Mastering a metropolis : planning the future of the New York region

Front matter

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Planning the Future of the New York Region AY

By R. L. DUFFUS

FoREWORD

How We Gort Herz

Trarric Ways

Hours or Lzisurz

How We Are Housep

How Oruer Citizs Have Been PLANNED **Maxe No Littre Puians’’

PLANNING FOR TWENTY MILLION RAILWAYS OF THE FUTURE

Hicuways AND Byways

ParRKWAYs AND BouLEVARDS

Wuat SHartt We Do wits THE LAND?

NEIGHBORHOODS

Tue EaGuie aNb Its Nests METROPOLITAN Farms

BuILpINGs OF TOMORROW

How THe Pitan Can Be Carrizep Out Tue City oF THE FuTuRE

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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FOREWORD

LANS for the future development of Metropolitan New York, however wisely conceived, will only be significant in civic development if they are both understood and enthusiastically endorsed by all the citizens and civic organizations whose support is necessary to their execution. The work of the Committee on the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, covering a period of seven years and resulting in the publication of ten detailed and technical volumes of findings and recommendations, is, therefore, in peculiar need of translation into a simple and readable story which conveys the broad outline of the proposals resulting from this exhaustive study.

As chairman of the committee, it is appropriate for me to say for myself and my colleagues that the committee has been at considerable pains to associate with itself an author who would prepare a volume dealing with the outstanding results of its findings in such a way as to give them a wide public audience.

We believe that Mr. Duffus has been conspicuously successful in dealing with the great mass of technical information and in selecting for presentation in this book the general picture of the findings

a he xii FOREWORD and proposals of the committee in such a way that its recommendations will be widely understood and discussed. The book shows that he has read the long story and has grasped the salient and interesting points; that he has been able to study a diffcult and complicated problem and still preserve his enthusiasm for its essentials.

The aim in this presentation is thus to submit for public evaluation and discussion the high points of our research and to offer our findings in the hope that critical appraisal and eventual endorsement may ensue. When the public is once convinced that this is the right way to proceed, that it does not mean spending vast sums of money unnecessarily, that it teally means the spending of money wisely, and in the end avoiding the waste of mistakes, the Plan of the New York Region can be said to have been launched. We believe that the book which Mr. Duffus has written is a practical step in accomplishing this important purpose.

FREDERIC A. DELANO of the Committee are listed on the last page of

Note—The volumes comprising the full ool this book.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Although this volume carries a single name on its title page as a handy means of indicating where the blame for its shortcomings may justly be placed, it is in reality a cooperative product. I have drawn exclusively on the material gathered by the Committee on Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs, have profited by the suggestions and criticisms of the members and staff of the Committee, and count my work successful to the extent that it reflects in its small way the spirit with which they began and carried through their huge and difficult task. I am especially indebted to Mr. Thomas Adams, general director of plans and surveys, who has been most patient and helpful in dealing with an amateur in a field where even experts may well fear to tread. I may add that whenever a phrase or passage in the more lengthy volumes published by the Committee seemed better adapted to the purposes of this book than any I could substitute, I have lifted it, without apology or quotation marks.

R. L. DUFFUus.

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Let our young people adopt in their hearts a city plan and the citizens of tomorrow will carry tt out.—Charles D. Norton.

Chapter One HOW WE GOT HERE

F WE know why a community has become what it is we can make a guess as to what it is likely to become in the future. There is no doubt that the New York Region of today is different from that of 1790, of 1850, of 1900, even of 1910. The Region of tomorrow will be different from that of today. The changes will affect the life of every resident. What are they likely to be? How can we get ready for them?

Let us begin by looking at the Region as it is; then let us trace its lines of growth and, if we can, its reasons for growing. Then let us inquire into the work it does, its ways of doing that work, and the problems which come up as a result. Finally, let us try to look ahead. ‘To do this in the simplest way will require the whole of this small volume. We will want to study not only the things that will probably happen if natural tendencies are left to take their courses, but also the things that we wish would happen and the steps we can take to make them happen. For instance, one natural tendency seems to be toward more crowding in subways, streets, and public places. What can we do to get rid of this

I inconvenience and still keep all the conveniences and attractions of city life? We can think of our community as we think of an apartment which we are planning to build, decorate, or remodel. Where are we going to put the piano? How are we to keep the different members of the family from stepping on one another’s toes? A city is simply a larger and more complicated apartment and its inhabitants a more numerous family.

