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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 3

Maps of White Plains 4

Introduction 5

Birth of a City 6

Towards Urban Renewal 9

The Central Renewal Plan 11

The Commercial Landscape 13

Downtown Destruction and Renewal 17

Renaissance and Conclusion 22

Bibliography 27

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Acknowledgements

Thank you to the following people and organizations, without which this paper would not have been possible:

Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Bob Kibbee Elaine Massena The Map Collection at Olin Library, Cornell University, and its Staff Professor Michael Tomlan The Westchester County Archives and its Staff The Westchester County Historical Society

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Maps of White Plains

Present-day street map (top) and satellite image of White Plains.

Images courtesy of Google Maps (www.maps.google.com)

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Introduction

From an untrained eye, a mere glimpse of the White Plains, New York skyline would convey a sense of bewilderment. It’s a seemingly impossible array of glittering skyscrapers and residential towers somehow plopped down in the middle of tree-lined suburbia. This city, if you could even call it that, has acquired enough capital, glitz, and glamour in the last eight years alone, it would make even the most well-to-do urbanite awestruck. Yet, beneath the shimmering façades and Rodeo Drive-like collection of boutiques lays a city that has completely transformed itself in the second half of the twentieth century. The city, which has just over 53,000 residents and a skyline that would make most American cities jealous, has become a regional destination for those who crave the essentials of nearby New York City, but dare not cross the city line.

Historians and politicians regard White Plains as the county seat of Westchester, while most others refer to it as the place where they work, shop, and play. It is a city home to young professionals, families, Fortune 500 companies, and world class shopping. It is an exemplar of the modern “Edge City”, in which its current incarnation as an urban center on the fringe of a much larger one is nothing like the place it was forty years ago

(Garreau 7). Simple storefronts and mom and pop stores have long since made way for towering edifices of glass, steel, and wealth.

It is a city that despite a rich history that goes back to the days of pre-colonial

America has only existed in its current state since the mid 1970s. Ever since the federal government gave city officials the green light to implement urban renewal and reshape the physical city, White Plains has become an entirely different place. Back in the day, before malls, office towers, or gentrification, it was a railroad town, close enough to New

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York City physically, but far enough away to have its own unique character. Urban

Renewal changed all that: movie theatres were demolished for parking garages, simple storefronts turned into climate-controlled malls, and small shops grew into gleaming towers. Even today, the city is still trying to reclaim street level shops and pedestrian cityscapes through a series of residential and mixed-use development projects, but reminders of urban renewal dominate the White Plains skyline. Urban renewal forever changed the very fabric of the city in the postwar years by redesigning the central business district to fit the scale of the automobile, by attempting to make the city a commercial enclave in a sea of suburban lawns and gardens, and by doing whatever it took to physically change the nature and purpose of a city desperate for transition and change.

Birth of a City

The earliest form of White Plains was created on November 22, 1683 when settlers from the nearby Rye Colony purchased roughly 4,500 acres of land from the local

Westchester Indians (Hoffman, “Yesterday” i). The Indians had named the land

“Quarropas”, which translated to “the white marshes” or “plains of white”. Settlement of the new White Plains Colony was slow until March 13, 1721, when King George II of

England granted the Colony a royal patent (Hoffman, “Yesterday” ii). By that year,

White Plains was still a small village within the Town of Rye, but as the village gained population, power, and momentum, it soon became a separate entity. In 1758, the village constructed its first courthouse thanks to a wealthy local landowner and assumed the

6 county seat of Westchester County (better known as simply “Westchester”). Thirty years later, the village separated from Rye and became its own town (Hoffman “Yesterday” ii).

Prior to separation, two events occurred in White Plains that would forever change the city’s importance and direction. First, on July 9, 1776, a messenger arrived at the town courthouse fresh from Philadelphia. Dusty and tired, he addressed the New

York Provincial Congress by presenting them with a copy of the Declaration of

Independence. The Congress quickly appointed a committee to verify, study, approve, and adopt the document, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies would separate from their mother country, England. Two days later, the copy of the Declaration was read aloud publicly on the courthouse steps. With the Declaration declaring the formation of the United States of America, and changing New York from a provincial colony to a state, White Plains would become the birthplace of the State of New York (Hoffman,

“Yesterday” ii).

