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The Jenney Myth: How the Home Insurance Building Falsely Became the “First Skyscraper” (Part II)

Jason M. Barr            July 1, 2024

Note: This blog post is based on the research discussed in my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers, as well as my working paper on the subject, which includes references to the original sources and archival documents.

Part I of the series can be read here.

Winning the Argument

In 1896—a decade after the completion of the Home Insurance Building (HIB)—William Le Baron Jenney and his Chicago colleagues, including the world-renowned architect and planner Daniel H. Burnham, engaged in a public relations campaign in the trade journal The Engineering Record to convince the world that, as Jenney claimed, “The skeleton construction was a radical departure from anything that heretofore appeared and was exclusively my invention.”

These words represent an attempt to rewrite history as the HIB was neither a radical departure from previous structural designs nor something that one individual, let alone Jenney, could claim sole credit for. The perfection of the tall office building was the product of decades-long trial and error. And there is virtually no metric for which Jenney’s building can be deemed the “first skyscraper.”

However, because Chicago architects and engineers were so crucial in advancing building technology and creating the Skyscraper Revolution, the public was convinced when they claimed that Jenney built the first skyscraper. The engineering argument was rather technical, while Jenney’s statement was simple and believable, despite being untrue.

But Why?

But Jenney’s dogged insistence that his building was both radical and pivotal begs the question: Why was he so eager to claim the prize? Was it pure vanity? Or were other forces at work?

The answer is that in the years between 1885 and 1896, other architects and cities were vying for the title of “first skyscraper” and the Chicago community fought to claim what they believed was rightfully theirs. As a result, they began changing the historical account and offering misleading statements about the structure of the Home Insurance Building.

The “Cloudscraper.” A rending of an office building from Leroy Buffington based on his 1888 patent for iron framing. It was never built. Source: Inland Architect, July 1888.

The Claimants

Jenney’s language in the ER and private letters makes sense when placed in the context of what he saw and heard in the late 1880s and 1890s. By using phrases such as “radical,” “my invention,” and “first steel skeleton,” to refer to his building, Jenney was attempting to securely establish his claim by locking out the other claimants, which included three key “factions”: those from New York, Chicago, and Leroy Buffington, from Minneapolis, respectively.

Leroy Buffington

Leroy Buffington (1848-1931) was arguably the most antagonistic and problematic of the lot. In 1874, he opened a practice in Minneapolis, where he flourished. As a designer of large public buildings in the 1880s, Buffington knew the state of the art of structural methods.

He claimed that in 1882, he discovered the ideas behind the skyscraper and was determined to get his due. In 1888, he won a U.S. patent for his iron-framed skeletal building design, which, he argued, showed solid proof that he was the father of the tall building. However, no structure was ever built using his patented system.

In 1892, Buffington started suing for patent infringement. His first of several unsuccessful cases was against William H. Eustis, a real estate developer and the mayor of Minneapolis. Eustis’s answer to Buffington’s bill of complaint referenced Jenney’s 1885 article about the design of the HIB in The Sanitary Engineer as proof that the patent had been anticipated and was, therefore, void.[1]

In 1892, Buffington also wrote to Jenney (and likely many others), “I beg to direct your attention to my patent, No. 333,179, issued May 22nd, 1888 for ‘Iron Building Construction’, and to warn you and others to refrain from infringement of said patent or any of its claims.” We can imagine that Jenney received quite a shock when he opened the envelope. Jenney responded by asking for a copy of  “said patent.” On May 14, 1892, Buffington honored his request.

Buffington After Boodle

In late November 1892, at least four Midwest and Western newspapers published an article with the headline, “Buffington After Boodle,” which stated that Buffington “is about to begin suit against the owners of all the sky-scraping buildings in Chicago. He claims that the structural iron work has been put in a manner conflicting with patent which he holds. He will claim damages to the extent of the 5 per cent of the cost of each building. This means that he will claim $4,500,000 from Chicago….”

Some version of this article was printed around the country during the last week of November and early December, including the in San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago-based newspaper, The Sunday Inter Ocean, and The Chicago Tribune on December 4.

Buffington’s claims seem extreme today, but when put in the context of Jenney’s private experiences with Buffington and his retainers, such copy, if it reached Jenney—which it most likely did—would undoubtedly have contributed to his concern. Jenney’s words in the ER need to be considered in light of Buffington’s actions, and the evidence suggests that Jenney was worried.

Gates Paves the Way

Then, in 1896, when F. T. Gates inquired to The Engineering Record about who invented steel framing, Jenney saw an opportunity to get Buffington off his back. Jenney rounded up friends, colleagues, and former executives related to the Home Insurance Company to help in his quest by having them write letters supporting him.

The letter-writing campaign can be seen as an attempt for both the Chicago group—through Jenney—to claim “prior art,” which is evidence that an invention was already known. If another party can document it, it can invalidate a patent.

Jenney’s phrasing in his letter to the ER and private letters such as “radical departure,” “my claim to the invention,” and “nothing of the kind had ever been…hinted at” were efforts to demonstrate that Buffington’s patent was null and void due to Jenney’s structure, completed at least two or three years before Buffington filed (November 1887) or won (May 1888) his patent.

Thanks for the Honor

In early 1897, when Gates “formally” chose Jenney as the inventor of the skyscraper in another letter in The Engineering Record, Jenney wrote to Gates to thank him for his selection, stating, “I accept [this honor] with many thanks: it is the one official recognition, confirming my claim to the invention of the Steel Skeleton Construction, though as far as I know, no one has ever made the claim….(emphasis added). I have also to thank you for the inquiry through the Engineering Record, which brought the matter to the notice of the Architectural and Engineering profession.”

Jenney saw Gates as paving the way for him to make his claims in the public forum. However, Jenney’s statement, “no one has ever made the claim,” is false, in light of the fact that Jenney received a cease-and-desist letter from Buffington in 1892. Additionally, the newspaper article about Buffington’s lawsuits likely reached Jenney’s desk.

The Birkmire Letter

Furthermore, in an 1899 letter to the architect William H. Birkmire, Jenney confesses his awareness of Buffington’s actions when he wrote:

L. Buffington of Minneapolis, took out a patent May 22, 1888, which I have before me….Buffington formed a company with large capital, supposed to be for the purpose of prosecuting and obtaining money from all those who used the skeleton construction. Parties interviewed me whom I supposed to be Buffington’s attorneys. I showed them that if they could find anyone using that extravagant column [in the patent] they certainly could prosecute them but no architect or engineer of any scientific knowledge would be guilty. That was the last I knew of the patent. He certainly never attempted to interfere in the use of the skeleton construction which he did not patent (emphasis added).

Again, how Jenney can say to Gates that “no one has ever made the claim” is odd considering that he was interviewed by Buffington’s lawyers four years before Gates’s inquiry to the ER!

This “fight” between Buffington and others would continue for many years and was no doubt an ongoing source of concern for Jenney. In 1904, a Chicago-based attorney, James Raymond, responded to an offer from Jenney to help in Raymond’s legal work for his client, the First National Bank, which Buffington was suing for patent infringement. Raymond expresses his fear, which Jenney likely shared, when he wrote, “Undoubtedly if Buffington should win either the suit commenced here or the suit commenced in New York, claim would be made against all the skeleton buildings in the country which come within the construction which the Court might thus put upon the Buffington patent.”

George Post’s New York Produce Exchange (1884) in New York. This building is considered the first to include curtain walled framing, but in courtyard walls. Source: Wikipedia.

The New York Faction

While Buffington may have represented Jenney’s “left flank,” several New Yorkers on “the right flank” were vying for the trophy. One respected architect, George Post, felt he deserved the credit. Post’s building, the New York Produce Exchange (1884), at the lower tip of Broadway, was arguably the first tall office building to contain at least one set of curtain walls—in this case, in the internal courtyard.

Post’s Claims

In 1894, at a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Architects, which included both Jenney and Daniel Burnham, Post made his claim to his esteemed colleagues when he said:

Individually I believe, although I never very carefully investigated the subject, that I was the first person to use anything approaching to the steel cage. Some fourteen years ago, I think it was, I built the tower of the Produce Exchange with a wrought iron and cast iron combined cage, filling in the panels with brickwork, but covering it on the outside with cast iron plates in the form of pilasters and string-pieces and cornices.…

Using the terminology of the day, by “cage,” Post means an iron-framed curtain wall. Again, the fact that Jenney stated in his letter to Gates that he never heard anyone make the claim about steel-framed construction is disingenuous, given that he was sitting on the panel dais when Post made it two years before the ER debate.

