Density and Intervention - Global Urban Development

THE LANDSCAPEOF MODERNITYEssays on New York City,1900J 940Edited by David Ward and Olivier ZunzRussell Sage FoundationNew York

The prepatation of this volume was sponsored byYork City of the Social Science Research Council.fohn H. Mollenkopf, ChairThe Graduate Cen ter, City University of New YorkManuel CastellsUniversity of California-Berkeley andUniversidad Autonoma de MadridMichael P. ConzenUniversity of ChicagoDeryck HoldsworthPennsylvania State UniversityKenneth T. |acksonColumbia UniversityIra KatznelsonNew School for Social ResearchAnn R. MarkusenRutgers UniversityDeborah Dash MooreVassar CollegeOlivier ZunzUniversity of VirginiaDavid L. Szanton, StaffSocial Science Research Councilthe Committee on New

ContentsAcknowledgmentsNotes on ContributorsList of IllustrationsixXxiiiPart I INTRODUCTIONBetr,veen Rationalism and Pluralism: Creating the ModernCity David Ward and Olivier Zunz 3Part ll PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYRegulating the Landscape: Real Estate Values, City Planning,and the I9L6 Zoning Ordinance Keith D. Revell L9Density and Intervention: New York's Planning TraditionsMarc A, Weiss 46|oining New York City to the Greater Metropolis:The Port Authority as Visionary, Target of Opportunity,and Opportunist Iameson W. Doig 765 The Regional Plan and the Transformation of theIndustrial Metropolis Robert Fishman 106Part Iil BUILDING THE VERTICAL CITY6 Corporate Identity and the New York Office Building:1895-1915 Gail Fenske and Dervck Holdsworth I297 Form Follows Finance: The Empire State BuildingCarol Willis 160vtl

CONTENTSPart IV GOING FROM HOME TO WORK8 Subways, Transit Politics, and Metropolitan SpatialExpansion Clifton Hood 1919 Sweatshop Migrations: The Garment Industry BetweenHome and Shoplri-ancy L. Green 2I3Part V FIGHTING FOR IDENTITY10 Little Italy's Decline: Immigrant Renters and Investorsin a Changing CityDonna Gabaccia11 On the Fringes of the City: fewish NeighborhoodsDeborah Dash Moorein Three Boroughs12 Cities of Light, Landscapes of Pleasure David lr{asaw13 "The Pushcart Evil" Daniel BluestonePart VI COMPLETING THE LANDSCAPE14 Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Challenge of DemocraticPlanningThomas KessnerSelected ReferencesIndex23525227328731533 I343viii

Density and Intenventron,New York's Plannrng TnaditionsMarc A. Weiss"Make no little plans." Daniel Burnham's famous dictum was writtenfor and about Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Yet hislarge and ambitious vision could equally well have been applied toNew York City. Indeed, two of the leading promoters of the I9O9 Planof Chi eago, Charles Norton and Frederic Delano, later helped initiatethe much grander Regional Plan of New York and its Environs, whichplayed a maior role in guiding the infrastructure development of themodern metropolis. New York's regional efforts in the 1920s stood asa direct descendant in a long line of farsighted, massive and highlyacclarmed planning efforts, including the 181 I street plan, the creationof the Croton Aqueduct and the water system, the development ofCentral Park and the park system, the building of the subways, bridges,tunnels, highw &ys, and public housing proiects, and many other significantaccomplishments. These achievements, while by no meansunique in American urban development, were highly influential dueto their scale, timing, and level of imagination. rOne of the best known of these milestones is the passage in 1916of the New York City Zonrng Resolution, frequently hailed as thenation's fi.rst zoning law. New York's actions in publicly regulatingprivate development and land use through zoning were widely imitatedaround the country, as were its earlier efforts in regulating multifamilydwellings through the 1901 Tenement House Law. Theassumption that underlay New York's zoning resolution-that restrictionson the use, height, and bulk of all privately owned buildingsdifferentially applied by "districts " ot "zor'es" was legally permissibleunder the municipal police powers-helped launch a rapidly spreadingwave of zoning laws during the L92Os.246

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSLooked at in the larger context of the evolution of land use regulationsin the United States, however, New York's 1916 zoning lawwas definitely an American pacesetter but not quite for the reasonscommonly attributed to it. This is because the primary motivation forzoning on a national basis was the segregation of residential uses fromcommerce and industry, and especially the creation of exclusive districtsfor single family houses. Almost all of the many suburban communitiesthat adopted zoning in the 1910s and 1920s had this intention,and most central cities also established zoning fundamentally tohelp protect certain middle- and upper-income residential neighborhoods.In this sense the first American citywide land use zoning lawwas passed by the City of Los Angeles in 1908. Los Angeles established,both in legislative and administrative practice and iudiciallythrough several k.y court decisions, the legal validity of regulatingand separating land uses for the public purpose of sheltering and nurturinga home environment. New York City essentially adopted andindirectly popul artzed the Los Angeles model, and applied this approachto winning political support from property owners in zoningcertain areas of its outer boroughs.'New York's pioneering zoning law stands as an anom aly in UnitedStates urban history because its basic economic, political, and regulatorythrust had its roots in a very different issue than the mainstreamof the early twentieth century zor'ung movement: (1) New York's lawwas chiefly designed to resolve conflicts among commercial and industrialproperty owners in the central business districts of Manhattan.Residential regulation, though an important part of the law, was notthe principal focus . (2) The main innovation in the New York law wasthe height and bulk regulations, not the use restrictions. AlthoughNew York was not the first city to control building height or even tocreate height districts (many cities already had statutory limits, andBoston's height regulations by separate zones had been legally upheldby the U.S. Supreme Court in L9O9l, it was the fi.rst city to use publicregulation to ration altze and stimulate the $owth and developmentof a central area for modern corporate office builditrBS, advanced services,and retail trade.4 The story of zoning in New York is primarilythe saga of the growth of Manhattan skyscrapers, which is also themain emphasis of this article.Thomas Adams, who directed the 1920s New York Regional Plan,wrote in 193 I that "the L9I6 zonrng law was really a temporary measurebased on compromise. "s Yet the k.y compromise over height andbulk regulations, which the real estate industry finally recognized in1916 as necess ary to protect the long-term economic viability of commercialproperty in Manh attan, established a permanent pattern of47

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYactive public intervention and private involvement to facilit ate largescaledevelopment while attempting to create more open space betweenbuilditrBS, and especially to preserve "open space in the sky."The building setback requirements of the origin aL zonrng restrictionswere later superseded by the more elaborate "tower-in-th e-pIaza" approachof the I96L zoning resolution, which encouraged street levelopen space around high-rise builditrgs, and then by "rapid successionof density bonuses and special districts in the past three decades, allfar more complex than in any other American crty.6Since 1916, New York has consistently led the nation by experimentingwith more aspects of zoning regulation, a wider variety ofadministrative processes, and a greater level of interaction betweenpublic regulators and private developers in negotiating building form,public amenities, and urban design standards. Only recently have SanFrancisco, Boston, and a few other places embarked on interventionistmethods of central business district development control that rivalNew York's. But then, no American city has ever approached the levelof density or the number of tall buildings that have long existed indowntown and midtown Manharran.The Corporate-Commercial CityIn many large and rapidly growing American cities in the early twentiethcentury there were " Crty Beautiful" plans written by architects,civil engineers, and landscape architects, and sponsored primarily bydowntown corpor ate and commercial interests. These plans were explicitlydesigned to establish a central business di strict of commercialoffice builditrBS, department stores, hotels, and other related useswhile pushing out factories, warehouses, and wholesale markets. Thefocus of this urban redevelopment planning was on public investmentin civic centers, parks, parkways, rail terminals, and waterfront facilities.Its main purpose was reshaping the physical landscape throughpublic works to generate new patterns of accessibility and movementin the ctty, showcasing the clean and attractive commercial and culturaldistricts, and attempting to banish the dirty and unsightly cityof industry to working-class neighborhoods removed from the centralarea. The Chicago Commercial Club's I9O9 plan by Daniel Burnhamand Edward Bennett is a classic of this genre, and many other citiesfollowed a similar path. In each case, from Cleveland to San Francisco,land use conflicts emerged between the commercial and industrialsectors, and this type of central area planning was more successful insome cities than in others.T48