The second event was the Battle of White Plains, which occurred in October and

November of that year. American troops gathered on a hillside overlooking the village, waiting for British troops, but the when the British arrived, they first laid eyes upon the weakest of the American lines, and immediately seized them on Chatterton Hill to the west (Hoffman, “Yesterday” ii-iii). While the Chatterton campaign was quick and swift, taking the entire village of White Plains proved to be too cumbersome for British forces.

As American troops restructured their defenses to counter the British, the latter troops found that they could gain no more ground within the village, and so, on November 5, they retreated to nearby Dobbs Ferry (Hoffman, “Yesterday” iii).

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The new town experienced slow growth in the late 18th and early 19th century.

The town was laid out like other New England-style villages: houses were clustered around a central commons on Broadway (later, the commons would become a public park) (Massena, “Tibbits”). Unattractive buildings, “inferior” shops, and poorly kept streets kept population growth at a crawl: in 1790, the population was 505 residents. By

1800, 70 new residents had moved into the village over the past ten years. By 1830, there were only 830 total residents (Hoffman, “Yesterday” iv). The town would not experience any real growth until the 1840s, when the New York Central Railroad extended service into White Plains on December 1, 1844 (Hoffman, “Yesterday” 46). With the railroad, residents could easily travel into nearby New York City and new businesses began to set up shop within the town, taking advantage of the new transportation infrastructure.

By the 1860s, the layout of the town had changed dramatically. The Broadway

Commons were no longer the center of activity. New developments chose to locate along

Railroad Avenue, which ran eastward from the railroad station to Broadway and passed the courthouse along the way (see figure 1). In 1870, the town’s population had swelled to 2,630 residents with no signs of slowing down (Hoffman, “Yesterday” iv). Near the end of the 19th century, the town had now grown to resemble a small city. Trolley service within the Town of White Plains and to its neighbors began in 1897 (Hoffman,

“Yesterday” 71), better connecting residents to the growing rail-based infrastructure.

During the 1910s, a second rail line serving the New York-Boston corridor began service to White Plains (Hoffman, “Changing” 323). Due to increased traffic, a permanent road bridge was built over the original railroad tracks (which were now electrified) to accommodate the town’s many commuters (Hoffman, “Changing” 209-210). Light

8 industrial firms also began to establish within the town at this time. For the most part, firms settled near the railroad tracks and manufactured mostly consumer goods

(Hoffman, “Changing” 316-318). Even a small car company used White Plains as its manufacturing base (Massena, “Motor” 12)! In 1916, White Plains incorporated itself as a city (Hoffman, “Changing” iv).

Towards Urban Renewal

The end of the World War II and years ensuing became a pivotal time for the city of White Plains. Returning troops, eager to start new families, looked to the suburbs as the new residential frontier, with its spacious plots, inexpensive housing, and family- friendly atmosphere (Tomlan, “Modern”). Rail service was on the decline (rail service to

Boston and the trolleys had already ceased) and automobiles were in fashion.

Westchester already developed a decent parkway network to carry commuters back and forth from New York City, but White Plains was barely on this new grid. With nearby towns like Mamaroneck, Scarsdale, and Tuckahoe quickly becoming bedroom communities of New York City, White Plains began to change its focus from a governmental center to a commercial haven within the suburbs. After all, the city had a beautiful Art Deco style convention center for meetings and traveling performances

(Massena, “Agnes”) as well as many of the same department stores and retailers found in

Manhattan (Sanchis 344). It was only natural to remind locals and newcomers about the great benefits the closer city had to offer.

In 1948, White Plains held a Parade of Progress, in which over nine days, “civic, educational, social, and business leaders [coordinated] a program that [promised] to be

9 one of the most impressive events ever witnessed in Westchester County” (Rodwin 12).

Aside from being a large celebration of marching bands, fanfare, and floats, the city used the parade as a way to advertise recent growth, city businesses, and local culture, all under the banner slogan, “The Best of Everything can be Had in our Town” (Rodwin 13).