Then, during the letter-writing campaign in 1896, Post weighed in again when he said, “In 1881, I designed and erected the New York Produce Exchange, in which the interior courtyard wall is constructed with a cage of cast-iron columns and wrought-iron girders, which are filled with brick panels. I am inclined to think that this is the first example of cage [iron-framed] construction.”

However, Post’s claims suffered for several reasons. First, his voice in the ER was drowned out by the bevy of those writing for Jenney. And the HIB, unlike, the Produce Exchange had iron in the external street-facing walls, while the Produce Exchange did not. So, while Post’s courtyard walls represented a true evolutionary step forward in curtain-walled design, Jenney’s building seemed closer to one.

Bradford Lee Gilbert

Another claimant arrived on the scene in 1889. The architect Bradford Lee Gilbert was awarded a commission by John Noble Stearns, a silk merchant, seeking to erect an office building on an awkwardly shaped lot in Lower Manhattan. The problem was that the Broadway frontage was only 21.5 feet across, though the lot widened toward the rear. To erect a masonry-bearing structure would have meant that the thick walls would have rendered the site unprofitable.

Gilbert claimed he devised the idea of turning a railroad bridge truss on its side.  However, there is some debate about whether the idea was his or that of William H. Birkmire, who worked for the Jackson Iron Works, supplying the building’s iron at the time. Gilbert framed the exterior walls with iron columns and included diagonal members for wind bracing. The framing freed up significant space on the lower floors. The Tower Building was only 11 stories.

Like many buildings of the day, it was a hybrid. The rear part had masonry walls. The iron frame in the front stopped at the sixth floor, and above that were load-bearing walls. But his building certainly made an impression. Partly for his achievement with the structure, Gilbert won a medal at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 “for a new type of American architecture.” It’s telling that Jenney did not win an award for the Home Insurance Building.

Them’s Fighin’ Words

Although a few years after the letter-writing campaign, a “fight” erupted between New York and Chicago when, on August 9, 1899, the Society of Architectural Manufacturers of New York affixed a bronze plaque to the Tower Building, which stated that it was “the earliest example of the skeleton construction….” This event illustrates how, in the late 19th century, New York was aiming for the “trophy” as well. It also helps to explain Chicago’s ongoing attempt to claim Jenney invented the skyscraper.

The Tower Building (1889). At 11 stories it was the earliest example in New York of the use of external iron framing with wind bracing. Source: Landau and Condit (1996).

Chicago’s Other Claimants

Finally, while less vocal than Buffington or the New York architectural community, some individuals in Chicago felt they deserved more credit than they received. Jenney, Burnham, et al. constantly interacted with community members; from time to time, they would likely talk with or hear a story about someone who felt denied their recognition.

The Chicago architect Frederick Baumann believed he, too, was entitled to some credit. In 1884, Baumann published a pamphlet outlining the principles of iron-framed construction. Though there is an intense debate about whether Baumann’s article came before or after the conception of the Home Insurance Building, Baumann was disappointed that his ideas were not recognized.

Peter Wight, a well-known architect and fire-proofing expert at the time, agreed with Baumann, to whom he wrote in 1915,

Mr. Jenney’s claim has no foundation in fact…I know more about the Home Insurance Building than any other man living or dead, but did not feel like contraverting Jenney’s claims, as Holabird and Roche never did with any earnestness. George B. Post used cast iron construction in the inner court of the Produce Exchange in that city, just as H and R had done. I am sorry you did not have an opportunity to bring your ideas into effect.

As this letter implies, there was also a movement in Chicago to anoint the Tacoma Building (1889), designed by Holabird & Roche, as the “first skyscraper” since it was the first tall office building in Chicago to have curtain walls in the street-facing façades (though the rear walls were load-bearing brick).

The Tacoma Building in Chicago. Designed by Holabird & Roche is was one of the earliest examples of curtain-wall framing for a tall office building in Chicago. Source: NYPL.

The Jenney Myth Must Die

The Jenney Myth arose because we like stories with clean narrative arcs. In this case, the gist of the (made-up) story goes like this: Chicago was growing by leaps and bounds after the Great Fire of 1871. The Loop, being hemmed in, desperately needed taller buildings to accommodate the demand. One man–brave and ingenious–answered the call. William Le Baron Jenney, heroically and radically, altered the course of history by designing the Home Insurance Building. After even taller builders emerged in the late 19th century, his genius proved correct and was awarded the title “Inventor of the Skyscraper.”

Jenney was an engineering genius, to be sure, but his building was none of what history has ascribed to it. It was neither a steel-framed skyscraper, a radical break with the past, nor a pivotal one. While it’s impossible to have a counterfactual history where Jenney never existed, we can say for sure that the skyscraper would have been “invented” all the same. For that matter, it seems likely that if Jenney had not been presented with such a propitious opportunity as the ER letter-writing campaign, his building would have been just a historical curiosity among architects and engineers with little notice among the public.

It’s time the Jenney Myth was laid to rest.

 

Part I of the series can be read here.

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[1] We can only speculate if Jenney was aware of this. But if so, it’s possible that Eustis’s claim gave Jenney the idea of using his building to demonstrate “prior art” regarding Buffington’s patent. Perhaps when Buffington’s lawyers interviewed Jenney, they mentioned this fact to him.

 

by Jason Barr 1 Comment

The Jenney Myth: How the Home Insurance Building Falsely Became the “First Skyscraper” (Part I)

Jason M. Barr            June 24, 2024

Note: This blog post is based on the research discussed in my book Cities in the Sky: The Quest to Build the World’s Tallest Skyscrapers, as well as my working paper on the subject, which includes references to the original sources and archival documents.

What was the first skyscraper?

Well, if you read Wikipedia or ask ChatGPT, both will tell you that it was the Home Insurance Building (HIB), designed by the architect William Le Baron Jenney.[1]

The Wikipedia entry on the “First Skyscraper” informs us that “The Home Insurance Building in Chicago, opened in 1885, is, however, most often labeled the first skyscraper because of its innovative use of structural steel in a metal frame design.” Similarly, if you go to Jenney’s Wikipedia page, you will read that the Home Insurance Building “was the first fully metal-framed building and is considered the first skyscraper.”[2]

The only problem with these entries is that they are entirely wrong. His building neither used structural steel nor was the first fully metal-framed building. Jenney’s designation as the “inventor of the skyscraper,” rather, was the result of a public relations campaign initiated by Jenney and his fellow Chicagoans to make the world believe that Jenney created the skyscraper.

The HIB included some engineering innovations, to be sure, and Jenney was one of the leading architect-engineers of his day. But there is not a single metric by which we can say his building was so important that it merits the title that society has given it. It’s time the Jenney Myth died.

The Home Insurance Building (1885) in Chicago. Falsely labeled the “first skyscraper.” Source: Library of Congress.

What is a Skyscraper?

Before discussing the first skyscraper question, we need to define a “skyscraper.”  Predating its application to tall buildings, the word “skyscraper” was used to denote nearly any high or tall object. The most notable examples include its use to describe a type of ship’s sail, a tall horse, a fly ball in baseball, and even ladies’ flowery hats that were all the rage in the mid-19th century.

The first appearance in the press that I can find referring to a tall building as a “skyscraper” was in 1882, when the New York Sun announced plans for the Mutual Life Insurance Building (1884, 11 floors) in New York. The following year, the Chicago Tribune reported in its “New York Gossip” column about the “high-building craze,” which included a discussion of Gotham’s “sky-scrapers,” mentioning its early tall offices such the Tribune Building (1875, 10 floors) and the Western Union Building (1875, 10 floors).

So clearly, by the standards of the press and the popular conception, what mattered was a building’s height and not its structural design. Thus, by the pure height definition, the first skyscraper predated the Home Insurance Building by a wide margin.

The Steel Skeleton

However, in the first skyscraper debate, what mattered most was how the building was constructed. Thus, a “skyscraper” can be defined (for historical purposes) as a relatively tall building having three essential elements. First is a steel skeleton, where all the beams and columns—both for external and internal use—are riveted together to form one complete latticework. Second, the skeleton contains extra steel for wind bracing. And third, the façade is a mere “curtain” that serves no structural purpose.

Against this standard, the Home Insurance Building fails in all categories. First, only the two street-facing exterior walls had iron columns, which were embedded in the exterior masonry piers that ran up the façade. The iron was used to reduce the thickness of the exterior walls, and the iron and masonry shared the load. Additionally, the rear two façades were traditional load-bearing masonry brick. Further, the iron beams and columns were not riveted but were bolted together and reinforced with iron rods since iron was too brittle to be riveted. None of the exterior beams or columns were made of steel.  Finally, the building contained no additional materials for wind bracing—instead, the thick masonry walls stiffened the building against wind forces. Without this façade, the ironwork would not have been strong enough to protect the building against intense gusts.