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSWhat makes New York interesting and different is that at the pointthat most cities were still struggling to assemble a critical mass of talloffice buildings, department stores, and hotels that would symbolizethe modern downtown, Manhattan was already firmly established asone of the world's leading corporate and commercial centers. This factexplains why New York's zoning law was geared so heavily towardregulating Manhattan commercial real estate when zoning in mostcommunities was more concerned with protecting residential propeny.lt also helps to explain why in New York the height and bulkregulations on commercial buildings adopted in 1916 after nearly twodecades of controversial debate were generally supported by key businessand real estate interests, whereas in other big cities at that timemany comparable business groups strongly opposed height and bulkregulations in proposed zoning laws. New York was already built upwith such a gre^t density and volume of large buildings that thecorporate-commercial sector turned to public regulation as a necessarymeasure to facilitate and protect new investment and developmentwithout stagnation or chaos, in order to continue growing bigger andtaller.A few statistics give a sense of the contrast between New York andthe rest of the country during the period in which zoning laws werefirst established in most American cities. At the end of 1912, Manhattanhad 1,510 buildings from nine to seventeen stories high, andninety-one buildings between eighteen and fifty-five stories (seventyoneof which were offi.ce buildings, with the rest divided betweenhotels and loft manufacturing buildings). A decade later, during whichtime new commercial buildings had grown both taller and more numerous/Chicago, the nation's second-Iargest city with a rapidly expandingdowntown, had forty buildings eighteen stories or higher, lessthan half of Manhattan's total from ten years before. In Chicago'sdowntown "Loop," where most of the city's high buildings were concentrated,151 buildings were between nine and seventeen stories, amere one-tenth of the decade-earlier Manhattan figure. New York notonly led the nation in very tall buildings (which in l9l2 includeda thirty-eight-, a forty-orre-t a fifty-one-, and a fifty-five-story officebuilding), but the sheer volume of skyscrapers totally overshadowedany other city. Table 3.1 displays national data for United States citiesin 1929, demonstrating that New York had half of all the buildings inAmerica that were ten stories or higher. New York also had mostof the tallest commercial structures, from the Woolworth Building,completed in 1913, to the Chrysler Building, which was under constructionduring 1929.849

Table 3.1 rall Buildings in American cities, rgzgCityAlbany, NYAtlanta, GAAtlantic City, NJBaltimore, MDBeaumont/ TXBirmingham, ALBoston, MAChicago, ILCincinnati, OHCleveland, OHColumbus, OHDallas, TXDayton, OHDenver, CODes Moines, IADetroit, MIDuluth, MNForth Worth, TXGalveston, TXHouston, TXIndianapolis, INfacksonville, FL|ersey City, NJ|ohnstown, PAKalam azoo, MIKansas City, MOKnoxville, TNLittle Rock, ARLong Beach, CALos Angeles, CALouisville, KYMemphis, TNMiami, FLMilwaukee, WIMinneapolis, MNMontgomery, ALNashville, TNNewark, NINew Haven, CTNew Orleans, LANew York, NYOakland, CAOklahoma City, OKOmaha, NEPeoria, ILBuildings10-20Stories9T72T36513r023842440T63l159T410251l52423T4T6556066L4r34r7232515325L7l852T2,29rt4209t2Buildings2I Storiesor More2I04II26524II000I90305000002000I0III30030I188I20050

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSTable 3.1 (continued)CityPhiladelphia, PAPhoenix, AZPittsburgh, PAPortland, ORProvidence, RIRichmond, VARochester, NYSacramento, CASt. Louis, MOSt. Paul, MNSalt Lake City, UTSan Antonio, TXSan Diego, CASan Francisco, CASeattle, WASpringfield, ILStockton, CASyracuse, NYTacoma, WATampa, FLToledo, OHTulsa, OKWashington, DCWheeling, WVWichita, KSWilkes-Barre, PAYoungstown, OHBuildings10-20Stories985522552At27837102l8454I56461l637206T455Buildings2l Storiesor More220r50II00300308200I00I200000Source: The American City 4L (September 19291: 130.One of the driving forces behind New York's l916 zoning resolutionwas the Fifth Avenue Association, a group of leading retail merchants,hotel operators/ property owners, investors, lenders, and real estatebrokers trying to stabilize and reinforce the image of Fifth Avenuebetween Thirty-second and Fifty-ninth streets as a high-class shoppingdistrict. The retail merchants' nemesis was the garment industry,which was steadily moving northward along Fifth Avenue, occupyingnewly constructed tall loft manufacturing buildings. Arguing that"these hordes of factory employees . are doing more than arry otherthing to destroy the exclusiveness of Fifth Avenue, " the merchantsturned to the city for the legal authorlty to control private property51

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYthrough zoning laws, limiting building heights within the district tocut down on the number and slze of loft buildings.e Zoning undermunicipal police power regulations, if properly executed, had the advantagesof being compulsory on all property owners without the governmenthaving to fi.nancially compensate these owners.ff the Fifth Avenue Association could have blocked the rapidlyspreading lofts by prohibiting light manufacturing in a commercialzorte, it would surely have proposed such intervention. By L913, ho'wever,no ctty, not even Los Angeles, had yet attempted to segreg atesuch uses, and it did not appear to be legally possible. Height restrictionsby district, on the other hand, had been declared constitutionalby the U.S. Supreme Court in L9O9, so the Fifth Avenue Associationseized on and vigorously promoted this idea as the means of its salvation.loFifth Avenue, however, was not really the principal long-term issue.Whereas the Fifth Avenue Association had chosen building height regulationas a method of blocking and redirecting the garment industry'sgeographic expansion, the main demand in 1916 for regulating theheight and bulk of commercial buildings through zoning came fromprivate businesses that leased office space, land and building owners,investors/ lenders, insurers, developers, contractors, brokers, lawyers,and others involved in the lower Manhattan real estate market. Thesereal estate and business groups reluctantly agreed that some form ofpublic regulation was necess dty, after having opposed sommercialheight restrictions since they were first suggested in the I890s.The 1901 Tenement House Law had imposed height and lot coveragerestrictions on multifamily dwellings, but commercial and industrialbuildings were still unregulated except by building codes, and thenew skyscraper technology had brought much anxiety and uncertaintyto the downtown area, where many new tall and bulky buildingsblocked the sunlight from older and smaller buildioss, causing thelatter's property values to drop and in some cases even drivin g awaytheir tenants. This situation is well illustrated in the accompanyingphotograph from the L9L6 report of the Commission on Building Districtsand Restrictions (see Figure 3.1). Though the tenants in the darkbuildings could presumably move, and the owners could possibly builda new, taller building, there seemed to be no way to privately ensurethat the district would not become strangled by overbuilding and congestion,with each building cutting off the others' sunlight and views,turning the narrow side streets into perpetually dark and impassablecanyons. Public regulation was finally perceived by L9L6 to be theonly viable solution.52

'{ #'t,.tuq*ff##rFigure 3.1 The Final Report of the I9L6 Commission on Building Districtsand Restrictions used this photo to demonstrate the necessity for zoning regulationsin New York City to reduce the density of skyscrapers and allow morelight, air, and open space between tall buildings. Source: Avery Architecturaland Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.53

Table 3.2 Financial Institutions and Insurance CompaniesEndorsing the 1916 New York Zoning LawAstor Trust CompanyBank for Savings in the City of New YorkBankers Trust CompanyBowery Savings BankCitizens' Savings BankColumbia Trust CompanyCommonwealth Insurance Company of New YorkCommonwealth Savings BankDime Savings Bank of WilliamsburghDry Dock Savings InstitutionEast Brooklyn Savings BankEmigrants' Industrial Savings BankEquitable Life Assurance Society of the United StatesExcelsior Savings BankFidelity Trust ConipanyFranklin Savings BankFranklin Trust CompanyGerman Savings Bank of BrooklynCermania Fire Insurance CompanyGermania Savings BankGlobe & Rutgers Fire Insurance CompanyGreater New York Savings BankGuaranty Trust Company of New YorkHarlem Savings BankHome Insurance CompanyHome Life Insurance CompanyHudson Trust CompanyImperial Assurance CompanyIrving Savings InstitutionItalian Savings Bank|amaica Savings BankLawyers Mortgage CompanyLawyers Title & Trust CompanyLiverpool and London and Globe Insurance CompanyLong Island City Savings BankManhattan Life Insurance CompanyMetropolitan Life Insurance CompanyMutual Life Insurance Company of New YorkNew York Life Insurance CompanyNew York Savings BankNew York Title Insurance CompanyNorth British & Mercantile Insurance CompanyNorth River Insurance CompanyPeople's Trust CompanyPostal Life Insurance CompanyRoyal Insurance CompanySouth Brooklyn Savings InstitutionSumner Savings Bank54