High school bands, choruses, and musical ensembles performed alongside exhibitions from corporations like GM and Phillip Morris. There were even fashion shows from local merchants and national department stores with locations within White Plains (Rodwin 13,

28, 30). Overall, more than 7,000 performers and endless amounts of street decorations and civic improvements were involved to make the ten-day celebration a success, at least, temporarily (“White Plains Off”).

In stark contrast, the 1950s and early 1960s were not kind to White Plains. New businesses chose to locate away from the historic center on sprawling campuses closer to their employees’ homes (Sanchis 307). Downtown White Plains, with its Warren and

Wetmore railroad station and impressive new county offices built in 1932, was in a dreadful state of decline (Hoffman, “Yesterday” 294, 303) (Common Council 2). A typical stroll down Railroad Avenue (which had been renamed “Main Street” earlier in the century) would find seedy mom-and-pop stores, shuttered movie theatres, low-end retailers and abandoned street shops (Hoffman, “Changing” 24-25). In the early 1960s,

Mayor Richard Hendley, along with the city’s Common Council and Planning Board agreed that something needed to be done to help revitalize the downtown of their once thriving city (Common Council 12). Much to their pleasure, the federal government was providing opportunities for cities on the decline to invest in urban renewal programs to drastically improve their downtown districts.

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The Central Renewal Plan

White Plains’ quest towards revitalization began in 1957, when the city hired professional planners to survey the central commercial core (Massena “Urban”).

Consisting of roughly 113 acres, the proposed area for urban renewal, which consisted of the “historic” business district surrounding the old railroad station, was failing to cash in on the economic growth that the eastern portion of the city experienced (Massena,

“Urban”). Four years later, a preliminary proposal was created, with the radical idea of tearing down most of the existing structures and rebuilding from scratch, but it would take the city two more years to perfect the project proposal to meet city standards

(Massena, “Urban”).

In 1963, White Plains unveiled its sweeping master plan to greatly improve its downtown. Presented as the end result “of intensive study by city officials, city agencies, and their professional consultants”, the project proposal, better known as the Central

Renewal Plan (CRP), sought to integrate new development with compatible existing buildings in the city’s central commercial area as a solution to revive a city on the downturn (Common Council 3). Among the aims of the project were:

• Reinforce the city’s position as the commercial, governmental, and cultural

hub of Westchester

• Bring together City and County offices and new cultural facilities in an all-

inclusive new civic center

• Reduce traffic congestion through new and improved arteries

• Expand parking within the central business district

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• Create new opportunities for housing for city residents and offer new park and

recreation areas alongside new development (Common Council 3)

The initial concept art suggested sweeping changes to the city’s layout and skyline. For starters, planners suggested converting many of its cross streets downtown into wider, two-way “grande-allée” style boulevards. A traffic loop would be created by constructing a feeder from Central Avenue to Quarropas Street and an arterial running northwest from Grove Street back towards Central Avenue, connecting with the Bronx

River Parkway and to the new Cross Westchester Expressway (Common Council 8).

Working with the notion that “business goes where the automobile goes”, the plan called for “over 4,000 new public parking spaces” to supplement the feeder and arterial, guaranteeing parking within the CRP zone (Common Council 8). The creation of the nation’s first off-street metered parking lot and the White Plains Parking Authority in

1947 greatly enhanced the city’s preference to increase municipal parking and become an auto-centric city (Municipal).

Furthermore, all development west of Court Street would be obliterated.

Developers proposed massive superblocks with sweeping courtyards, public plazas and international-style glass and steel office towers, reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s “Towers in the Park” project in Paris, France (Tomlan, “TVA”). Skybridges would be built to connect the blocks and plazas, passing over busy streets and allowing pedestrians to

“walk free from traffic turmoil” (Common Council 8). Additional retail, residential, recreational, and industrial buildings would encircle the new commercial district

(Common Council 5-7). The CRP also provided strict guidelines concerning the placement, size, and most importantly, availability for parking of each structural unit

12 proposed for the CRP zone (Urban Renewal Plan). For example, buildings could not be more than “a distance equal to the average height of such buildings at the point where they are nearest to each other” (Urban Renewal Plan 13), and to keep with the low profile of the surrounding suburbs, residential structures could be no taller than twelve stories, while commercial structures had to cap their heights at fifteen stories (Urban Renewal

Plan 13, 23).

