Saving America's Cities

by Lizabeth Cohen

  140. “Statement by Edward J. Logue,” Boston, Massachusetts, May 26, 1967, Hearings Before the National Commission on Urban Problems, vol. 1, May–June 1967 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968), 191.

  141. Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19. An exception to the criticism of superblock residential projects is Danielle Aubert, Lana Cavar, and Natasha Chandani, eds., Thanks for the View, Mr. Mies: Lafayette Park, Detroit (New York: Metropolis Books, 2012).

  142. Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 451.

  143. Wolfinger, Politics of Progress, 157–58, 163; Dahl, Who Governs?, 143–46; U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “The Old and the New in New Haven,” Urban Renewal Notes, 13.

  144. Leeney, Elm, Arms, and Ivy, 59; Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 209; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 520–21, on the plan to double salaries by 1953 to make them competitive with suburban school systems.

  145. On school modernization, New Haven Redevelopment Authority, 1961 Annual Report, “Education and Schools”; Garvin, American City, 262; Leeney, Elms, Arms, and Ivy, 60, 65; Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 514–21; Robert Hazen, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 14, 2007, New York, NY.

  146. On Lee’s view of the Conté School, Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 140; on Logue’s view, “Can Cities Survive Automobile Age?,” 182. On the Grant School, see Mary Hommann, “Symbolic Bells in Dixwell,” AF (July–August 1966): 54–59, particularly 58–59; from Johansen: “The Dixwell School, New Haven, Connecticut,” Box 12, Folder 7; photographs of the model of Dixwell School, Box 2, Folder 10; Dixwell Project New Haven Development Office, “Dixwell Renewal News,” September 1964, Box 11, Folder 22; Johansen, interview.

  147. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Profile of a City,” Urban Renewal Notes, July–August 1966, 4. New Haven’s urban renewal also gained increasing international attention: “Foreign Officials Observe City Renewal,” NHR, September 27, 1966; “Turkish Officials View City Answer to Some Shared Social Problems,” NHR, October 8, 1966, cited in Carriere, “Between Being and Becoming,” 232n47.

  148. WNBC-TV documentary, Connecticut Illustrated. Excerpts are also incorporated into two more-recent documentaries: Ted Gesing, Model City (MFA thesis film, University of Texas, Austin, 2003), and American Beat Film produced by Elihu Rubin and directed by Stephen Taylor, Rudolph and Renewal, Yale School of Architecture, 2008 (made to accompany the exhibition “Model City: Buildings and Projects by Paul Rudolph for Yale and New Haven,” November 3, 2008–February 6, 2009), copies of all in possession of the author.

  149. Wirtz quote in “An Old Industrial City Wages Dramatic War on Poverty,” Trenton Sunday Times Advertiser, July 12, 1964; Weaver quote in “New Haven Pursuing the American Dream of a Slumless City,” NYT, September 7, 1965, both in Powledge, Model City, 90.

  150. “Cities: Forward Look in Connecticut,” Time, June 24, 1957; Jeanne R. Lowe, “Lee of New Haven and His Political Jackpot,” Harper’s, October 1957; Life, March 22, 1958; Logue, “New York: Are Cities a Bust?,” Look, April 1, 1969; Joe Alex Morris, “He Is Saving a ‘Dead’ City,” SEP, April 19, 1958; totals from Powledge, Model City, 25.

  2. Urban Renewal as a Liberal Project

      1. “Antipoverty Expert Mitchell Sviridoff,” NYT, June 14, 1966.

      2. Logue-Ylvisaker reminiscence in Logue, interview by Noel A. Cazenave, July 17, 1992, EJL, 2002, Box 21, Folder “Noel A. Cazenave, Ph.D., University of Connecticut,” 2–7.

