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Robert Moses and the Zoning of New York (Part II): 1944

Jason M. Barr               July 24, 2023

Author’s Note: This blog post is the second in a series that brings to light Robert Moses’ forgotten role in New York zoning and planning history. Post I from 1938 to 1941 is here.

Robert Moses, the Master Builder of New York City from the 1930s to the 1960s, is famous—or infamous—for the staggering number of projects he built. He started with parks and parkways and expanded to bridges and tunnels, highways, housing projects, and slum clearance.

Lost in all the discussion, however, was that Moses was also a member of the City Planning Commission (CPC) for twenty years. Though this position was less visible than his leadership of the Triborough Bridge Authority or the Parks Department, Moses’ role at the CPC deserves more attention than it has because it has impacted the city, nonetheless.

A Brief History of the CPC

In 1933, Fiorello La Guardia was elected Mayor of New York. He was determined to clean up city government, which for decades has been run by Tammany Hall Democrats. La Guardia brought in Robert Moses as Parks Commissioner, who immediately initiated a vast program of building swimming pools, parks, and parkways.

In 1936, La Guardia spearheaded charter reform to centralize power in the mayor’s office. The new charter created the City Planning Commission. Many people expected that Moses would take the helm, but he refused. He was unsure exactly what the CPC was supposed to do and was not interested in figuring it out.

Instead, in 1938, La Guardia chose as the CPC’s first leader the economist and FDR advisor Rexford Tugwell. Tugwell, a devotee of master planning, arrived with a vision of what the Commission should do. He had three signature items on his agenda. The first was to undo the problem of non-conforming uses. Tugwell wanted urban order and could not stomach things being where they ought not to be. His first major initiative was to ban signs and billboards at locations where they were originally grandfathered in 1916.

Failures

A business and real estate coalition, however, formed to stop him, afraid that the proposal was just the tip of the iceberg toward greater interference in the property market. Ironically, Tugwell received support from Moses. Given his career building parks and parkways, he, too, thought signs and billboards could be a nuisance.

Next was a Master Plan of Land Use, comprised of maps with stricter boundaries for future allowable land uses and a vast greenbelt. New York would become a Garden City, whether it wanted it or not. Here Moses was his foe and helped lead the charge against the plan, as it struck him as too radical.

The third policy was to revise the zoning resolution—particularly by downzoning the city. But Tugwell never got his chance. Instead, he could only pass changes to a few residential districts. In particular, the CPC created several single-family-home-only zones and introduced Floor Area Ratio (FAR) caps in suburban areas. Moses went along with these as he was fine with downzoning in residential neighborhoods.

Moses on the CPC

After the billboards loss, Tugwell’s failure to pass the Master Plan was the last straw. He quit his position in 1941 and soon became Governor of Puerto Rico.  La Guardia chose as the new chairman Edwin. A. Salmon, already a member of the CPC. Robert Moses was picked to fill the vacant seat. Almost immediately after taking office, Moses pushed the CPC to formally scrap Tugwell’s Master Plan.

During the three years of working with—and battling against—Tugwell, Moses learned what the CPC could and should do. Furthermore, being on the inside would be useful, aiding him in his other endeavors. As planning historian Stanislaw Makielski writes, “Moses saw city planning as a matter of meeting the city’s needs on a project-by-project basis, and he never gave his full attention to the activities of the Planning Commission, using it chiefly as an additional source of information and as a public forum for his own brand of planning.”

Long Haired Planners

As discussed in an earlier blog post, Moses occupied a position squarely in the political middle. On his left were those he labeled as “long-haired planners” (although, as best I can tell, they all had short hair). In June of 1944, Moses published a screed against them in the New York Times Magazine. In so many words, he told eminent modernist thinkers like Eliel Saarinen, Walter Gropius, Erich Mendelsohn, Rexford Tugwell, and even Frank Lloyd Wright to shut the f*** up.

Moses was a man who did things like build parks and roads, and their planning theories were poisoning people’s minds, or, as he wrote,

In municipal planning we must decide between the revolution and common sense—between the subsidized lamas in their remote mountain temples and those who must work in the market place. It is a mistake to underestimate the revolutionaries. They do not reach the masses directly, but through familiar subsurface activities. They teach the teachers. They reach people in high places, who in turn influence the press, universities, societies learned and otherwise, radio networks, the stage, the screen, even churches. They make the TNT for those who throw the bombs. They have their own curious lingo and double talk, their cabalistic writings, secret passwords and abracadabras.

Moses also had little patience with the laissez-faire-ists who felt the government had no business telling people what to do with their property. While Moses disdained wholesale reforms, he was a fervent devotee of modernization and “cleaning up” the old metropolis. He believed in slum clearance because the new housing had more open space, was less dense, and was laid out according to  proper standards. Like many planners of his day, Moses adhered to the dictate of better living through the tower-in-park.

Before and After. Left: Rendering of a hypothetical office building under the 1916 Zoning Codes. Right: Hypothetical rendering if the same building was constructed under Robert Moses’ 1944 Plan, with stricter setback rules. Source: here.

The Moses Plan of 1944

By the spring of 1944, it was clear that the war would be winding down, and the time was ripe to implement zoning reform ahead of the expected post-War boom. After the Roaring Twenties, there was broad consensus among planners that the 1916 codes were too lenient.

With Tugwell out of the picture, Moses felt it was his turn to take a stab at rezoning. If he could get through a more conservative resolution, he might put the left at bay for a while. Still, Moses firmly believed in the necessity of downzoning.  As he wrote to his fellow commissioners in May 1944, when he introduced his new plan:

It is ridiculous to apply high standards to public housing, to redevelopment corporations and to limited-dividend companies, and not apply them to speculative or ordinary private buildings.