The Client

When Jenney was asked by his client, the Home Insurance Company of New York, to design a Chicago headquarters, he created a hybrid building, combining old and new materials and methods. However, it is true that Jenney was likely the first architect to include steel floor beams inside the building on the upper stories. Jenney’s original plans called for wrought iron beams, but the Carnegie mills asked him during construction to substitute steel instead. However, steel and wrought iron had similar structural characteristics, so there was nothing revolutionary about this substitution.

The Reliance Building (1895) and its Steel Skeleton Frame. Sources: here and here. This building in Chicago is one of the earliest examples of a true steel-framed skyscraper with a curtain well.

Jenney’s Own Words

When his building was completed, neither Jenney nor the wider architectural and engineering community took particular note. Just as importantly, no one, including Jenney himself tried to claim that the Home Insurance Building represented a revolution in structural design.

When Jenney wrote about his building in the journal The Sanitary Engineer in December 1885, his opening remarks—the accomplishment of which he was most proud—was that he had successfully employed a foundation design to prevent uneven settlement.

Only in the second half of the article does he turn to the structural framing, where he discusses how he implanted the iron columns into the load-bearing piers and connected them to expanded iron lintels, the beams that span over the window and door openings.

Burying the Lead

There was little in his discussion to suggest that he saw his building as anything more than an evolutionary advance, and nothing in his talk hinted that he felt he invented the skyscraper. Surely, if he thought that his iron framing methods were entirely novel and groundbreaking, he would have led with this fact. Ironically, in his article, there is no mention of the word “steel.” This omission is strange given that years later, he would claim that he invented the steel-framed skeleton.

In the ensuing years, as other hybrid and experimental buildings came online, such as the Rookery (1888) and the Tacoma (1889) in Chicago and the Tower Building (1889) in New York, none copied Jenney’s methods. Rather, these structures were inspired from earlier designs in iron framing.

The PR Campaign

Starting in 1896, however, the discussion about the Home Insurance Building began to take a very different tone. At this point, Jenney and his colleagues asserted that the HIB was a revolutionary building. By the mid-1890s, skyscrapers of 20 stories or more were rising around the country, such as the 21-story Masonic Temple Building (1893) in Chicago and the 20-story Manhattan Life Insurance Building (1894) in New York, and people were curious to know who “invented” them.

No doubt, the new towers piqued the curiosity of a one F. T. Gates, the president of the Bessemer Steamship company, a ship manufacturer.  In June of 1896, Gates wrote to the trade journal The Engineering Record (ER) to inquire who discovered the idea of steel construction for tall buildings. An editorial offered that its journal had discussed some early examples of tall office buildings, such as the Home Insurance Building, the Rookery, and the Drexel Building (1889) in Philadelphia, though the editor did not pick one building as the first skyscraper.

High Gear

When Jenney read Gates’ letter, he went into high gear. The first thing he did was to write to Gates, telling him, “My claim is that in 1883 I invented and put into practical use in the Home Ins. Bldg. Chicago, what is now known as Skeleton Construction, a radical departure from anything heretofore existing.…” On July 6th, Gates responded to Jenney, apparently convinced by his pleas, by stating, “Your letters seem to be conclusive as to the invention of the Steel Skeleton Construction.”

In the ER’s July 11th issue, Jenney also wrote a letter to the ER stating that “The skeleton construction was a radical departure from anything that heretofore appeared and was exclusively my invention.”

Rewriting History

This statement—over a decade after the completion of the HIB—represents the first time Jenney publicly claimed that he invented the skyscraper. Furthermore, these words do not accurately depict the nature of the Home Insurance Building, as described above. First, the building was not a radical departure from earlier buildings. It was predominantly a load-bearing structure with iron to reduce the thickness of the masonry walls. The claim that skeleton construction was exclusively his invention disregards the long history of iron framing dating back at least a century before the HIB was conceived, not to mention the countless other necessities to make a skyscraper possible, such as electric elevators with safety breaks and fireproofing, with which Jenney had nothing to do.

The Voting

Gate’s inquiry also motivated others to write in with their opinions. Seven more letters, five in support of Jenney, were also included in the issue. Most of the writers were intimately involved with the construction of the building and had a relationship with Jenney. For example, one letter was from George M. Lyon, the former business partner of the Home Insurance Company’s Chicago Agent, A. C. Ducat, while another was from Hugh Young, the president of the Young & Farrell Diamond Stone Sawing Company, which provided masonry for the HIB.

One of the two letters not expressing support for Jenney was from Dankmar Adler of Adler & Sullivan in Chicago. Adler felt that one could not assign an inventor and gave a more historically accurate perspective by writing, “Take it altogether, the skeleton construction, or its present successor, the steel-cage construction, was a growth rather than an invention….the credit for which should therefore be given my profession as a whole rather than to anyone in its ranks.”

Another letter was from George Post, who felt his Produce Exchange Building (1884) in New York should be considered the first example of curtain-walled construction in a tall office building, and whom today many architecture historians feel was the first to use true external iron framing.

In the July 25th issue, two more letters appeared. One was from the Chicago engineer C. L. Strobel, who agreed with Adler and wrote, “The correct conclusion …of building work actually done would therefore seem to be that the modern steel-frame construction is a development towards which a number of individuals have made valuable contributions.”

Burnham Weighs In

Strobel’s letter was followed by one from Daniel Burnham, arguably the most famous and important Chicago architect from the 1880s to the early 1910s. He wrote:

This principle of carrying the entire structure on a carefully balanced and braced metal frame, protected from fire, is precisely what Mr. William L. B. Jenney worked out. No one anticipated him in it, and he deserved the entire credit belonging to the engineering feat which he was the first to accomplish.

In the same spirit as Jenney, Burnham sought to place the HIB as the pivotal structure in skyscraper history. As discussed above, Jenny’s building was not a “braced metal frame,” as it had no wind bracing and the ironwork was not fully self-supporting.

Similarly, the statement that “No one anticipated him” ignores the many historical precedents in iron framing, while the comment that “he deserved the entire credit” exaggerates Jenney’s role within this history. Burnham had worked in Jenney’s office as a draftsman in 1868, and they were long-time colleagues and friends. His letter can be considered more of a recommendation letter than an unbiased account. In this regard, it’s important to view Burnham’s words with a healthy dose of skepticism.

Buffington

The August 8th issue of the ER included a letter from Leroy Buffington, a Minnesota architect who in 1888 received a patent for iron-framed construction. Buffington claimed, “I have used construction like the Home Insurance Company’s Building of Chicago since 1876.” Like Jenny, Buffington was trying to argue his case and was prone to making statements that overstated his role in skyscraper history. There is no evidence that his buildings in Minnesota used external iron framing or had curtain walls.

The W. L. B. Jenney

Finally, in February 1897, Gates was convinced by the Chicago architects that supported Jenney and concluded that HIB was novel enough that his company would name their next vessel, “the ‘W. L. B. Jenney,’ after the eminent engineer and architect of Chicago, to whom we think the iron and steel trade is most indebted for this great advance in the construction of buildings.”

Jenney was quite pleased that Gates had given him this forum and victory. He wrote back to Gates saying, “I accept [this honor] with many thanks: it is the one official recognition, confirming my claim to the invention of the Steel Skeleton Construction, though as far as I know, no one has ever made the claim….I have also to thank you for the inquiry through the Engineering Record, which brought the matter to the notice of the Architectural and Engineering profession.”

Jenney’s use of the phrase “though as far as I know, no one has ever made the claim” is untrue (as will be discussed in the next blog post), as is his highly exaggerated statement of inventing “Steel Skeleton Construction.”

Jenney, for the Win

Jenney now had his tautological victory—he had told Gates that he was the winner, and Gates declared Jenney the winner; therefore, he was the winner. Just as importantly, Jenney used Gates’s decision as if it were a final, factual judgment. Gates was a business executive with limited knowledge and information regarding tall building construction, as evidenced by his query to the ER. He relied on the opinions of others, but most stated opinions came from people with a personal and professional interest in promoting Jenney—and several of them had directly received letters from him pleading for their support. The more nuanced opinions of industry insiders like Adler and Strobel were ignored, likely because they refused to play the game of picking an “inventor.”