Finally, champions of the CRP cited its low relative cost and projected increase in tax revenue as major project benefits. While the overall project would cost $57 million, the city itself would pay less than 12% of that figure (only $6.5 million)(Common

Council 11). Moreover, the project expected to produce an estimated $150,000,000 in new commercial activity, increase city tax revenue on commercial properties by more than $1,000,000 each year, and bring in over $800,000 annually from parking fees

(Common Council 11). With over $2,000,000 additionally in city revenues, the city could make back its investment in just three years, all for trying to turn urban blight into a renewed, revitalized area. These three factors: traffic improvements, structural improvements, and cost efficiency, together with even more fantastic visions of what the new city could look like, greatly helped urban renewal get off the ground in White Plains.

The Commercial Landscape

Although the CRP called for White Plains to be the next big regional commercial hub, major corporations had begun to relocate to the area prior to the plan’s conception.

Corporations favored White Plains and Westchester for its proximity to New York City,

“its amenities in terms of transportation, housing, and recreation,” (Sanchis 307) and in

13 the 1950s, the area’s comparatively bucolic landscape. The first of the corporate settlers was General Foods, which relocated to White Plains in 1953 on a hunch that the city would be the new locus of corporate wealth. Situated on thirty-eight acres on the city’s southeastern edge, the complex was one of the first “corporate campuses” and “office parks” that would soon dominate the local landscape (Sanchis 309). It set the precedent for contemporary corporate park design: rectangular structures sprawled out with long corridors, vertical windows, and interior Zen-like courtyards. These campuses also featured cafeterias, lounges, and multiple indoor and outdoor recreational areas, all designed to entice workers to spend more time on campus (Sanchis 307). Lastly, these corporate settlers often hired prestigious architectural firms to design their buildings, doubling their campuses as both functional work environments and architectural landmarks. General Foods hired Voorhees, Walker, Lundberg, and Whaler for their flagship campus in White Plains. When Ciba-Geigy Corporation moved to Westchester three years later, they hired Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill for their sprawling hillside complex (Sanchis 309).

Corporations were also attracted to new high-capacity interstate highways that began to crisscross Westchester County, in particular, the Cross Westchester Expressway, which was built in 1959. As part of the Eisenhower Interstate Highway Act, the expressway would provide a much needed limited access highway across the county connecting Westchester’s Hudson River towns, Rockland County, and New Jersey to the west with the Long Island Sound towns and Connecticut to the east. Construction of the expressway (I-287) was carefully planned to skirt around downtown White Plains to the east and north. Opened in the early 1960s, I-287 did accomplish its goal of making cross-

14 county travel faster and easier, but given the current trend of corporate resettlement, it created an environment that gave incoming corporations to Westchester and White Plains an excuse to settle outside of the CRP area.

One by one, corporations began to claim land in close proximity to the expressways. First, Nestle in 1958. Then IBM in 1963, Technicon in 1969 and Pepsico,

Union Carbide, and American Can Company in 1970, to name a few (Sanchis 309, 311,

313-314). Not one of these companies chose to settle in the improving CRP district, instead choosing the sprawled-out campuses. As the years went by, the architecture became edgier and flashier. Brick was replaced by steel, then plate glass, and finally by mirrored glass (Sanchis 311-313). Sculptures became regular fixtures on the front lawns of these corporate behemoths. By 1972, over 70 major corporations were members of the

“White Plains business community” and nearly 40% of those businesses weren’t even in the city proper (White Plains Today 8). By 1987, the I-287 corridor and its environs was dotted with modern glass and steel commercial complexes, corporate campuses, and office parks, earning Westchester County the nickname “The Golden Apple” (County), and the I-287 corridor heading southeast from White Plains the “Platinum Mile”, a tongue-in-cheek reference to both the amount of corporate wealth generated by the resident corporations and the shiny appearance of the many mirrored glass buildings in the area (Massena, Interview).