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSTable 3.2 (continued)Title Guarantee and Trust CompanyTransatlantic Trust CompanyUnion Square Savings BankUnited States Mortgage & Trust CompanyWest Side Savings BankWilliamsburgh Savings BankSource: Final Report of the Commissron on Building Districts and Restrictions, pp.7 5-7 6.Construction of the new Equitable Building had demonstrated thedifficulty with private methods of control. When the old nine-storybuilding burned to the ground and plans were announced in 1913 fora massive new forty-story, 1.4 million square foot structure coveringan entire city block that would "steal" light, views, and tenants frommany surrounding builditrBS, neighboring property owners organizedto stop its construction through private negotiations with the property'sowner, but failed in their efforts. After the new building wascompleted, Lawson Purdy, president of the New York City Departmentof Taxes and Assessments, testified that "the owners of practicallyall the property surrounding it have asked for and obtained areduction of the assessed value of their property on proof of loss ofrents due to limitations of light and aur and other advantages theyenjoyed when the Equitable Building was only nine stories high.ttrrMany of the institutions that were concerned with long-term realestate market stability were eager to impose the new regulations bythe middle of the decade. Large lenders such as the Metropolitan LifeInsurance Comp lfly, the New York Life Insurance Comp afry, and theLawyers Mortgage Comp any-a pillar of the New York establishmentwhose president, Richard Hurd, had written the widely admir ed Principlesof City Land Values (1903)-supported the building height andbulk regulations (see Table 3.2l.Even the Equitable Life AssuranceSociety, despite or perhaps because of the dispute over its new headquarters,endorsed the proposed zoning resolution. Walter Stabler, thecontroller of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Comp arry and a memberof the Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions, activelyencouraged the efforts of the Fifth Avenue Association. Stabler wassuch a strong advoc ate for height, bulk, and use restrictions that EdwardBassett, who chaired both the 1913 and 1916 New York zoningcommissions and was considered by many to be the leading Americanzoning expert, dedicated his 1936 book on zoning to Walter Stabler(along with Lawson Purdy and Frederic Pratt). Property, casualty, and55

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSconcerns about the lack of sunlight and alr, aesthetic considerationsthat preferred the older European city model of smaller buildings ofuniform height, and popular desires to avoid excessive urban populationdensity and congestion.In some cities, such as Chicago or San Diego, downtown businessand realty interests were initially against proposed height limits, 4ssertingthat restrictions would impede economic growth and civicprogress. Such opposition led to compromises that raised the maximumpermitted building heights. Once the limitations were in place,however, many of these same interests did acknowledge that the newregulations helped protect the owners of and tenants in smaller existingbuildings, stabilizunginvestments and markets. Particularly duringtimes of real estate recessions, owners of smaller buildings favoredheight restrictions.The commercial and real estate sectors in some cities basically supportedheight regulations from their inception. Los Angeles imposeda 150-foot building height limit in 1906, following San Francisco'searthquake and fire that same year. Civic leaders of southern California's"Riviera" took this action to reinforce Los Angeles' image ofsafety and serenity in contrast to more intimidating conceptions ofcity life in their northern California archrival. Boston's Brahmin businesselite was content with older traditions of modest buildingheights, and also wanted to spread private construction across newlyfilled land in the Back Bay and other areas near the city's center.Local chapters of the National Association of Building Owners andManagers (NABOM) were very influential in many cities during thisperiod. NABOM was as important in the development of downtownzoning as the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) wasin the evolution of residential and suburban zoning. Throughout theI920s, many Building Owners and Managers groups strongly opposedurban height limitations, sponsoring and public LzLng research studiesthat argued for the commercial superiority of skyscrapers.lsNew York City's successful negotiation of a common agreement onbuilding height and bulk restrictions in 1916 stands in contrast to thecontroversy that surrounded height limitations in many large cities.In Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco,downtown corpor ate-commercial and maior real estate cievelopmentand investment interests fought against strict height regulations,often with the local NABOM chapter among the leading orgarruzationalmembers of the opposition coalition. In many cases,, oppositionto regulating building heights held up the passage of an entire zoningordinance until some kind of accommodation was made. In Chicagoand Pittsburgh, compromises were reached by 1923. In San Francisco,57

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYthe Downtown Association and the Building Owners and Managerswere able to remove all height Iimitations from the I92I law, whichonly regulated land uses. In Philadelphia, Detroit, and Cleveland, oppositionfrom downtown corporations and property owners held upzoning throughout the 1920s, and in Cleveland an ordinance that finallypassed in 1928 was quickly repealed two months later. Houstonnever passed a zoning law, though the downtown lobby eventuallysupported the idea. Zoning in St. Louis and Los Angeles ran into strongopposition from real estate brokers and developers wanting to buildlarge commercial and residential buildings on wide boulevards thatwere to be restricted to single family homes. Other cities, includingBoston and Washington, D.C., raised their height limits during thel92os, and Atlanta virtually repealed effective height restrictions byincreasing its limits in 1929 from 150 feet to 325 feet with no setbackrequirements.What is most interesting about the pattern outside of New York isthat the cities with the greatest disagreements about the public controlof private building heights were essentially the cities with the tallestbuildings. Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Pittsburgh, San Francisco,Houston, and Cleveland, after New York, were the leading cities withbuildings twenty-one stories or higher (see Table 3.1). Two factorsaccount for the differences between zoning politics in New York andthese other cities. One difference is that New York's law was passedduring a period when the real estate market was in a cyclical downturn.Zoning was seen by the main economic actors as a means ofstabilizing the city's economy, spreading out property values, and creatingincentives for new investment. Major corporate and financialinterests were strongly motivated to give this new form of governmentintervention a chance, and speculative operators who would normallyoppose such regulations were in a weak financial and political positiondue to the real estate recession.l6 By the time New York's examplespread and zoning was proposed in other big cities during the earlyl92os, their real estate markets were beginning to boom, and propertyowners/ developers, investors, lenders, builders, brokers, corporate tenants,and other major forces all wanted to profit from economic growthwithout public intervention standing in the way. They wanted to maximizethe development potential of their individual parcels while demandwas strong. Once the markets collapsed, height regulations onceagain appeared desirable as a stabilizrngfactor. This helps explain whyPhiladelphia, Detroit, and Cleveland waited until the Great Depressionbefore they finally imposed zoning restrictions on their cities.The second difference is that in New York a complex bargain wasstruck/ establishing what is now a tradition of the city's zoning regula-58

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONStions permitting and encouraging very large-scale private developmentwhile still attempting to accomplish certain important public goals.Under the L9I6 zontng resolution, New York pioneered a new form ofregulation that combined restrictions on height, bulk, and use in onelaw. Since the issue in lower and midtown Manh attart, other than theFifth Avenue merchants' conflict with the garment industry, revolvedaround the problem that tall and bulky buildings blocked sunlightfrom neighboring buildings and from the streets, the solution was toredesign buildings so that they would allow more space between themand more room for sunlight and open afi. This was accomplishedthrough the setback requirements, regulating buildings by volumerather than height alone. Regulating building height and volume inrelation to the width of the street and the size of the parcel allowedbuildings in some zones to be very tall by requiring progressivelystepped-back towers above a certain height determined as a multiple ofthe width of the fronting street. This approach permitted developmentwhile preserving public open-air space because, as buildings wenthigher, the upper stories drew further back from the streets and lotlines and from surrounding buildings (see Figure 3.2l.What was prohibitedwas not tall buildings per se, just bulky, monolithic fortressescovering the entire lot, like the Equitable Building. Such a compromisein 1916 made possible the construction fifteen years later of theworld's tallest structure, the Empire State Building, which was legallyzoned to soar over Manh attan because it encompassed a very large lot,fronted on relatively wide streets, and utilized numerous setbacks inthe building's design.Why didn't other big cities adopt similar compromises? Eventually,many of them did. It took time for enough people to see the effects ofNew York's zoning regulations worked out in practice, and during theboom of the early and middle 1920s many private business interestspreferred not to rock the boat, wanting only traditional commercialstructures and existing government regulations, or no regulations atall. Eventually, most commercial architects, builders, investors, lenders,,insurers, corpor ate tenants, and owners began to accept the newpost-zoning New York model of setback skyscraper development andto want to import it to their city or export it to other cities. By thelate L920s, many big cities were changing their zoning laws to adopt"volum etrrc" controls and the setback system f or tall buildings. NewYork's height and bulk zoning had actually created a popular newaesthetic standard that was beginning to dominate American skylines.Even conservative Boston, which had regulated building heights since1890 with a flat and relatively low maximum in the downtown area,changed its zoning law in L92B to permit pyramidal setback towers.59