And, more importantly, the letter writing campaign convinced the public because Jenney, Burnham, et al. were the experts and leaders of the Chicago Skyscraper Revolution. Additionally, no one really knew what the guts of the structure looked like, as they were hidden in stone. In the debates, Jenney pointed to his published drawings of the iron beams connected to the expanded lintels, which had the appearance of an iron frame on paper but, physically, operated very differently in practice. Jenney’s words and drawings seemed true, and there was no way—or reason—to try to prove this American genius wrong.

An example of how the press repeated Jenney and Burnham’s words can be seen in an 1898 article entitled, “Chicago’s Skyscrapers” in The International: An Illustrated Monthly Magazine of Travel and Literature published in Chicago, which stated that “More effective than anything else in settling the dispute was a letter from Mr. D. H. Burnham.”

Left: Masonic Temple in Chicago (1893). Right: Manhattan Life Insurance Building in New York (1894). Sources: here and here.

Post-1896

After 1896, Jenney continued to insist that he invented the skyscraper. In one final writing, before he died in 1907, Jenney published a brief memoir in The Western Architect. Once again, taking liberty with the facts, he states that when the Home Insurance Building Committee asked about other buildings of similar form, “I replied there was none; that they would have the first; that the steel construction was a simple engineering problem….” Again, notice how Jenney simplifies and misrepresents the description of the building as the first steel skeleton constructed building. Whether Jenney believed what he was saying or not can never likely be known, but he was not above bending the truth.

When Jenney died, he continued to receive the honor in his obituaries. The Pittsburgh Press, for example, wrote, “William Le Baron Jenney, inventor of the skyscraper…died in Los Angeles, Cal., yesterday….” A few days later, a Chicago Sunday Tribune reported that Jenney “discovered skeleton construction….”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

But Why?

But what was driving Jenney’s dogged attempt to re-write history? Why was he so eager to claim the epithet “inventor of the skyscraper”?

The answer to these questions will be revealed in the next post, which you can read here.

 

 

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[1] There is a near-universal consensus among architectural and engineering historians that the HIB was not the first skyscraper. The problem, however, is that this understanding has not spread to the broader public. Architecture historians have done little to undo this persistent myth, as evidenced by the incorrect information in widely read sources like Wikipedia.

[2] ChatGPT simply repeats Wikipedia’s response if you ask it, “What was the first skyscraper?”

by Jason Barr 1 Comment

The Birth and Growth of Modern Zoning (Part III): FAR and Wide

Jason M. Barr (@JasonBarrRU)      November 1, 2021

If you ask someone familiar with New York City real estate about the birth of modern zoning, they’ll point to 1961, the year the city implemented the floor area ratio (FAR) as the primary method to control building density. Sixty years later, the FAR is still going strong and, arguably, is the most popular planning tool globally.

The FAR rules give the maximum allowable building area relative to the size of the lot. FARs are frequently set to less than one in suburban districts, forcing landowners to build single-family homes. In central areas, the base residential FAR can be as high as 10 or 12, allowing for high-rises. Central Paris, for example, is a FAR 3 town. By capping the FAR, cities implicitly dictate how many people can live or work in each neighborhood.

The Great Depression

Indeed, the FAR was created in New York. However, its conception emerged two and half decades before 1961, during the Great Depression. It circulated within Mayor Fiorello La Guardia’s administration, and, in 1940, the FAR was incorporated into revisions of the 1916 zoning codes to limit density in leafy, residential neighborhoods.

During the 1940s, the idea of capping FARs percolated in planning circles, spreading outward from New York like ripples in a pond. Planners had become convinced that the first generation of zoning codes, which radiated out of New York in 1916, was inadequate and unable to check the evils of urban density. The FAR had a certain simplicity and gave planners a degree of control that they could not get from other regulations. By the late 1940s, it was known FAR and wide. The irony is that New York was two decades late to its own party.

How did the FAR spread across the country? And why did New York dither as the world began to embrace it? To answer these questions, we must go back to 1935, while the Great Depression held the nation in its grip.

Robert D. Kohn and the Birth of the FAR

The story begins with the Regional Planning Association of American (RPAA). During its heyday in the 1920s, it was an informal group of architects, planners, and writers, troubled by the ills of urban life. It aimed to make cities more healthful by promoting deconcentration and decentralization.  RPAA members were inspired by their British counterparts, mostly notably Ebenezer Howard, Raymond Unwin, and Thomas Adams, who spearheaded the Garden City movement in the U.K.

In 1935, architect, reformer, and RPAA member Robert D. Kohn (1870-1953) led a housing committee at the City Club of New York, an organization devoted to promoting enlightened local policies. Kohn’s committee was established to weigh in on zoning reform. And it is Robert Kohn, more than any other individual, who was responsible for creating the floor area ratio. Kohn’s committee drafted a memo promoting the FAR to control housing density—the first time this idea appeared in print. The document also asked City Club President, Richard S. Childs, to push Mayor La Guardia to take up the mantle of zoning reform.

Kohn was assisted by architect, and City Club and RPAA member, Frederick L. Ackerman (1878–1950), who, in 1934, became the first Technical Director of New York City Housing (NYCHA). From there, he issued reports (screeds, really) on the evils of the free market and the inadequacy of the current zoning regulations. In a 1934 NYCHA report, co-written by William F. R. Ballard, he estimated that if the city was fully built out under the 1916 codes, it would have a resident population of 77 million and a daytime working population of 350 million.

No matter that these numbers were never realistically obtainable (New York’s population in 1930 was 6.9 million), they were cited in report and after report to motivate people to take zoning reform more seriously.

The Joint Committee

Child’s letter to La Guardia produced results. A new joint committee was formed with members of the Mayor’s Committee on City Planning and the City Club, which continued to recommend the implementation of FAR controls. This report was followed by yet another in 1938, entitled “Zoning for the City of New York,” by the Mayor’s Committee on City Planning with funds from the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

The FAR was able to make headway during the Depression because President Roosevelt’s administration was funding research that allowed planners the chance to study and promote what they had been thinking about for some time. As this report indicates,

This investigation logically carried the work [of the joint committee] one step further, resulting in drafting the skeleton framework for a new zoning resolution. This framework carried out the general thinking of the committee, and introduced some modifications and refinements of detail…..It is now generally accepted opinion that the time has come for New York City to overhaul its zoning structure and bring it up to date.

The report was written by Theodore T. McCrosky (1902-1968), who was one of the pivotal spreaders of FAR. It might not be too much of a stretch to say that he was the Johnny Appleseed of modern zoning. Given his key role, why has he all been forgotten in planning history? (He does not even have a Wikipedia page, for example, though the New York Times did publish his obituary). We’ll come back to this below.

Theodore McCrosky

McCrosky was born in Tecumseh, Nebraska, and graduated with a civil engineering degree from Yale University in 1923. After graduate work at Louvain University, he taught at Yale and worked in traffic engineering and city planning. In 1928, he was hired by the Regional Plan of New York and its Environs as an assistant to the general director of plans and surveys, Thomas Adams—one of the world’s foremost Garden City planners. As described in an earlier post, Adams and Robert Whitten promoted FAR-like planning in their writings, especially in the widely influential Regional Plan. Adams and Whitten were the godfathers of the FAR (godFARthers?).

In 1929, McCrosky traveled to Nanjing to advise Kuomintang officials on a master plan for what was to be the new capital of China. When he returned stateside, he became planning director for the City of Yonkers.

FAR Montage. Examples of housing in New York City with different floor area ratios (FARs). Upper left: FAR 5.0, lower left: FAR 0.5, middle: FAR 16.9, upper right: FAR 3.3, lower right: FAR 1.0.

Zoning for the City of New York

By 1938, McCrosky was back in New York, where he was hired by the Mayor’s Committee on City Planning to write the report. It would set the blueprint for modern zoning, not only by introducing the FAR for comprehensive building bulk limits but also by introducing the kinds of zoning maps that we have today.

In 1916, the enacted zoning codes were specified in three separate maps—one for height setbacks, another for open space requirements, and a third for use (residential, commercial, or unrestricted). McCrosky’s report combined them into the now-standard method of placing all three within each zone (in addition to FAR requirements, sunlight provisions, and all sorts of other regulations).

For example, the R1 district was for “single-family detached dwellings and its accessory buildings.” The maximum FAR was to be set at 0.65. The R2 district was for similar uses as R1 but with a maximum allowable FAR at 0.8. All told, the report offered nine residential zones, three business districts, and an industrial zone. In hindsight, it was quite conservative. Today, in New York, there are ten main residential districts, eight commercial districts, and three for manufacturing. And each category has one or more subcategories. By my count, there are about 170 different zoning areas.