All of the buildings, public, semi-public or private, contemplated in the postwar period will accomplish nothing toward improving city life unless the zoning standards are jacked up. At the present time the zoning standards are so low that in a good many cases we are entirely dependent on the Multiple Dwelling Law from relief on over-building….

I should like to go very much beyond these amendments and to make them a good deal more drastic, but it seems the approach should be gradual and conservative. I know of no reason why the rise in standards here proposed should meet with opposition from any reasonable citizen or organization.

Moses’ proposal could be called 1916 2.0. New buildings’ allowable envelopes would be lowered—their street wall would rise to lesser heights, and their setbacks would be more severe. Additionally, the open space requirements around each structure were expanded. The net effect was to reduce a building’s bulk as a function of the then-current rules; each zoning district would thus be dialed down a notch.

Moses Tackles His Opponents

Moses brooked no dissent. He knew he had the other commissioners and La Guardia lined up, and he needed to keep them unified against the opposition. When The Committee on Civic Design and Development, a group formed by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA), for example, wrote a report arguing for more sweeping changes, La Guardia asked for Moses’ opinion. He replied to the mayor, “This report is the work of the same radical group who have always insisted that our planning is not sufficiently revolutionary. You will never get anywhere in trying to argue the matter with them.”

And echoing his run-ins with Tugwell three years early, Moses reminded the Little Flower, “These people want a master plan and zoning system on entirely new constitutional and legal theories.” And relishing the opportunity to trash-talk them down the line, Moses added, “My very earnest advice to you is to ignore this report. I can tell you more about the individual members of the committee if you wish.”

Robert Kohn

Interestingly, Moses received a letter from Robert D. Kohn, who, as I argued in a prior blog post, invented the Floor Area Ratio in 1935. Kohn was a highly respected reformer and architect who served in the Roosevelt administration as the first housing chief of the Public Works Administration (PWA). As Parks Commissioner, Moses managed to commandeer a sizable WPA allotment to build up the city’s park system. It seems reasonable that he would have met Kohn.

Kohn was also a founding member of the influential group the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA). His architect partner, Clarence Stein was also an important reformer and initial RPAA member, and had led the New York State Commission of Housing and Regional Planning in the early 1920s under Al Smith’s administration while Moses was building out Jones Beach.

The letter from Kohn to Moses offered some slight changes to Moses’ plan as it related to large buildings on entire blocks but was supportive of the downzoning plan overall. Moses’ response to his fellow commissioners was to belittle Kohn and accuse him of hypocrisy, telling them,

Attached is a letter from Robert D. Kohn. Mr. Kohn and his partner Stein are advanced thinkers of planning. Both of them are of the school that advocates drastic reorganization and much higher standards until it gets down to anything which affects their immediate prospects of the commission.

To Moses, the phrase “advanced thinkers” was no doubt an insult, as he clearly associated “advanced” with “radical.”

Moses was likely aware of Kohn’s role at the RPAA. He obliquely refers to (and rejects) their position in his report on his plan to the Board of Estimate. Again, Moses tries to outflank those on the left, by signaling to the Board of Estimate what he sees as their radical position:

The Commission is not proposing further restrictions on the height and bulk of buildings out of sympathy with current theories regarding “decentralization” and the scattering of population and activities over larger areas of the countryside. On the contrary, its purpose is to check trends toward “decentralization” which threatens values based on the manifest advantages of centralization and concentration of people and activity in a community such as New York.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Moses also attacked those on his right. For example, he accused the leader of the real estate interests opposing the new plan, Robert W. Dowling, of being a liar. Moses complained to the other Commissioners that,

I just want to point to one thing as an evidence of the kind of opposition there has been to these proposals; the unscrupulous character of the opposition. One of the things that Mr. Dowling and his publicity man have relied upon has been the statement that reputable fiduciaries, such as banks, particularly, savings banks, and insurance companies, have filed plans for large buildings—that these plans and the buildings projects will be abandoned if the new standards are adopted; and, that, therefore, the new standards are a very wicked thing. They have even had the effrontery to go to labor unions and tell them that the members of the building trades won’t have any work if we carry out this program.

Well, I have a little familiarity over a period of years with the insurance and banking laws—in fact, wrote quite a little bit of the Banking Law. So, I got in touch with the Superintendent of Insurance first in connection with plans for a building filed in the Building Department where he was indicated as the owner. I asked him what authority he had or anyone in the Insurance Department had for filing the plans. Mr. Dineen, the Superintendent, sent me the man who is in charge of liquidation, who admitted that he didn’t have the slightest thought of ever building such a building, that he was simply trying to create a market—the appearance of a boom—so that he could sell the property at a higher price. Mr. Dineen, this morning ordered the plans withdrawn from the Building Department….

That gives you a rough idea of the activity of Mr. Dowling.[1]

The Huie Maneuver

It was one thing for outside groups to criticize Moses, but fellow commissioner Irving Huie had an alternative proposal that Moses did not like. Huie (1897-1957) was born in Brooklyn. He graduated from New York University in 1911 with an engineering degree. After World War I, he served in city and state positions and private practice, helping to build infrastructure, such as highway construction in New York and Pennsylvania. In 1938, he became chief engineer for the city’s newly formed Department of Public Works. When he was appointed to the CPC in 1941, he was seen as an able official and “doer” like Moses.

