L'Enfant Plaza, as originally planned, would contain four office buildings, a one-thousand-room hotel, a theater, restaurants, stores, and four levels of parking beneath the plaza. One of the office buildings, the World Communications Center, would be graced by the Women's Press Club. Another, the Air Sciences building, was designed to fill the growing need of the aero and astronautical industries for Washington offices. Jim Dixon, husband of Jeane Dixon, the well-known soothsayer, was involved in lining up clients for this building, but psychic phenomena this close to home must not work. To the best of my knowledge, we had no clairvoyant help or warnings on the project.
The hotel, which was designed to overpass Ninth Street in the same way the UN building in New York overpasses the East River Drive, needed clearance from the Planning Commission and a special O.K. from Congress. A now familiar routine got under way again. Getting our proposed changes agreed to took one and a half years. Then came negotiations on land price. This took until April, 1961, when we agreed on a seven-million-dollar total, roughly twenty dollars per square foot. We went ahead with working plans for the area, finally focusing on a sixty-million-dollar, three-office-building project, plus hotel. However, a continuous series of discussions and changes on the details of the mall, and the plaza proper, both of which would be owned by the Redevelopment Land Agency, kept L'Enfant Plaza in a planner's limbo. This treadmill of haggling, hangfire, and uncertainty created a closed circle of inaction: The vagueness about plan details kept would-be lessees from committing themselves to plaza offices. This in turn kept mortgagors from committing themselves to finance the site—which kept Webb & Knapp from moving forward on the construction. This was a typical problem we had beaten many times before in many places, but from 1960 on, Webb & Knapp was so pressed for funds that I could not find the long-term cash to enable us to force the situation at L'Enfant Plaza. Besides, by this time, even I was leery of making heavy cash commitments that would be frozen during interminable months of bureaucratic and political deliberation. We had been discovering that in Washington even the most solid-seeming agreements cannot be counted upon until after they have been signed, and sometimes not then.
By the time our L'Enfant Plaza discussions were well under way, the Southwest had obviously turned that invisible corner which separates the world of possible developments from actual ones. Through 1960–1961 John Searles, concentrating now on the non-Webb & Knapp section of the Southwest, had established eight development sites south of M Street. Searles had come to a realization that to be successful the Southwest would have to be fashionable, which also means expensive. Therefore, after a politic arranging for one relatively low-cost cooperative to be built by Reynolds Aluminum Co., he deliberately sought out wealthy backers interested in luxury developments, people who would move into and induce others to follow them to the Southwest. This strategy worked. For instance, Sam Kaufmann, publisher of The Washington Star, became a leading booster, investor, and resident in the Southwest. The area in a few years became the most active construction site in the nation and eventually a prestige Washington address.
All this was as we had originally planned and predicted. Something which we did not plan and which we had long fought against and thought we had defeated became the victor. Up till 1962 the master plan for the Southwest called for the Navy Department, whose personnel occupied many of the tempos on the Great Mall, to occupy Federal Office Building No. 5. This important building was to consist of two structures, joined underground, that would flank the entrance to the Tenth Street Mall. But now the General Service Administration's architects, ignoring the master plan, designed a building that would straddle the mall, leaving a tunnel under the building as entranceway to the area. Ever so quietly, the General Service Administration, in executive (i.e., secret) sessions, gained quick approval for this change from both the Planning and the Fine Arts commissions, then in March of that year presented us with this fait accompli.
As a Washington Post editorial noted:
Tunnel to the Southwest
With an air of innocence, our public planners and redevelopers have agreed to undercut and diminish the splendid design for the future 10th Street mall. It was to have run grandly south from Constitution Avenue, flanked by big new buildings, to a dramatic plaza overlooking the Potomac. It was conceived as the commercial center of Southwest Washington, where hundreds of millions of dollars, some of it public money but most of it private, are being spent to replace slums. The 10th Street mall was to have been the gateway to the new Southwest.
Instead, under the current plan, it will be the tunnel to the new Southwest. The Government is now being encouraged to build its Federal Office Building Number Five in one vast continuous rectangle along Constitution Avenue, leaving a large hole in its middle for the 10th Street traffic to creep through. The Fine Arts Commission speaks of the "dramatic effect of passing through the arch and suddenly seeing a new vista open out." The Fine Arts Commission might more profitably contemplate the formidable barrier that this monolithic building would place, in every aesthetic sense, between Southwest and the rest of the city. If it is to work economically, Southwest must be an integral part of downtown Washington. Huge Federal office buildings can seal it off just as destructively as the railroad and the slums once did.
Why cannot the Government avail itself of an architect as gifted as I. M. Pei, who has been working for the private developers, to draw appropriate plans for the new Federal office building? The site is not so crowded that the Government is forced to use the air space over 10th Street. The city cannot expect private investors to put huge sums into redevelopment if the basic lines of the project are subject to change without notice.