Like corporate settlers, department stores were another mainstay of White Plains that chose to resettle outside the CRP zone. National department stores began appearing in Westchester and White Plains as early as the 1930s. In 1934, B. Altman opened their first branch in Downtown White Plains on Mamaroneck Avenue and Post Road (Sanchis

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344). In 1949, the city received its second department store, a Macy’s, on Mamaroneck

Avenue closer to Main Street (Sanchis 346). Both stores relied heavily on street-scale architectural principles: large display windows, visually stimulating architectural details, and pedestrian scale appeal. Like other department stores being built in Westchester at the time in small urban centers like New Rochelle and Peekskill, the department stores were greatly limited in how big they could expand due to zoning restrictions and city lot sizes, not to mention, available parking was limited at best. Like corporations, department stores wanted to capitalize on the proliferation of the automobile, the traffic generated by new highway construction, and be free from the constraints of high-density urban development.

Starting in the 1950s, new department stores opening in White Plains began to operate with a new set of principles: stores began to feature expansive parking lots, banal architecture, and settle close to major highways. In contrast to the architecturally stimulating downtown White Plains Macy’s with its curved four-story glass wall façade, a much larger and more modern Bergdorf Goodman opened in 1973 several blocks away on Bloomingdale Road and was nothing more than a large brutalism-style concrete cube

(Sanchis 346-347). In fact, three other major department stores joined Bergdorf on

Bloomingdale Road due to its easy accessibility from I-287. B. Altman opened a second store there in 1950, Saks Fifth Avenue in 1953, and Bloomingdales in 1974. Each of the stores were much bigger than their urban counterparts and were able to stock more merchandise as a result. Gone were the display windows and ornamental architecture. In their place were large monoliths devoid of fenestration, aisles of free parking, and most importantly, lack of restrictive zoning measures (Sanchis 346-347). The stores, like the

16 corporate office parks, became icons in themselves, expanding horizontally and developing at the scale of the car. Together, the new trend in corporate and department store development posed a serious threat to the golden promises being offered by urban renewal.

Downtown Destruction and Renewal

As the CRP started underway in the late 1960s and 1970s, it was clear that the focus and direction of the city would change dramatically. Any sense of history or character that the city once possessed in its downtown district would be wiped clean and replaced with Anytown, USA. By 1972, six new buildings had been built as part of the

CRP, including the government complex, public library, New York Telephone building, and White Plains Mall. $90 million of investment had already been realized, and $80 million of construction was slated for the next few years (White Plains Today 3). Despite increased construction and development of suburban office campuses outside of downtown, the City of White Plains had 60,000 daily workers, was the state’s second largest retail center, and ranked third among per capita spending in the United States

(White Plains Today 2, 9).

It was clear to the proponents of Urban Renewal and the CRP that the ultimate goal was to transform White Plains from a local destination into a regional commercial hub, the forerunner of an Edge City, but at what cost? In the early 1980s, office construction within the City of White Plains and Westchester outpaced any other suburban county in New York State, double what Westchester saw in the 1970s (County

20), and its abundance of open courtyards and green spaces earned it the nickname of

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“The City in the Park” during its transformation (White Plains Today 2). Nonetheless, the improvements came at the cost of relinquishing the historic character of the central district, with the mayor and developers turning a blind eye towards preservation and protection and a giving the thumbs up to indiscriminate demolition.

Most of the demolition was aimed at older construction within the CRP zone, while some targeted structures on the periphery that were not in line with the city’s new vision. Stately Victorian homes along Main Street were razed in the late 1960’s for glass and steel office complexes (Hoffman, “Changing” 18-19). The RKO Theatre on

Mamaroneck Avenue, Westchester’s largest theatre that ran the city’s first talking picture, was demolished in 1972 despite public protests and efforts to save the building and possibly re-use it (Hoffman, “Changing” 20-21). In 1984, bulldozers claimed the historic Warren and Wetmore railroad station and replaced it with an empty lot

(Hoffman, “Changing” 57). Arguably the greatest lost was the county courthouse in

1978. Although the civic center complex had replaced it in 1972, the historic building that had been the cornerstone of White Plains since 1916 was demolished fully to make way for another shopping mall (Hoffman, “Changing” 38-39).