      3. Preface by Mayor Richard Lee, “Opening Opportunities: New Haven’s Comprehensive Program for Community Progress” (City of New Haven, New Haven Board of Education, and Community Progress, April 1962), in Fred Powledge, Model City: A Test of American Liberalism; One Town’s Efforts to Rebuild Itself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970), 55 and 45–64, passim. For more on the Gray Areas Program, CPI, Paul Ylvisaker, and Mitchell Sviridoff, see William Lee Miller, The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society: An Encounter with a Modern City (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 221–43; Douglas W. Rae, City: Urbanism and Its End (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 348–49; Jeanne R. Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time: Progress and Poverty in America’s Renewing Cities (New York: Random House, 1967), 517–18, 522–44; Robert Halpern, Rebuilding the Inner City: A History of Neighborhood Initiatives to Address Poverty in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 89–97; Karen Ferguson, Top Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 49–64; Edward Zigler and Sally J. Styfo, The Hidden History of Head Start (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 9–10; “Antipoverty Expert Mitchell Sviridoff,” NYT; “Mitchell Sviridoff, 81, Dies; Renewal Chief,” NYT, October 23, 2000. A very rich source is Mitchell Sviridoff, ed., Inventing Community Renewal: The Trials and Errors That Shaped the Modern Community Development Corporation (New York: Milano Graduate School, New School University, 2004), passim but particularly 21–25, 27–35, 105–11, 121–29, 149–50, 160–96.

  The title “Gray Areas Program” was intended to be racially neutral, aiming instead at the older, often deteriorating sections of cities bordering downtowns; Wendell E. Pritchett, Robert Clifton Weaver and the American City: The Life and Times of an Urban Reformer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 197–99. For an excellent history suggesting a longer incubation for Gray Areas than Logue’s version, Alice O’Connor, “Community Action, Urban Reform, and the Fight Against Poverty: The Ford Foundation’s Gray Areas Program,” JUH 22, no. 5 (July 1996): 586–625. O’Connor explains how Ford wanted to avoid an explicitly racial agenda. In addition to New Haven, the other Gray Area sites were Boston, Oakland, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and the North Carolina Fund, a statewide agency.

      4. For extensive background on Sviridoff, see Inventing Community Renewal, particularly the interview with him, 160–96.

      5. Logue, interview by Cazenave, 2.

      6. “Interrogatory for Edward J. Logue,” eleven questions with responses by Logue, June 23, 1952, to Conrad E. Snow, Chairman, Loyalty Security Board, U.S. Department of State, 1–7, in response to a request from Mr. Snow, May 27, 1952, MDL, response to question 11.

      7. Linda Corman, “Former BRA Head Takes Another Look at the City He Helped Plan,” Banker and Tradesman, October 21, 1987, 6; “I have never met a developer I trusted” was a typical Loguism; from Robert Geddes, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, May 25, 2006, Princeton, NJ.

      8. William Lee Miller and L. Thomas Appleby, “‘You Shove Out the Poor to Make Houses for the Rich,’” NYT Magazine, April 11, 1965, 68.

      9. Robert A. Dahl, Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1961); Nelson W. Polsby, Community Power and Political Theory: A Further Look at Problems of Evidence and Inference (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1963; 2nd, enlarged ed. 1980); Raymond E. Wolfinger, The Politics of Progress (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974).

    10. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956); Floyd Hunter, Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1953). For a useful discussion of the elitism and democracy debate, see Phillip Allan Singerman, “Politics, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy: The Case of Urban Renewal in New Haven” (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1980), 3–36.

    11. G. William Domhoff, Who Really Rules? New Haven and Community Power Reexamined (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, Rutgers University, 1978), which is dedicated to Floyd Hunter. Also see “Who Really Ruled in Dahl’s New Haven?,” originally posted September 2005 but continually updated, http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/new_haven.html.

    12. Dahl looks back on Who Governs? in “A Conversation with Robert A. Dahl,” interview by Margaret Lev
i, Annual Review of Political Science 12 (2009): 1–9; Douglas Martin, “Robert A. Dahl Dies at 98; Yale Scholar Defined Politics and Power,” NYT, February 7, 2014.

    13. Wolfinger, Politics of Progress, 228; “Mayor Appoints Action Commission Headed by C of C Past Pres. Freese,” New Haven News Letter (published by the New Haven Chamber of Commerce) 9, no. 6 (September 1954), Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Redevelopment”; “How to Get Renewal off Dead Center,” AF 105, no. 4 (October 1956): 167–69.