It will be convenient to use the word “city” because it is short, but our interest will not stop with the legal boundaries of the City of New York. Because the influence of the city spills over those boundary lines we shall expand the term to include what is called the New York Region—that is, all that territory in which people’s ways of living and working are directly affected by the presence of the metropolis. The late Charles D. Norton, father of the New York Regional Plan, suggested that this atea be indicated by a circle drawn from the City Hall which would include “the Atlantic Highlands and Princeton; the lovely Jersey hills back of Mortistown and Tuxedo; the incomparable Hudson as far as Newburgh; the Westchester lakes and ridges, to Bridgeport and beyond, and all of Long Island.” This is a good working definition, though, as we shall see, it includes some land which is almost as virginal as it was on the day Columbus discovered America, and some that has actually lost population during the last one or two generations.

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REGIONAL PLAN OF a of SCALE tv MILES

NEW YORK AND ITS Beans 7 ae? 5 Lt) 1S [) 2 ENGINEERING DIVISION 7

Tue New Yorx Recion These 22 counties in three states include over 400 separate municipalities

Our “city,” viewed in this way, contains 5,528 square miles. It is as large as the State of Connecticut, four and a half times as large as Rhode Island, and two hundred and fifty times as large as Manhattan Island—which started all the trouble! A little more than half of it—2,887 square miles—lies in New York State, 2,228 square miles in New Jersey, and 413 square miles in Connecticut. It contains over 420 municipalities. Its population is about 10,000,000, or more than that of any state except New York. About one person in every twelve in the United States lives within it. As Paul said of Tarsus, this is no mean city. More human beings are gathered within commuting distance of the New York City Hall than have lived in any similar area since the world began.

Why is this vast population gathered around a little island whose most valuable piece of real estate was sold three centuries ago for $24? We shall try a little later to answer this question in economic terms. People live in the New York Region, as they live in Kansas or Louisiana, partly because they are able to earn a living here. It might also be answered in psychological terms. People live here because, quite apart from what they earn and what they pay for food and rent, the city has a pull for them. If we could explain just what this pull is we would throw light on some of the most puzzling aspects of modern civilization. The majority of us today seem to like to live in crowds. The majority of our an-

HOW WE GOT HERE 5 cestors didn’t. It would be interesting to know why. But whether or not we can explain the forces that act upon so many of us, we can see them at work, The congestion from which we suffer could easily be remedied if so many of us did not insist upon going to the same places at the same time. But we do insist. We cause congestion not only by going to and from work but by going to and from our amusements and recreations. We probably derive a net profit from living in New York—a profit measured in intellectual and spiritual satisfactions as well as in dollars and cents—or we should not be here.

A good deal of this profit may lie in feeling ourselves at the center of the world’s most stirring activities. Here the life of our time burns most fiercely. For the young and the ambitious there is endless opportunity. The stir along a great street, the lift of great buildings against the sky, stimulate the most sluggish imagination. The very noise and confusion may come to be as homelike as the singing of frogs in a country meadow, and perhaps no harder on the nerves. It is often said that New York has no civic patriotism which can be compared with that which an Athenian, a Roman of the Empire, or a Florentine of the Renaissance experienced for his native city. Yet there can be few New Yorkers who have not felt a thrill at the thought that they are a part of a mighty metropolis. At times the city makes the individual small and insignificant. But at times it dignifies him.

We may take it for granted, at any rate, that the way to improve New York is not to abolish it—even supposing that we are able to abolish it. A paragraph or two back we were speaking of the necessity for planning, a subject to which we shall return many times. As.we look about us we see on every hand evidences of the lack of planning. Buildings are erected without regard to their effect upon street traffic or upon the ability of the subways to carry their tenants back and forth. Industries which belong outside are maintained within the crowded areas. The population as well as the industries is unevenly spread out. If it were evenly distributed each family of four or five persons in the Region could have an acre of ground. ‘This would be difficult and probably not even desirable, but the fact shows that some of our troubles come from our failure to make sensible use of what we have. It is a little as though we had crowded our family and furniture into two or three rooms of a six-room apartment, leaving the others vacant.

