only one aspect of a more general problem, was not really the principal long-term issue” (Weiss or rather, of two general problems-urban congestion 1992a, 52); office property in lower Manhattan was. and the instability of real estate values-whose scope For Seymour Toll, however, the skyscraper itself was extended far beyond the corporate and retail areas only a “precipitating problem” in the emergence of where tall buildings multiplied. Congestion was an ail- zoning in New York City (Toll 1969, 196). There, as ment of the financial center, but also of the immigrant elsewhere, multiple goals and mixed motives drove a slum. “We use the term [congestion] very easily,” Law- concerted effort to protect valuable property in single- rence Veiller recognized at the second meeting of the use areas and to submit development to the higher National Conference on City Planning and the Prob- requirements of health, beauty and efficiency. lems of Congestion, “but some of us mean one thing What made the regulatory effort in New York City by it, and others something quite different” (Veiller much more than an attempt to control the spread of 1910b, 73).6Congestion gave people with different po- tall buildings was at the same time what made it so litical agendas a common object of concern (Foglesong mainstream, rather than marginal, in the zoning 1986) and helped to “catalyze the disparate planning movement. This wider significance of early New York movement into a national organization” (Kantor zoning pertains not to the areas of Manhattan that 1983,58). In New York City, the fight against conges- made the city so unique, but to the neighborhoods tion brought together office developers and housing where ordinary life was carried on; not to the special reformers, advocates of scientific planning and owners problem of skyscraper development, but to the issues of luxury shops. While some worked to prevent fur- of residential segregation and infrastructure manage- ther densification by skyscrapers, others aimed to pre- ment that were already the bread and butter of land vent the spread of crowded tenement neighborhoods use regulation and planning. In terms of historiogra- in the areas developing outside Manhattan. The stabil- phy, the regulation of the height and bulk of office ity of property values was also a concern shared widely towers is the tip of the iceberg. The other “phases” of across both the private and the public sector (Revell city planning, as early-century planners would have 1992, 32-5). In the private sector, it preoccupied the said, have remained submerged in our history of the owners of office buildings and fancy stores, and the 1916 ordinance, even though they were more impor- owners of expensive homes as well. The intrusion of tant socially and geographically than handling the undesirable uses raised as many cries for public inter- problem of the skyscraper. Popular support for the as Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 vention from residents in well-to-do neighborhoods sweeping regulations came not from compassion for from retailers on fashionable shopping streets. the troubles of Manhattan developers and retailers, Much more, then, was at stake than the construc- but from the self-interest of homeowners and taxpay- tion of tall buildings in the office core and along Fifth ers throughout the five boroughs. Government inter- Avenue; hence much more than establishing height vention derived its energy not only from the pressure limitations was on the agenda of the Heights of Build- applied by the rich and powerful, but also from the ings Committee. The mandate of the Committee’s zeal of officials and professionals to control the city’s members was to “ascertain and to report whether, in growth and its finances. their judgment, it is desirable to regulate the height, size and arrangement of buildings thereafter to be erected or altered, with due regard to their location, The Residential Dimension of the character or uses” and, second, to “investigate and re- 1916 Ordinance port, whether, in their judgment, it would be lawful The place of housing issues in the design of the and desirable for the purposes of such regulation to first comprehensive zoning code has received little at- divide the City into districts or into zones, and to pre- tention in the historical literature. The work of Rich- scribe the regulation of the height, size and arrange- ard Plunz, in particular his essay on how zoning ment of buildings upon different bases in such affected residential design in the outer boroughs, has dfferent districts or zones” (New York City Board of started to fill this gap (Plunz 1990; 1993). Plunz draws

APA JOURNALmSPRING 1998 1173 RAPHAEL FISCHLER

our attention to the fact that the makers of the 1916 makers chose to protect single-family areas indirectly, resolution deliberately sought to regulate develop- mainly by limiting the proportion of the lot that could ment in the outer boroughs in order to prevent the be built upon and establishing minimum areas of spread of urban congestion to newly urbanized areas. yards and courts that had to be left open. Frank B. Yet, he notes, their effort was only half-hearted: effec- Williams, legal counsel to the Commission on Build- tive protection for residential enclaves would entail ing Districts and Restrictions, recognized later that anti-growth measures that did not square with the the “handicap” was barely adequate in the selected “E” pro-growth attitudes of the times. The restrictions area districts, the so-called “villa districts,” and cer- therefore remained too lenient to protect low-density tainly “too slight to accomplish the purpose intended residential sections adequately from the development in the more encompassing “D” area districts (Williams pressures that new mass-transit lines generated. It was 1922,274, fn.). Another contributor to the ordinance, only in the 1920s and 1930s that New York City home- George B. Ford, agreed that the “D” and “E” zones, owners secured the adoption of more stringent re- though “intended primarily to preserve one- and two- strictions similar to those of many other cities. family house districts, . . . would not preclude tene- In the same year that New York adopted its com- ment houses” (Ford 1917,ll).Edward M. Bassett, who prehensive zoning ordinance, Berkeley, California gave chaired the Commission, later explained the choice to zoning what became its most cherished feature, the protect single-family homes indirectly as due to the exclusive single-family residential district. On March potential for legal challenges that explicit differentia- 28, 1916, the Berkeley City Council unanimously tion might create: adopted Ordinance No. 452, “creating a basis of classi- When Greater New York was zoned there was no fication by means of which the City of Berkeley may segregation of residence districts according to be divided into districts within some of which it shall the number of families in a dwelling. It was be lawful and within others of which it shall be unlaw- feared that courts would not uphold districting ful to erect, construct or maintain certain buildings, on that basis because of the difficulty of showing or to carry on certain trades or callings.” Section I of that the number of families, apart from space re- the ordinance reads: “Districts of Class I shall be that quirements per family, was substantially related portion or those portions of the City of Berkeley in to the health and safety of the community. For which no building or structure shall be erected, con- instance, a two-family house on a lot twice as structed or maintained which shall be used for or de- large as the lot for a one-family house might signed or intended to be used for any purpose other seem to be equally safe and healthful. Accord- than that of a single family dwelling” (City of Berkeley ingly control of the number of families was left 1916, l).’New York homeowners would benefit from to area-district regulations. (Bassett 1940, 63-4) a similar protection only twenty-two years later (Plunz 1993, 39). Bassett’s ((ultra-conservative”attitude (Williams 1922, It is hard to find two cities more different from 274) and his eagerness to tailor the new regulations to each other than New York City and Berkeley in 1913. prevailing conditions led logically to a zoning code

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 The American metropolis, with over 5 million inhabit- very unlike that of Berkeley. California’s legal, politi- ants, was (‘cosmopolitan in its population” and cal, and architectural traditions were quite different “equally cosmopolitan in its social problems” (Veiller from those of New York; its courts were more likely to 1910a, 8). It was (in)famous for its crowded tenements approve the explicit segregation of single-family hous- and luxurious French flats and berated for its “affinity ing districts, and its real estate leaders were interested for density” (Plunz 1990,93). New York was probably less, if at all, in the development of corporate sky- the only American city where an owner would dare to scrapers. advertise a flat as “An Apartment That Is a Real But the differences between New York City and Home.”s Berkeley, on the other hand, was a “residen- Berkeley should not blind us to the strong similarities tial suburban city,” ninety percent of whose housing between the motivations and preferences of the plan- stock comprised detached single-family residences ners on the two coasts. Though some were perhaps (Cheney 1917, 184). Given the very different condi- more fervent than others, all believed in the need to tions under which the two cities formulated and promote homeownership and to protect the single- adopted their respective zoning codes, the different family home. In New York City as in the rest of the levels of legal protection they afforded their home- country, the single-family house was an object of ven- owners are not surprising. eration among planners. There as elsewhere, then as While Berkeley officials explicitly set aside single- now, the lure of suburban living strongly influenced family residential areas, New York City decision- public decision-making. Though fewer New Yorkers