Figure 3.2 The New Yorker Hotel, completed in 1930, is a good example of"sculptured mountain" skyscraper architecture popular in the 1920s and1930s, encouraged by the building setback requirements of New York City'szoning law. Urban planners, including the authors of the Regional Plan ofNew York and Its Environs, appreciated the setbacks and argued that high-risestructures should be situated farther away from surrounding buildings andstreets than was mandated by the existing zoning. Source: Avery Architecturaland Fine Arts Lrbrary, Columbia University.60

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSPart of the motivation for Boston's change was pressure from bothlocal and national corporations for the city to modernize its image,aiong with the desire by public officials to attract outside capital andto promote new investment in a central business district that was farfrom booming.lTImplementation of the 1916 New York Zoning LawThe imposition of restrictions on the height, bulk, and use of commercialbuildings in New York, after more than two decades of sometimesacrimonious debate, was generally received by the real estate industryas an acceptable compromise. Some real estate developers were unhappywith the height limits, and several of them appealed to the cityfor reductions in property tax assessments on the grounds that zoninghad caused a decline in values. The Real Estate Board of New Yorkdisagreed, strongly endorsing the ordinance in November 1916 andannouncing that it would help the city defend its constitutionality incourt.18In February l9l7 ,leaders of the Fifth Avenue Association and otherkey zoning advocates formed the New York Zoning Committee tomobilize ongoing private sector support for the new law. The Committeeworked with the city's Corporation Counsel to protect the legalityof zoning, provide technical assistance in its implementation/ and publishpamphlets explaining the new regulations to the general public.Frederic B. Pratt, dean of the Pratt Institute and son of one of NewYork's leading industrialists, chaired the Zoning Committee; WalterStabler of Metropolitan Life was the tr€xsurer; and Edward Bassettserved as general counsel. Within five months the committee had over100 members and was actively working to maintain public acceptanceduring the critical early period of zoning implementation.re Robert E.Simon, a commercial real estate developer and leader of the New YorkZoning Committee, stated in l9l8:Never before in the history of this City has a restrictive measure ofso radical a nature, affecting real estate, received so nearly unanimousapproval of the real estate interests in the City as did thislaw. Now that it has been in effect sufficiently long to give it anopportunity to be thoroughly tested, it still has the approval of a vastmajority.2oA vital factor in this broad support for zoning was the improvedcondition of the Manhattan real estate market after the law's passagein L9I6, reversing several years of declining property values. According61

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYto the Central Mercantile Association, investment in new buildingsbetween Canal and Thirty-fourth streets increased dramatically af.terzoning was initiated. Demand for office space rose significantly inlower Manhattan, particularly after the war, and rents were rising substantially,leading to the boom in construction and real estate pricesbeginning in the early 1920s.21The new zoning law succeeded in defining Fifth Avenue and themidtown area as an office and retail district, rather than an expandinglocation for garment manufacturing. The Save New York Committeereported in December 1916 that 205 out of 225 manuf.acturers betweenThirty-second and Fifty-ninth streets and Third and Seventh avenueshad agreed to relocate from their current buildings by the time theirleases expired. Despite this accomplishment, the Fifth Avenue retailerswere concerned that too much light manufacturing was still beingpermitted under the 1916 zoning use district category for "business."To accelerate the pace of change and protect against future encroachment/in 1923 the Save New York Committee proposed the creationof a "retalI" use district category in the zoning law. A retail districtwould permit the same uses as a business district except that manufacturingwould be prohibited within the retail zone. Walter Stabler, EdwardBassett, and Charles G. Edwards, president of the Real EstateBoard of New York, were among those endorsing the retail zoneamendment.22The Fifth Avenue Association was joined by similar associationsrepresenting merchants, property owners/ and tenants on Broadway,Thirty-fourth Street, Eighth Avenue, and Forty-second Street in lobbyingthe Board of Estimate for the retail amendment. These groupswere opposed on one side by garment manufacturers and wholesalersfighting to retain the business use designation, and on the other sideby elite residents of Murray Hill and portions of Fifth and Madisonavenues who wanted to preserve their neighborhoods as residentialuse districts. Finally in 1929 the Board of Estimate created a retail usedistrict category restricting manufacturing activity to a maximum of5 percent of the total floor space in any building in that zone 1'25percent manufacturing was permitted in "business" use districts underthe 1916 zoning resolution). Like all the provisions of the law, itwas not retroactive and only applied to new development. At the sametime, the Board of Estimate designated much of the area betweenTwenty-third and Fiftieth streets from Park to Eighth avenues as aretail district.23In the 1920s Fifth Avenue above Thirty-fourth Street solidified asthe elite shopping district, surrounded by a steadily increasing amountof new office space for corporate tenants/ some of them migrating62

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSnorthward from Wall Street to midtown. As early as I92O theHeckscher Builditrg, a thirty-two-s tory office tower, was constructedat Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, and S. W. Straus, the leadingmortgage bond brokerage firm, built a tall headquarters at Fifth Avenueand Forty-sixth Street. By mid-decade the pace of office constructionin the midtown area was rapidly acceleratin g.'oOne of the most dramatic effects of zoning was on the architectureof New York's skyline (see Figure 3.2l.Bulky rectangular buildingswere replaced by (Il ziggurat-style "wedding cake" setback buildings,such as the ubiquitous tall loft structures of the new garment district;(21 buildings that looked like sculptured mountains with numerousimposing setbacks; (3) most prominently, very tall but relatively slenderand graceful setback towers. All of these new building sizes andshapes conformed to the zoning restrictions on height and bulk. TheChrysler, Empire State, and other famous buildings of the 1920s and1930s serve as monuments to zoning's impact on urban design in NewYork and around the world.2sThe spread of new midtown office towers was reflected in the heightdistrict zontng changes for Manhattan taken by the Board of Estimatebetween 1916 and 193 1. Many of the rezortLng actions were designedto permit the development of skyscrapers in areas originally zoned forlesser heights. All but one of the fourteen decisions of this type werein midtown. The biggest change occurred in 1928, when the Boardof Estimate rezoned all of Eighth Avenue from Thirty-third to Fiftysixthstreets as a "two times" height district, allowing for very tallbuildings.26Occasionally, a zoning conflict was resolved against the wishes ofreal estate developers. One of the most publictzed examples of a developerdefeat involved the Equitable Life Assurance Society, principaloccupant of the bulky skyscraper in lower Manhattan that had beensuch an important catalyst for the imposition of height and bulk restrictionsin 1916. Equitable intended to relocate some of its clericalstaff from downtown to midtown in a new building the firm planned toconstruct on Seventh Avenue between Thirty-first and Thirty-secondstreets. The proposed building, nineteen stories without any setbacks,did not conform to the height regulations for that district. Equitableasked for a zoning variance, but the Board of Standards and Appealsdenied the insurance company's request in 1922.27The rash of skyscraper development, at first reflecting the widespreadacceptance of the zoning regulations as well as the new aestheticof setback architecture, reached such an unprecedented volumeby 1 926 that the previous enthusiasm for the 1916 compromise turnedinto dissatisfaction and controversy. Critics began to voice serious63