Huie—rightly—complained that the CPC went ahead without any analysis of the plan’s impacts. Moses simply notched the dial downward and left it at that. Huie had performed an analysis and concluded that in the dense business districts, the combined lowering of street wall heights, setbacks, and increasing yard sizes would reduce allowable building floor area by 45%, likely making commercial construction uneconomic. At the same time, he felt that the rules in underdeveloped residential zones were not dialed down enough—and would allow, in his opinion, too much residential density. The best way to fix the problem was to establish Floor Area Ratio (FAR) caps citywide.

The Moses Rebuttal

Huie sent his plan to the Board of Estimate. Moses quickly dashed off a rebuttal lest they get persuaded by Huie’s reasoning. Like a good defense attorney, Moses went through Huie’s points and attacked them as either incorrect or too far-fetched. As for the Floor Area Ratio, implementation citywide would be too risky and have uncertain effects. Besides, Moses argued, you’d still need height caps in the center to control excessive height. On the other hand, Moses’ plan was simple, easily understood, and a mere tweak of rules that had existed for nearly three decades.

Rezoning Plan of 1944. As a commissioner on the City Planning Commission, Robert Moses attempted to reform the zoning codes. His plan was a “1916 2.0,” which reduced building envelopes and lot coverage. Source: here.

Moses Never Sees the Promised Land

When first released, the public reaction to the plan was mixed. Good Government groups, like the Citizens Union and the City Club, endorsed it, while the real estate industry was opposed. The CPC held hearings in June of 1944, then again in July. Moses wanted that to be that, but critics demanded more hearings, and caving to their wishes, the CPC had one more hearing in September. The opponents barked for more delay and study. Nonetheless, on November 1st, the CPC voted 5 to 1 to accept the Moses plan with Huie as the lone dissenter.

Next, it went to the Board of Estimate, which was charged with voting it into law. The Board held hearings on November 15th. Thirty speakers were allowed to voice their opinion, and the majority were against it. Over the next two weeks, opponents and proponents tried to sway the Board. When it held its final vote on November 30th, the majority voted against the zoning revision, with ten votes “nay” and six votes “yea.”[2]

And yet, the CPC had won. To give power to the CPC, the 1936 Charter stipulated that zoning changes approved by the CPC became law unless rejected by three-quarters of the Board of Estimate. In this case, the Board of Estimate rejected Moses’ plan by only 62.5%—not enough to negate it.

Thus, with the 1936 Charter on his side—along with La Guardia’s support—Moses accomplished something that Tugwell could not, or for that matter, had not been done since 1916—a revision of the zoning codes. Or so it seemed….

The 20% Rule

But opponents had an ace up their sleeve—the Zoning Resolution itself, which stipulated the so-called 20% Rule. Section 23 of the Codes on Amendments, Alterations and Changes in District Lines states,

The Board of Estimate and Apportionment may from time to time on its own motion or on petition, after public notice and hearing, amend, supplement or change the regulations and districts herein established….If, however, a protest against such amendment, supplement or change be presented, duly signed and acknowledged by the owners of 20 per cent. or more of any frontage proposed to be altered, or by the owners of 20 per cent. of the frontage immediately in the rear thereof, or by the owners of 20 per cent. of the frontage directly opposite the frontage proposed to be altered, such amendment shall not be passed except by the unanimous vote of the Board. (Emphasis added.)

In other words, if a rezoning was protested by 20% of affected property owners, it could only pass if the Board of Estimate approved it unanimously. The matter was brought to the courts less than a month after Moses’ apparent victory, and the plan officially died in July 1946.

As Makielski writes,

The result was almost anticlimactic….[T]he State Court of Appeals held that “20 per cent rule” applied and that clearly the Board of Estimate had failed to pass the amendment by unanimous vote….The Planning Commission had won before the Board of Estimate…but was defeated by another “formal rule” of the game; a rule that demonstrated the importance of the Borough Presidents’ votes when coupled with an energetic opposition to zoning innovation. Moses characteristically commented on the outcome, “Apparently we were too far ahead of the procession.”

Robert Dowling—the man that Moses accused of lying—led the lawsuit and had the last laugh when he “took a slap at Mr. Moses by referring to protests ‘ruthlessly ignored by certain public officials who resent any disagreement with their opinion….’,” as reported the New York Times.

The Moses Effect

Moses’ defeat, in part, represented the triumph of parochialism. The Borough Presidents of the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island voted against his plan. This fact, along with the 20% rule, meant that even Moses did not have enough power to overcome local interests. But at the same time, Moses was not interested in building coalitions and forging common interests like Edward Bassett did when formulating the 1916 Resolution. For Moses, it was his way or the highway; in the end, that was his undoing in 1944.

His failure also meant the continuation of the status quo—the 1916 Resolution—for the foreseeable future, which, depending on where you sat, was either good or bad. But more broadly, Moses’ defeat also shows that, in its early years, the City Planning Commission proved ineffective in achieving its own goals. Whether it was the grand dreams of Tugwell’s Master Plan or Moses’ simple rezoning, the City Planning Commission failed to establish power over land uses and to find the right balance between growth and change and protection and preservation. This legacy continues into the 21st century, where the idea today of wholesale rezoning is virtually impossible. 

FAR Away

Because of Moses’ antipathy toward using the Floor Area Ratio, a full-scale rezoning of the city would have to wait until he was out of power. But over the years, the ideas of those on the left would become increasingly mainstream. As I will document in the next post, the CPC would take up a full-scale rezoning in 1950, and the battle to tame Gotham would continue once again.

 

Read the first post in the series here.

—

[1] As a side note, Moses appears to utter these statements without a hint of irony, which is rich given that throughout his long career, he was not above using sneaky or underhanded methods to achieve his ends.