APA JOURNAL.SPRING 1998 THE METROPOLITAN DIMENSION OF EARLY ZONING

than Los Angelinos lived in homes and cottages, Cali- tory beautifully developed with single family dwellings fornia did not have a monopoly on the “love affair at great cost, well constructed, in condition to last for with single-family housing” or on the belief in the civic a hundred year, and have destroyed their value in large virtues of homeownership (Weiss 1987, 105). (The two measure” (New York City Board of Estimate and Ap- concepts, the single-family home and the suburban portionment 1916, 169). The Commission’s Find Re- neighborhood, overlap only partially: single-family port, as a whole, presented the protection of the home homes can be found in dense urban areas, and periph- as a primary goal of the proposed regulations. In an eral neighborhoods may contain multi-family hous- article entitled “‘A City of Homes’ Aim of Zoning ing. But both stand in contrast to the high-density Plan,” a journalist for the New York Times commented: tenement, where privacy and pride of ownership as “[Ilt is this importance of proper home life that is the well as air and light are lacking.) keynote of the report.”13To a certain extent, the decla- When community leaders and officials from New rations in the Commission’s report and in the Times York City asked the New York State Constitutional were mere political marketing.I4 Turning New York Convention of 1915 to expand the city’s power in mat- into Philadelphia, the original “city of homes,” could ters of zoning and planning, they emphasized the po- not reasonably constitute a planning objective, nor tential benefits of public intervention for the housing could anyone claim that bad housing conditions were situation, in particular the stimulus it could give to the principal catalyst of the zoning movement (Willis the construction of detached house^.^ New York‘s own 1993, 13). Lawrence Veiller, who devoted so much energy to im- As Edward Bassett explained, the rationale for proving living conditions in tenements, was also one public regulation was more complex: zoning was de- of the most vocal promoters of the single-family signed to deal with “congestion of housing and street home. At the Sixth National Conference on City Plan- traffic” and with “chaotic building conditions,” espe- ning, he argued: “[Tlhe multiple-dwelling is unques- cially in the business district, and was adopted because tionably a source of detriment to the development of “improper uses caused injury to homogeneous areas” any city and interferes greatly with proper social con- across the city. But among those areas, “one-family, ditions and the development of true civic spirit. A city detached-home districts, possessing trees and lawns” cannot be a city of home owners where the multiple- were particularly affected by unregulated building ac- dwelling flourishes” (Veiller 19 14, 104). For Veiller, tivities, as were better apartment areas. Therefore, “it effective protection of the home meant the explicit became apparent that regulations might be adopted exclusion of multi-family buildings from blocks or that would tend to stabilize some localities for one- even neighborhoods of one- or two-family homes.’O In family detached homes, others for apartment houses the eyes of many New Yorkers, the construction of a free from stores and factories” (Bassett 1940, 23-26). twelve-story apartment house in the private home area Weak though they were, the provisions of the zoning of upper Fifth Avenue presented “a striking object les- code with regard to housing expressed the genuine in- son of the urgent need of building and zoning restric- terest of New York City planners and officials in pro- tions.”’l Veiller and other proponents of government tecting residential areas and in securing the “suburban

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 regulation throughout the country “played a leading conditions of light and air” that they deemed essential role in nurturing the ideology that multifamily hous- to proper home life (New York City Board of Estimate ing was evil” (Baar 1992, 39).12In a modest but none- and Apportionment 1916,27). theless clear way, the zoning code reflected their bias. The similarity between New York and Berkeley The repeated invasions of neighborhoods by was not only ideological. Bassett and his colleagues apartment and commercial buildings, owners and re- were dealing with a city that “encompassed within its altors argued, undermined the ability of residents to boundaries the most disparate urban forms-from the see their houses as homes, as havens of peace and sta- densely textured canyons of the financial districts to bility. A contemporary observer complained that in the Arcadian idyll of the suburbs” (Stern, Gilmartin, such circumstances “the home feeling is, and must be and Massengale 1983, 12). The creation of Greater from necessity, rather slight. The tenure of the house New York nearly two decades earlier had brought is too uncertain” (Van Dyke 1909, 234). Speaking in within city limits vast expanses of open or scarcely de- front of the Commission on Building Districts and veloped territory as well as low-density communities Restrictions, Lawson Purdy, President of the Depart- that resembled suburban Berkeley. By the 1910s, ment of Taxes and Assessments, emphasized the eco- whole “neighborhoods in the boroughs of Queens, nomic dimension of the problem: “Tenement houses, Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx reflected the more euphoniously called apartment houses, built to new suburban life styles” found on the periphery of the full limit allowed by law, have intruded into a terri- other American cities (Hornick 1990, 22). At the end

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of 1914, Brooklyn counted 62,080 one-family houses section of the country, and it is desirable that their and 49,505 two-family houses, in a total building personal comfort and commercial convenience should stock of 172,380 structure^.^^ Queens was even more be consulted. If the high-class trade of the city were to suburban in character; during the 1920s, seventy per- be dispersed by the invasion of factories there is dan- cent of dwellings built in the “Garden Borough” were ger that the trade would be driven from the city.. . .”I8 one- or two-family houses (Plunz 1990, 131). For Opponents of zoning used the very same argument to some, even the outer reaches of these boroughs were attack the proposed regulations. “If you try to put the not sufficiently distant from the city of tenements, manufacturer away from the jobber and the retail and only the truly rural landscapes of Long Island and trade,” one critic warned, “you will drive them to the the Hudson Valley were worthy of their suburban country or out of the State into New Jer~ey.”’~ homes. With the rapid expansion of a regional railway Among those who did leave the city were members and roadway network, the summer residence of the of New York City’s upper class. They were drawn to well-to-do turned into an “all-year’’ home for the Long Island or Westchester County by the peace and wealthy and the less wealthy. As the Committee on quiet, the greenery and the vistas. But they also were Building Heights and, later, the Commission on Build- being pushed out of the city as their traditional quar- ing Districts and Restriction were devising regulations ters in Manhattan were invaded by commercial build- for the city, outside the municipal boundaries country ings (for instance, by Fifth Avenue stores). In 1915, homes were going up by the hundreds and thou- the island still contained over 25,000 single-family sands.16 homes,2O mostly bourgeois townhouses but also pala- Though the move to the outer suburbs was not tial mansions, grouped together in fashionable resi- yet the mass exodus that it would become after World dential areas (Stern, Gilmartin, and Massengale 1983; War 11, the trend was clear enough to alarm New York White 1987). Despite the socio-economic status of City’s authorities. The social and fiscal problems their residents, these central, upper-class residential raised by suburbanization had become apparent to districts needed the protection of zoning as much as American central-city leaders as early as the 189Os, if did the peripheral, mostly middle-class neighbor- not earlier. In 1897, Joseph Downey, Chicago Commis- hoods in the other boroughs. Where no private cove- sioner of Public Works, called for the protection of nants existed, some owners found themselves the high-class residential property by means of officially victims of blackmailers. Unscrupulous individuals designated “home park districts,” in order to prevent would buy land in good neighborhoods with no re- the emigration of the city’s richer residents to subur- strictions and then extort large sums of money from ban municipalities (King 1986, 280). Prominent wit- neighbors under the threat of building stables or nesses brought the same point home in testimony other nuisances that would ruin local values. As Walter before the Committee on Building Heights. Nathan B. Stabler, Controller of the Metropolitan Life Insur- Matthews, chairman of the commission that had insti- ance Company, explained at the 1915 Constitutional tuted districted height limitations in Boston, argued Convention in Albany, “if the city had the right to cre- that two decades of migration to the suburbs had de- ate business and residential zones, this form of black-

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 pressed property values in that city (New York City mailing now flourishing would receive its death Board of Estimate and Apportionment 1916,253). For blow.”21 a fellow Brahmin, J. Randolph Coolidge, Jr., the presi- Where private covenants did exist, public protec- dent of the Boston Society of Architects, the solution tion became necessary as Covenants were losing was clear: “Districting should be adopted in order to their effectiveness in safeguarding the residential char- preserve residential districts” (202), that is to preserve acter of old neighborhoods. First, they were com- residential districts for valuable tax-payers. Edward pletely impotent to regulate development around the Bassett, testifying in his own name, declared that area they covered and did not protect residential pock- “many Brooklyn and Queens residents have moved ets from experiencing the nuisances generated by com- outside of the city, because they say the only protec- mercial and industrial development at close range. tion of their home is to buy a fair-size plot of ground Moreover, some restrictions lost the protection of the outside of the five-cent-fare zone. There is a constant courts because owners had not applied them uni- migration of well-to-do people to counties and states formly, or because urban conditions did not corre- near Greater New York on this account” (84).” The spond any more to the situation under which the Committee heard of similar considerations pertaining covenant had been written. Other restrictions lost to commercial and industrial property, for instance to their effectiveness as judges adopted a more liberal in- the Fifth Avenue retail district: “New York each year terpretation of key clauses, for instance those per- welcomes an enormous number of buyers from every taining to the use of land exclusively for “private