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYobjections to the existing height and bulk regulations permitting toomany new buildings that were still far too tall and massive, despitethe setbacks and the restrictions. One of the most virulent skyscraperopponents was Maior Henry Curcart, counsel of the City Club of NewYork, who denounced the buildings as "monsters" and their spread asa "plague." Curran blamed them for subway crowding and automobileaccidents, called for an absolute height limit of six stories on narrowstreets and ten stories on wide streets, and recommended that tallbuilding design be regulated by the Municipal Art Commission.2sWilliam A. Boring, director of Columbia University's School of Architecture,endorsed Henry Curran's proposed ban on skyscrapers andadvocated a special tax on tall buildings. The Committee on CommunityPlanning of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), chairedby Henry Wright, also supported Curran's proposals. Wright suggestedin 1927 that skyscrapers should provide public open spaces in amountsproportionate to their cubic capacrty, an idea that was later partiallyincorporated into the 196I zoning law through density bonusesawarded for pLazas surrounding tall buildings. The concern of HenryWright and his AIA committee for open space was also voiced bythe Municipal Art Society. Its City Plan Committee denounced theoverdevelopment of skyscrapers and the consequent urban congestion,arguing that "we cannot have a beautiful city without a proper adjustmentof spaces to buildings .t t2eBy the mid- I92Os, even some of the L9I6 zoning law's strongestsupporters were beginning to call f or changes, frustrated with theseeming lack of arry real control over the advancing juggernaut of skyscraperconstruction in Manh attan. Edward Bass ett, sharing a platformwith Henry Curran at the Municipal Art Society in L926, agreed thatthe zoning law should be modified to further reduce congestion inManhattan by promoting decentrahzation of commercial developmentthroughout the city and region. Earlier in the year, I.E. Harrington,chairman of the Traffic Committee for the Broadway Association,blamed the excessive numb er, suze, and growth of skyscrapers for transitand traffic congestion and stated that "the Zonrng Law in NewYork has outgrown itself and needs revisiotr. rr30Edward Bassett joined other critics of skyscrapers in opposing theBoard of Estimate's upzoning of the midtown section of Eighth Avenuein 1928 to permit the construction of taller buildings. "The greatestpresent problem is congestion," Bassett asserted, and while politically"Lt rr,ay be impossible to decrease the cubage zoning limlt," he neverthelessstrongly argued that "successive Boards of Estimate ought torefrain from establishing new skyscraper districts."3l Bassett also appearedbefore the Board of Estimate in 193 1 to oppose the height dis-64

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONStrict upzoning of Forty-second Street between Eighth and Tenth avenues.The proposed change had the support of the Forty-second StreetProperty Owners and Merchants Association, hoping that the newthirty-two-story McGraw-Hill Building would spawn a skyscraper developmentboom in their district. In 1932, the Board of Estimate passedthe zoning map amendment over Bassett's objections. By the lateI920s, Bassett was also frequently denouncing the wholesale grantingof zoning variances by the Board of Standards and Appeals. Some ofthese variances were later overturned in court as being legally improper,and Bassett claimed- that the appeals board's actions were corruptingthe process of zonin g."Zonrng reformers banded together to lobby for changes through theCity Committee on Plan and Survey appointed by Mayor Walker in1926. The Sub-Committee on HousiilB, Zonrng and Distribution ofPopulation was headed by Frederick H. Ecker, chairman of MetropolitanLife. On this subcommittee, Lawson Purdy chaired a study of zoningheight and area regulations, and Edward Bassett chaired a study ofzoning administration. The Purdy report proposed that height limitsgenerally be lowered and that there be three standard building heightsfor the entire crty, replacing the formula for multiples of street widths.In particular, his report proposed a drastic reduction in buildingheights along the wide avenues and of the corner buildings on the crossstreets. It also recommended other changes to increase open spaceby trading off increased building height for decreased lot coverage,foreshadowing the I96L zoning law.33The 1928 Report of the City Committee on Plan and Survey endorsedthe zoning changes proposed by Purdy's study group, statingthat "The time is ripe for amendment and strengthening of the ZontngResolution which was passed into law eleven years ago." The fullcommittee also supported the establishment of a separate retail usedistrict cate Eory, which was endorsed by Bassett's study. In additior,the committee advocated that the Board of Estimate create " an officialPlanning Board functioning as a permanent city department." Amongtts many other functions, the proposed planning board would have theauthority to review and recommend zoning changes:This would permit a more constructive approach being made to thezoning of the City than has been the case in the past in the absenceof ^comprehensive plan. In the final analysis the solution of theproblems of congestion and of distribution of population will dependon the principles and methods which are applied to the regulationof building uses and densities, and the relation of these to the streetand other open areas of the City.3465

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYThe new cLty charter adopted in 1938 finally established a CityPlanning Commission along the lines suggested by the Committee tenyears earlier. The City Committee on Plan and Survey's endorsementof the retail distric t zonrng amendment had a more immediate impacton the Board of Estimate, which passed a compromise version in I 929.However, the committee's proposed changes in height and area restrictionsran into too much opposition from real estate developers andproperty owners to succeed politically.Manhattan Borough President |ulius Miller and New York City TaxCommissioner George H. Payne were two prominent public officialswho opposed new height restrictions. Miller believed that tall buildingswere necess ary for the city's economic vitality, and that the problemsof congestion could be solved without curbing the developmentof skyscrapers in Manhattan. He proposed alleviating traffic congestionby constructing subways under major crosstown streets, expresshighways on the riverfront, and tunnels to the outer boroughs. Thenew City Planning commissioner, fohn F. Sullivan, appointed byMayor Walker in 1930 to head a one-man agency with no power overzoning or any other land use matters, also was on the side of supportingskyscraper development. For example, he favored the upzoning ofForty-second Street between Eighth and Tenth avenues, which passedthe Board of Estim ate in 1932. The opponents of stricter height andbulk limitations mostly prevailed during the renewed zoning debatesand controversies of the late I92Os, and the Board of Estimate rejectedvarious amendments recommended by the City Committee on Planand Survey and other civic groups such as the Municipal Art Society,the City Club, and the AIA Committee on Community Planning."Thomas Adams, who directed New York's metropolitan regionalplanning during the L92Os, addressed the Building Managers and OwnersAssociation of New York in 1928 about the Purdy report proposinggreater zor\rng restrictions on height and bulk, and acknowledged that"It lr:'ay appear that certain details of the recommendations of theSub-Committee go much further than the Association would approve.. .t t36 Whereas chapters of NABOM in several other cities werebitterly opposed to any regulations limiting the height of builditrgs,the New York chapter was generally content with the zoning compromiseof I9L6 but did not support further reductions in the permittedsLze of commercial structures.New Yorkers provided national leadership for building owners andmanagers in the 1920s: Clarence T. Coley, manager of the EquitableBuilding, served as NABOM president during 1921- I 922; and LeeThompson Smith, manager of the Sinclair Oil Building, was presidentof NABOM from 1924 to 1926. During Smith's presidency, NABOM's66

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSHeight Limitation Committee launched a sophisticated public relationscampaign by sponsoring research that argued for the economicand social benefits of tall buildings and disputed charges that skyscraperscaused congestion or were unsafe. NABOM emphasized that advancesin building design, construction, and materials, such as the useof setbacks and lightweight terra cotta that reflected sunlight, mitigatedproblems of light, alr, views, and open space.37Probably the most significant efforts at fi.nding a new compromiseformula for zoning to reduce densities and congestion while attemptingto satisfy both the real estate industry and its critics camefrom the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, directed byThomas Adams and involving many of the key architects, planners,lawyers, and community leaders behind New York's zoning law: EdwardBassett, Lawson Purdy, George Ford, Robert Whitt€r, GeorgeMcAnetry, Frederic Pratt, and numerous others. Thomas Adams wassympathetic to Henry Curran's ideas and the movement against skyscrapers,and, like Bassett, opposed the upzoning of Eighth Avenue in1928. Adams believed that tall buildings per se were not a problem ifland patterns around the skyscrapers were better planned and regulated:"The high building in itself cannot be condemned as unhealthfulif there is sufficient space around it to give it light and lrt i nor asinefficient if there is sufficient space for the people and traffic to serveits needs .t r38 He argued that in the debate over height limitations,people must "distinguish between, first, the high building that hasample space surrounding it to meet all its need for light, air and accessibility,and second, the crowded groups of high buildings where theseessential elements in land values are destroyed as a result of too intensiveconcentration. "3eIn several k.y publications of 193I {volume 6 of the Regional Surveyof New York and Its Environs, volume 2 of the Regional Plan, andvolume 2 of the Harvard City Planning Studies) Thomas Adams,George Ford, and their colleagues began to work out ideas for continuingto reduce the bulk of tall buildings through less lot coverage at thestreet level, greater setbacks of the building's lower stories, and slimmertowers.a0 Adams and Ford discussed limiting height and bulk byregulating the total volume of building space in relation to land mass,citing the architect Raymond Hood's ideas about controlling buildingvolume through a maximum floor-area ratio. Three decades Iater, NewYork City adopted a vartation of this approach as a new and moreeffective method of controlling building density while still permittingthe construction of skyscrapers.The Regional PIan Association pointed in particular to New York'sand the world's tallest structure, the Empire State BuilditrB, completed67