The reason for this situation is not hard to find. The United States is an individualistic country and New York is an individualistic city. Its growth has been brought about by a multitude of individuals and interests, often doing great things, but not often working together as a community. This has been particularly the case as the real New York has outgrown its old suit of clothes and spread into two

HOW WE GOT HERE a, other states as well as into other counties of its own state. .

Let us stand back far enough to get a perspective and observe the way in which this development has taken place and some of the causes for it.

Chapter Two HOW WE GREW EW YORK began, as everyone knows, at the

lower tip of the Island of Manhattan. If we think over the greatest cities of the world, past and present, we can see that most of them owed at least their beginnings to the fact that they were situated on bodies of water over which trade had to pass. A protected harbor, giving access both to the sea and to rivers leading inland, was sure in any civilized country to have its city. It took railroads to produce important cities away from the water and even now such cities ate scarce. The first settlers on Manhattan wanted to buy furs from the Indians. The Hudson suited their purpose very well, for it opened up the interior as no trails on land could have done. Later on some of the most important railway lines followed this and other river valleys. Even now, as a glance at the map shows, the largest clusters of population in the Region are within jumping distance of the water. Of course the significance of waterways has changed a good deal since the city was started, At that time one could often move more rapidly and with greater security by water than by land.

Now the situation is reversed. The Hudson River, the East River, the arms of the Bay and Long Island Sound, are obstacles which compel us to build ferries, bridges, and tunnels. Naturally, these stretches of water have influenced the direction in which the city has grown, and incidentally have been responsible for some of the overcrowding which has existed so long in certain districts. Manhattan’s population had to spread north, during many decades, for the simple reason that it could not spread. in any other direction. The building of the bridges across the East River enabled it to spread east, just as tubes, tunnels, and before long a great bridge will assist it to spread west. But even with these aids New York could not grow as Chicago has done, by sprawling out until the outward thrust from the center had spent its force.

The city and the neighboring groups of population which have now become practically a part of it were hemmed in not only by water-barriers, but by the ridges between the watersheds. A topographical map shows this very plainly. Most of the ridges run north and south, which is all very well when one wishes to travel in that direction, but decidedly annoying when one wishes to go directly east or west. The ridge of the Hackensack Valley, the Palisades, and the crests of southern Westchester and Fairfield counties have obstructed the building of highways and railroads. Since much of the traffic coming into New York does follow an

IO MASTERING A METROPOLIS east-and-west line, this has been a disadvantage. At the same time, the hills and the beaches, rivers and lakes, have added greatly to the charm and interest of the New York Region. The Bronx River is a good illustration of a small stream which has been made to give pleasure and recreation to thousands of people. Perhaps we should not list it as one of the early factors in making New York grow, yet now, with its natural advantages skillfully utilized, it is drawing population. The pleasant scenery of Westchester, Putnam, and Rockland counties, and of many sections of Long Island and northern New Jersey, has had its influence in making New Yorkers willing to move into the suburbs. Before it became “scenery’’ it was farming country and played its part in feeding the growing city. That was before New York began to import apples from Oregon, grapes from Argentina, and mutton from New Zealand. But it is interesting to note that some of the best residential territory of the present day, as in Westchester County, was never very good for farming.

Even though we are sure we know all about our city and its surroundings, it may be worth while to cast an eye over the outstanding geographical features of the Region—that solid basis upon which the metropolis stands. Manhattan Island itself is thirteen miles long and between one and two miles wide. South of One Hundred and Tenth Street it is relatively flat, though there is hilly ground in Central Park and there are bluffs above the East

HOW WE GREW II

River in the latitude of Forty-second Street. An excellent way to trace the smaller ups and downs is to follow lower Broadway or Fifth Avenue after dark and observe the graceful curves made by the tows of street lights. Broadway dips at Canal Street, where once there really was a canal upon which the boys and girls of Manhattan used to skate. At Murray Hill there is quite a little mountain, for that portion of the island. As readers of Mrs. Wharton’s Age of Innocence will remember, children of long ago used to slide down it.