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residences.” Perhaps most damning in the eyes of real- tions, at least not when they were first proposed. tors was the inconsistency of legal decisions: “[Alpart- While some appreciated the protection of the state be- ment houses are permitted in the face of private house ing offered by the Committee on Building Heights and restrictions in the Murray Hill tract . . . but a three- the Commission on Building Districts and Restric- family house may not be used as such on Sedgewick tions, others rejected it as undue intervention by the Avenue and Undercliff Avenue in the Bronx. . . . A pri- government in the private affairs of citizens. By the vate house may be altered into an undertaking estab- time the comprehensive ordinance was adopted, how- lishment on Madison Avenue and Forty-first street; ever, most homeowners had rallied under the banner into a dressmaking shop on West Twenty-Fourth of zoning and city planning. In an open discussion at Street; but not into a business building on West Forti- the Eighth National Conference on City Planning, eth Street, and neither may a dress-maker hand out a which took place while the Board of Estimate was still sign on West Fifty-second Street.”23Public controls, working out the details of the new zoning ordinance, that is zoning, would bring an end to the uncertainty. Edward Bassett told his colleagues that the “detached In the struggle to uphold private covenants house district” implied in the “E” area district had against the odds and, when unable to do so, to replace gone from being an object of fear to being an object them with public restrictions, the case of Murray Hill of desire: is illustrative. The area was home to about 400 families There were people in the beginning that [sic] pro- from New York‘s social and economic elite, including tested that we should have no restrictions which the Morgans, of J. Pierpont Morgan fame. Seeing the would prevent their present private houses being noose of commercial development tighten around torn down and apartments going up. . . . Gradu- their home area, leaders of the small community ally there came a change, as the people thought joined forces; their struggle can be traced in articles it over.. . . Gradually a demand arose from other from The New York Times. In early 1914, residents localities that wanted to come in to the E dis- formed the Murray Hill Association for the purpose tricts. They wanted to continue indefinitely the of “preserving and promoting the residential character restrictions as to private houses, and in our final of [the] neighborhood,” in particular by means of a maps we have increased the E districts probably strict enforcement of the restrictive agreement.24The threefold, and increased their area perhaps two association was facing an uphill battle; by the end of times. We received petitions anywhere from 80% 1915 the battle had been lost. “The easterly side of the to 90% of the property owners. (National Confer- residential Murray Hill district,” a realtor declared, ence on City Planning 1916, 162-3) “along Lexington Avenue, seems destined for improve- ment in the near future with high-class apartment Homeowners would continue to strive for public pro- houses.”25The loyalty of residents to the area was re- tection, working to give the zoning code more teeth to markable, and their economic and social clout was fan- preserve their neighborhoods. tastic. But neither the Morgans nor any neighbor of But even the weak regulations of the 1916 ordi- theirs could change the fact that “the days of utility of nance had an effect on the well-being of residential

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 the restrictive covenant [were] nearing an end.”26To areas, albeit a temporary and mostly psychological compensate for the loss of private protection, public one. Barely two months after the adoption of the com- controls were highly welcome. Zoning was “proposing prehensive zoning code, optimism ran high as the New to do for all what some have attempted to do for York Times announced that “residence neighborhoods themselves and failed.”27But zoning could not reverse have been fixed and secured against destruction, and past changes, only prevent further ones. Thus the loaning institutions have confidence to make mort- 1916 ordinance set aside “only small areas restricted gage investments where formerly they were in doubt for the erection of private dwellings” in the southern as to the future of any neighborhood, either for resi- half of Manhattan.28One such area was Murray Hill, dence or Two years later, at the Tenth Na- identified as a residential district in the midst of a tional Conference on City Planning, Edward Bassett business area. The designation had immediate effects: reported with pride that “people are not now going former residents who had left the area started coming out of Greater New York to find a home that they can back to their old homes in the following months. For keep for one or two generations the way they did be- the members of the Murray Hill Association, the law fore the residential zoning went into effect” (National created confidence that the business invasion had been Conference on City Planning 1918, 43). The next year, stopped and that their little neighborhood would pre- planners in Newark used the “almost unanimous” tes- serve its residential character.29 timony of New York City “real estate experts” to advo- Not all homeowners welcomed the zoning restric- cate the adoption of zoning in their city. “The effect

APA JOURNALmSPRING 1998 RAPHAEL FISCHLER

of the zone plan,” the New Jersey planners wrote, “has tached house” (Perin 1977, 4, 45). The Final Report of been particularly noticeable in the districts reserved the Commission on Building Districts and Restric- for detached houses.. . . The restrictions have resulted tions synthesizes with great candor the mix of social in a great improvement of real estate conditions in and political motives that underlay the adoption of such neighborhoods. Where the prohibitions against suburban-like regulations for parts of the city: objectionable uses of land imposed by restrictive cove- It is important, from the standpoint of citizen- nants were formerly limited in their duration, they are ship as well as from that of health, safety and now permanent” (Newark Commission on Building comfort, that sections be set aside where a man Districts and Restrictions 1919,4).With excessive con- can own his own home and have a little space fidence perhaps, experts and planners in East Coast about it. It makes a man take a keener interest industrial cities displayed a very West Coast attitude in his neighborhood and city. It has undoubted when it came to protecting single-family home areas. advantages in the rearing of future citizens. The New York was like no other place, but its reform- setting aside of sections for this detached dwell- ers and planners were men and women of their times. ing type is necessary in order to retain within the From the adoption of the earliest tenement regula- city many citizens who would otherwise move to tions in the middle of the nineteenth century (DeFor- the suburbs. The retention of the citizenship of est and Veiller 1903) to the passage of the first a greater proportion of this class of.. . business comprehensive zoning law, their agenda was one of so- men is of great importance, not only as regards cial uplift through environmental improvement (Lu- to the city’s taxable values, but also as regards bove 1974). Their motto could very well have been: civic interest and civic leadership. (New York “Degeneracy and vice [will] yield to sunlight and fresh City Board of Estimate and Apportionment air; profanity and drunken brawling to the laughter of 1916, 31) children at play!” (Boyer 1978, 233). Lewis H. Pounds expressed the prevailing doctrine, with its social and Edward Bassett and his colleagues acted to shield racial biases, soon after his election as Brooklyn Bor- homeowners and their families not only from the ough President, in 1913: “The average Brooklyn school physical nuisances of high-density development, but child is as different from the average New York [i.e. also from the morally harmful influences of the Manhattan] school child as one child can be from an- crowded city. At the same time, they worked to protect other and remain of the same color. The plentiful light the city from the fiscally and politically harmful com- and air in Brooklyn have played their large part in this, petition of the outer suburbs. They did so by fostering the lack in Brooklyn of certain undesirable elements the presence of suburbia within city limits. Their mo- of population which are present in New York has tivation was both economic and moral, their perspec- played part in it, the lack of certain evil influences, cer- tive at once local and regional. tain vicious details of environment is responsible for much of it.” According to Pounds, a greater percentage The Infrastructural Dimension of of white, church-going homeowners living in detached the 1916 Ordinance