[2] The Borough Presidents of the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Staten Island were against it, and the citywide officers and the Borough President of Queens voted in favor. On the Board, citywide leaders each had three votes, the borough presidents of Manhattan and Brooklyn had two votes, and the other borough presidents each had one vote.

by Jason Barr 3 Comments

Robert Moses and the Zoning of New York (Part I): Killing the Master Plan

Jason M. Barr               February 28, 2023

Author’s Note: This blog post is the first in a series that brings to light Robert Moses’ forgotten role in New York zoning and planning history.

Gotham is suffering from a housing affordability crisis. One reason stems from its stringent zoning regulations, which limit the number of units on each property. Despite the perception that New York is a high-rise city, this is simply not true. Outside of Manhattan, New York is decidedly low-rise, with two-thirds of its properties mandated by law to be one- or two-family homes.

To her credit, Governor Kathy Hochul intends to introduce legislation requiring New York and other cities to upzone neighborhoods around mass transit lines. Her plan is for New York State to add 800,000 new units in the next decade. Mayor Eric Adams has offered the goal of 500,000 new units for Gotham. The fact that upzonings are a key element of Hochul’s plan shows how important zoning is and how it has limited New York’s housing growth.

Planning through Zoning

Reformers who initiated zoning in 1916 aimed to limit the negative “externalities,” such as shadows and traffic congestion, and reduce urban density for its own sake. They were eager to engage in visionary-oriented master planning but felt they could not legally do so without violating sacred property rights. Planning would have to come later.

A Master Plan of Land Use was finally offered to the public in 1941 by the newly formed City Planning Commission. The plan, however, was quickly shot down. Whether it would have been good for New York today is debatable, but its defeat also meant the defeat of master planning as a tool. Rather, New York would rely on zoning instead.

The result was increasing restrictions, as the “law of motion” of zoning is inherently “downward” in residential neighborhoods, where the Nimbyists tend to outnumber the Yimbyists. The idea in the 20th century that restrictive zoning would someday create a housing affordability crisis in the 21st century was not on anyone’s mind. Instead, the pervasive belief was that density was bad and must be limited. While urbanist Jane Jacobs would spearhead the reversal of this thought in the 1960s, New York remains a victim of its past.

Moses on the Mount

In the history of how we got here, few realize the role that Robert Moses played. This was in large part because his actions regarding zoning were more in the “negative” category—things that were not done because of his protest (or his failures). History unfolds when leaders make decisions at crossroads in time. A left turn instead of a right one or vice versa means that our present could have turned out very differently.

Moses was like a tollbooth, and nothing got through without his blessing. And when he wouldn’t let someone pass, they went in another direction. In the period from 1938 to 1941, Moses saw himself as the guardian of New York’s middle path and he felt his role was to lay down the law: New York will not cave into its far-left impulses. The City should build infrastructure and parks, and even allow for some restrictive residential zoning, but there will be no over-arching Master Plan that imposes Utopia on Gotham.

The Master Builder

When we think about Robert Moses, a handful of popular narratives circulate. First is that of the “Master Builder.” In his four-decade career, Moses built and built and built, and created modern New York. He cleared old neighborhoods for highways, bridges, urban renewal projects, and public housing. He built scores of parks and oversaw the construction of two World’s Fairs.

Then there’s the narrative about his battle with Jane Jacobs—a David versus Goliath tale about the people versus their meddling government. A rag-tag group of residents, led by Jacobs, “took down” the indomitable Moses to block his building of an elevated highway through Greenwich Village.

Finally, there’s the narrative about his anti-democratic methods. As Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, he was not directly beholden to leaders or voters and could not be checked by the democratic process. Rather, his power stemmed from the almighty nickel. The toll fares pouring in from his bridges and tunnels were the agency’s to keep, and Moses plowed them back into other massive projects.

The Caro Effect

In 1974, Robert Caro published his masterpiece biography, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. The book has had a tremendous role in defining Moses’ legacy. Caro stresses Moses’ hubris and overreach—the man who became drunk by power and rammed his projects through without considering the harm. Caro cites Moses’ love of the quip, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. ”

But less known—and even forgotten—was that Moses was a member of the City Planning Commission from 1942 to 1960, and, before that, Moses was a key voice regarding New York’s planning decisions. Reading Caro’s book one comes away with the notion that Moses’ impact on zoning and urban planning was minimal, if at all.

From a storytelling perspective, this makes sense. Residents were displaced to make way for public housing and “slum clearance.” Traffic congestion emerged immediately upon opening the highways. The Cross Bronx Expressway ripped apart communities in the South Bronx. It’s no wonder that Moses’ role in the mundane world of zoning codes and land use has been forgotten. It doesn’t make for good copy.

Moses v. Tugwell. On the left is the Master Builder, Robert Moses. On the right is the Master Planner, Rexford Tugwell. Politically speaking, however, Moses was on the right and Tugwell on the left.

La Guardia Takes the Helm

Moses’ influence in New York’s zoning history began in the mid-1930s. The Great Depression and the corruption scandal of Roaring Twenties Mayor James “Jimmy” Walker led to the election of Fiorello La Guardia as mayor in November 1933. La Guardia was a reform-minded congressman from East Harlem, and he brought to City Hall his zeal for change. He wanted to eliminate the power of the Tammany Hall Democratic Machine and have the government play a more active role in aiding residents.

In the sphere of city planning, two of his actions were pivotal. The first was that immediately upon taking office, La Guardia brought in Moses as Commissioner of the Parks Department, which then paved the way for the “Power Broker” to dominate city construction for the next quarter century.