However, some historic structures were salvaged and challenged the CRP’s direction. Most notable of these saves was the Jacob Purdy House, a structure that had stood downtown since 1721. General George Washington had used the property twice during the American Revolution as headquarters for his troops. Centuries later, the structure became embarrassingly run down (Hoffman, “Changing” 64). Faced with an ultimatum by the White Plains Department of Urban Renewal, local residents formed a committee to save the building and purchased the structure in 1963 (Massena, “Purdy”).

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Despite efforts to rehabilitate the house and preserve the whole property, the building was still in the way of the proposed feeder route for downtown. Fortunately, a grant was given for a plot of land just overlooking the downtown, where the house itself could be relocated. In 1973, the Jacob Purdy House was put onto a flatbed truck and carted to the new lot, saving the structure from being another victim of urban renewal (Massena,

“Purdy”).

The other save, the County Center, was also significant in that it stymied the CRP plans for the feeder and arterial altogether. The Center, built in the 1930s, was starting to deteriorate by the mid 1970s, but city residents were greatly opposed to tearing down the beautiful Art Deco building with an original $100,000 Aeolian organ (Massena,

“Treasures”). Faced with steep opposition from the residents, the City of White Plains decided not to tear down the structure and subsequently cancelled the feeder and arterial.

Furthermore, Westchester voters approved a complete renovation of the Center in 1984.

Four years later, the newly renovated building re-opened its doors to the public (Massena,

“Treasures”).

Yet by the early 1980s, the downtown landscape had been changed dramatically.

Many of the originally proposed buildings had been built, but a majority of the plans were never fully realized. The glut of office space in the downtown also caused city populations to fluctuate wildly throughout the day. Although many housing units had been constructed, White Plains was mainly regarded and seen a commercial city: a workplace that would thrive by day but empty out at dusk. As a result, White Plains became austere, corporate, and cold. It took on the character of a stereotypical edge city,

19 with jobs vastly outpacing bedrooms, a population made up of mostly day-commuters, and most land going towards office space and retail (Garreau 6-7).

But perhaps the worst result of the CRP was the complete removal of pedestrians from the sidewalks and streets. Most of the office towers built downtown ended up having their own parking lots and facilities, eventually replacing the proposed networks of public plazas and skybridges. As a result, workers in these downtown structures would use their cars to commute and travel in, out, and around the city, completely neglecting any pedestrian modes of travel. Furthermore, the new CRP superblocks perpetuated the need for residents and workers to get cars and stay off the street. The scale greatly shifted from rows of individual stores and narrow sidewalks and streets to wide boulevards with enormous box-like towers (with highly impersonal names like

“Westchester Financial Center”) on gargantuan single block lots with sprawling sidewalks. The CRP essentially vacated the streetscape and unintentionally moved pedestrians and workers into cars and buildings.

But all was not lost for the city. In 1978, plans were made to revamp Main Street into a notable retail district by means of constructing a mall. After two years of project development and collaboration with retail developers and Federated Department Stores,

White Plains opened up its first legitimate mall (The White Plains Mall, which was part of the CRP, was in decline with retailers moving out and its being anchored by the

Department of Motor Vehicles) in 1980. Billed as the “$100 Million Galleria”, the new mall, better known as “The Galleria”, had over 150 stores, a twin theatre, and twenty-two restaurants (Massena, “Galleria”). Although it was designed to keep pedestrians within the mall with its attractive interior design and pleasant surroundings, it did create an

20 incentive for workers to stay downtown. The new retail was adjacent to major private and public offices and created a common singular center for shoppers within Westchester

County to congregate (Massena, “Galleria”). The building itself featured typical urban renewal elements, such as being architecturally boring (most of the exterior is clad in concrete) and featuring an overpass over Grove Street (later renamed Martin Luther

King, Jr. Boulevard). During the 1980s and the early 1990s, it was seen as the preeminent shopping center within White Plains and Westchester County, furthering in the city’s image as a shopper’s Mecca.