The Civil Servant

Following his stint with the Mayor’s Committee, McCrosky became the first director of the Master Planning division in the newly formed City Planning Commission (see below). By 1938, McCrosky was a rising star. In 1940, the New York Times reported that

Theodore T. McCrosky of 32 Washington Square West was rated first in competitive examinations for the posts of city planning director at $6,000 and associate city planner at $5,000, according to an announcement yesterday by the Municipal Civil Service Commission….Following Mr. McCrosky, whose rating was 92.90 per cent, the list for associate city planner carries F. Dodd McHugh as second, with 85.93….Mr. McHugh also placed second in the test for city planning director.

However, just as he was basking in his magna cum lauds, McCrosky packed up his bags and headed to the Windy City to take over as the executive director of the Chicago Plan Commission. We will return to McCrosky (and McHugh) later.

Rexford Tugwell and the City Planning Commission

In 1933, Congressman Fiorello La Guardia (1882-1947) was elected as the 99th mayor of the City of New York. He ran on a fusion ticket of Republicans and good government parties after the fall of mayor Jimmy Walker (1881-1946). Walker, a member of the notorious Democratic Club, Tammy Hall, was popular while Gotham was booming in the Roaring Twenties, but then a corruption scandal forced him from office. La Guardia was determined to reform New York’s government to root out corruption and provide an expansive set of services and programs to relieve suffering from the Great Depression.

In this vein, La Guardia spearheaded the creation of a new city charter that would centralize decision-making in his office. Historically, power was decentralized through the city’s Board of Estimate, comprised of the five borough presidents, the mayor, the comptroller, and the Board of Alderman president.

Birth of the CPC

The new charter, adopted in November 1936, left the basic governmental organization intact but provided changes to reduce corruption, create new offices and divisions, and establish a civil service. The charter contained a provision for establishing a City Planning Commission (CPC), which had responsibility for zoning, producing a master plan, and preparing capital expenditures and budgets. To give teeth to the CPC, the charter indicated that CPC decisions were considered final unless a three-fourths majority of the Board of Estimate overturned them.

The Department of City Planning (DCP) was also formed to provide research and do the heavy lifting of the Commission. It was headed by the chairman of the City Planning Commission and staffed with engineers, architects, and experts. Both the Commission and the Department began functioning in 1938.

The Master Planner

La Guardia eventually picked the controversial figure of Rexford G. Tugwell (1891-1979) as the first chairman of the CPC. Tugwell studied at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his Ph.D. in economics. He taught at Columbia University from 1920 to 1932, and wrote widely on the need for economic planning. As historian Mark Gelfand writes,

No political figure of the 1930s was more closely identified with planning than Rexford Tugwell. Although allegations by his conservative opponents that Tugwell was a communist were unfair, defenders of the traditional American way of life were correct in concluding that the former Columbia University professor was not one of their own. Tugwell shared little of the American public’s faith in the market place as the impartial maker of decisions, either economic or political. The market place had been outmoded by the new machine age; society could no longer be run efficiently or justly on the principles of individualism and competition. Both businessmen and politicians, he insisted, thrived on uncertainty, whereas liberty, equality, and security in the modern world depended on exactitude and control. “Planning,” Tugwell told the American Economic Association early in the decade, “is a process of predicting and making it come true.”

In 1932, Tugwell was selected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his New Deal “Brain Trust.” After a stint in the Department of Agriculture in 1935, he was given a chance to create and direct the Resettlement Administration (RA) to aid struggling farmers.

The Resettlement Administration

One important component of the RA was its suburban resettlement program, which sought to relocate poor farmers to newly built “greenbelt towns” outside city centers, where they could find employment in other sectors. Initially, Tugwell hoped to build 25 greenbelt communities, but only three were completed (Greenbelt, MD; Greenhills, OH; and Greendale, WI).

To aid with his plans, Tugwell turned to New York architect and RPAA member Clarence Stein. During the 1920s, Stein worked with Kohn and Ackerman to develop America’s first Garden Cities, Sunnyside, Queens, and Radburn, New Jersey. By the time Tugwell arrived in New York, he was steeped in the RPAA’s ideas to de-densify cities.

FAR Example. This drawing shows three ways to build a structure, all with an FAR of 2. Source: NYC DCP.

Tugwell’s New York

Tugwell’s role in New York planning history merits a longer discussion. And I will have more to say in a future post about his stint in the Big Apple, but suffice it say, it was short and marked by defeat. Tugwell arrived in New York in 1938 and left for Puerto Rico in 1941, where he became the island’s governor. He was basically chased out of town, with his tail between his legs, by New York master builder and power broker Robert Moses, who held a dim view of Tugwell’s masterplan. (I will also return to Moses’ role in New York’s planning and zoning history in a future post.)

Tugwell tried to tackle zoning reform in 1939. His signature policy was to ban large billboards and flashing signs from retail districts. The proposal also stated that current signs in violation would not be grandfathered and had to be removed. The business community, landlords, and advertisers didn’t like this plan and were vocal in their protest. They were joined by those who saw this small non-conforming use rule as a slippery slope to greater regulation. Ultimately their objection led to the proposal’s defeat.

Nonetheless, amended zoning codes passed in June 1940. It had tweaks to the extant 1916 regulations and included FAR caps in newly created suburban zones. These additions were meant as a toehold into more extensive reforms, but the real work was to follow the implementation of a master plan. In the statement to the 1940 Zoning Proposal, the CPC claimed,

After careful consideration, it appears that more fundamental revision may be indicated upon completion of the basic Master Plan studies upon which the Commission and the Department of City Planning are now engaged. As the same time there would appear to be no good reason for denying to the residents of this City the advantages to be gained through such zoning provisions as are enjoyed elsewhere, are desirable in the City, and not inconsistent with the structure of the present Resolution….

Finally, there is introduced an entirely new principle of bulk limitation, designed to keep the bulk of buildings in these districts within reasonable limits, at the same time affording a maximum of leeway for individuality of design and arrangement. This bulk limitation is expressed in terms of the permissible area of floor space in the building in proportion to the area of the plot. For example, the 1.6 ratio permitted in F area districts is such as to permit the usual six-story apartment building, but if the height were increased, it would be necessary to decrease the coverage proportionally….The regulation is framed in terms of floor area, rather than cubic contents of building, because the latter would put a premium on low ceilings.

The Master Plan

Released in the fall of 1940, the proposed master plan had the ambition of flipping one-third of New York City into green space by 1990. As Gelfand writes, this was too much for Robert Moses whose

disdain for “do-gooders” also extended to their espousal of planning. Years of bargaining and compromising with governors, mayors, legislators, bankers, lawyers, property owners, engineers, and countless other groups had taught Moses that society was composed of too many disparate interests for any comprehensive, long-range master plan to be conceived and executed. A free society could plan, but only for limited objectives within a short time frame. Any “long-haired, ivory-tower” approach to planning was either not feasible or based on undemocratic premises. A master of the broker type of political universe he had inherited and helped form, Moses had sworn holy war on those “fanatic[al] and irresponsible” exponents of economic and political experimentation “who were quite ready to blow up the entire laboratory in order to insure a fair test of their latest invention.”

February 13, 1942, the City Planning Commission formally voted to scrap the master plan.

 Tugwell and Ludlow in Puerto Rico

After New York, Tugwell had a chance, as governor of Puerto Rico, to implement his ideas with a much freer hand. In 1942, he set up the Junta de Planificación, Urbanización y Zonificación de Puerto Rico—the Planning, Urbanization and Zoning Board—which hired William H. Ludlow as consultant.

William Ludlow

Ludlow is one of those hidden people in planning history. All we have left today is the footprints of his writings. I can find no obituary at his death; he has no Wikipedia page; and apparently has no biographies. Rather, he seems to have been a studious and serious soldier for the planning and zoning cause and did little to attract attention to himself. But from the digital gossamer, we can trace out bits of his actions.

In 1954, the Hartford Courant printed an obituary of Ludlow’s father, William Orr Ludlow, a well-known New York City architect. It mentions that Ludlow was survived by his family, including his planner son, William H. The Rockland County Journal-News in 1935 announced a wedding between Miss Wilma Chitterling of West Orange, New Jersey, and William H. Ludlow of Madison, New Jersey, also a Princeton University alumni. As for the newlyweds, “Following a brief motor trip in New York State, Mr. and Mrs. Ludlow will reside in Washington, where Mr. Ludlow is engaged in planning and research for the Resettlement Administration,” headed by Tugwell. At the RA, he contributed to several reports, and also worked with Clarence Stein.