Moses gained prominence in Governor Al Smith’s administration in the 1920s. Originally hired to aid the governor in reorganizing the state government, Moses was then given the chance to build parks. In this role, he created the Jones Beach Park system on Long Island, along with parkways to deliver people to them.

La Guardia was eager for Moses to replicate his success within the city, and he was not disappointed. Within weeks of his appointment, funds from the Federal government began pouring in and thousands of employed workers were put to the tasks of creating parks and public swimming pools.

Moses was also a master of public relations. All his projects were accompanied by glossy pamphlets, charts, and maps extolling their virtues. They were distributed to the press and politicians, and they fueled Moses’ desire to engender the goodwill necessary to keep his building operations in constant motion. They also reflected what people wanted to see. Through the slick, “utopian” renderings, New Yorkers could be confident their city was being cleaned up and modernized.

The Birth of the City Planning Commission

The second element of La Guardia’s program was that of charter reform. La Guardia aimed to centralize power in the mayor’s office as New York City had operated more like a federation of boroughs. The borough presidents had relatively strong powers through the Board of Estimate, a “legislative” body made up of the five borough presidents, the mayor, the president of the Board of Aldermen, and the city comptroller. Since the Board voted on important budgetary and governance issues, borough presidents would engage in horse trading to promote their agendas, and, as a result, the Board was often parochial in its outlook.

In 1936, the electorate voted for a new charter. Though it kept the Board of Estimate intact, one of the key provisions was the formation of the City Planning Commission (CPC), whose six members were appointed by the mayor. The CPC had a three-fold mandate. The first was as the “guardian” of the city maps. As such, it was directly involved in the rezoning and remapping of city streets and lots. Second, it was charged with the creation of a Master Plan of the city’s land use, transportation routes, and other municipal services. Third, it was to produce a capital expenditures budget and a five-year capital expenditure program for the investments in the city’s infrastructure.

Ultimately, the CPC, however, had to answer to the Board of Estimate. But to give the CPC power, major policies that it adopted would become law unless vetoed by three-quarters of the Board of Estimate.

Moses Says No

It was widely expected that Robert Moses would be the new CPC Chairman. But he declined. At the time, in 1937, he simply told the New York Times, “I’d rather do what I’m doing.” However, in a speech in 1939, he divulged more details:

[W]hen the Charter went into effect the Mayor asked me to be Chairman of the Planning Commission and I talked to my friends on the Charter Commission about it. The point of the story is that no two of them agreed on the functions of the Planning Commission, although all of them were insistent that it was a vitally important body. The conversation became so confusing that it occurred to me that we might get somewhere by means of a practical analogy, simile, or metaphor, and I asked what function the Planning Commission played in the city government on the theory that the city government was an automobile. One of my distinguished charter friends said that the Planning Commission was the steering wheel; another said it was the brakes. They all agreed that it was not the engine or the carburetor. After thinking it all over I decided that moving from an administrative position into the Planning Commission would be trading the substance for the shadow. (Emphasis added.)

The designated powers of the CPC were not only too vague, but were also hidden from view, and Moses would like to keep the spotlight on him. He was, after all, the hero who delivered parks to the people.

Brain-Truster-on-Hudson

When his man declined, La Guardia searched for someone who had both the gravitas to lead the Commission and could also, in theory, adhere to the mayor’s wishes. That man, La Guardia felt, was Rexford Tugwell.

Born in Sincalirville, New York in 1891, Tugwell earned a Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. He became an economics professor and taught at Columbia University in the 1920s. In 1933, he joined the Roosevelt administration in two capacities. First was as a member of Roosevelt’s “Brain Trust,” a group of intellectuals who gave advice to the president. Second, he served in various positions in the Department of Agriculture.

In April 1935, Tugwell started up the Resettlement Administration (RA), within the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. The RA sought to relocate struggling rural households to newly-built communities in order to provide urban opportunities. The RA initiated the construction of so-called Greenbelt Cities. They were modeled after Ebenezer Howard’s concepts, as espoused in his 1898 book Garden Cities of To-morrow, where large greenbelts enclosed low-densities towns.

“Rex the Red”

Tugwell was a controversial figure and was labeled by his enemies as a “Rex the Red,” and he was nudged out of the Roosevelt administration in 1936. As planning historian Mark Gelfand writes,

No political figure of the 1930s was more closely identified with planning than Rexford Tugwell….Tugwell shared little of the American public’s faith in the market place as the impartial maker of decisions, either economic or political. The marketplace 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.

Tugwell believed that government should—and will—someday have a “Fourth Power,” a group of planners and social scientists that employ their sharp minds to surgically remove the pathologies of capitalism.  As a devotee of the economist Thorsten Veblen, he saw planning as a process where technocrats organize the economy in the way a conductor leads an orchestra.

Urban Planning Philosophy

His philosophy about urban planning, typical of the day, was an offshoot of his broader planning philosophy and was to follow a specific roadmap:

Step I: Conduct a detailed survey of all aspects of the city’s economy, demographics, land uses, and transportation.

Step II: Project what all these elements are likely to be, with and without planning.

Step III: Produce a Master Plan that creates the ideal city in several decades hence.

Step IV: Implement the program.

In short, the urban planning philosophy of the mid-twentieth century can be summarized by: Measure, Project, Arrange.

For Tugwell, the Plan was to be made by those who knew better—the academics, social scientists, and planners—and implemented as a form of noblesse oblige to protect the hoi polloi from the unfettered greediness of capitalists and real estate speculators. Tugwell’s ideal city would be dominated by single-family houses and decentralized employment centers as some version of Garden City Gotham.