But it is at the northern end of Central Park that our Manhattan mountains really begin. Here are real cliffs where young mountaineers exercise their skill. At One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street is the deep depression which in Revolutionary times used to be called The Hollow Way, and at Two Hundredth Street there is another. What we call Washington Heights lies between these two valleys. Underneath these dimples and wrinkles of Manhattan is a solid rock framework of what the geologists call gneiss and schist, with a little limestone in the north and northeast. Sometimes, as we can see with the naked eye, the rock comes boldly to the surface. At the lower end of the island it is covered with the sand and gravel of some prehistoric glacier, in places to a depth of more than a hundred feet. But it is there, and likely to be there a long time. It is a good foundation to build a city on.

Long Island is not quite so solid, for most of it was brought down by glaciers, and glaciers, relatively speaking, travel light. But it has the great advantage, for many purposes, of being comparatively flat, especially along its southern shores. The ridges in its center and along the northern shore are the piled-up débris known as glacial moraines. A moraine is what a glacier leaves when it has gone as far as it can and begins to recede. The Bronx and Westchester County have also been heavily glaciated, but they have a hard rocky framework, and as everyone who has tried to do gardening or farming in that part of the Region knows, they have also a great many loose boulders. But this does not very much injure their value as residence territory. New Jersey, south of the Raritan River, has low hills, running from one hundred to three hundred feet in height, with a good deal of sand and gravel, many watercourses, big and little, and some swamp Jands. Staten Island, geologically speaking, belongs to this part of New Jersey. North of Staten Island, between Newark Bay and the Upper Bay, begins the Bayonne Peninsula. The backbone of this peninsula, swinging in toward the Hudson River, gives rise to the Palisades—perhaps New York’s most original and striking scenic feature.

West of the Palisades lie the so-called Hackensack Meadows, a vast undeveloped area, only five feet above the mean tide level, of which we shall have something to say later on. It is well to pay some attention to them, for they may play a large part in the development of the future New York Region. We may leave them, however, and follow up the Passaic and its tributaries to the rim of barrier hills. As we go north through the country on the west bank of the Hudson we come to higher elevations— the Watchungs, the Ramapos, and the Hudson Highlands. As we do so we get out of the immediate influence of the city. But these natural features had much to do with the way trade and traffic came into New York from the beginning, they have affected its growth, and they make a framework to which the future development of the Region must be fitted.

Having cast this hasty glance at the physical qualities of our metropolitan Region, let us consider for a moment its climate. With few exceptions—probably we shall have to mention Los Angeles as one of them—great cities have not owed their greatness to their perfect weather. London and Paris, to take the two mother cities which rank next to New York in size and far overshadow it in historical associations, endure a good deal of weather which no one denies is wretched. When Kipling tried to picture an exile’s longing for home he made him hear again the churning of the cab wheels in London mud. New York is luckier, for mud is certainly not the first thing one thinks of in connection with it. Mr. W. F. Wilson of the United States Weather Bureau speaks of the Region as possessing “relatively mild winters for the latitude, not excessively watm summers, an abundance of precipitation well

I4 MASTERING A METROPOLIS distributed throughout the year, and a rather high humidity.” The rains of summer are heavier and the cold of winter less severe than in districts north and west of the city. The actual rainfall for the Region varies between 42 and 51 inches annually. In New York City the average over a period of ninety-five years was 42.16 inches. The minimum is about 30 inches and the maximum is about Go inches. There are, on an average, 126 days each year on which the careful citizen will carry an umbrella. There is sunshine during 60 per cent of the daytime hours.

The coldest month in the year is February, with a mean temperature of 31 degrees, and the hottest is July, with a mean temperature of 74 degrees. There are normally only 25 days in the year on which the temperature does not rise above freezing, and only six on which it goes above 90 degrees. ‘There is a good deal of fog, which hampers the movements of vessels and even of automobiles and railway trains, and high winds are common. But on the whole the climate of New York is probably better suited to a great urban population than that of most of the world’s cities. It is stimulating, yet does not compel us to waste too much energy in fighting it. This is fortunate, for, though we can overcome topographical obstacles, there is apparently not much that we can do about the weather.