    14. Dahl, Who Governs?, 136–37, 200–201.

    15. Ralph Taylor, interview by Robert Dahl, September 4, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews S–Z,” 8; Max Livingston, interview by Robert Dahl, August 5, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews I–R,” 9.

    16. New Haven Citizens Action Commission, Third Annual Report (New Haven, CT, 1957), 1, quoted in Dahl, Who Governs?, 122–23.

    17. Dick Banks, interview by Robert Dahl, July 23, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews A–H,” 2.

    18. Wolfinger, Politics of Progress, 305.

    19. Powledge, Model City, 28, 29, 37, 38–39, 42, 44, 66–67, 112–13, on Lee’s election results.

    20. Logue, interview by Robert Dahl and Nelson Polsby, September 3, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews I–R,” transcript, 16.

    21. Wolfinger, Politics of Progress, 285; Louis Harris and Associates, “A Survey of the Race for Mayor of New Haven,” February 1959, EJL, Series 4, Box 26, Folder 59, 16. Also see the Harris Poll, identified as “Post Election Survey—November 1954,” in EJL, Series 4, Box 24, Folder 27. A survey of registered voters in summer 1959 on the popularity of Lee and redevelopment found varying degrees of support but almost no outright opposition; Memo to Mayor Richard Lee from William Flanigan, September 2, 1959, Dahl, Box 3.

    22. Allan R. Talbot, The Mayor’s Game: Richard Lee of New Haven and the Politics of Change (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 126.

    23. In interview after interview, Logue would insist that little if any opposition was raised at public hearings, whether in the neighborhood or downtown in the alderman chambers. See, for example, Logue, interview, Steen, December 13, 1983, New York, NY, 7–8.

    24. Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 161.

    25. The Hartford Courant quote in Lowe, Cities in a Race with Time, 407. The Connecticut Democratic National committeeman John M. Golden told Time, “I’m for Dick Lee for anything,” in recognition of his strong voter appeal; “Cities: Forward Look in Connecticut,” Time, June 24, 1957.

    26. Hugo Lindgren, “New Haven,” Metropolis 13 (January–February 1994): 29.

    27. Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 89, 157; Joe Alex Morris, “He Is Saving a ‘Dead’ City,” SEP, April 19, 1958, 118.

    28. Quoted in Powledge, Model City, 90.

    29. Logue referred to trying to “keep my dearly beloved wife sullen rather than mutinous” from “all the overtime that I have been putting in and expect to put in between now and election,” in requesting four days off to sail back from Maine with the Bowleses; Logue to Richard Lee, August 23, 1955, EJL, Series 4, Box 27, Folder 70. Ralph Taylor’s wife, Henny, had vowed never to marry a doctor like her father, because of the demanding hours away from home; she had not expected that urban redevelopment work would prove much the same; H. Ralph Taylor, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, April 21, 2006, Chevy Chase, MD. Dick Banks, who worked closely with the mayor on public relations, told Dahl that Logue was “probably the hardest working guy in the city administration”; Banks, interview, 10. Frank O’Brion, the Tradesmen’s Bank president who chaired the New Haven Redevelopment Agency Board, observed to Dahl about Logue, Taylor, Grabino, and Appleby: “It’s amazing. These fellows work ten and twelve hours a day and Saturdays and Sundays”; Frank O’Brion, interview by Robert Dahl and Nelson Polsby, September 23, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews I–R,” transcript, 1.

    30. Harold Grabino, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, November 23, 2007, New York, NY.

    31. Allan Talbot, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 13, 2007, New York, NY. Talbot also recounted how one staff member got such a dressing-down at a weekend staff meeting held at Logue’s modern house that he “literally walked into the [glass] door, trying to get out of there.”