La Guardia and Tugwell

To La Guardia, Tugwell had certain advantages. One was his connection to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). Tugwell had the ear of the president and was connected to members of his administration. La Guardia harbored ambitions to power at the Federal level, thinking he might even run for president during the 1940 election. When World War II broke out, he was angling to be named Secretary of War.

And Tugwell, like La Guardia, was a reformer. They both disliked hyper-density and sought to clean up the slums and create a modern city. However, Tugwell, unlike La Guardia and Moses, lacked the “transactional” personality required for the job. La Guardia and Moses played the game of realpolitik—as opportunities for reform arose, they took them. When the Federal Government was doling out money for housing, the City built housing. When the Federal Government was paying for workers to build infrastructure, the City built airports and highways.

Dressing Down

La Guardia also had little tolerance for academic arrogance. For example, in August 1939, he sent Tugwell a “dressing down” letter for the way he ran hearings:

It is my desire that hereafter all hearings of the Planning Commission be held in your own offices and also that these hearings follow the procedure of conferences rather than inquiries or judicial proceedings. By that I mean that the members should sit around a table on the same level with officials who appear before them to “confer on the Capital Outlay Budget.” I have already detected the psychological effect on your Commission of being elevated and assuming a judicial as well as an inquisitorial attitude. Please cut it out. I don’t know exactly what it is but just a few feet of elevation brings an individual or a group of individuals into what they seem to think is e loftier atmosphere. They get a bench psychosis, a superiority complex, which always affects judgment in the reverse ratio of the degree of such complex. This has been disappointingly noticeable in your Commission of late.

Tugwell’s vision also included regulating aesthetics, and La Guardia wanted Tugwell to know that that was not his job:

An employee of your Commission…informed the Housing Authority that all plans had to be submitted to the Commission and they would pass upon the architectural detail. This is not the functional power of the Commission. I have instructed the Authority to submit no plans to your Commission whatsoever. All the Commission is entitled to know is the location, the general layout and the density of population…..

The very life, existence and continuance of the Planning Commission depend upon whether it takes a common sense attitude or whether it becomes a busybody, interfering with the functions of other agencies of government; whether it sticks to facts or whether it indulges in fantasy; whether it acts as practical men or constitutes itself into the barefooted Isadora Duncans, dancing on the lawn chasing Will-o’-the wisps.”

Nonetheless, while La Guardia and Tugwell did not always see eye to eye, they met regularly and shared a common concern that the city needed better planning. Ultimately, however, as I will discuss below, La Guardia failed to go to bat for Tugwell’s major initiatives. They were simply too controversial, even for the reformed-minded “Little Flower.”

Moses and Tugwell

Arguably, more important for Tugwell and his planning visions was Robert Moses. The result of their clashes meant that Tugwell’s three-year stint at the CPC would be stormy, at best. In fact, his run-ins with Moses would prove pivotal for New York’s long run zoning and planning history.

Tugwell had his agenda, and Moses had his, and the two would increasingly come to blows. When they shared a common interest, they would work together. When their interests diverged, Moses would have the upper hand.

Scolding Moses

Through their letters, we can get a glimpse into their relationship. A typical exchange, for example, took place in July 1939, when Moses scolded Tugwell about his road building plans. Offering opinions that foreshadowed the bigger battles to come, Moses barked,

Dear Rex:…I must say that I was disappointed at the lack of clarity of this [highways] plan. You will recall that I suggested that if your staff had preliminary ideas about these matters they should be kept in the form of memoranda for your files, and should not be scheduled for hearings as part of the master plan. As the matter stands you are putting those of us who have worked for many years on this arterial problem and who are with you in principle, in the position of opposing you.

Poinsettias

Yet at Christmas time, Moses strategically sent Tugwell poinsettias, compliments of the Parks Department, and a note with a pleasing tone:

Dear Rex: The Park [sic] Department is happy to present you with this Christmas plant. I recall gratefully the helpful and pleasant relationship with your office during the past year. Best wishes for the holiday season for the new year.

Tugwell responded graciously:

Dear Bob: The poinsettias are beautiful and I am happy to have them. The Park [sic] Department is to be congratulated on raising such wonderful plants. They brighten up my office and are a grateful reminder of that friendly and pleasant relationship between us which you mention in your note. This relationship, I hope will always continue.

The Master Plan. City Planning Commissioner Chairman Rexford Tugwell tried to order New York according to his notion of the “good city.” He aimed to make one-third of New York into a vast greenbelt by the 1960s.

Moses in the Middle

Tugwell, however, provided a convenient foil for Moses. The Great Depression created an opening for those on the left to test out their theories. Moses, on the other hand, rose to power with a more focused ambition.

As a young man trying to build parks, he ran headlong into the rich and powerful on Long Island who tried to stop him from building parkways on their lands. Through cleverness and grit, he learned how to beat them at their own game and became known as the “best bill drafter in Albany.”

When he came to the Big Apple, he applied this philosophy locally: Get legislation and money and build quickly; then move on to the next project. With the arrival of Tugwell, Moses began giving public lectures and writing about his opinion of the Planning Commissioner and his ilk. In short, he didn’t like their views. Part of this might have been personal. Tugwell was a busybody interfering in Moses’ plans. But it ran deeper than that. To Moses, government should not impose visions of the “good city” on the citizenry—that smacked of communism.