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 houses gave “the Brooklyn baby.. . far better sanitary, “Zoning,” Harland Bartholomew commented, economic, and social surroundings than the average “has come about partly through the desire of certain Manhattan baby.”31The provisions of the zoning law better residential districts to obtain a protection of 1916 concerning the residential sections of Brook- which is difficult, if not impossible, to secure by pri- lyn and Queens were not as stringent as the measures vate initiative, and partly through municipal authori- enacted by other cities to protect their single-family ties who seek to curtail the enormous losses brought residential areas; but they were based on the same atti- about by uncontrolled growth (Bartholomew 1932, tudes and rationales as were the exclusionary zoning 3). To a certain extent, the two issues that Bartholo- ordinances of so many suburban municipalities. mew mentions-the protection of residential areas In formulating measures to protect and promote and the safekeeping of municipal income-were one the residential areas where families could achieve pri- and the same. First, the city lost income because un- vacy and ownership, the New York planners were giv- certainty and instability had a depressing effect on real ing legal sanction to the idea that differences in estate activity and because well-to-do residents left the housing design are constitutive of differences in social city for neighboring counties or states, in search of class. Their “land use system” was a “moral system more propitious living conditions. Second, overcrowd- that both reflects and assures social order”; they im- ing posed serious health threats, mostly in tenement plemented it, even if only indirectly, by means of “a areas but also in office buildings, where lack ofventila- hierarchy of uses at whose apex is the single-family de- tion and lack of exposure to sunlight allowed tubercu-

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losis to perform its deadly Disease was a code and the design of metropolitan plans) (Scott burden on the city, as it lowered productivity and in- 1971, ch. 4). The three endeavors were closely inter- creased public need. Finally, the constant shifting of twined. As David C. Hammack has shown, the consoli- residential areas and the mixing of residential and dation of Greater New York, which took effect on nonresidential uses led to waste in the construction January 1, 1898, after a long political battle, was part and maintenance of public infrastructure and in the and parcel of a larger “vision for promoting the provision of municipal services. planned, controlled, orderly, sustained growth of the While questions of real estate value have been metropolitan region” (Hammack 1982, 188). The vi- widely discussed in historical accounts of early New sion was to be realized by means of a “vast, coordi- York City zoning, the question of infrastructure plan- nated program of public improvements for the city’s ning, like the question of housing, has received too harbor, docks, streets, street railway, and rapid transit little attention. An essay by Keith D. Revell and an un- facilities” that would further both the growth of com- published monograph by Nino Hason both make merce and industry and the deconcentration of the clear, however, that municipal officials joined the zon- population (192). In the 1890s and in the 1910s, the ing movement because districting would help them ra- popular appeal of city-wide planning, first in the form tionalize infrastructure planning (Hason 1977; Revell of consolidation and infrastructure building and then 1992).33In fact, the strength of the link between infra- in the form of comprehensive zoning, lay in its poten- structure planning and zoning cannot be overesti- tial effects on housing condition^.^^ Financiers, own- mated, especially in the case of New York. The link is ers, and developers backed these efforts for their readily apparent from an analysis of problems along contribution to the well-being of the local economy; Fifth Avenue and in the financial district. In both loca- officials and municipal reformers participated in them tions, unregulated development caused acute street for their positive impact on the city’s finances; and a congestion. Mammoth structures created problems majority of voters supported them in the hope that due to the sheer number of employees that entered they would end the age of tenement life and usher in them in the morning and left them in the evening. The the era of suburban living (Hammack 1982,202-3). construction of the Equitable Building, which was the Agitation over building heights in Manhattan co- largest office building of its generation and which incided with the culmination of the city’s effort to could contain up to 15,000 people at one time, was unite the five boroughs by means of an integrated greeted with the remark, “Here is a problem in conges- public transit network (Hood 1992). This fact is essen- ti01-1.”~~Skyscrapers caused urban gridlock especially tial to an understanding of the history of zoning in when erected close to each other. “Most of the faults New York City. When the question of building heights [of the skyscraper],” the architect Ernest Flagg ex- came on the political agenda, Raymond V. Ingersoll plained, “come from crowding. Standing singly and and other leaders of the fight against congestion were isolated there is little to be said against high buildings quick to point out that the issue concerned not only except on aesthetic For Flagg, regulations business property in Manhattan but also residential had to ensure that tall buildings would stand suffi- development throughout the five boroughs, as new

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 ciently apart from each other-something the new subway lines soon would make vast areas ripe for de- zoning code did not velopment. Ingersoll emphasized the link between The relation between zoning and infrastructure zoning and subway construction in a letter to the New planning lay, more importantly, in their common goal: Yo& Times, on July 30, 1913. His statement, a wonder- to guide development in newly built areas. Both en- ful synthesis of the various factors considered in the terprises contributed to a long-term effort by city adoption ofzoning, is worth quoting at length: authorities to deconcentrate New York City and ratio- nalize metropolitan growth. From the crusade to cre- This is an opportune time for thorough consid- ate a Greater New York in the 1880s and 1890s to the eration of the whole problem of limiting the battle for regional planning in the 1920s and 1930s, height of buildings. Business interests in lower the orderly diffusion of the population over larger Manhattan are seriously concerned over tenden- areas remained a primary objective of public planning cies toward uneven and chaotic development of in New York City. This general endeavor entailed insti- office and loft buildings.. . . At the same time tution building (the integration of the five boroughs, persons interested in housing conditions feel the the creation of regional planning mechanisms), infra- urgency of further restrictions on the height of structure work (the construction of transit systems tenements, and especially of checking the dupli- and highway networks), and land use planning and cation of abnormal Manhattan conditions in regulation (the adoption of the comprehensive zoning other sections.

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There is a still more fundamental reason why “and your suburbs only can be reached through much this difficult subject should be worked out now improved transportation facilities. Two things will be if the city is ever to have a restriction policy. The necessary in your city planning system if it is to rightly opening of projected subways will cause the be worked out. First, your railroads must be made the greatest alteration in the skeleton structure of main part of it, second, the fares charged on them the city that is likely to occur for many decades. must be very Transportation routes and transit A local transportation plan so vast and costly fares were indeed matters of concern in New York could hardly be justified except for the broad so- City; Bassett, among others, had fought hard to ex- cial purpose of securing a more wholesome tend the five-cent fare to the outer boroughs (Bassett spreading out of our city population. Obviously 1962, 548). But cheap fares were not a priority for ev- if height restrictions are to come they should be eryone. If low commuting costs made suburban land introduced before the readjustments of popula- more affordable to households of modest means, high tion and of values. Even in lower Manhattan the costs would help keep such people out of desirable west side subway will give some opportunity for areas. Shortly before the Commission on Building redistribution. In outlying sections the changes Districts and Restrictions issued its call for the cre- will be very great.38 ation of a multi-zone system of building regulations, the Public Service Commission recommended, on re- Obviously, Ingersoll added, some of these outlying sec- quest of the transit companies, “that a two-zone tran- tions “might even be reserved for detached dwel- sit system be established, in one of which a five-cent ling~.’’~~ fare and in the other a ten-cent fare would be On the subject of transit planning and building charged.” The higher fare was intended to help the regulation, anti-congestion crusaders and other Pro- companies recoup the huge costs involved in building gressive reformers received the support of the gener- new lines into the Queens hinterland (and beyond). ally conservative leaders of the financial and real estate To the surprise of the Commission and the transit industries. Though they disagreed on the methods to companies, residents of the suburban areas where the be used, they, too, looked with favor on the dispersal lines would extend did not protest against the mea- of population and on the expansion of a stable real sure, but welcomed it. The officials should have real- estate market into outer areas.4oOfficials and experts ized the significance of the ten-cent fare: it would were also game. Bassett, who had helped to plan the protect the “purely residential sections, where de- subway system before chairing the Committee on tached houses with large grounds are the rule” from Building Heights and the Commission on Building the invasion of “flat buildings and the congestion that Districts and Restrictions, noted that his zoning work always follows a five-cent fare.”44 “bears a direct relation to the new rapid-transit plans.” Besides the system of differentiated transit fares, The city, he explained, “is spending over $150,000,000 another zoning system accompanied the adoption of of its money in developing the dual subway system districted land-use controls, and that system too and is causing the railroad companies to spend as helped to promote single-family housing. In the winter

