Elbert Peets: Town Planning, Pragmatism and Ecology, 1915-1968 Royce Michael Earnest University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

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Elbert Peets: Town Planning, Pragmatism and Ecology, 1915-1968 Royce Michael Earnest University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations May 2017 Elbert Peets: Town Planning, Pragmatism and Ecology, 1915-1968 Royce Michael Earnest University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Earnest, Royce Michael, "Elbert Peets: Town Planning, Pragmatism and Ecology, 1915-1968" (2017). Theses and Dissertations. 1463. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/1463 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ELBERT PEETS: TOWN PLANNING AND ECOLOGY, 1915-1968 by Royce M. Earnest A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee May 2017 ABSTRACT A STUDY OF THE WORK AND WRITING OF ELBERT PEETS; A CASE STUDY IN URBAN PLANNING, ECOLOGY AND THE ADVENT OF MODERNISM AT THE MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY by Royce M. Earnest The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2017 Under the Supervision of Bob Greenstreet, PhD Elbert Peets (1886-1968) designed some significant town plans in the early to mid-twentieth century. His design work was successful and well regarded at the time, and his plans for Greendale, Wisconsin and Park Forest, Illinois were influential for post-World War II suburban developments. These town plans, and others such as Wyomissing, Pennsylvania and Washington Highlands, Wisconsin have continued to be vibrant and successful neighborhoods. Peets also wrote widely, and most notably was the co-author of The American Vitruvius; An Architect’s Handbook of Urban Design. However, though these contributions were notable, Peets has been largely neglected in the historiography of twentieth century urban and landscape studies. Histories of the period have tended to focus on a few heroic figures and major movements like the advent of International Style modernism. This study adds to the history of the period by showing that the appearance of a monolithic narrative of the time is incomplete and that including alternative points of view like Peets’s provides both a more accurate and more interesting history. There are three primary arguments for this study. The first is that the quality of the work itself merits recognition. Beyond noting that there was interesting work being done, the qualities that made Peets’s work notable, emphasis on user-centered humanistic designs, inclusion of site-specific ecological features, and concentration on the primacy of social streets as the centerpiece of neighborhood plans, ii were distinctly at odds with the dominant narrative of the modernist agenda. The second argument, and the one that has not received attention, is that the plans incorporate sensitivity to ecological concerns that grew from the growth of scientific forestry, the rise of ecological science, and the growing conservation movement at the beginning of the twentieth century. Peets was exposed to these trends from his education at Harvard’s Landscape Program, and to a greater degree than his contemporaries, he incorporated those concepts into his town plans in the form of riparian protection zones and greenways. Finally, this study will interrogate the reasons that Peets has been overlooked. His association with the Garden City movement and with a precedent-based design approach at the time that European modernism as advocated by Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Hilberseimer resulted in his being associated with a traditionalism and historicism that was falling out of fashion. This study will recognize Peets’s contributions, and more broadly will investigate how the vagaries of fashion in design trends result in a significant figure being overlooked. This study will challenge the dominant narrative of the rise of modernism by recognizing an alternative and competing path for urban design. Peets’s work, along with other critiques of the modernist agenda that noted the anti-urbanist implications of modernist urban renewal and its devaluing of social streets, illustrates an overlooked and valuable episode in the trajectory of mid-century urban planning practice and urban theory. iii © Copyright by Royce Earnest, 2017 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ........................................................................ iii List of figures ............................................................... vi Acknowledgements ...................................................... ix Chapter One: Introduction ............................................1 Chapter Two: Notes on methodology ..........................28 Chapter Two: Biographical background ......................37 Chapter Three: Contextualizing Peets .......................49 Chapter Four: Town plans ........................................113 Chapter Five: Peets’s writing ....................................154 Chapter Six: Conclusion ...........................................187 Articles by Peets ........................................................200 Other contemporaries .................................................204 Brief timeline .............................................................206 Bibliography ..............................................................209 Curriculum vitae ........................................................217 v LIST OF FIGURES 1. Garden City diagram Ebenezer Howard ................................................ Page 75 2. Fairfield, Alabama Plan, George H. Miller .................................................82 3. Fairfield, Alabama Aerial view of civic center George H. Miller .........................................................83 4. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Aerial view of civic center ...........................................84 5. Port Sunlight, Liverpool Town plan ....................................................................85 6. Port Sunlight Aerial view ...................................................................85 7. Radburn, New Jersey Stein, Wright & Cautley ..............................................86 8. Mariemont, Ohio John Nolen ...................................................................87 9. Venice, Florida John Nolen ...................................................................88 10. Sunnyside Gardens Stein, Wright and Cautley ............................................89 11. Ville Contemporaine Le Corbusier...............................................................100 12. CIAM publication cover ...........................................101 vi 13. Plan for Barcelona Le Corbusier .............................................................102 14. CIAM, plan for Milan Albini, et al..............................................................103 15. Kohler, Wisconsin Hegemann and Peets, town plan ...............................142 16. Washington Highlands Hegemann and Peets, plan ........................................143 17. Wyomissing Park, Pennsylvania Hegemann and Peets, plan ........................................144 18. Wyomissing Park, Pennsylvania Hegemann and Peets, aerial view ..............................145 19. Wyomissing Park, Pennsylvania Hegemann and Peets, vignettes ..................................145 20. Greendale, Wisconsin Peets, plan .................................................................146 21. Greendale, Wisconsin Peets, plan .................................................................147 22. Greendale, Wisconsin Exploded diagram .....................................................148 23. Greendale, Wisconsin Vignette of housing cluster .......................................149 24. Greendale, Wisconsin Houses, ca 1936 ........................................................150 25. Greendale, Wisconsin Houses, ca 1937 ........................................................151 26. Greenbelt, Maryland .................................................152 vii 27. Park Forest, Illinois Peets, 1946 plan ........................................................153 28. Park Forest, Illinois Peets, 1950 plan ........................................................154 29. Park Forest, Illinois Aerial view ...............................................................155 30. Levittown, New York Aerial view ...............................................................156 31. Plan of Washington, D. C. “Corrected” plan by Peets ........................................187 32. Illustration for “The Golden Horses” ........................188 33. Elbert Peets’s gravestone, Austinburg, Ohio Photo by the author ...................................................204 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I will just start with the most immediate circle of individuals who deserve thanks and acknowledgements for helping to shape and shepherd this dissertation to this point. The obvious and common case is that there are way too many people to thank, but the people on my committee are the ones who have had to read drafts that were not ready and try to find suggestions for how to improve this dissertation. Bob Greenstreet, the chair of my committee, once noted that the topic of my dissertation was not his area of expertise. This is true in the sense that the narrow slice of landscape history is not his specialty, which is more about the professional practice of architecture and legal issues. However, in broader sense, his skill
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