    32. Grabino, interview.

    33. Quoted in Margaret Logue, email message to author, April 25, 2011.

    34. Taylor, interview.

    35. Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 21. Staff member Harry Wexler made his own list of Logue’s contradictory personality traits: “brilliant, visionary, felt deeply about issues” as well as “arrogant, unforgiving, confrontational”; Harry Wexler, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, October 24, 2005, New Haven, CT; Harry Wexler, email message to author, September 12, 2005. Ed Logue’s brother-in-law, Milton DeVane, made similar observations: “He made up his mind fast,” “he was busy bringing all kinds of knowledge to bear on the questions that he had before him on a daily basis,” “he was absolutely an open person about … equality and not judging anyone on ethnic grounds,” and “he didn’t suffer fools gladly”; Milton DeVane, interview, April 13, 2006, New Haven, CT, Ruben, transcript, 15, 24, 25.

    36. Grabino, interview.

    37. Wolfinger, Politics of Progress, 198–99; Singerman, “Politics, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy,” 117–23; “Slum-Fighting Funds Requested by Cities,” NYT, October 2, 1958; Logue résumé, May 29, 1958, EJL, Series 4, Box 27, Folder 72; Logue quote from Logue, interview by Jean Joyce, October 22, 1976, Bowles, Part 9, Series 3, Subseries 3, Box 398, Folder 199b, transcript, 81. On JFK’s urban platform, see Roger Biles, The Fate of the Cities: Urban America and the Federal Government, 1945–2000 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 87.

    38. Mitchell Sviridoff, interview by Robert Dahl, September 18, 1957, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Interviews S–Z,” transcript, 5–6.

    39. Taylor, interview by Dahl, 6, 24.

    40. Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 23.

    41. “‘Dying City’ Label Stirs New Haven,” NYT, May 22, 1955; Robert J. Leeney, Elms, Arms, and Ivy: New Haven in the Twentieth Century (Montgomery, AL: Community Communications, in cooperation with the New Haven Colony Historical Society, 2000), 60; Talbot, Mayor’s Game, 122–23, 247.

    42. Richard Lee, interview by Ray Wolfinger, February 12, 1958, New Haven, CT, Dahl, Box 1, Folder “Special Interviews and Reports by Ray Wolfinger,” transcript, 3.

    43. Memorandum from Richard C. Lee to Logue, January 30, 1956; Memorandum from Logue to Richard C. Lee, February 6, 1956; EJL, Series 5, Box 51, Folder 309.

    44. New professional expectations had also arisen in the foreign service after the war; on the Foreign Service Act of 1946, see https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/foreign-service-act-1946. For the range of skills needed by new urban experts, see Singerman, “Politics, Bureaucracy, and Public Policy,” 138–39.

    45. Ambassador Chester Bowles, “Efficiency Report for Edward Joseph Logue for Period 1/28/1952 to 3/15/1953,” EJL, Series 3, Box 15, Folder 63, “Summary Comments,” 1.

    46. Logue to Douglas Ensminger, August 21, 1956, EJL, Series 4, Box 25, Folder 43.

    47. Two interrelated historical dynamics were under way here: a growing embrace of rational state planning as the American welfare and warfare state developed from the New Deal on, and the rise of broadly trained administrative experts to implement these new state functions.

  On the expansion of state planning, see Rexford G. Tugwell and Edward C. Banfield, “Governmental Planning at Mid-Century,” Journal of Politics 13, no. 2 (May 1951): 133–63 for emerging consensus by 1950 that “the kind of government which had now arrived necessitated planning. For the role of government was no longer merely rule-making,” 135. Otis L. Graham, Jr., traces the vicissitudes of a commitment to planning
by the federal government from the 1930s to the 1970s in Toward a Planned Society: From Roosevelt to Nixon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), but even when he argues that it slowed under Eisenhower, he singles out the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954 as exceptions: 124, 162.

  There is a substantial literature on experts in twentieth-century America, but much less on the post–World War II era than on the first half of the century, particularly on the generalist administrator. What exists tends to focus on more specialized experts, such as scientists and social scientists who brought their technical knowledge to solving the nation’s problems within narrowly defined areas. Christopher Klemek includes many of these same people in his notion of the “urbanist establishment”; his protagonists are mostly connected to academia. See his Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal: Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Also useful is Brian Balogh’s Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power, 1945–1975 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 1–20; Balogh argues that scientists shifted from a wariness toward the state to greater embrace of its funding and patronage, only to see their authority undermined by the 1970s.