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 much more toward creating great areas available for a of 1915-1916, the New York City Board of Aldermen five-cent fare.” In the past, Bassett acknowledged, new adopted a new building code. One of the changes con- transit lines had fostered congested development in cerned fire safety and involved the creation of “subur- “the most eligible parts of New York and Brooklyn . . . ban limits.” These limits defined areas outside the with the result that values have changed and many existing fire limits where frame construction was al- persons have left the city to live in Long Island, New lowed only for detached Fire-fighting was a Jersey, or other places.” But now, with the help of the consideration in the work of the Commission on new zoning regulations, the expansion of public tran- Building Districts and Restrictions, as well. The com- sit would make possible “the distribution of popula- mission’s members were concerned with the special tion into comfortable home districts” and the rearing problems that skyscrapers and tall loft buildings rep- of children “in healthy cornmunitie~.”~~Bassett was an resented in this respect; but, more generally, they saw optimist and a good salesman. In reality, mass transit the zoning scheme as a means of rationalizing fire- would help to spread high-density development into fighting and other municipal activities in addition to the outer boroughs (Plunz 1993,31). public transit. For instance, the constant movement of In general, planners in 1913 mixed high expecta- populations and activities in invasion-succession pro- tions with professional caution. “Your suburbs are cesses made it difficult for city assessors to make your only hope,” Dr. Werner Hegemann, the noted sound estimates of property values and for school au- German city planner, told his New York co11eagues,42 thorities to allocate students to facilities. The mixing

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of different uses in so many neighborhoods increased erty in order to finance local public improvement^.^^ the costs of policing, of fire-fighting, of street- Together with the hundred and fifty or so taxpayers’ building, and of postal delivery. associations of the they accused City Hall of Several witnesses testified before the Commission mismanaging its finances, of damaging the city’s that the segregation of uses and the regulation of den- creditworthiness, and of failing to stabilize property sities would greatly improve the ability of municipal values. In effect, they blamed local authorities for authorities to perform their duties. John T. Fether- much of the troubles of the real estate market.48Com- ston, Commissioner of the Department of Street ing to the rescue, the City Economy League flexed its Cleaning, said: “[Tlhe development of the zone system political muscle to “protect the city’s credit, give relief involving an orderly arrangement of the building uses, to taxpayers and increase confidence in real estate, the should ultimately tend to economy in the cleaning of city’s basis of credit.” To reach these ends, the organi- streets and in the collection of refuse by providing a zation urged “the establishment of a policy on the part basis for a work plan which will meet particular condi- of the City Government of economy and efficiency, tions of each district or section” (New York City Board eliminating waste and extravagance and putting a stop of Estimate and Apportionment 1916, 120). John C. to the appropriations of public funds that do not con- Gebhart, Secretary of the Brooklyn Tenement House tribute in full measure to the health, education, and Committee, blamed excessive population densities in general welfare of the people at large.”49At their meet- some areas of town for the fact that some schools were ings, members of the League decried “the burdens of “not only overcrowded, but overcrowded to the effect the down-hearted taxpayer” with an original anthem of violating the Sanitary code” (123). John Kenlon, that contained this highly eloquent chorus: Chief of the Fire Department, also targeted conges- tion, in this case for delaying the arrival of fire-fighting Rally now to cut the budget, equipment to the scene of a fire and for making it easy Rally now to cut the budget, for fires to spread. He favored districting not only be- Rally now to cut the budget, cause it would open up the streets and put more space And force the tax bills down.50 between buildings, but also because it would segregate The regulation of building heights and uses was a way hazardous trades from residential neighborhoods, in which the city could help to stabilize property val- thereby lowering the risk of fire in large areas. Even ues and rekindle confidence in the real estate market, finer-grain districting measures, it was said, such as on the one hand, while at the same time realizing sav- confining stores to the wider avenues and reserving ings in expenditures and hence bringing down local the narrower streets for residences-a measure that be- taxes and assessments, on the other. came law-would “greatly lessen the cost of fire protec- Cutting the cost of government was a virtue as- tion” (139). Nelson P. Lewis, an early participant in the cribed not only to development controls but to city National Conference on City Planning, speaking as planning in general. In fact, the distinction between Chief Engineer of the Board of Estimate, even de- zoning and planning was not always clear; what was nounced the dangers arising from the “indiscriminate evident was that both endeavors, conducted in a scien-

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 mixture of traffic of various classes” in mixed-use tific manner, would save New Yorkers large sums of neighborhoods (144). The separation of low-density money over time. As George B. Ford explained to the residential areas from industrial and commercial areas members of the Municipal Art Society: would reduce these dangers, saving lives and limbs. It would also enable the city to realize great economies Careful studies are being made and essential data in street-paving, as different land-uses and the differ- are being collected to show the trend of the ent types of vehicular traffic they generated required growth of the city and to determine for what very different grades of pavement. In addition, savings kind of development each portion of the city is would accrue in the cost of infrastructure if the street best suited, so that the improvements under- layout itself were adapted to the standard lot sizes of taken or the restrictions suggested in any district housing and industry. may be such as will tend to help its development The 1916 zoning code came to life amid strong and to improve the real estate values of the public agitation on fiscal matters. The elimination of neighborhood. waste in public expenditure was a key item on the Re- Again, city planning prevents duplication of form agenda and on the agendas of individual civic improvement work. It sees to it that the subdivi- associations. Real estate interests complained vocifer- sion plan which the city accepts for a tract in ously about the high tax rates on property and about Queens will not have to be done over again with the “fictitious height” at which the City assessed prop- a great waste of the taxpayers’ money twenty-five

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years hence. It would see to it that the main thor- Scott concludes, “the New York zoning resolution was oughfares do not have to be widened at great in some respects a setback to the city planning move- cost when the growth of the city demands more ment because it contributed to the widespread prac- ample facilities for traffic or transit lines.51 tice of zoning before planning and, in many cities, to the acceptance of zoning as a substitute for long-term Plan-making, building regulation, and infrastructure planning” (Scott 1971, 160). development were one and the same activity-at least The significance of the ordinance, then, is mostly so it appears. When the Board of Estimate had been historical. It helped to diffuse the practice of compre- empowered to control construction by means of dis- hensive zoning throughout the country. More impor- tricted regulations, it had also received the power to tant, it constituted the most’ thorough effort of its plan, and it had subsequently created a Commission time to design a mechanism for the rational control of on the City Plan. Yet two years later, when the Com- urban development. The case of New York City, atypi- mission on Building Districts and Restrictions issued cal as it may be, is a unique window on the early days its final report, a “comprehensive plan for the future of land use regulation and planning, offering a partic- physical development of the city” was still beyond ularly clear perspective on the varied interests and ide- the horizon.52 als that animated city planners at the start of the century and that still motivate them to a certain ex- Conclusion tent at the century’s close. The story of New York zon- As a planning tool, the 1916 ordinance proved to ing is fairly traditional in its cast of characters-real be highly ineffective. Since it was not retroactive, it did estate interests, public officials, professional experts, not reduce congestion in the older parts of the city; civic groups-and in its plot: economic hardship leads since it was not strict, it did not prevent the spread of to calls for public intervention, government creates huge skyscrapers in Manhattan or of crowded apart- commissions to define and study the problem, com- ment buildings in the other And if the missions hammer out regulations under heavy politi- Fifth Avenue retail area was saved from the invasion cal pressure, government adopts regulations, which of manufacturing lofts, it owed its salvation first and are immediately subject to new political demands. foremost to the ability of the Fifth Avenue Association Looking back, there is no doubt that the most im- to force garment manufacturers out of the area by portant impetus for zoning in New York City, politi- means of a boycott. There is no appealing Me1 Scott’s cally speaking, came from influential owners, realtors, judgment: the ordinance “provided little more protec- financiers, and insurers of commercial property; the tion than a nuisance ordinance. In many ways the zon- need was urgent to bring some order into the chaotic ing resolution was deceptive, sanctioning excessive landscape of Manhattan real estate. Nor should we overcrowding and permitting in commercial and un- overlook the fact that development interests were bet- restricted zones the very mixture of uses that had ter served by the new ordinance (by what it did and by aroused the cry for regulation” (Scott 1971, 160).54 what it did not do) than were other interests or “the The zoning code does not even merit all the credit general interest” as planners understood it. It is also

Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 it has received for its effects on Manhattan architec- clear, however, that real estate owners and operators ture (Weiss 1992b; Willis 1993). Although the “ziggu- did not single-handedly write the ordinance and make rat” architecture that proliferated in the 1920s and it into law. After the adoption of the resolution, J. 1930s can be ascribed to the setback requirements im- Howard Burton, Chairman of the Save New York posed on higher floors, the model of the tower on its Committee, wrote to the New Yo& Times to say as base had already become state-of-the-art practice by much: the time the new prescriptions came into law; here too, practice shaped pre~cription.~~The planners let Articles appearing in the press give the impres- pass the opportunity, finally taken five decades later, sion that the Save New York Committee was re- to regulate commercial development by means of sponsible for the Zoning bill which was passed standards of Floor Area Ratio, a measure proposed by last Spring. We wish that we could claim the Raymond Ingersoll as early as 1913.56Nor did they fol- credit for this law, but, as a matter of fact, we low the advice, offered separately by Werner Hege- believe that the zoning law was the result of the mann and Ernest Flagg in the same year, to institute work principally of George McAneny and the Transfer of Development Rights.57Finally, by failing other members of the Board of Estimate and Ap- to link the zoning plan to a real city plan, they estab- portionment.. . and to Lawson Purdy, President lished a bad precedent for all to emulate. “In fact,” of the Tax Board, and to these gentlemen and

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their associates the entire credit for the passing 149). That system included three types of zones: one re- of this law is due.. . . served for industry, one where certain nonpolluting in- We believe that we have been instrumental dustrial activities were accepted and one where no in aiding what the Zoning bill wished to accom- industry or commerce was tolerated. On the other hand, the New York State law for second-class cities that plish by moving the manufacturers out of the Veiller helped to draft in 1913 focused on the creation Save New York Zone, and in shaping public opin- of residential districts; there, “no person can build . . . ion and thereby aiding in the passing of the law.58 anything other than a private dwelling or a two-family house; he cannot build even an apartment of the high- Certainly these words should be taken with a grain of est grade; he cannot build a factory or a store, or even salt; it is not smart politics for a private group to ac- put a little shop in an old dwelling” (150). In this light, knowledge openly its influence on public affairs. Still, the Los Angeles model represents industrial zoning and Mr. Burton had to concede that the zoning law per- the New York (State) model stands for residential tained to much more than downtown property and zoning! was the work of many more people than those on his 2. The mainstream view is also the “official” view of New committee. York city planners today. “The first zoning ordinance,” As other actors besides Fifth Avenue merchants one reads in the Zoning Handbook that the City Planning and downtown office owners are brought into the pic- Department prepared for the public, “was created in re- ture-the officials, specialists and activists who wrote sponse to inappropriate development in Lower Manhat- tan” (New York Department of City Planning 1990, 1). the ordinance and rallied popular support behind it- 3. As elements of the local growth machine (Logan and the range of interests to be considered broadens as Molotch 1987), media such as the New York Times partic- well, and so does the geographic scope of the inquiry. ipated in the public relations campaign that accompa- This enlarged view makes New York appear less partic- nied the work of the two commissions. Despite the pro- ular and more similar to other urban centers. The city zoning bias that marked much of the Times’ reporting, had a unique downtown core, higher and denser and this essay relies heavily for evidence and examples on a more bustling than any other on the continent, but it review of that newspaper for the years 1913 to 1917. The shared with other cities the experience of rapid growth reason is practical: the articles, excerpts from reports, and of suburbanization. Housing and infrastructure, letters, and editorials that the paper published during not just skyscrapers, were objects of public action. those years constitute an excellent record of contempo- They mattered for the same reasons that they matter rary events and ideas. The richness of the record and its use as but one source among others for the purpose of today in all capitalist cities, to secure the health and analysis will, it is hoped, excuse this methodological safety of residents, but also to grease the wheels of shortcut. commerce, to keep the “right” people within city lim- 4. The New York Times, 6 April 1913, sec. 8, p. 1, col. 2. its or attract them from elsewhere and, by doing so, to 5. The New York Times, 30 July 1916, sec. 3, p. 6, col. 2. maximize the city’s economic and social capital. 6. The initial name of the National Conference indicates New York planners were dealing with a special sit- the prominence of the issue of congestion for the na- uation and were subject to unusual pressures. But they scent planning movement. The latter part of the name responded in a way typical of the mainstream of mod- was dropped after the second meeting, indicating the Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 ern city planning; indeed they helped to define the estrangement of social reformers from the mainstream mainstream. Their plan, if it may be called that, was a of city planning, in particular the departure of Benja- workable compromise, the product of pragmatism and min Marsh, who had been instrumental in organizing the first National Conference. consensus building. For us, however, their greatest 7. The Berkeley ordinance innovated in two ways: it was contribution was a set of writings and declarations in the first to reserve special zones exclusively for detached which they crystallized the concerns of their time. The single-family homes, and it was the first to put indus- record of their thinking constitutes a rich legacy, a trial districts off limits for residential development. mirror in which things seemingly distant are shown to Though it was the ne plus ultra of contemporary zoning be, in fact, very close. with respect to residential segregation, the ordinance re- mained far behind the comprehensive codes of the time in other respects: it specified only land use districts and did not consider building height and bulk, and it still 1. It is interesting to note Lawrence Veiller’s alternative had one foot in the older world of private agreements. analysis. According to the grand figure of housing re- The creation of a single-family residential district, or form, Los Angeles planners “laid the emphasis upon in- any other district for that matter, was left to the initia- dustrial districts” when they created their districting tive of property owners who asked the City for public system in 1909 (National Conference on Housing 1913, protection. The Berkeley zoning ordinance grew in com-