Ludlow in New York

After about seven years in DC, Ludlow moved back to New York. He was hired to write a report for the Citizen’s Housing Council (CHC) of New York. The organization promoted affordable and safe housing (and claimed Frederick Ackerman among its membership). Ludlow’s 1944 CHC report, “Population Densities for New York City: A Technical Study of Urban Population Densities in Relation to City Planning,” set about defining and measuring population and building density throughout New York. The floor area ratio plays a key role.

Ludlow’s introduction begins with the “Ackerman Fact” that the city could hold 77 million residents if fully built out. He then discusses the need for “adequate density controls,” followed by a discussion of the pros and cons of the floor area ratio. Pro: “Relatively easily computed for single buildings, projects or small areas….Allows for flexibility of design. Can be applied to non-residential space.”  Cons: “Does not allow for differences in room and apartment sizes. If used for regulation, it may tend to result in minimum room sizes in new projects.” The report concludes that northern Manhattan and parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn should have residential FARs capped at 2.1, and the rest of the outer boroughs capped at 1.2.

The following year, Ludlow published two papers in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners, specifically mentioning his work on the FAR for density control. Here, we can see that the ideas first developed in New York in the 1930s were increasingly part of the planners’ toolkit. And as such, they begin to appear in academic journals read by the planning profession.

Ludlow in Puerto Rico

After Tugwell established the Junta, Ludlow was hired as a planning consultant to work on developing zoning codes. They were implemented in San Juan in 1946 and contained FAR provisions. San Juan was thus the first city within U.S. territory to implement the FAR outside of New York.

The Spread of the FAR Stateside

Besides Ludlow, other planners from New York spread the FAR “good news” to the rest of mainland U.S., primarily through their reports and journal publications. For example, a year after Ludlow’s article about New York, F. Dodd McHugh published his research on Gotham in the Journal of the American Institute of Planners, where, for example, he measures the relationship between population densities and floor area ratios.

Francis Dodd McHugh (1907-1978) studied architecture and planning at Cornell and Harvard Universities. As mentioned above, he worked for the Department of City Planning, New York City, and was City Planning Director from 1941 to 1946. After his public service, McHugh joined with McCrosky as planning consultants that were hired by many municipalities around to offer new zoning plans.

The 1950s

By the end of the 1940s, the FAR was common knowledge. A 1948 report by the American Public Health Association entitled “Planning the Neighborhood,” confirms that this to be true:

The measurement of building bulk in term of ‘floor area ratios’ has been found so useful as a density control that it being applied increasingly by planners both in the United States and Britain.

And by the 1950s, the FAR began its exponential spread into the zoning codes across America. Initial discussions showed up in Chicago in 1951, in San Francisco in 1952, and in Boston in 1953. By 1958, the FAR was so widely used across the country that no one seemed to remember its origins. In 1958, the American Society of Planning Officials admitted, “Just when the floor area ratio bulk control first appeared in a zoning ordinance is not certain.” (Answer:  New York, 1940.)

Chicago 1957

Chicago’s example is interesting because, as America’s second city, it beat New York to the punch, though that fact seems to be lost in our understanding of the FAR’s history. Exactly how it got to Chicago is not wholly known. The evidence suggests that even though McCrosky was director of the Chicago Plan Commission in 1941-42, following his seminal 1938 report, he did not spread the FAR there.

Rather, by the 1950s, it was in the ether winds blowing across the heartland. It appears in a report for the Chicago Plan Commission in 1951. Like the New York reports that preceded it, contained a detailed study of residential densities across the Windy City. The report cites its definition of the FAR from the 1948 “Planning the Neighborhood” study.

Under the leadership of local freight shipping magnate turned planner Henry F. Chaddick, Chicago began the process of creating a new zoning resolution. In October 1955, the city embraced the FAR, and the new zoning resolution was implemented in 1957. From there, FAR caps spread throughout Illinois.

McCroksy as Johnny Appleseed?

Returning to McCrosky, after World War II, he became the executive director of the Greater Boston Development Committee. But then, starting in 1948, in his private consulting practice with F. Dodd McHugh, he spread the FAR across America.

In 1952, McCrosky and McHugh were hired by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission to provide blueprints for rezoning the city, which included FAR cap provisions. Like New York, Philly appears to have dithered for a decade until 1962, when the FAR was formally implemented. By the end of the 1950s, McCrosky could boast of his influence.  In a court deposition, he revealed:

Well, among others, we prepared zoning ordinances for Yonkers, New York for Ossining village, for North Pelham, all of Westchester County; for Derby in Connecticut, for West Orange and Somerville and Manville, Jefferson Township and a good many other municipalities in New Jersey.

The Cast: Some of the Key Players in New York Zoning History. Clockwise from top left: Thomas Adams, Theodore McCrosky, Fiorello La Guardia, Rexford Tugwell, Robert Moses, and Jame Felt.

Why Did New York City Dither?

If New York invented the FAR, why did it take two decades to adopt it citywide? The short answer is strong opposition and divided leadership. The two-decade delay was not for lack of trying, but a new proposal was defeated each time. Eventually, a comprehensive rezoning was shepherded into law in 1960 by the widely-respected Planning Commissioner, James Felt (1903-1971).

Born in the Lowest East Side, Felt was a third-generation real estate man. After studying at the University of Pennsylvania, he returned to New York and established a firm, dealing in management, land assembly, and relocation of evicted tenants. His company, for example, amassed the land for Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, two huge residential projects in Manhattan built by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company after World War II.

His New York Times obituary quoted Donald Elliot, the then chairman of the CPC, saying that Mr. Felt was “the father of modern zoning, as a result of his achievement in effecting the 1961 zoning resolution, the first change in the city’s zoning laws since 1907.”

Evidently, the Times was willing to take him at his word. But the two facts are not true. The city’s first zoning laws were enacted in 1916, not 1907, and, as discussed above, he was not the father of modern zoning (though the Times article helped perpetuate that myth). When Felt took over the reins of the CPC, the FAR and modern zoning were already decades old. His contribution was to effectuate what the city had struggled to accomplish for many years.

Zoning After Tugwell

After Tugwell left Gotham in 1940, Robert Moses was appointed a commissioner to the CPC.  Moses proposed a citywide rezoning in 1944. His plan was based on reforming the 1916 zoning codes rather than the systematic use of the FAR. The key element was to reduce bulk by making setback and open area rules stricter.

Interestingly, Irving V. A. Huie, a fellow member of the Commission, offered a FAR-based proposal, but Moses and the other commissioners rejected it. Despite opposition from the real estate community, the Board of Estimate passed Moses’ plan. However, the courts declared it illegal on a technicality related to the Board of Estimate’s voting procedure. The law, as handed down by Moses, was rejected.

The Harrison, Ballard & Allen Report

Then in 1948, the CPC Chairman Robert F. Wagner Jr, hired Harrison, Ballard and Allen (HB&A) as consultants to create a blueprint for a new zoning resolution. This report is interesting in a few respects. First, it is still circulated widely among New York planners (and is posted on the DCP website), and this gives the (false) impression that it was the first time in New York history that the FAR was part of any government-sanctioned report.

Secondly, one of the report’s authors William Ballard, who became CPC chairman from 1963 to 1966, was a protégée and co-author of Frederick Ackerman, who was intimately involved with the early conception of the FAR (which was used in guiding NYCHA housing projects at least as early as 1940). As discussed in another post, Ackerman was an avowed technocrat and believed that the perfect society could be designed by the technically oriented master planner. Ballard, as such, was there as the creation.

But the HB&A report, which uses the FAR as the central density-controlling feature, makes no mention of the FAR’s 15-year history. Why this might be, at this point, is subject to guesswork. One theory is that when the report was released, the FAR was so universal that no need was felt to mention its origins. Planners across the country already took it for granted. A second theory is that the authors wanted it to seem like it was their contribution rather than those who came before them. Regardless, today, the conventional wisdom is to give credit to the HB&A report for introducing the idea, and the focus on it has helped to erase knowledge of the roles played by the founders, including Kohn, Ackerman, Tugwell, McCrosky, McHugh, and Ludlow.

Ironically, despite the perceptions as it being pivotal, the HB&A report ultimately failed to be enacted. The plan, released in April 1951, had both supporters and detractors. One key opponent was…wait for it…Robert Moses. Between the opposition from within and without, the plan eventually died. Or as Stanislaw J. Makielski put it in his 1966 Ph.D. dissertation on the politics of zoning reform, “The Commission had been defeated by a strongly organized resistance and its own unwillingness to do battle for the HB&A plan.”