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYin I93L, as a model skyscraper with sufficient open space surroundingit on the street level and in the sky. In an important rebuttal toNABOM-type arguments over esonomic efficieney, Adams and his colleaguesargued that the older practice of crowding urban land and commercialdistricts with tall buildings cheek-by-iowl had given way tonew techniques of skyscraper planning and development that were thewave of the future: "The rectangular prism remains the most economicalframework for a building. But economy of construction is not trueeconomy if the building is not rentable at a profit. As the best lightedspace brings the highest rents, this gives the economic justificationfor wide setbacks .r t4LConclusionBy 193I, Edward Bassett was critical of the zoning compromise he hadso carefully fashioned fifteen years earlier, and was looking ahead tothe next generation of height and bulk restrictions that were widelydiscussed in New York beginning in 1926:The regulation of skyscrapers is undoubtedly the most difficult problemof zoning in every great city. After the zoning plan of New YorkCity had been worked upon for years, it was nearly defeated at acertain stage by reason of a spirited and influential attack on limitationof skyscrapers. The same difficulty has been mainly responsiblefor the flact that Philadelphia and Detroit have no zoning ordinancestoday. New York City did not advance very far when it adopted thetwo and two and one-half times limit with setbacks and 25 percenttowers, and there are many who say that with this limit the skyscraperproblem was hardly touched, that skyscrapers are beingerected as high as they probably would have been without zoning,that the total rentable floor space in the high building blocks hasnot been affected, and that street congestion is as great as if buildingshad been left unregulated. These criticisms are partly true. On thewhole, howevert the results of zoning have been to give greater aecessof light and aLr to separate buildings and to the street. Theopportunity of blanketing one building by another has been lessened.Architecturally New York has been greatly improved by zoning.What more can be done? Nearly all will admit that something oughtto be done. But to say what ought to be done and to say what can bedone are two quite different things.a2After a decade of experience with regulating the height and bulkof commercial builditrBS, New Yorkers were contemplating doingmore by the late 1920s. Residential structures received a new set of68

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONSregulations with the Multiple Dwelling Law of 1929, and ideas forrezonLng were being discussed, leading in 196I to the floor-area ratioconcept and new sky exposure planes. With the L96L zoning law the"wedding cake" setback buildings were shunted aside to herald a newera of modernist architecture with tall "glass boxes" rising straight upfrom the street, leaving more open space around the buildings to allowsunlight and I'iews on every floor. The concept of "open space in thesky" was brought down to street level as the new zoning permitted a20 percent larger building in exchange for the construction of a plazamade avarlable for public use. Between 196l and 1973 virtually everymajor development project in New York took advantage of the zoningdensity bonus to build taller and bulkier buildings, constructing overone million square feet of plaza space, more than the total in all otherU.S. cities combined. Incentive zoning proved controversial; one studyof density bonuses in New York found that for ev ery dollar developershad spent on constructing plazas, they earned an additional $48 fromthe increased value of the buildings due to the extra rentable spacethey were permitted to build. Despite much criticism, the city governmentlater initiated many other density bonus trade-offs under incentivezoning, especially through the method of creating special districts.Bonuses were granted both as-of-right and by negotiation and specialpermit for providing a variety of amenities that included sidewalkarcades; indoor public spaces such as atri a, retail stores, museums, livetheaters, and dance studios; pedestrian passageways; subway stationimprovements; and affordable housing. As two expert zoning observerscommented in I979, "It is as pointless to talk about special districtswithout a focus on New York as it would be to discuss the steel industryand ignore Pittsburgh and Chicago. The New York City PlanningCommission, these last ten years, has been cranking out specialdistricts as though they could be used to redeem anemic municipalbonds .r t 43In I97 5, New York City instituted an elaborate Uniform Land UseReview Procedure (ULURP), officially incorporating the demand forgreater crtrzen participation through the fifty-nine Community Boards.Despite this and other more recent reforms, including a new charterand land use planning system beginning in 1990, zoning in New Yorkcontinues to be extremely contentious. Yet each new compromisefrom L9I6 forward has had the essential backing of key corpor ate anddevelopment interests . Zontng has also become increasingly interventionist,adding more layers of complexity to address urban physicalproblems and conflicts that threaten quality of life, economic stability,and property values. Most contradictory, New York has evolved as aninnovative leader in urban planning and zoning, yet with a set of prob-69

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITYlems substantially different from most other cities. The extremelyhigh levels of population and building density, especially in Manhattan,have required a greater degree of real estate market interventionin order to maintain an adequately functioning metropolis.Since the 1960s, the "Manhattanization" of central business districtshas been an explicit urban planning and economic developmentpolicy goal, in many cases the main purpose of large-scale urban redevelopmentand renewal projects. Density, intervention, and politicalcontroversies about the impacts of downtown commercial developmentthat were pioneered in New York City are being repeated acrossurban America, and new experiments with sophisticated and complexdowntown zoning regulations have spread to numerous cities coast tocoast, from Boston and Hartford to San Francisco and Seattle.aa Asthese planning debates unfold, interest in the origins of zoning for themodern corporate-commercial city leads one back to the New YorkIaw of 1916 and its implementation during the real estate boom andbust of the 1920s and 1930s.Notes1. Three useful essays on New York planning are Kenneth T. |ackson, "TheCapital of Capitalism: The New York Metropolitan Region, 1890-1940,"in Anthony Sutcliffe, ed., Metropolis, 1,890-L940 (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, L9841, fohn Mollenkopf, "Ctty Plannirg," in CharlesBrecher and Raymond D. Horton, eds. , Setting Municipal Priorities, 1990(New York: New York University Press, l989l,i and Paul Goldberger,"shaping the Face of New York," in Peter D. Salins, ed., New York Unbound(New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988).On Chicago plannitg, see MarcA. Weiss and |ohn T. Met zger, "Chicago: The Changing Politics of MetropolitanGrowth and Neighborhood Development ," Ln Robert A. Beauregard,ed., Atop the (Jrban Hierarchy (Totowa, NI: Rowman & Littlefield,I e8e ).2. On New York's 1916 zonrng resolution, see S. J. Makielski, lr., The Politicsof Zoning: The New York Experience (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 19661, Seymour I. Toll, Zoned American (New York: Grossman,L969)i Harvey A. Kantor, "Modern Urban Planning in New YorkCity: Origins and Evolution, 1890-1933." Ph.D. diss. (New York University,1971); Marc A. Weiss, "skyscraper Zonrng: New York's PioneeringRole," [ourna] of the Amefican Planning Association 58 (Spring 19921.The reports of the two zoning commissions are vital documents. SeeReport of the Heights of Buildings Commrsston (December 23, 1913)tand Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions, Final Report(New York: Board of Estimate and Apportionment, Committee on theCity Plan, I9L6t hereafter CBDR, Frn al Repottl. On height and bulk restrictionsfor residential buildings before 191 6 zonrng, see Roy Lubove,70