Commuters traveling to White Plains were also helped by the creation of the

Metro North Railroad in 1983. In that year, the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) assumed control of commuter rail lines along existing Conrail and Amtrak right of ways, some of which were the same rail lines that had served White Plains since the 1840s

(Metro North). White Plains became a focus city along the Metro North’s Harlem Line, and in turn, the city and the MTA collectively built a brand new high-capacity commuter rail station with attached parking garages and bus terminal. Moreover, its close proximity to downtown office parks and complexes makes commuting by rail a feasible option for commuters traveling to White Plains from elsewhere in Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess Counties, and even New York City.

Finally, renewed interest in nearby Westchester County Airport helped the city rebound from the negative effects of the CRP. Located nine miles from the heart of downtown, Westchester County Airport is favored by local business and corporations for its extensive service throughout the country, its proximity to White Plains, and its lack of crowds often found at other New York City area airports. The combined interest and

21 usage of the railroad and airport along with increased business and retail development had begun to make White Plains into a small city that could hold its own in the regional market. Nevertheless, there was still much to be done concerning the city’s residential efforts.

Renaissance and Conclusion

The recent developments within White Plains have all been lumped under the banner of “Renaissance”, in the fact that the city has shifted from being almost all commercial to having a healthy mix of residential properties scattered among the corporate edifices. The major impetus for the Renaissance, however, was upping the city’s image even more than did the efforts made in the 1980s and early 1990s. By 1991,

Main Street had a completely different look, with individual stores gone and office towers and a mall in its place. As overall economic growth in Westchester increased, so did the demand for higher-end shopping. The Galleria had a good mix of stores, but many of the wealthier residents in the communities surrounding White Plains wanted the

Fifth Avenue quality within local proximity.

In the early 1990s, Simon Properties acquired the old B. Altman’s on the corner of Westchester Avenue and Bloomingdale Road, demolished it, and built a brand new shopping mall adjacent to the Bergdorf Goodman’s (later, a Neiman Marcus), which opened in 1995. This new mall, The Westchester, would feature a level of shopping that was unprecedented, even for White Plains standards (Foderaro). Today, The

Westchester features an array of top-level boutiques and has stores that rival those of

Midtown Manhattan, such as Tiffany & Co, Gucci, and Burberry to name a few

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(Foderaro). Inadvertently, the arrival of The Westchester greatly diminished the significance of The Galleria and caused the latter to fall into decline. With well-to-do shoppers now abandoning the mall of Main Street for the fancier mall of Bloomingdale

Road, The Galleria solidified its reputation as The Westchester’s seedier cousin, attracting a mostly unsavory crowd and becoming more famous as a local crime scene

(Metro), despite past efforts to improve the mall’s image to better compete with its counterpart (Brenner).

Although The Westchester accomplished the problem of getting a higher class of shopper to come into White Plains to do business, the city still, as recent as 2001, lacked the character and vibrancy of a residential city. With its purpose still firmly planted in business and commerce, locals lamented that “while the city’s population [swells] fivefold during business hours…once five o’clock comes, the area quickly empties”

(Sparling 16). White Plains had focused too much on catering to the upper class consumer and white-collar worker while neglecting the upper class resident. The city had all the retail and employment opportunities to successfully attract a wealthier resident, but it lacked the right residential properties and nightlife. The city had no movie theatres, bars, or anything that would attract prospective residents (Sparling 16-17). The new goal, and the direction that the city has taken in recent years, is to reclaim the city streets by bringing in more residential properties, more street level retail, and making White Plains a city where one can live, work, and play.

* * *

It is obvious that urban renewal has greatly reshaped the city both physically and how the city defines itself. White Plains has since become a regional destination offering

23 a wide range of commercial, entertainment, and residential choices on all economic levels from the lower-tier to the ultra-premium. The most significant change, however, is the rescaling of the city from the pedestrian scale to the auto scale, even within downtown blocks. Some areas of downtown, particularly along Mamaroneck Avenue and

Broadway, have tried to retain their pedestrian nature. Mamaroneck Avenue is still a pleasant, tree-lined street stocked solely with individual retail stores and restaurants, while Broadway’s Tibbits Park acts as the boulevard’s exceptionally wide median and contains pedestrian pathways, a gazebo, and street furniture.