And this change is particularly objectionable because it was hustled through the various public agencies surreptitiously. It was approved in each case behind closed doors as though the planners had guessed, correctly, that the alteration would not stand up to public inspection. At a meeting today the private developers are to discuss the mall with the public agencies. The proper solution is to return forthwith to the original designs. [March 20,1962.]
We fought the new plan, but, caught unawares, found ourselves fighting in a Washington where the faith keepers of yesterday were no more. Of the original stalwarts who had believed in and helped us fight for an open mall, the majority were gone. John Remon and Phil Graham had died, one from advanced age and the other from suicide. Eisenhower had left, and Sam Spencer, the capable head of the District commissioners, had long since left that post. Even the Redevelopment Land Agency, now chaired by a most competent gentleman, Neville Miller, a one-time mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, had changed. John Searles, with whom we had had our differences, but who was an ally, had left in 1961. The Fine Arts and the Planning commissions were headed by new sets of political appointees. To these newcomers, anxious to wield their authority, the arguments and agreements of yesteryear were just so many myths and pieces of paper.
The Redevelopment Land Agency decided to assume a neutral stand on the mall issue. This was tantamount to bowing to the opposition. Webb & Knapp, its energies diverted by crises in a dozen different areas, was in poor shape to move against a politically entrenched opposition. Even the fact that we had just signed for the sixty-million-dollar L'Enfant Plaza development gave us no leverage: it simply meant that any more delays than those we anticipated would mean more expenses and trouble. It was ironic. In 1954–1955 Webb & Knapp had been the linchpin that held everything together; without us there could be no Southwest project. In 1962 Webb & Knapp was just one more contractor-developer under pressure from the landowner and unable to prevent an architectural blunder.
In late 1963 and early 1964 Webb & Knapp negotiated the sale of its Town Center development, plus a series of nearby townhouses and walk-up apartments, to a group headed by Charles S. Bressler, a local builder. By the end of 1964, we had almost arranged the sale of our rights to and the detailed plans for L'Enfant Plaza to a successor organization. This was L'Enfant
Plaza Corp., of which George Garrett, David Rockefeller, Lazard Freres, and others were principals, and General Peter Quesada, one-time chief of the Tactical Air Command and member of the Civil Aeronautics Board, was chief administrator.
The Washington Star carried the following editorial:
Zeckendorf's Legacy
When William Zeckendorf referred the other day to his development rights in Southwest Washington, the last of which now are being sold off, as "a legacy" there was no reason to doubt his sincerity.
For the new Southwest is largely his conception. Its reconstruction, by a variety of other people, follows to a remarkable degree the fine, imaginative plan he offered the city more than 10 years ago, long before most of the slums in the disgraceful Southwest were razed.
Mr. Zeckendorf's primary reason for entering the renewal picture was, of course, to make money. He believed that massive investment in urban renewal in Washington and other cities would, over a period of time, pay off handsomely. In his case he guessed wrong —partly because his whole financial empire is tottering; partly, no doubt, because his chunk of the Southwest project was too large to bear the strain of the long wait for a fiscal return. And now that he is all washed up in the Southwest, or nearly so, one can look for very little good to be said about his role.
Well, just to set the record straight, there was a great deal of good. Redevelopment in Washington in the middle 50s was heading nowhere, and the Zeckendorf plan gave it a focus. Long before he had the opportunity to build anything, he had to fight for the plan's acceptance—for a longer time and at greater expense, perhaps, than any other developer could or would have done. He brought a superior brand of architectural and planning expertise to the city. And during these early years of controversy, everyone learned valuable lessons about the whole renewal process.
The flamboyant New Yorker, who was then at the crest of his wave, argued the possibilities for good in urban renewal at a time when the more popular position was to despair of cities as decent places to live. He gave Washingtonians more than a plan. He gave them, through the force of his personal enthusiasm, a greater faith in the future of their own city. [November 8, 1964.]
In 1966, almost a year after the fall of Webb & Knapp, and at a time when the Southwest's housing area was largely built or in active construction, ground was finally broken for the L'Enfant Plaza I had conceived twelve years previously in 1954. I was invited down to take part in the ceremonies. After a bit of ritual speech-making, the bulldozers started up, and symbolic digging commenced. It was a fine show, luncheon and drinks being served in a great tent, and at some point in the proceedings George Beveridge, a reporter from The Washington Star, asked, "Bill, how do you feel about all this; you conceiving the whole thing, bringing it along almost up to this very point, then having to watch other people take over your job and take the profit?"
"Can I talk off the record?"
"Of course."
"Well, what I say, and I don't think you will want to repeat, is: 'I'm the guy that got the girl pregnant. Those fellows you see around here are merely the obstetricians.'"
Beveridge kept his word. He did not quote me. His copy that afternoon read, ". . . Mr. Zeckendorf was beaming like a well-satisfied father watching the midwives at work. . . ."
In point of time and space, the Southwest was grandaddy to most other redevelopment projects in the United States. It was on the basis of and in spite of its Washington experience that Webb & Knapp determined to take on redevelopment work anywhere and everywhere in North America.
