These are the ideas that drove planning in our cities through the middle of the twentieth century. Experience would seem to show that they were exactly backwards, but the arguments presented here will help us understand why so much of twentieth-century urban planning was driven by a need to make people do things they did not want to do.
City Planning as a Determinant of the Location and Character of City Housing Projects of All Kinds.
Abstract of an address by Frederick Bigger, A.I.A., Architect and City Planner, Pittsburgh, at the Conference on Planning, Richmond, May 4, 1936.
There are significant differences between housing projects which raise questions of importance to the city planner.
1. In the first category are housing projects designed to be sold off, dwelling by dwelling, to future individual owners, who are unlikely to preserve the wholesome characteristics of the original unified design.
2. In the second category are projects designed as entities, but rented to many individual families either as a long term high class investment, or as a venture of speculation. In this case, the well-being of the occupants will undoubtedly receive greater consideration.
3. In the third category are housing projects of limited dividend corporations or housing authorities, which have social objectives and restrict their rents; in theory, permanent assets in a city plan. These projects need to be safeguarded by separation from neighborhoods affected by commercial manipulation.
There have been too many cases in which lack of barriers brought changes in zoning regulations, and damaging commercial frontages.
4. In the fourth category are similar projects owned by the occupants of the houses, which require similar protection.
The planner must know whether a project is to be split up for sale or held, whether it is to be merely a profit and loss commodity, whether a social objective is contemplated and whether or not it is owned by the occupants of the dwellings.
If one holds a title deed but is obligated by a mortgage on his property, it is necessary to realize that this privilege of complete control over his property is limited.
If a project is not owned by its occupants, the need for better living and the demand for profit are conflicting forces.
The planner is necessarily controlled by the expenses incidental to the basic cost of the project, such as public utilities, landscaping, etc. If the designer is influenced only by the profit motive, he will locate his housing project so that it can be subsidized by the existing community through an earlier provision of utilities and schools, though another location might be better from the standpoint of the city plan.
Housing designed for sale to individual owners, and large-scale housing on a speculative basis, promise no permanence and no stable contribution to improved housing. The other categories offer possibilities of greater stability and continuity of existence. Community planners must therefore favor the latter groups.
A general amount of open space is a basic element in planning a socially desirable housing project in which financial values are to be permanent. The town planner must consider these fundamental points as of greater significance than the more technical aspects of studies of population and economics.
From a Pittsburgh trade magazine called the Construction Record for April 4, 1914, we take this article about the implications of American skyscrapers. Already they had reached heights unimaginable in Europe, and the question of regulating the heights of buildings, and perhaps instituting some sort of zoning system, was coming up in cities all over the United States.
Heights of Buildings.
During the last eight months there has been under way a remarkably thorough and intelligent study of the regulation of the heights of buildings. This investigation was financed by a $15,000 appropriation of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment of the city of New York.
The commission has investigated the practice of many cities in America and Europe in height, area and occupancy regulations. Studies have been made as to the effect of these regulations on property and rental values and on the more general growth and development of the community. The attitude of the courts with regard to the constitutionality of such regulations has also been considered.
The commission’s investigations brought to light many interesting facts. One finds, for example, impressive evidence, of New York’s peculiar situation as regards building heights by comparing the city’s tallest skyscraper with the height of buildings in other cities. The Woolworth building is 750 feet in height. This is 670 feet higher than the maximum limit for buildings in London, 678 feet higher than the limit in Berlin, 685 feet higher than the limit in Paris, 671 feet higher than the limit in Rome and 678 feet higher than the limit in Stockholm.
A building erected to a height equal to the combined maximum heights permitted in these five great European capital cities would be seven feet lower than the World building, and the World building is only half as high as the Woolworth building. A building erected to a height equal to the aggregate height limits of London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, Edinburgh, Zurich, Frankfort-on-Main, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Hamburg would exceed the height of the Woolworth building by only 14 feet.
The maximum heights of buildings permitted by ordinance in some of the large cities of the United States having such restrictions are:
FEET
Baltimore
175
Boston
125
Charleston, S. C.
125
Chicago
200
Cleveland, O.
200
Erie, Pa.
200
Fort Wayne, Ind.
200
Indianapolis, Ind.
200
Los Angeles, Cal.
150
Manchester, N. H.
125
Milwaukee, Wis.
225
Newark, N. J.
200
Portland, Ore.
160
Providence, R. I.
120
Salt Lake City
125
Scranton, Pa.
125
Worcester, Mass.
125
The commission’s report contains tabulations which were most difficult to obtain, but which were invaluable in framing the recommendations bearing on safety and health. In this connection there are tables showing the number of people on each floor in a number of typical factory and office buildings; showing the use of artificial light near the windows of office buildings on narrow streets at noon in summer on a bright sunlit day; showing the movements of people down stairways; showing the movements of crowds on the level; showing the congestion in office buildings, factories, large department stores, etc. From such data calculations were made showing the length of time it would take to get people out of certain typical crowded buildings, showing the congestion that would result in certain downtown streets if the buildings were vacated in a panic and showing the inadequacy of exit facilities in many buildings.
Much attention has been given by the commission to the districting or zoning system in German and Austrian cities and to the increasing adoption of this system of height and occupancy restrictions in the United States. The American cities represented in such maps are Boston, Washington, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Baltimore and Indianapolis.
The Western Penitentiary, Butz’s most prominent work.
Edward M. Butz was an architect from Allegheny, later the North Side of Pittsburgh, most famous for the sprawling Romanesque Western Penitentiary. This obituary gives his birth date as 1859. The Allegheny West site, which is devoted to the neighborhood in which he lived, gives a birth date of 1850. More pictures of the Western Penitentiary are at Father Pitt.