The Vorhees, Walker, Smith & Smith Report

Finally, when James Felt took the helm at the CPC, he hired yet another consulting firm in 1956 to offer a new zoning plan. Released in 1959, it was in a similar spirit to the HB&A report in that it relied on the FAR to reduce the city’s density. After public feedback, Felt and the CPC were able to revise the proposal and rebut the naysayers to get sufficient buy-in. Moses, again, was opposed to it, but he eventually switched to a “yes” vote after pressure from Felt.

In December 1960, New York City formally adopted the floor area ratio as the main tool to limit building bulk, and the law was to go into effect in December 1961. It represented a major downzoning, with a maximum population of 12 million, compared to Felt’s estimate of 55 million under the 1916 codes as they were written in 1956.

Triumph of the FAR

While the FAR’s originators, including Robert Kohn and Frederick Ackerman, were off the scene by 1960, they were the true fathers modern zoning. They were carried by the spirit of the age, which saw cities as messy, unhealthy, and exploitative. They came to believe in a technocratic ethic: that they could develop formulas to fine-tune the city like a sophisticated clock. Once they understood the key mathematical rules, they could adjust the city to their preferences and create order by design. These formulas, including the floor area ratio, were not value free.

Planners could not as easily control people or household sizes, but they could control building sizes and densities. As a result, they created vast swaths of urban land with very low maximum floor area ratios. These FAR caps were meant to check the “greediness” of developers who might have otherwise catered to the demand for apartment living. The FAR founders felt that the city should look more like the ideal Garden City as laid out by Ebenezer Howard and his “apostles.”

By the 1960s, with the publication of Jane Jacob’s book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and the failures of public housing, slum clearance, and urban renewal, the belief in better living through technocracy and planning began to get pushback. Nonetheless, cities across the country could not shake their reliance on the FAR. Once implemented, it became an “absorbing state” because it was the one planning policy left from the technocratic heyday that allowed planners some modicum of control (and had great support from Nimbyists seeking to stop changes in their neighborhoods). For good or for bad, the FAR remains triumphant.

In next post, we take up how the FAR left America and spread to the rest of the world.

Continue reading Part I of this blog series on the birth of modern zoning during the 1920s here and Part II on the Great Depression here.

by Jason Barr 11 Comments

In a City FAR, FAR Away: Building Height Regulations and Their Impacts

Jason M. Barr      March 17, 2020

Your New Job

Imagine the governor of your state announces that she is going to create a brand-new city out of whole cloth. The state has purchased 200 square miles (519 km2) of farmland (around the size of Chicago) and will begin auctioning off lots for development. The governor is working with officials to build the transportation and infrastructure network. But she has turned to you with a critical mission: to formulate the regulations about building heights. Your job, as Chief Building Heights Planner, is to develop a series of plans about how dense or tall the structures can be throughout the city.[1] Where should you begin?

Options

You can think of the possibilities as existing along a continuum. On one side is to write no rules and allow buildings to be as tall or as dense as developers want. If someone builds a 100-story skyscraper in the middle of a leafy residential neighborhood, so be it. If builders cover 100% of the lot and put their neighbors in darkness, that’s okay too.

The other extreme is to order the city entirely. Say you build a 3D model in your office and arrange the exact scale, density, and height for every structure. There can be no deviation. Building #1 must go here and must be so many stories. Building #2 must go there and have exactly so many floors, and so on.

Option three, of course, is somewhere in between, where you designate some rules on height and density, and let the real estate community figure out the rest. But even within this option, there’s a wide spectrum. Do you set limits for everyone? Do you restrict hieght in some places but not others?

What Do these Four Buildings Have in Common? All of these Brooklyn structures have a floor area ratio of 3. Clockwise from top left: 181 Clermont Ave (2007, 6 floors), 761 Atlantic Avenue (1974, 31 floors), 109 3rd Avenue (1900, 4 floors),  1630 41 Street (1926, 4 floors). Source: OASIS NYC Map.

How FAR Can You Go?

After doing a little research, you find one popular regulatory tool is to limit the so-called floor area ratio (FAR).[2] The FAR dictates how much building space can be constructed based on the lot size. For example, in an older (pre-car) dense apartment-based neighborhood, the rules might specify a maximum FAR of 3. This means that on a 2,000 square foot (186 m2) lot, the most a new building can have is 6,000 square feet (557 m2) of living space.

If we assume, for example, that each household in the building rents 600 square feet (58 m2), then that building will have ten units. A FAR increase to 4, means the structure can be 8,000 square feet (743 m2), with 13 units. If each apartment, on average, holds two people, the FAR-3 building has 20 people, and the FAR-4 building has 26 people.

Building Heights

FAR limits say little about building heights directly. In a FAR-regulated city, the height is chosen by the developer, based on what works best for her. In the FAR-3 example, she can build a three-story building that takes up the entire lot, or she can erect a six-story building that covers only half the lot. Yet both will hold the same number of people.

Thus FAR limits mean that building bulk and height are substitutes—the taller the building goes, the narrower it must be, with more open space surrounding. This strategy presumably mitigates the negative impacts of tall buildings, such as shadows on neighboring properties. For these reasons, FAR regulations are popular among planners. They are a simple way to reduce the density of both people and buildings.

Wheel of FARtune?

By how do planners choose the “correct” FAR values across the city? The answer is: they just pick numbers that seem right—usually some higher numbers in the central core (say 8 to 15), medium numbers in the dense residential rings (say 2 to 4), and much smaller figures further out (typically one or less). These values are often based on what “feels” appropriate, or are politically salable, and are not tied to any economic research that attempts to weigh the costs of restrictions versus their benefits. A survey of maximum FARs in central cities around the world shows that planners have chosen a wide range of numbers. Their arbitrariness is also supported by the research discussed below.

Average Maximum Allowable Floor Area Ratios Versus Distance from City Center for New York, Chicago, and Bengaluru. For each city, I took the average of the maximum allowable FAR for buildings in 1 kilometer rings from the center city. In New York, the average allowable FAR within 1 KM of the center is about 9. For Chicago, it is about 12, and in Bengaluru it’s about 1. Sources: New York: NYC PLUTO, Chicago: Building footprint shapefile, Bengaluru: Breuckner and Bertaud (2005). Note: Average FARs were not weighted by lot size.

FARnomics: The Economics of FAR Regulations

Recently, economists have begun to question the wisdom of choosing urban FARs based on planners’ notions of what constitutes the “good” city. Economic analysis about FAR regulations starts with a series of questions: What would density look like without any FAR limits? Under what conditions would restrictions help improve city well-being? When would FAR restrictions make things worse?

The Order without the Design

As Alain Bertaud discusses in his 2018 book, Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities, a bustling metropolis without any FAR restrictions will generate a natural order. In the central city, where land values are high, developers will be incentivized to provide taller builders on relatively small lots. As land values decline moving away from the center, buildings will get shorter, on average.

A well-functioning land market will also create a predictable pattern for population density. Near the center, where land is expensive, households will live in apartment buildings. Further away, where lots are cheaper, people will occupy larger houses. Thus, density will be high near the center and fall from there. This outcome is based on the choices of households and represents what they prefer—better accessibility to the center versus more housing and open space further away. The price of land is the nexus between what households want and what kinds of real estate will be constructed. Overly burdensome regulations will distort land prices and prevent them from efficiently allocating housing demand with housing supply.

Key Assumptions

The optimality of this natural order is based on a few assumptions. First is that there are no negative spillovers or externalities from this arrangement. That is, the tall buildings in the city don’t create excessive shadows, promote hyper-congestion, or generate undue health or social problems. Additionally, economists assume that residents or visitors are indifferent to the building designs and shapes that would spring up when the real estate market is relatively open. Tall or dense buildings, it is assumed, don’t offend people’s aesthetic sensibilities.[3]

The presence of these possible harmful elements has been the driving force and justification for imposing FAR restrictions. City officials argue they are necessary to relieve congestion, provide open space, improve urban health, and make the city “beautiful.” But the economist would respond: if this is so, what are the “right” set of restrictions (assuming that restrictions are the best way to solve these problems) that best balances the trade-offs. The truth is, as of this writing, no one knows. The proper calculations have yet to be done.

The Case of New York

Take New York City as an example. The city’s FAR-based regulations were enacted in 1961. They were designed to reduce density as compared to the 1916 zoning codes, which were seen as not being restrictive enough. While small FAR changes (rezonings) in different neighborhoods occur from time to time, there has been no systematic change in the regulations in over half a century. In other words, the same FAR codes, more or less, are in effect today as when John F. Kennedy was President and when The Andy Griffith Show was one of the most popular TV shows in the nation. (If you’re young enough not to know what I’m talking about then I think I’ve made my point.) Once FAR regulations are imposed, they are nearly impossible to dislodge, despite mounting evidence that they are harming the city.