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plexity over time. The number of zones was gradually 16. The growth of outer suburbs in the New York region increased over the year following its adoption (City of was a subject of numerous reports in the real estate sec- Berkeley 1917), and bulk regulations were added to the tion of the Sunday New York Times. These reports bore use regulations two years later (City of Berkeley 1919). titles such as: “Paying Big Prices for Farm Acreage on This brought the Berkeley ordinance in line with that of Long Island for Country Estates” (5 January 1913), New York City in terms of technique, while keeping its “Many Improvements Throughout Westchester Adding emphasis on “Home Area Districts.” to Its Suburban Home Attractions” (23 March 1913), 8. Advertisement of the Loton H. Slawson Company for “Home Seekers Constantly Attracted to New Jersey; Its apartments at 495 West End Avenue (The New York Suburban Area Showing Progress in Many Lines” (6 Times, 22 August 1915, sec. 7, p. 7, col. 1). It is true that April 1913), “Active Home Building in Suburban Com- only extremely large and luxurious apartments were eli- munities Indicates the Love for Country Surroundings” gible for the title of “home.” When one read that Jesse (17 August 1913) and “Magnificent Home Colony on I. Straus, head of R. H. Macy & Co., had leased “a home Long Islands North Shore” (21 December 1913). in a modern apartment house,” one was reading about a 17. In 1913, Bassett had already provided a similar testi- %room dwelling with “a governess’s room, three boys’ mony to a reporter of the New York Times. Upon his re- rooms, nine servants’ rooms, and a special laundry” (The turn from a visit to Toronto, he declared “Several of New York Times, 17January 1915, sec. 3, p. 4, col. 1). the suburbs [there] are carefully protected for detached 9. “Realty Men Favor Trade Zones For City,” The New York private homes. The result is that the city is made perma- Tzmes, 4 July 1915, sec. 7, p. 1, col. 3. nently attractive for the residence of citizens who other- 10. Me1 Scott writes that Lawrence Veiller refused to sign wise would move outside of the city limits. There is little the final report of the Commission on Building Dis- doubt that one of the main causes of the migration of tricts and Restrictions “because he thought its recom- well-to-do people from New York City to New Jersey, mendations were too favorable to [financial and Westchester County, and Long Island is because the city commercial] interests” (Scott 1971, 155). It is probable gives no assurance that any given locality will not be in- that he was particularly disappointed in the weakness of vaded by apartment houses or factories” (quoted in “To- the proposed regulations to protect single-family areas. ronto Suburbs Well Protected,” The New York Times, 14 Veiller was perhaps more strident than some of his col- September 1913, sec. 7, p. 10, col. 1). leagues on the Commission on Building Districts and 18. “Saving New York (editorial), The New York Tzmes, 2 Oc- Restrictions, but he was not a marginal thinker with re- tober 1916, p. 10, col. 4. The loss of manufacturing ac- spect to housing issues. tivity to other municipalities was also a matter of 11. “Private Homes on Carnegie Hill,” The New York Times, concern. An official from Philadelphia testified to the 23 July 1916, sec. 3, p. 8, col. 8. Fourth National Conference on City Planning: “This ex- 12. It is true that the campaign against the apartment was odus is a serious menace to the progress and prosperity far less successful in New York City than in other parts of manufacturing communities, and might be effectu- of the country. Deborah Dash Moore explains that ally halted if the municipal authorities could set aside many Jews, for instance, who moved to Brooklyn or certain areas for manufacturing and establish such Queens in search of “suburban amenities,” nevertheless other regulations as would tend to keep land values sought a certain “urban compactness” in their new within reasonable limits for such purposes” (Haldeman neighborhoods (Moore 1992,260); hence many chose to 1912, 184). live in the new garden apartments that proliferated in 19. Realtor Robert E. Dowling, quoted in “Experts to Study Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 New York City in the 1920’s and 1930’s (Plunz 1990, ch. Building Heights,” The New York Tzmes, 23 May 1914, p. 5). Peter Sahlins recently noted that “the luxury tower 7, col. 3. is a uniquely New York idea,” an idea whose successful 20. “Two Subway Branches Open Up New Era of Prosperity implementation had kept more wealthy people within for Brooklyn and Queens,” The New York Tzmes, 27 June city limits than was the case in other American cities 1915, sec. 7, p. 1, col. 3. Many town houses had already (The New York Times Muguzine, 11 November 1995, been subdivided into small apartments, and many more 92-3). underwent conversion in the following years. The trend 13. The New York Times, 12 March 1916, sec. 1, p. 13, col. 1. seems to have reversed today, as families are re- 14. According to Marc Weiss, “New York essentially discovering “the emotional values of a house in the city, adopted and indirectly popularized the Los Angeles with twin comforts of space and backyards” (“Upstairs model [of residential zoning], and “applied this ap- or Down, Now It’s All in the Family,” The New York Times, proach to winning political support from property own- 30 May 1996, pp. C1, C6). ers in zoning certain areas of its outer boroughs” (Weiss 21. Quoted in “Real Estate Prey of Blackmail Gang,” The 1992a, 47). The truth, as always, lies between the two New York Times, 30 June 1915, p. 7, col. 3. extremes: protection of housing areas was neither the be 22. On this issue, see Marc Weiss’ work on the institutional- all and end all of the ordinance, nor an addition in- ization of zoning in California (Weiss 1987). cluded merely to gain political support in peripheral 23. “Hard Problems in Old Restrictions,” The New York areas. Tzmes, 8 August 1915, sec. 7, p. 1, col. 8. 15. The New York Times, 6 December 1914, sec. 10, p. 1, col. 7. 24. Certificate of incorporation of the Murray Hill Associa- THE METROPOLITAN DIMENSION OF EARLY ZONING

tion, quoted in “Morgan and 0 thers Fight to Save Mur- scraper Towers,” The New York Times, 7 April 1913, p. 8, ray Hill,” The New York Times Magazine, 7 June 1914, p. 2. col. 7. 25. Martin B. Babcock, of the Albert B. Ashforth company, 36. In a 1914 article in The Journal of the American Institute quoted in “Demand for Small Apartment Grows,” The of Architects, Edward Bassett explained and justified the New York Times, 12 December 1915, sec. 7, p. 2, col. 3. conservative provisions of the zoning ordinance with re- 26. “Trade Invasion in Murray Hill Section Threatens spect to skyscrapers and street congestion as follows: Doom of Ancient Restrictions,” The New York Times, 9 “The battle to keep buildings at a moderate height is January 1916, sec. 7, p. 5, col. 3. already lost. It is lost before it is begun. The injury is 2 7. “The ‘Zoning’ of the City” (editorial), The New York already done.. . . The street problem in lower Manhat- Times, 12 March 1916, sec. 1, p. 13, col. 1. tan is a peak-load problem, and like other peak-load 28. “Proposed Zone Plan for Manhattan Between the Bat- problems, it is capable of many adjustments. High tery and Fifty-Ninth Street,” The New York Tzmes, 26 buildings in downtown Manhattan may some time March 1916, sec. 3, p. 5, col. 3. cause double-decked streets. There usually is not a great 29. Barely three months after the enactment of the zoning deal of sense in locking the barn door after the horse is code, an optimistic headline proclaimed “Home- stolen. The rule for future high buildings will make Coming Season in Murray Hill-Interesting Changes in them less high, will compel courts and setbacks, will Old Center; Many Former Residents Moving Back from tend to moderate congestion, and to a large extent pre- Uptown-Zoning Act Removes Fear of Business Inva- vent the stealing of other people’s light and air” (quoted sion-Ugly Plot on Park Avenue Beautified by Formal in “The Regulation of Building Heights,” The New York Garden,” The New York Times, 22 October 1916, sec. 3, p. Times, 10 May 1914, sec. 9, p. 1, col. 8). 4, col. 3. 37. Early New York City planning was also conducted under 30. “Realty Benefits by Zoning,” The New York Times, 24 Sep- the influence of the City Beautiful movement (Stern, tember 1916, sec. 3, p. 5, col. 8. Gilmartin, and Massengale 1983, 30-4). Revell notes 31. “New Borough President Tells of A 2,000,000 Brook- that the spirit of the movement still animated some of lyn,” The New York Times Magazine, 13 July 1913, p. 4. In the proponents of zoning (Revell 1992,37-8). 1910, Brooklyn was home to some 23,850 “non-whites,” 38. Letter to the Editor, published under the title “Heights 1.46% of the borough‘s total population; the figures of Buildings,” The New York Times, 1 August 1913, p. 6, were higher in Manhattan (64,950 and 2.79%),while in col. 7. Queens they were even lower (3,350 and 1.18%). By 39. As presented in the Congestion Show of March 1908, 1920, absolute numbers had increased in all boroughs, the anti-congestion program included a variety of mea- but the proportion had changed little in Brooklyn sures: tenement house reform, neighborhood and social (1.65%) and in Queens (1.15%),though it had almost work (parks and playgrounds, health laws, etc.), the re- doubled in Manhattan (5.04%). The fraction of the location of factories to peripheral areas and the con- white population that was foreign-born was also lower struction of “model villages” for their workers, the in the outer boroughs than in Manhattan. In 1910, the relocation of urban residents to agricultural communi- percentages were 35.48%in Brooklyn, 28.18%in Queens, ties, the adoption of “Germany’s system of town plan- and 48.71% in Manhattan; they declined somewhat by ning” (i.e., zoning), and tax reform (Martin 1908). On 1920, to 33.21%,24.09%, and 42.51%, respectively. These the last point, tax reform, see note 40. figures are based on data tabulated by Ira Rosenwaike in 40. For instance, attempts to reduce congestion by re- his Population History ofNew York City (Rosenwaike 1972, forming property taxes were defeated by real estate in- Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 table 64). terests and by part of the progressive camp (Revell 1992, 32. Planners in others cities warned against the emergence 27-9). Reformers opposed the idea of taxing buildings of tightly packed skyscraper districts on the basis of less heavily and land more heavily in part because the health considerations. The 19 17 plan for Minneapolis, measure could increase congestion rather than decrease for instance, explained: “There can be disease-breeding it, as property owners would maximize building vol- congestion in an unventilated, sunless office in a sky- umes on expensive land. Edward T. Devine, general sec- scraper as well as in the darkroom of a many-storied ten- retary of the New York Charities Organization Society ement. The housing of the working population at work and editor of The Survey (formerly Charities and The Com- is as important as the housing of the working mons), welcomed the proposal to lower taxes on build- population at home” (Minneapolis Civic Commission ings and increase taxes on land because it would foster 1917, 119). apartment construction and industrial development on 33. Revell also presents valuable information on the place vacant land in the outer boroughs, thus ensuring a bet- of public health considerations in the decisions of the ter distribution ofjobs and housing. But he warned that Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions if fiscal change were not accompanied by regulations (Revell 1992, 38-9). concerning building volumes, the net effect on conges- 34. “New Equitable Office Building May Be Last of Huge tion would be negative. His analysis parallels that of In- Skyscrapers,” The New York Times, 3 May 1914, sec. 9, p. gersoll: “These two policies-encouraging the use of 1, col. 3. unoccupied land, and determining in the most drastic 35. Letter to the Editor, published under the title “Sky- way the conditions under which buildings, especially