E. M. Butz, of E. M. Butz & Co., Ltd., and widely known throughout the country as an architect and engineer, died on Sept. 4 at his home on the North Side of Pittsburgh. Mr. Butz was born in Allegheny in 1859. He was identified with the construction of some of the finest buildings in western Pennsylvania and had been a pioneer in the steel business and promoter and builder of the Columbia Iron and Steel Co.’s plant at Uniontown, of which for several years he was General Manager. Mr. Butz retired from active business about six years ago.
A 1905 architectural dictionary gives us a description of the usual New York tenement house, which historical novelists and students of working-class conditions at the turn of the twentieth century will find invaluable.
TENEMENT HOUSE. A building occupied by more than one family and usually having suites of rooms, a public stairway, dumb-waiter, and toilet room common to two or more families on each floor, each suite consisting of a living room, with one or more bedrooms opening therefrom, and furnished with cold water supply and a chimney flue, and renting for less than $300 a year. (See Apartment House.)
Historical. With the growth of a town, the first tenements have always been abandoned houses of the wealthier classes, but these are ultimately replaced by houses divided into separate suites and occupied by many tenants. The tenement house was undoubtedly an early result of ancient city life, coming as an inevitable consequence of the increase of population within circumscribing defensive walls. Rome is known to have had tenements many stories in height, and the crowded cities of medieval Europe housed their poor under steep gables and in high buildings. The conditions of life under these circumstances are always very objectionable, in both a sanitary and moral sense, and the menace which such crowding constitutes has become well recognized by legislators and philanthropists.
The Modern Tenement House. This is the result of conditions which are ditterent in different localities and times. These are briefly:
(a) The size of the lot in Europe is large and approximately square, and the building is erected about a central court with an open passageway to the street on the first floor; in America long narrow lots are in vogue, resulting in buildings with small air shafts.
(b) The amount of capital employed limits the building to a certain size and character; in Europe the investors represent wealth, in America they commonly represent small capitalists who erect buildings on small lots.
(c) Legal restrictions which have generally resulted from a struggle between forces allied to vested interests on the one side and those associated with sanitary requirements on the other.
The New York Tenement House. This being built under what are probably the most severe conditions in the world, small lot, small capital, and stringent laws, is commonly erected on a unit lot of 25 feet by 100 feet. The law limits the percentage of the lot that can be occupied, requires an open rear and courts of a certain size, and regulates the plumbing, ventilation, construction, etc. The commonest type produced under these conditions is the “dumb-bell” plan (Fig. 1), and the modified form of this plan which provides narrow courts along the party lines and open at the rear. Three or four families are accommodated on each floor, each family having a living room looking upon the street or upon the open yard, and bedrooms on the air shafts. Public halls are long and narrow, lighted only at the middle point, if at all. The chief advantages of this plan are cheapness and simplicity of construction, and small running expense; the chief disadvantages are wasted room in public halls, narrow air shafts giving little light or air below the top story and rendering privacy in summer almost an impossibility, public water closets, and the like. Other types of plan have been used on wider lots which have a much better disposition of area and arrangement of courts. An absolute departure from old lines has been made lately (Fig. 2) by building companies which have erected tenements upon large plots of ground, generally on a unit lot of 100 feet square. This type of building has a large square court in the middle with broad courts open at the street or yard along the party lines. The advantages of avoiding the long, dark, public hall, the public toilet room, and the dark, narrow air shaft are evident. The chief disadvantages are the many living rooms which have no outlook upon the street or yard, the amount of capital required to erect, the fewer number of suites on a given area than are provided by the “dumb-bell” plan, and the smaller income from the capital invested.
Requirements. The living room is the largest room and must accommodate laundry tubs, table, range, sink, and dresser, the minimum area being 120 square feet. The other rooms should have a capacity of at least 600 cubic feet with direct access to outer air by means of a window of at least 12 square feet of area. The living room must be accessible from the public hall either directly or through a private entry. The bedrooms must be entered either from the living room or from a hall. It is very desirable that each suite should have a short private hall, stand for refrigerators, private toilet opening off private hall, windows on narrow courts not opposite each other, and a closet in each bedroom. The laundry tubs frequently have a removable partition so that they can be used for bathing. It is desirable to have the cross partition set so as to divide them un- equally, making one tub larger than the other. The sink and the back of the laundry tubs may be of metal. Gas should be provided for lighting with rising mains for the supply of each row of apartments and branches taken off so that metres can be placed in each suite, using either the old type or the new prepay system. Each suite of rooms should have a second exit by means of a fire escape. The drying of clothes must be provided for by a drying frame on the roof or by means of tall poles with pulleys thereon set on the rear lot line, and each suite must have a locked coal box or room in the yard or cellar. Halls are lighted and cared for by the owner. Lighting of halls may be furthered by setting wire glass in the upper half of doors opening upon them. It is very desirable to provide for the safe use of the roof by the tenants in hot weather by means of slat platforms and proper railings and guards at front and rear and around courts. Shower baths are sometimes provided in the basement. The walls and ceiling of the passageway from the entrance doorway to the public staircase should be fireproofed and have the floor concreted and the walls tiled or cemented to a height of five feet.
Construction. A complete fireproof construction is much the best from every point of view except that of expense. It is feasible only when the only restriction on the builder is safe construction. In any case the stairways, stair landings, and dumbwaiter shafts with all openings therein must be fireproofed. The ceilings should be wire-lathed and plastered, both being carried completely across all floors to prevent the communication of fire between stories. The first tier of beams should be of iron with fireproof floor construction. All toilet rooms should have water tight floors and impervious side walls to a height of at least two feet. —George Hill.