We have now taken an aviatot’s view of the raw material of New York as it existed when the white man first landed. The Dutch planted their fort and houses at the tip of Manhattan because that point was accessible from the sea, was easily defended, and lay at the meeting of two rivers. Two of these factors eventually made New York first the greatest city on the continent and then the greatest in the world, but it was a long time before this destiny could be foreseen. The Manhattan settlement lagged behind Boston and Philadelphia, though it was established six years earlier than the former city and more than half a century earlier than the latter. In 1760, according to estimates made by the federal Census Bureau, Philadelphia led with 18,756 inhabitants, Boston was second with 15,631 and New York had to be content with a miserable 14,000. There were very good reasons for this. Boston lay nearer to the fishing banks, which furnished so important a share of Colonial trade. The tobacco of the southern Colonies alone exceeded in annual value New England’s export of cod and other sea food. Pennsylvania had grown more rapidly than New York and New Jersey because it had kept peace with the Indians and because its eastern valleys were fertile and accessible. The Iroquois barred the New York merchants from the north long after the traders of Philadelphia were freely exchanging goods with Pittsburgh. Then, just as New York began to draw ahead of her rivals, the Revolutionary War dealt her a terrible blow. For seven years she was in the hands of the British. Twice large sections of the city were burned. Commerce practically stopped. When the American colors were tun up, on November 25, 1783, only 10,000 tfemained of the population of 20,000 which had existed before the war.

But during the next few years the spirit of New York as we know it today began to assert itself. By 1787 the population was back at its pre-war level. Three years later it stood at 33,131. The New Yorkers felt so cocky at their new prosperity that they came near not ratifying the federal Constitution. The Napoleonic wars were a godsend to New York merchants. They not only shipped abroad their own products, but they brought in cargoes from the French West Indies, “nationalized” them to give them the protection of the American flag, and sent them abroad, too. They had an advantage because they were nearer the open sea than their Philadelphia competitors and nearer the West Indies than were the ship-owners of Boston. By 1800 New York was the leading American seaport—a position which it has never since relinquished. Meanwhile the State of New York had been gaining rapidly in population. It had been fifth in 1790; in 1810 it was second; and not long after it was first. Transportation was developing. ‘There was much building of turnpikes after the Revolutionary War. The first steamboat line between New York City and Albany was put into operation in 1807.

The War of 1812 was a temporary setback, but

HOW WE GREW oy it was followed by a period of renewed activity.: Transatlantic communication grew in speed and importance. The famous Black Ball packet line to Liverpool was established in 1816, and the Red Star, the Swallow Tail, the Dramatic, and others followed. The era of canal building came on. The Erie was finished in 1825. It came at a time of great expansion, and its effects were probably greater than those of any other public improvement in the United States since that time. It opened the West to trade and settlement in a manner hard for us in this day of railways, automobiles, and airplanes to tealize. Not only in western New York but in northern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois did the canal make its influence felt. Large populations grew up in these regions, and instead of trading down the Mississippi to New Orleans, as their neighbors further south had done, began trading eastward to the Hudson River and New York City. New York State alone was growing at the rate of half a million new inhabitants every ten years.

Then came the railroads, destined in the end to reduce most canals to a minor position, and to dry up some of them. The first railroad in what we now call the metropolitan district was the Camden and Amboy. Residents of Manhattan desiring to go to Philadelphia took a steamer to South Amboy, then went by rail to Camden, then took a ferry to the City of Brotherly Love. This service was opened in 1832. Seven years later, in 1839, three railways combined their facilities to give a direct rail route. On Manhattan itself the great-grandfather of subways, elevated lines, and transcontinental connections was the New York and Harlem, upon which, as early as 1832, one could ride all the way from Prince Street to Fourteenth Street—bell ringing, whistle tooting, and sparks from the wide wood-burning stack flying all over the neighborhood. The building of this road went forward with a deliberation which suggests some of our subway construction. It reached the Harlem River in 1837 and clattered into White Plains in 1844.

These early roads were intended mainly for passenger traffic, and they often avoided the routes of canals and navigable rivers. When five little railroads joined in 1842 to give direct rail service to Buffalo the State of New York imposed conditions which forbade them to compete with the Erie Canal for freight. Through connections by rail with Boston and with Albany were delayed because of the effective competition of steamers on Long Island Sound and the Hudson River. The Erie Railroad, chartered in 1832 for a through route to the West— or what was then called the West—was not com-— pleted between Piermont and Dunkirk until 1851. The pier or mole which was its first eastern terminus is still a landmark on the western bank of the Hudson, familiar to thousands of summer excursionists. But it was found before long that the nearer the rails could be brought to the city the bet-