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONS3.4.5.6.7.8.The Progressryes and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in I'Jew York,1890-1912 (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, L963) j RichardPlut:rz, A History of Housing in New York City: Dwelling Type andSocial Change in the American Metropolis (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, I99Ol.For analysis of Los Angeles'1908 zoning law and its effects on the nationalorigins and spread of residential zoning, see Marc A. Weiss, TheRise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industryand (Jrban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press , L9871.The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the legality of Los Angeles zoning ina 1915 decision, Hadcheck v, Sebastian, which served as an importantprecedent for New York's 1916 zoning resolution.The I9O9 U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Boston's height limitationdistricts is Welch v. Swasey. On height regulations in Boston from1891 to 1928, see Michael Holleran and Robert M. Fogelson, "'The SacredSkyline': Boston's Opposition to the Skyscrapet, 1891-1928," WorkingPaper No. 9 (Cambridge: MIT Center for Real Estate Development, August1987).Thomas Adams, "The Character, Bulk, and Surroundings of Buildings,"in Regional Survey of New York and Its Environs, Buildings: Their Usesand the Spaces About Them (New York: RSNYE, L931), p. 119.On the post-L9L6 evolution, see S. I. Makielski, Politics of Zoning;RSNYE, Buildings; Norman Marcus and Marilyn W. Groves, eds., TheNew Zoning: Legal, Administrative, and Economic Cancepts and Techniques(New York: Praeger, I97O); )onathan Barnett, An Inuoduction to(Jrban Design (New York: Harper & Row, IgBZ)j William H. Whyte,City: Rediscovering the Center (New York: Doubleday, 19BB); MichaelKwartler, "Legislating Aesthetics," in Charles M. Haar and |erold S.Kayden, eds ., Zoning and the American Dream (Chicago: Pianners Press,I989lt Katherine Kennedy and Mitchell S. Bernard, New York City Zoning:The Need for Reform (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council,I989li F.ichard F. Babcock and Wendy U. Larsen, Special Districts:The Ultimate in Neighborhood Zoning (Cambridge: Lincoln Institute ofLand Policy, I99O),) special issue: "Real Estate Development and CityRegulations, " New York Aff airs 8 (1985); Weiss, "skyscraper Zontng."George B. Ford, City Planning Progress in the United States (Washington,DC: American Institute of Architects, I9I7l j William H. Wilson, TheCity Beautiful Movement (Baltimore: |ohns Hopkins University Press,19891,) Judd Kahn, Imperial San Francisco: Politics and Planning in anAmerican City, 1897-L906 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press,19791; Weiss and Metzger, "Chicago."Data comes from Report of the Heights of Buildings Commlsston, pp.l5-I7, Chicago Real Estate Board, Stu dies on Building Height Limitationsin Large Cities (1923), pp.24 and 26 (map); "A Cerrsus of Skyscrapers," American City 4L lseptember 1929): 130. For additional informationon New York buildings in the 1920s and 1930s, see Adams, "Character,"pp. 54-64) Robert H. Armstrong and Homer Hoyt, Decentralization inNew York City (New York: Urban Land Institute, I94l), L22-I47. CarlW. Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture (Chicago: University ofChicago Press , L964), gives a detailed picture of downtown Chicago buildingsfrom 1875 to 1925.71

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITY9.10.11.12.13."statement by Mr. Frank D. Veiller, Representing the Fifth Avenue Association,lune19, 19L3," Report of the Heights of Buildings Commtssron,p.269. The Fifth Avenue Association also published a separate book thatincluded all of its arguments for height restrictions in its neighborhood.See Statement of the Fifth Avenue Assoa ation on the Limitation ofBuilding Heights to the l,{ew York City Commlssron and the Testimonyof the Association's Representatives at a Conference, Iune L9, 1913,Emanuel Tobier, "Manhattan's Business District in the Industrial Age,"in |ohn H. Mollenkopf, ed., Power, Culture, and Place (New York: RussellSage Foundation, 1988), analyzes the growth of loft manufacturingin New York and the land use conflict with commercial properties suchas office buildings, department stores, and hotels."statement by Frank Veiller," p. 270: "In case the occupancy of thebuilding cannot be regulated either through the factory commission orotherwise, the next best step would be in the limitation of the height ofbuildings in this zone, thereby diminishing the volume of operatives andmaking a uniform sky line." New York City's Board of Estimate andApportionment established a Heights of Buildings Commission in 1913at least in part at the urging of the Fifth Avenue Association, with theexplicit purpose of recommending height regulations on Fifth Avenueabove Thirty-second Street."statement by Lawson Purdy, President, Department of Taxes and Assessments,May 8, 1916," in CBDR, Final Report,p. 168. Purdy in his1916 testimony, Seymour Toll in Zoned American, and Edward Bassettin a speech (Chicago Real Estate Board, Studies on Building Height Limitations,pp . 236-237) discuss the efforts of the property owners to privatelyorganrze against the Equitable Building. Their accounts conflicton several points, but each of them argues that the failure of these privateefforts helped convince the building owners that public regulation wouldbe necess ary. Also, one of the leaders of the attempt to stop the newEquitable Building was George T. Mortimer, vice-president of the UnitedStates Realty Company that owned two buildings across the street fromI20 Broadway as well as several other tall buildings nearby. Mortimerserved on both the 1913 and the 1916 zoning commissions, and was astrong advocate for height and bulk restrictions on commercial buildings."This book is dedicated by the author to Frederic B. Pratt, Lawson Purdyand Walter Stabler," Edward M. Bassett, Zoning: The Laws, Administration,and Court Decisions During the First Twenty Years (New York:Russell Sage Foundation, 1936). Richard M. Hurd, Principles of City LandValues (New York: Real Estate Record and Guide, 1903). The LawyersMortgage Company, which by 1916 had made $465 million in firstmortgageloans on "improved income-producing business or residenceproperty in the most desirable sections of New York City, " was so ardentlyin favor of zoning that it published a handbook explaining theNew York zoning resolution through text and maps. See George B. Ford,Building Zones (New York: Lawyers Mortgage Company, 1916).When Frank Woolworth paid $13 million in cash to build a nearly 800-foot office tower that became New York's tallest building in 1913, hewas warned by his general contractor, Louis Horowitz, president of theThompson-starrett Company, that the building might be too costly andnot yield an acceptable return. According to Horowrtz, Frank Woolworth72

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONS14,15.replied that "the Woolworth Building was going to be like a giant signboardto advertise around the world his spreading chain of fivi-and-tencentstores. On that basis , of course, his splendid building was a soundinvestment." Louis |. Horowrtz and Boyden Sparkes, The Towers of NewYork: The Memoirs of a Master Builder (New York: Simon & Schuster,I937)rp. 2. On early corporate office headquarters buildings, see KennethT. Gibbs, Business Architectural Imagery in America, 1870-1930 (NewYork: Arno, 1984)i Mona Domosh, "The Symbolism of the Skyscraper:Case Studies of New York's First Tall Buildings,'' lournal of (Jrban Histoty14 (May 1988): 320-345, Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin,and fohn Massengale, New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture andUrbanism, 1890-1915 (New York: Rizzoli, 1983). For more recent offi.cedevelopment, see Tom Schactmarr., Skyscraper Dreams: The Great RealEsyate Dynasties of New York (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, I99I;,i KarlSabbagh, Skyscraper: The Making of a Building (New York: Viking,re8el.The discussion in this section draws from a number of sources, includingWeiss, Community Builders; Bassett, Zoning; Report of the Heights ofBuildings Commrssron; Chicago Real Estate Board, Studies rn BuildingHeight Limitations; Theodora Kimball Hubbard and Henry Vincent Hublbard, Our Cities To-Day and To-Moftow (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, L929l1) George B. Ford, Building Height, Bulk, and Form (Cambridge:Harvard University Press, 1931), Norman L. Knauss, Zoned Municipalitiesin the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Department oflommerce, 1931 ), RSNYE, Buildings; Barbara |. Flint, "Zomng and ResidentialSegregation: A Social and Physical History, 1910- 1940." Ph.D.diss. (University of Chicago, I977)i Garrett Power, "High Society: TheBuilding Height Limitation on Baltimore's Mt. Vernon Place, " Maryland.Historical Magazine 79 (Fall 1984): I97-219; Marc A. Weiss, "The RealEstate Industry and the Politics of Zonrng in San Francisco, 191 4-IgZg,"Planning Perspectives 3 (September 1988): 311-324i I.M. Neil, "parisor New York: The Shaping of Downtown Seattle, 1903-IgI4," PacificI'{orthwest Quarterly 75 (lanuary 1988): 22-33; Holleran and Fogelson,"'Sacred Skylinr-"'i Charles M. Nichols, Zoning in Chicago (Cliicago:Chicago Real Estate Board, 1923)) Toll, Zoned American, Wilsotr, CityBeautiful; Houston Chamber of Commerce, What Other Citiets SayAbout Zoning (Houston: Chamber of Commerce, 1946), Weiss, "SkyscraperZoning. " Though Cleveland did not have a zoning law during the7920s, it did have a 250-foot height limit. The proposed zoning wbuldhave lowered this limit, which is one reason why downtown Eusinessand real estate interests opposed the zoning bill.On NABOM, see Earle Shultz and Walter Simmons, Offices in the Sky{Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959)i annual Proceedings of the NationalAssociation of Building Ovvners and Managers and their other publications,includrng Buildings and Skyscraper Management. On NAREB andzoning, see Weiss, Community Builders. NABOM is now the BuildingOwners and Managers Association International, and NAREB is now theNational Association of Realtors. An influential, widely discussed, andNABoM-inspired book of the period was W. C. Clark and I.L. Kingston,The Skyscraper: A Study in the Economic Height of Modern Office Buildrngs(New York: American Institute of Steel Construction, 1930). Clark73