Furthermore, in 1961, when these regulations were set, planners with who felt that promoting the tenants of modernism was surely the path to urban utopia. Clearly, by 1975, when New York City was ready to declare bankruptcy (see “Ford to City: Drop Dead”), utopia was on the minds of few. Sticking with these outdated zoning rules is like trying to use a Commodore 64 computer to process “big data” data.

Estimating the Impacts of FAR Regulations

Recently, however, the urban economist Jan Brueckner, of the University of California-Irvine, and co-authors have studied the impacts of FAR restrictions around the world. His research asks the question: What are the costs of excessive FAR restrictions, imposed in the name of improving the common good?

Bengaluru (Bangalore)

Indian cities have some of the lowest central-city FAR values in the world. Planners have established them, evidently, as a backdoor way to impose their notion of a better city, and because officials couldn’t provide the city services needed to support a dense urban core. As Brueckner and Bertaud (2005) write, “It is believed that ‘excessive’ density results in a loss of environmental quality and increased traffic congestion. In addition, higher densities would place greater demands on urban infrastructure, which Indian cities, plagued by weak technical capacities and inadequate tax revenue, feel ill-equipped to provide at appropriate levels.”

Unlike New York (with a maximum central-city FAR of 15), and Shanghai (with a maximum central-city FAR of 8), Bengaluru has a central-city FAR capped at less than 1.5. This number is considered reasonable for a suburban residential neighborhood of garden apartments, but absurdly low for a central business district in a metropolis with 8.4 million people.

Maximum Allowable Floor Area Ratios in Central Areas for Selected Cities. Source: Brueckner and Sridhar (2012).

In their paper, Brueckner and Bertaud explore the economics of these excessive restrictions. They demonstrate that these FAR limits promote denser development in the suburbs than would otherwise be the case, and create larger, more sprawling cities. The attempt to limit building heights in the center to reduce congestion inadvertently creates more congestion by promoting more driving. If we think about the (lightly-regulated) city as a block of clay. The draconian FAR restrictions are tantamount to smashing the clay. The result is a flatter, wider entity.

They perform some calculations for Bengaluru, and find that the excessive sprawl reduces average household income from extra commuting by 2%. It’s also worth noting that, in recent years, Bengaluru has achieved an international reputation as a tech hub. Limiting densities may have other consequences, such as reducing the opportunities of firms and workers to interact and learn from each other. These restrictions are likely reducing citywide productivity than otherwise.

101 Indian Cities

In a 2012 paper, Brueckner and his collaborator, Kala Seetharam Sridhar, investigated the impact of FAR restrictions on urban sprawl for 101 municipalities throughout India. First, they find a wide distribution of maximum central-city FARs. The lowest city has 1, and the highest has 4.125. The average city in the sample has a central-city FAR of 2.87. Again, compared to other cities around the world, these figures are low.

They next study how these FAR restrictions impact the total land area of municipalities, which is a measure of urban sprawl. Based on their analysis, they conclude that if the average city in India raised its central-city FAR by one unit (e.g., go from 2 to 3), the, it would need 20% less land area to hold the same amount of people. Or, on the flip side, on average, a city that decides to lower its central-city FAR by one is generating an increase in its land area by 20%.

Land Values in China

A well-functioning land market is the main means by which the city orders itself. If land values rise at a specific place, it signals that the residents want taller buildings. If FAR regulations are overly tight, they can lower the value of land, which will then generate buildings that are economically “too short,” denying residents the opportunity to live and work in the location of their choice.

Brueckner, and his co-authors, Shihe Fu, Yizhen Gu, and Junfu Zhang, study the land market in China. Unlike the U.S., there is no private property. Instead, all the urban land is “owned” by the respective municipal governments, who sell long-term leases to developers (70 years for residential and 50 years for commercial). The revenue from these land-leases is used to fund infrastructure and other government projects.

Because municipal officials control this land, they can impose FAR regulations on the developers when they win the right to build. We tend to think of modern Chinese housing as mostly dense, high-rise apartments. This is true, but municipal officials frequently require developers to adhere to relatively low FARs of between 2 and 3. The effect is to create a Corbusian city of tower-in-the-park complexes.

Findings

To study the question of how these FAR restrictions impact land (lease) values, they constructed a very large data set with over 50,000 transactions across more than 200 cities from 2002-2011. Each land-lease transaction also includes the maximum FAR requirement. Across cities, they find that the average residential FAR is only about 2.4.

The authors also find that the higher the FAR restrictions, the greater it reduces land values. Loosening these restrictions would allow land prices to more accurately reflect the benefit of various locations throughout the city. The results suggest that the current FAR values are actually not allowing central locations to be as dense as residents would want.

The Trade-offs

Since Chinese officials lease the land, one would think they have the incentives to provide even looser FARs to increase their revenue streams. However, local leaders must balance the revenues from these land leases with the costs of building infrastructure. So the FAR restrictions may not only be related to notions of sound design principles but also limiting urban density growth to something that will not overly burden the current level of infrastructure. Or, as Brueckner et al. hypothesize, “In this sense, local officials behave as net revenue maximizers, taking into account the public costs associated with land development into account.”

However, if city size or budgetary issues were important than the data would show a relationship with FAR restrictions. But, based on their analysis, they do not find evidence that this is so. Instead,  they find little explanation for FAR stringencies across China, aside from the fact that places with ancient historical sites are stricter. Their results seem to indicate that FAR limits are based on the preferences of city officials rather than on underlying economic principles.

High-rise living in four Chinese cities. Clockwise from top left: Shenzhen, Changchun, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Photos by Jason M. Barr

Land Values in the United States

Brueckner and his co-author, Ruchi Singh (2020), study land values and FAR stringency across U.S. cities. The lower the average allowable FARs, the lower the land values are likely to be, and hence the greater is the “gap” between what residents want and what developers can supply. In particular, they investigate how FAR regulations impact land prices in New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, and San Francisco from 2000 to 2018.

Their analysis allows them to estimate the gaps. They find that New York City is supplying only about 70-77% of the demand. For Washington DC, this number is between 60 to 72%, which makes sense given that DC also has height caps. Boston is supplying around 78 to 83%. And Chicago is at 92 to 94%.

Interestingly, they find that San Francisco’s gap is only between 90 to 93% of what the market wants. Their findings are likely being driven by the relative stringency in each city’s central business district. The demand to live and work in Manhattan is quite strong.[4] Unlike San Francisco’s business district, which “competes” with Silicon Valley, Manhattan has few direct local competitors for its financial and tech services. Similarly for Chicago and Boston.

What Would you Do?

I asked Professor Brueckner to summarize the findings from his body of work. He indicates that, in short, city planners should be careful for what they wish for. He says,

FAR limits reduce housing supply, raise prices and lead to longer commutes. If there are no good reasons for the restrictions, such as better neighborhood ambience, the outcome is a loss for city residents.

As Brueckner’s research shows, the path to getting things right begins with measuring the costs of excessive restrictions. Not going too far with FAR stringency can help a city reduce the negative impacts of density, without eliminating or reducing its benefits. And now, with this in mind, what have you decided to do in your role as Chief Building Heights Planner? If you want to take a look at my planning ideas, you’ll have to stay tuned for a future post on the subject.

 

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[1] You will be part of a team that is developing other rules, including building codes, requirements for health and safety, as well as regulations about land uses. Your decisions will be made in consultation with them.

[2] “Plot ratio,” “floor space ratio,” “floor space index,” “gross plot ratio,” and “site ratio” are other terms also used to designate the FAR.

[3] To the best of my knowledge, there is little research on how residents feel about different kinds of architecture, building shapes and arrangements, and their willingness to pay to be in these neighborhoods. Architects and planners, who have strong feelings about what is right and good, are usually the ones, along with politicians, writing the rules about building heights and densities. There is research to support the notion that walkability and mixed uses are good for residents’ well-being. These findings suggest that there is too much automobile usage and too many zoning restrictions. Good policies can reverse be undone by them as well.

[4] A similar 2019 study for New York City was performed by Brueckner’s student, Byunggeor Moon. Here Moon did the analysis with properties bought to be torn down, rather than vacant lots as in Brueckner and Ruchi (2020). Moon’s findings compare similarly to those of Brueckner and Ruchi.

 

 

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