In contrast to decades of exclusively commercial development, White Plains’ most recent projects have been almost entirely residential, with a focus on bringing people to live in the city. Words like “boomtown”, “renaissance”, and “new edge city” have become buzzwords to describe the most recent growth. In the early and mid 2000’s, over $1 billion was invested in residential and mixed use development by developers after years of avoiding White Plains because of its high office vacancy and rates of urban decline (Foderaro). The cornerstone, City Center, located on the site of the old Macy’s on Mamaroneck Avenue and Main Street, has helped to revitalize street level shopping along both corridors by adding many street level shops, as well as providing the city with

600 new rental apartments in twin thirty-five story towers (Foderaro). Furthermore, City

Center features a respectable mix of mid- and high-level retail outlets and restaurants, spread out on over half-a-million square feet including Legal Sea Foods, Target, Barnes and Noble, and a fifteen-screen state of the art movie theatre (Foderaro). Two other high rise developments, Bank Street Commons and Renaissance Square (Foderaro), have since given the city more residential character, and for the first time in its history, a skyline

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(Censor 92). As Catherine Censor wrote in Westchester Magazine, “After working hours, along Mamaroneck Avenue, White Plains still pulses with life. People live here, and there are many more who want to live here” (92).

In addition to City Center, developers also eyed the opportunity for another mixed-use project along Bloomingdale Road. Saks Fifth Avenue closed their White

Plains outpost in 2002 and the lot became vacant. In 2003, plans were established to convert the lot into another upscale-themed mini mall, with luxury home goods retailer

Fortunoff as its anchor (Foderaro). The new project, The Source at White Plains, opened in 2005 and features high-end retailers like Whole Foods Market, Morton’s of Chicago, and The Cheesecake Factory. Despite their success in bringing foot traffic back to White

Plains, this recent string of projects has only been successful along the eastern side of downtown, way out of the original CRP zone. On a given Friday or Saturday night,

Mamaroneck Avenue and City Center teems with life thanks to the movie theatre, restaurants, and bars in the immediate area. The same cannot be said for just a few blocks west, which still feels like a ghost town.

Architecturally speaking, the scars of the CRP are still present, and stick out like sore thumbs amidst the wave of post-millennium development. Along Main Street, an ugly concrete skyway entrance to one of the city’s many municipal parking garages looks garish next to the pristine Ritz Carlton towers next door. Box-like office towers line

Main Street and Hamilton Avenue in the shadow of stately looking developments like

Bank Street Commons and City Center. Even The Galleria, the former pride of the city and one of Urban Renewal’s greatest accomplishments, is an architectural eyesore and an urban hazard.

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But the most telling fact about whether or not the CRP was a success is by walking the city’s streets. Walking through Downtown White Plains in the middle of the day still feels strange. Minorities and the working-class are the only two visible groups on the city’s sidewalks, and that’s if any people walk by at all. Cars zip down the wide streets stopping only at traffic lights or to duck into parking garages. Near City Center and the Renaissance Center, the foot traffic is more vibrant, but not by much. Cars still drive by, looking for parking or garage entries. The public plazas near the office towers, the gathering points of commerce and city workers, are all but empty. Only two CRP skybridges exist in the whole city, and one can only experience them while being indoors.

The buildings, the stores, and infrastructure are there, and there’s not much more the city can do to build itself up. What the city really needs is something that billions of dollars of investment cannot always guarantee: people. The city is nothing without its residents, its lifeblood, and its character. Without people, White Plains is only buildings and concrete. CRP ultimately failed because it alienated its residents by constructing an overly grandiose sea of bricks, glass, concrete, and steel in which the people, realistically, could not move about comfortably. But now that the city has recognized the importance of designing for people and for livability, perhaps White Plains can shake off its image as being purely commercial and become a city of vibrancy, character, and soul.

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