In a 1939 speech, he provided his philosophy:

I like to believe that I am a forward-looking conservative, that is, a person who recognizes the law of change, wants to keep abreast of the times and to anticipate the future to the extent that it can be visualized, but who wants to hold on to what is good and what has proven its worth before jumping to something new just because it is new. Such a person does not believe in revolutions in human nature nor in cure-alls, nor in the possibility of accomplishing anything really worthwhile in human progress without immense and sustained effort over a considerable period of time.

Ironically, forgotten today in all the debates about Moses was that in Depression-era New York, Moses was, politically speaking, dab smack in the middle. To the left of him were the likes of Tugwell. To the right of him were the laissez-faire-ists who believed that the government that governed the least governed the best. This group would also come to include Jane Jacobs both in her battles with Moses about Greenwich Village in the 1950s and in her writings about cities in her classic book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. They wanted planners of all stripes—both the Tugwells and Moseses—to leave their plans to themselves.

The Standpatters

In a 1940 speech, Moses also attacked those on the right of him as naïve:

The ulta conservative group consists of standpatters who believe that the present slums are good enough for those who live in them….These critics assert that plenty of good people have come out of the slums, that only the shiftless stay in them, and that anyway it is no business of the government to substitute palaces for tenement houses and to fix rents according to what people can pay rather than on the basis of carrying charges.

In this respect, Moses’ power was built on a foundation of taking the middle position between the two extremes. He believed that government ought to be a force for good, but that it should not go so far as to allow, as he put it, the “honest fanatic” to “destroy present investments on the theory that no one has a right to own or maintain a building which is unfit for living.”

The Battle to Rezone New York

As Tugwell began to take concrete actions at the CPC in 1939, it was not clear if Moses would be a friend or foe. Ironically, when it came to his rezoning ideas, Moses was a friend. But not even Moses as “Oz—the Great and Powerful” could hold back the tide of anger from Tugwell’s signature proposal.

Initially, Tugwell felt that he should not push through a complete re-writing of the zoning codes until after he released his Master Plan on Land Use, which was to be formally announced in late 1940. In the meantime, he aimed to create intermediate reforms.

Two of the provisions concern us here. First was the idea of so-called non-conforming uses. When the original 1916 Zoning Resolution was enacted, it grandfathered in all properties that did not conform to the new rules. For example, if there was a factory in a district zoned for residential use, it was allowed to remain. The assumption was these nonconforming uses would simply melt away over time. A quarter-century later, however, this was not so. And to this, Tugwell could not abide.

A Bad Sign

To initiate reform, Tugwell picked advertising signs and billboards as his target. He proposed that billboards in certain zones would need to be removed after one year. Additionally, billboards were to be banned from within 200 feet of parkways. This was something dear to Moses’ heart, and he went to bat for Tugwell on the billboards issue.

However, the real estate community, especially those who profited from billboard advertising, along with those who saw the issue as a Trojan Horse for wider enforcement of non-conforming uses attacked it fiercely. Tugwell tried to placate them by extending the elimination period to two years. But alas the Board of Estimate unanimously rejected it. Not even La Guardia supported it. The Board of Estimate, however, left in the parkway provision.

A FAR is Born

The second feature of Tugwell’s zoning plan was the addition of two novel elements to help downzone New York. First was the introduction of zones that only permitted single-family housing. Before 1939, the zoning resolution only limited bulk through setbacks, general uses (residential, commercial, and unrestricted), and lot coverage. But here was the first time in the city’s history that all but single-family homes were banned in some districts. In fact, single-family zoning became a reality in the Feildston neighborhood first in the Bronx on November 17, 1939, and was subsequently embedded in the resolution.

Relatedly was the first introduction in U.S. history of the floor area ratio (FAR) as a zoning tool. In two newly created districts, not only did the original 1916 rules apply, but there were also FAR caps. The FAR limits how much building area can be provided on the lot as a multiple to the lot size. For example, an FAR of one on a 2500 square foot lot, means a building can be one floor with 2500 square feet or two floors with 1250 square feet each. In the “F-1” districts, the FAR was set at 0.75, while in the “E” districts, the FAR was set at 1.9.

The Long-Run Impacts of Tugwell’s Rezonings

While Tugwell lost the battle over non-conforming uses, the CPC established the precedent that some districts could be reserved exclusively for single-family houses and established the FAR as a zoning tool.  Moses was silent on these provisions. Likely he saw them as benign, specifically as they related to his program of road building. Downzoned districts of single-family homes or garden apartments were more conducive to automobile usage and encouraged the clearing out of dense tenement districts.

There are some ironies with Moses’ silence on these changes, which we shall discuss in more detail in future posts. But first was that Moses in 1944 would offer his own comprehensive zoning plan, which was a further downzoning. His plan was ultimately defeated, however. And second, after World War II, the CPC would promote the FAR as a planning tool and Moses would become increasingly antagonistic toward it. He was opposed to abandoning the basic 1916 framework. For this reason, even though New York City “invented” the FAR its full-scale implementation would have to wait till Moses was out of power.

Praise be to Robert Moses! This the first two paragraphs of an article printed in the New York Times, on March 20, 1938. It was typical of the kudos New Yorker’s gave to him during the Great Depression.

The Master Plan

While Tugwell’s zoning proposal had mixed success, the defeat of his Master Plan was the last straw. Tugwell certainly had forewarnings from Moses about his position.  In May 1940, Tugwell complained in his diary:

Found Moses had written LaG. bitter letter attacking Commission for “long-haired planning.” All this is attempt to prevent work on the Master Plan which would limit, perhaps, his work in some way. … Mayor undoubtedly showed me the letter in a friendly way, though he does not mind a little hard feeling among commissioners. He’d rather they didn’t get together too much.

Dear Bob

After this meeting, Tugwell couldn’t resist the urge to write to Moses.