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tenement buildings, shall be erected-are consistent and ests Make Strong Appeal for Relief Before the Mills complementary” (Devine 1911,413). Joint Legislative Committee on Taxation,” The New York 41. Quoted in “New Plan for Building Heights and Re- Times, 10 October 1915, sec. 7, p. 1, col. 2). stricted Areas Will Stabilize Values, Home and Business 49. William H. Chesebrough, President of the City Econ- Conditions,” The New York Times, 30 July 1916, sec. 3, p. omy League, quoted in “Outlines Scope of Economy 6, col. 2. The editors of the Times echoed Bassett’s assess- League,” The New York Times, 24 August 1913, sec. 7, p. ment two months later in an article entitled “Ten-Cent 10, col. 3. Fare and New Zone Law to Create Ideal Home Condi- 50. “City Economy League Seeks to Stop Extravagance,” The tions” (The New York Tzmes, 1 October 1916, sec. 3, p. 1, New York Times Magazine, 13 June 1913, p. 12. col. 2). 51. “The Value of Municipal Art to the City,” The New York 42. Hegemann was a frequent visitor to the United States Times, 14 February 1915, sec. 8, p. 7, col. 3. In this article, and actually pursued much of his career there (Collins published seven decades before the first manifestos of 1996). Advocates of zoning in American cities generally the New Urbanism, Ford complained about the practice engaged in fruitful exchanges with their European peers of making suburban streets unnecessarily wide. and often referred to the experience of German cities to 52. “‘A City of Homes Aim of Zoning Plan,” The New York buttress their proposals (Logan 1976; Mullin 1976). As Tzmes, 12 March 1916, sec. 1, p. 13, col. 1. work proceeded on the zoning code, Frank B. Williams 53. In his contribution to the 1931 Regional Survey of New published several articles in the Sunday New York Times York, Thomas Adams explained the second point as fol- Magmine describing the German “zone system” and lows: “It is because the zoning resolution of New York drawing lessons from the experience of Berlin, Frank- permitted coverage of a greater percentage of areas of furt, and Cologne, respectively: “Germany Can Aid New lots in relation to prescribed heights than were sug- York in Skyscraper Problem” (21 September 1913, p. 5), gested [during the public discussions], that it has failed “Zone System Advocated to End City Congestion” (21 to afford substantial relief to congestion” (Adams 1931, December 1913, p. 14), “New York May Learn From Co- 155). Adams also ascribes the failure of the 1916 ordi- logne” (7 February 1915, pp. 18-9). nance to the subsequent lowering of standards (already 43. “Vaster Skyscrapers Inevitable, Says German Expert,” low to start with) under pressure from “a few specula- The New York Tzmes Magazine, 6 April 1913, p. 6. Practi- tors in real estate” (153). cally speaking, Hegemann called for the construction of 54. In another work, Scott calls the ordinance “a fantasti- cheaper elevated lines instead of more expensive under- cally unrealistic enactment [because it] permitted ground subway lines, in order to keep land values and enough building to house 77,000,000 people” (Scott fares low and thus make low-density, suburban housing 1959, 166). affordable to more people. His call was not heeded; with 55. The rule allowing unlimited heights over a small por- subway construction, land values in many parts of the tion of the lot was inspired by Ernest Flagg, the archi- outer boroughs reached levels that required higher den- tect of the Singer Building, which had a wide base and sities or pushed the price of detached housing beyond a slender tower. Other architects followed Flagg’s ex- the reach of most residents. ample before they were forced to do so by the new regu- 44. “Public Service Commission Recommends Five and Ten lations, because the model made good business sense. Cent Fare Zones For the Third Ward of Queens,” The Announcing the construction of a new office building in New York Tzrnes, Sunday, 27 February 1916, sec. 3, p. 6, Midtown Manhattan, the title of a New York Times article col. 2. explains: “Tower Building on Forty-Second Street With Downloaded By: [CDL Journals Account] At: 20:56 5 January 2009 45. “New Building Code Almost Completed,” The New York Permanent Open Space on All Sides; Twenty Stories of Times, 26 December 1915, sec. 7, p. 7, col. 1. Heckscher Building, on Madison Avenue Corner, Will 46. “Real Estate Owners Suffer from City’s Bookkeeping,” Be Set Back from Basic Five-Story Structure, Giving The New York Tzrnes Magazine, 30 November 1913, p. 6. Light and Air to All Offices” (12 September 1915, sec. 7, 47. The estimate is given by Cyrus C. Miller, Chairman of p. 2, col. 3). It is interesting to note that Flagg himself the Advisory Council of Real Estate Interests, in “Advi- did not view the multiplication of skyscrapers modeled sory Council of Real Estate Interests Plans New York,” after the Singer Building as a success. “If the proposed The New York Tzmes, 2 January 1916, sec. 3, p. 5, col. 2. measure,” he wrote, “would not interfere with the build- 48. It was clear, and acknowledged by many, that the mar- ing of such a building as the Singer Building, then it ket downturn could not be ascribed entirely to mu- could hardly be regarded as a regulation to limit the nicipal action or inaction. In addition, developers height and area of buildings within what would be recognized the need for expanded public works and thought elsewhere reasonable bounds” (letter to the Ed- public services. But they also believed that real estate itor, published under the title “Heights of Buildings,” was shouldering a disproportionate part of the fiscal The New York Times, 10 February 1915, p. 10, c01. 5). burden. To share that burden more equally, the Real Es- 56 “Would Limit Size of All Tenements,” The New York tate Board of New York recommended that a state in- Times, 21 July 1913, p. 7, col. 3. The article describes In- come tax be instituted, together with an occupation tax gersoll’s recommendations to the Heights of Buildings on in-state business by nonresidents (“Real Estate Inter- Committee. On the idea of area-based regulation, we

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read: “For skyscrapers and office buildings and factories Tenement House Problem. New York: The Macmillan a rule depending on the proportion of the volume to Company. the area of the lot should be enforced.” Devine, Edward T. 1911. The Congestion Bills. The Survey, 57. Werner Hegemann suggested that the owner of a parcel June 10, 1911,413. who wished to build a skyscraper be allowed to do so on Foglesong, Richard E. 1986. Planning the Capitalist City: The condition that he “buy from his neighbors light and air Colonial Era to the 1920s. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer- and keep their property down by paying for it” (“Vaster sity Press. Skyscrapers Inevitable, Says German Expert,” The New Ford, George B. 1917. New York City Building Zone Resolution York Times Magazine, 6 April 1913, p. 6). “Owners,” Er- Restricting the Height and Use of Buildings and Prescribing the nest Flagg wrote, “should have the right to dispose of Minimum Sizes of Their Yards and Courts, With explanatory their right to build high in favor of adjoining land (let- notes that will be helpful to Owners, Builders and Architects. New ter to the Editor, published under the title “Skyscraper York: New York Title and Mortgage Company. Towers,” The New York Tzmes, 7 April 1913, p. 8, col. 7). Haldeman, B. Antrim. 1912. The Control of Municipal De- 58. Letter to the Editor, published under the title “The Zon- velopment by the “Zone System” and Its Application in ing Bill,” The New York Times, 8 October 1916, sec. 7, p. the United States. In Proceedings of the Fourth National Con- 2, col. 6. ference on City Planning, Boston, Massachusetts, May 27-22 1912. Boston. 173-88. Hammack, David C. 1982. 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