PLANNING FOR NEW YORK CITY16,17.r8.19.20.was a vice-president of S. W. Straus, the mortgage bond firm that financedthe development of many skyscrapers, including the Chrysler Building,and Kingston was a commercial architect with Sloan 8l Robertson. Theauthors chose a hypothetical example of a site near Grand Central Stationto demonstrate that a seventy-fi.ve-story building yielded a greater returnon investment than smaller structures, thus arguing for skyscrapers asthe most economically efficient use of urban land in districts with highproperty values. The best efforts to critique Clark and Kingston's proskyscraperarguments were by George Ford, Building Height, and ThomasAdams, "Character, Bulk, and Surroundings of Buildings." For furtherdebate, see Chamber of Commerce of the United States, EconomicHeight of Buildings (Washington, I)C, 1927li.An excellent statement of the cyclical economic imperative behind NewYork's 1916 zoning is by Frank Lord, vice-president, Cross & Brown Company,Real Estate and Insurance, Commrssron on Building Districts andRestrictions (March 29, L9l6l, pp. L49-150. For a broad analysis of howeconomic timing affects planning and policy initiatives, see Marc A.Weiss, "The Politics of Real Estate Cycles ," Bltsiness and Economic History20 (l99ll: 127-135.Carol Willis, "Zor\rng and Zertgeist: The Skyscraper City in the l92os,"lournal of the Society of Architectural Hrstorians 45 (March 1986):47 -59, gives a good picture of the changes in architectural style andconceptions of urban design that followed the 1916 New York buildingheight and bulk regulations. See also Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin,and Thomas Mellins, New York 1930: Architecture and [JrbanismBetween the Two World Wars (New York: Rizzoli, I987)i Paul Goldberger,The Skyscraper (New York: Knopf, 1981), |onathan Barnett, (JrbanDesign; Carol Herselle Krinsky, "Architecture in New York Crty,"in Leonard Wallock, ed., I,{ew York: Culture Capital of the World, 1940-1965 (New York: Ftrzzo1r, 1988). On Boston's late 1920s conversion, seeHolleran and Fogelson, "'sacred Skylrne."'Il/ew York Times (November 22, 1916): I:I2; (November 5, 1916): 3:4;(May 6, l9l7l: 4:I.New York Times (February 25, 19171 8:4; (August 5, I9L7l: 4:4; (Febrvary2, I9I9l: l:6.Real Estate Record and Builders Guide (fune I, 1918; hereafter Recordand Guidel: 697.2L. Record and Guide (September 15, l9l7l: 329; (October 27, L9I7): 531-532i (February 8, 1919): lTIi (fune 28, l9I9):861; (November 15, I9I9):493-494. I,{ew York Times (}anuary 25, L9I7 ): l:13; (September 23, I9l7):8:2; (lune 29, I9l9l: 9:18.22. New York Times (Decernber 31, 1916): 3:5; (May 27, 19231: 9:2; (October14, 19231 l0: 1; (Marchz3, 19241: I I :2; Record and Guide(May 26, L923):6ss-6s6.23. New York Times (November 7, L9241:1:l; (December 7, 19241 11:1;(lanuary 3, 19261: lO:4; (May 4, 19261:1:16; (November 11, I92Bl:13:l;(|anuary 2I, 1929): 1:1; (April 19, 1929): l:8; Record and Guide (April27, 19261: 6.24. Record and Guide (February 2L, I92Ol: 24L; (September 25, l92O): 427 .25. See Willis, "Zoratng and Zertgeist" and Record and Guide (|une 1, 1918):697.74

DENSITY AND INTERVENTION: NEW YORK'S PLANNING TRADITIONS26. City of New York, Board of Estimate and Apportionment, Building ZoneAmendment, Amendments 44 (fune 28, L9l9): 7Oi ll',iy ll, l9l9l:264i{November 23, 19231: 309; (April 4, 1924): 378; {March 5, 19251: 42Ii(|une 12, 19251: 611; (|une 17, 19261:718; (March 31,1927\:787; {September29, 1927): 803-805; (November 17, 19271: 853; (March 8, 1928): 903;(September 27, l928li New York ?rmes {September 29, 1928): 18.27. Record and Guide lluly 29, 1922lr: I34.28. NewYork Times llwe 17, 1926):25; (November lO,19261:29; (December5, 19261: 4:2; lMay 22, 19271: l2:4i Record and Guide (May 14, 19271: 8.29. New York Times llune 18, 1926): 15; (May 13, 19271: 29; lluly 9, 19261:33.30. New York Times lDecernber 12, 1926): 2:21; (fanuary 10, 1926): 1l:1.31. Record and Guide {fanuary 21, 19281: 6; New York Times (April 18,1927):39i (]une 7, 19271: 12; {fune 17, 19271:4Ii (fanuary 15, 1928): 1l:2.32. NewYork Times (fune 13, 1931): 29; (November 8, l93l): l1:l; (October26, 1927 l: 5 I ; (fanuary I 5, I 928 ): I 1 :2; (February 2I, 19281: 27; ( September30, 1928): L2:2i lMay 5, 19291: l2:l6i lMay 22, l93ol:5; (March 24,19301:20i Record and Guide (October 27, L928): 6.33. Report of the City Committee on Plan and Survey (New York, 1928), pp.5 l-52.34. Ibid., pp. 3, 8-9; New York Times lAprll 11, 1928): 1; (fune 6, 19281'. l;Record and Guide (October 20, L928): 6, 8.35. New York Times (November 16, 19261: l; (May 16, 1928):26i (fune 13,l93l): 29 ; iNovember 8, 1931 ): I I : I .36. Record and Guide (October 2O, 19281: 6, 8.37. Record and Guide (lluJy 12, 1924lr: 8i (|une 20, 1925): 10; New York Times(May l, 19271: ll:2i {}une 19, 19271:. lo:l; (}anuary 15, 1928}: 14. OnNABOM, see note 15.38. New York Times llily 4, 19261: 8:3.39. New York Times (May 2, L9281:24.40. RSNYE, Buildings; Ford, Building Height; Regional Plan of New Yorkand Its Environs, vol.2, The Building of the City (New York: RPNYE,l93l ).41. RPNYE, Building of the City, p. 192.42. Edward M. Bassett, "Control of Building Heights, Densities and Uses byZonirtg," in RSNYE, Buildings, p. 367.43. Clifford L. Weaver and Richard F. Babcock, City Zoning: The Once andFuture Frontier (Chicago: Planners Press, 1979), p. 125; ]erold S. Kayden,Incentive Zoning in New York City: A Cost-Benefit Analysis lCambridge:Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1978). See note 6 for additionalreferences on the evolution of New York zoning since the 1940s.44. For example, see Babcock and Larsen, Special Districts; Terry |ill Lassar,Carrots and Sticks: New Zoning Downtown (Washington, DC: UrbanLand Institute, l99Ol; Mike E. Miles, Emil E. Malizia, Marc A. Weiss,Gayle L. Berens, and Ginger Travis, Real Estate Development Principlesand Process (Washington, DC: Urban Land Institute, I99ll.75