▪ 17 ▪Webb & Knapp's Peripatetic School of Urban Design
TROOPS OF PENGUINS, if they have been out of the water for a time, are very wary about diving into the sea; after all, there are often unfriendly creatures down there. Instead, these gregarious birds solemnly cluster around the edge of the ice, studying the water, leaning over the edge, backing away, bowing, and politely making room for anyone else who might want to step to the brink and maybe even test the water. Soon, building up excitement, the whole troop begins milling and shifting at the water's edge. As happens in crowds, even the politest of crowds, near a brink, someone sooner or later is jostled over the side. Once this happens, the whole troop stands still and watches. If their "volunteer" is attacked or gobbled up, his friends and relatives find some way to entertain themselves on shore for a while longer. If, on the other hand, the penguin goes through a series of aquabatics with no ill result, the whole gang of his fellows stage a swim-in.
Webb & Knapp was the great Emperor Penguin of urban redevelopment. We willingly and knowingly jumped into the water again and again in place after place to catch some wonderful fish and chase as many more.
In 1956 Webb & Knapp launched a nationwide urban-redevelopment campaign. Within four years we had bid on millions of dollars' worth of redevelopment work. We eventually went into actual construction in seven cities, to become the number-one Title I redeveloper in the country. In order to win contracts in seven cities, we had to submit proposals to at least fifteen cities. Before choosing fifteen cities in which we would offer to build, we had to study the possibilities in at least thirty cities, and we did the greater part of this investigatory and preparatory work in one great surge between 1956 and 1958. During this period a number of people in the industry took to calling Title I "The Zeckendorf Redevelopment Bill." They were only half-joking, and only half-wrong.
Since 1949 we had all known that sooner or later America would have to dive into the business of building in the cities with Title I, but no one seemed to know quite how to get started. You have to remember that through 1956 urban redevelopment was still something new and strange.
Robert Moses was possibly the only man in America who, when Title I came, was ready. As New York's coordinator of construction, director of parks, chief of the Triborough, and unofficial granter of patronage to local politicians, he had, beforehand, lined up support to pass the local and state legislation needed to implement Title I. As soon as the new law was passed, he and I put it to work rehabilitating one of the worst parts of Brooklyn. I was chairman of the board of trustees of Long Island University, then a diminutive and unaccredited school temporarily settled in a loft building in Brooklyn. Our university, then catering largely to ex-GIs, desperately needed an in-town campus plus more buildings. I donated the necessary extra funds to sponsor a Title I redevelopment project in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. With Moses' help and guidance, we cleaned out acres of asphalt jungle to put up various types of high-rise housing, a modest commercial development, and the beginnings of a Brooklyn campus for the university. This well-executed little exercise, however, was merely a warm-up for our later operations. My "donation" to LIU was a further means of inducing recently retired Admiral Connally to take over the school and begin the task of making it into a great university.
During this same period Webb & Knapp had learned how to create projects that mesh with the surrounding city. In our UN deal, at 1407 Broadway, at 112 West Thirty-fourth Street, in Denver, and in Montreal we had foreseen what would happen when, upon completion of our projects, key parts of a city would act upon each other in new ways. Naturally, we were interested in Title I projects; they offered a chance for more of the same, plus great investment leverage.
It turned out that most of the cities were as eager as we. In the case of Cincinnati, the town's mayor, Charles Taft, came down to Washington, met with our people there, and invited us to review possibilities in his city. On paper, Cincinnati had a relatively well-organized plan of development. We decided to try to do something in that town. In San Francisco it was my old friend and fellow investor Benjamin Swig, with whom we had acquired the Hotel St. Francis and the Fairmont in earlier days, who first drew us into that city. Swig, who was working on a modest six-block redevelopment plan of his own, was running into difficulties and invited us in to help out. By coincidence, it was in San Francisco, at a 1956 Municipal Association convention, where I was a speaker, that I met Mayor Anthony
Celebrezze, of Cleveland. During dinner he told me of his hopes for a massive redevelopment in downtown Cleveland. After dinner we went up to his room to see plans and sketches he had with him, and this led to a 1957 Webb & Knapp foray into Cleveland.
When the City of Hartford invited us to take a look at their situation, we flew up there from New York in the early morning, and a quick tour decided me that we could try to do something in that town. Our Boston endeavors came about because of a speech I gave at MIT: I said Boston was a wonderful town, but due to its grim fiscal situation and outlook, its high tax rate and the indifferent attitude of too many key citizens, I would hate to own property there. The local newspapers naturally featured this portion of my talk. The town mayor, John Hynes, predictably took exception. He announced that vital changes were under way in Boston, and he only wished he could have the opportunity of explaining them to me. I took Hynes at his word. I sent him a short letter saying that given some promise of relief from the confiscatory tax rate in Boston, we could do something to rehabilitate the city's core and improve its finances. Hynes sent back a lengthy letter explaining how the city hoped to progress, and invited us to bid on a development project. I visited Boston. Hynes and I had a friendly meeting, and so began our adventures among the political Robin Hoods of Boston Common.
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