Dear Bob: I can’t think of anything in our relations during the past two years or more which would lead you to feel that I do not or would not accept your judgment about most planning issues in the city.

There cannot, I think, be any question that I have a mandate to make a master plan. On nothing else is the charter so specific. What kind of master plan is another question. I have hoped that you would give me help on that. Instead you seem to prefer to question the whole activity here developed to master plan work. You have even questioned my judgement as to the division of work in my own department—and done it repeatedly.

I do not want to work up a grievance. I merely want to ask you again if you will not give up your attacks on all master plan work and tell me clearly what it is that you do not like in our proposals. They have been put forward modestly. They were submitted to you even in advance of hearings. None of us here thinks our judgment better than yours. On the contrary we want to embody yours in the plan.….

I hope our relations will not continue to degenerate. If they do, it will not be because I have not tried to make them improve. That, indeed, is the reason for this letter.

Dear Rex

Moses wasn’t going to back down. The next day he fired off his response:

Dear Rex: The last thing I am looking for is a quarrel with you, and it seems to me that there is no reason why we cannot continue to get along amicably and with mutual benefit.

On the other hand, we do have one fundamental difference of opinion. This has to do with the long range planning and the interpretation of Section 197 of the Charter….

There is no compulsion upon your or your associates to prepare a comprehensive far-reaching long range Master Plan. Nobody can make you do it and my hunch is that there are plenty of people who will stop you if you try it, and that in the process you will wreck the Planning Commission and lot of constructive work which might otherwise be done….

If you attempt to go beyond these boundaries and seriously consider distance objectives you will bring your Commission and the administration which it must serve into disrepute, and what’s more you won’t get away with it….

There are so many things on which we can all cooperate, and so much enthusiasm and public support for these things that is seems crazy for you to launch highly controversial, long range plans which many of us, in and out of the city administration, would be compelled to oppose.

Tugwell Undeterred

In early December, the plan for land use was formally released. It was a brief document with five pages of explanatory text and three maps. The first maps showed the land uses and roads at present. And, as the New York Times reported, the second map showed “where the next generation may expect to work and live after slums have been eliminated.” And the third map “foresees the city of the future, probably the third generation from now, when current trends have finally responded to the present foresight of the planners and to the guidance imposed by zoning legislation and public works.”  A key element of the Master Plan was that in several decades hence, one-third of New York was to be comprised of a vast greenbelt (an idea that British planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie would put forth for Greater London in his 1944 plan).

Seeing Tugwell step on his turf, Moses ripped him in a letter dated December 10, 1940:

[The Master Plan of Land Use] represents the kind of Ivory Tower, theoretical planning which dresses up revolutionary ideas in obscure and newly invented phrases such as “greenbelts” and “recentralization.” It ignores the city’s government and financial structure, and contemplates an entirely new character along radically different lines…

No one in this city has greater enthusiasm for the expansion of parks and recreation areas than I have.…Actual accomplishments in New York City since 1934…were brought about by people who labored day and night for limited objectives in the face of great difficulties. These accomplishments were not brought about by itinerant carpet bag experts splashing a ten league canvas with brushes of comet’s hair.

I recommend that you file the “Master Plan of Land Use” and forget it. The city won’t stand for it when its implications become apparent. Everything worthwhile in this direction be accomplished by the reasonable use of your zoning powers.

The Hearings

Moses reiterated these statements at the public hearings of the City Planning Commission on December 11. In his personal diary, Tugwell bemoaned not only Moses’ behavior but also the other commissioners, who did not have the nerve cutoff opponents. Tugwell felt his commissioners “like a lot of sheep they shivered in the storm and asked for more by ‘continuing’ the hearings.” Tugwell asked them to take the leap and they hesitated. La Guardia was also silent.

The controversy and the indecision of the commissioners meant that formal approval of the Master Plan was going to have to wait until after city elections in November of 1941. In the meantime, Tugwell’s opponents sharpened their attacks. One business leader, echoing Moses, stated in the New York Times in February 1941 that the Master Plan “was so radical and revolutionary that they will tend to undermine present basic real estate values in the City of New York, without any substantial compensating benefits.”

Moses gets the Last Laugh

By the summer of 1941, Tugwell had had enough. He was offered the chance to become the Chancellor of the University of Puerto Rico and soon after became the island’s governor. He tried his best in the rough and tumble politics of New York City, but, in the end, was unable to win in the arena.

With Tugwell gone, La Guardia once again offered Moses a seat on the City Planning Commission. This time he accepted, though not the chairmanship. Moses now knew what the CPC was capable of and he wanted to be sure that the “Tugwellians” didn’t have any more chances. In early 1942, the CPC formally voted to scrap Tugwell’s Master Plan of Land Use, with Moses declaring, “Green belts are dead.”

Moses on the Inside

While we can’t blame Tugwell’s failure solely on Moses, he did give voice to the collective zeitgeist about city planning in Depression-era New York: It was the city’s job to build infrastructure, clear unsanitary slums, build parks, and get people back to work; it was not to risk the future of New York on pie-in-the-sky ideas that ran counter to Gotham’s laissez-faire spirit.

As a member of the CPC, for the next 20 years, Moses would work from the inside. City planning would now be based on his vision of “short-haired conservatism.” And soon enough, just as World War II was ending, Moses would introduce his own comprehensive zoning reform. This will be the subject of the next blog post.

 

Notes on sources can be found here.

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.

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Credits

The New Amsterdam map on this page was sourced here, and the atlas image is from the 1891 Atlas of City of New York by GW Bromley & Co.

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