Saving America's Cities

by Lizabeth Cohen

    25. Quoted in Weisman, “Nelson Rockefeller’s Pill,” 38.

    26. Lefkowitz, interview.

    27. David K. Shipler, “Sense of Crisis Over Housing Grips Officials,” NYT, November 16, 1969; typical of Logue’s frustration with the current levels of funding is Logue, “NAHRO’s 1968 Workshops in Community Development,” JH 25, no. 9 (October 1968): 459–62.

    28. National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (Kerner Commission), Report of the National Commission on Civil Disorders (New York: Bantam, 1968); President’s Committee on Urban Housing (Kaiser Committee), A Decent Home (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968); Building the American City: Report of the National Commission on Urban Problems to the Congress and to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1968).

    29. Quoted in Samuel Kaplan, “Bridging the Gap from Rhetoric to Reality: The New York State Urban Development Corporation,” AF 131, no. 4 (November 1969): 73.

    30. Kaplan, “Bridging the Gap.”

    31. For Logue’s defense of government, see “Planning and Urban Renewal: A Discussion with Edward Logue,” in Franziska Porges Hosken, The Functions of Cities (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1973), 116.

    32. Quote in Linda Charlton, “Ronan Says Rockefeller Made Loans as a Friend,” NYT, November 19, 1974; Frank Lynn, “Rockefeller Gives Details of Gifts to 20 Recipients,” NYT, October 12, 1974; “Text of Rockefeller Letter and a List of Recipients of Gifts and Loans by Him,” NYT, October 12, 1974; William Greider, “Rocky Gift to Author Reported,” WP, October 13, 1974; Robert Lanzner, “Logue to Be Sacked by N.Y. Governor,” BG, January 10, 1975; for $65,000 salary, see Ursula Cliff, “UDC Scorecard,” Design and Environment 3, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 63; also see Logue, interview, Steen, February 4, 1985, Lincoln, MA, 12–17.

    33. MLogue, interview. Colleagues were shocked when the news came out. For example, Larry Goldman said, “I was disappointed in him.” Allan Talbot recalled, “Everyone’s jaw dropped when that came out.” Goldman, interview; Allan Talbot, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 13, 2007, New York, NY.

    34. Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 10–13.

    35. “Statement by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller, April 5, 1968,” Public Papers of Nelson Rockefeller, 1968, 1039, in Smith, On His Own Terms, 522; for more on Rockefeller’s relationship with King, see 371, 395, 457–58, and related to the assassination, funeral, and UDC, 521–25, 527, 628.

    36. The struggle against regional and state authorities for usurping the power of local government went on elsewhere as well; see Louise Nelson Dyble, “The Defeat of the Golden Gate Authority: A Special District, a Council of Governments, and the Fate of Regional Planning in the San Francisco Bay Area,” JUH 34, no. 2 (January 2008): 287–308.

    37. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 3:2; also see Smith, On His Own Terms, 525–26; Kaplan, “Bridging the Gap,” 71.

    38. Sam Roberts, “Robert R. Douglass, Adviser to Rockefellers, Dies at 85,” NYT, December 7, 2016.

    39. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 1:18.

    40. “Let There Be Commitment”: A Housing, Planning, Development Program for New York City, Report of a Study Group of the Institute of Public Administration to Mayor John V. Lindsay (New York: Institute of Public Administration, 1966), 12; Steven V. Roberts, “One Housing Body Is Urged for City,” NYT, June 15, 1966; Steven V. Roberts, “Homes for Millions Proposed for City in Next Ten Years,” NYT, October 2, 1966; Editorial: To Rejuvenate New York,” NYT, October 2, 1966; Mort Young, “Logue’s Committee Outlines Plans to Reorganize Housing,” World Journal Tribune, November 4, 1966. For Logue’s recounting of this failed recruitment, see Logue, interview, Steen, December 13, 1983, New York, NY, 45. For the opposition to Logue: Michael D. Appleby, “Logue’s Record in Boston: An Analysis of His Renewal and Planning Activities, with a Foreword and Summary by Herbert J. Gans for the Steering Committee, Council for New York Housing and Planning Policy, Funded by the Normal Foundation, May 1966,” EJL, 2002 Accession, Box 22, Folder “Logue’s Record in Boston by Michael Appleby”; and a collection of flyers and correspondence opposing Logue from 1966, including a broadside titled “Keep the Boston Bulldozer out of New York City!” in the Papers of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, Box 65, Folder 38, Tamiment Library, New York University.

    41. Logue, interview, Steen, December 13, 1983, New York, NY, 39–42; Steven V. Roberts, “Civil Unit Backs Planning Agency,” NYT, March 14, 1966; Steven V. Roberts, “Boston’s Mastermind in Renewal Weighs Lindsay’s Offer for a Post in City,” NYT, May 1, 1966; Steven V. Roberts, “Logue Won’t Take City Renewal Job,” NYT, November 16, 1966; Robert Hannan, “Report: Logue Rejects N.Y. Post; His Reaction: I Like Boston,” BH, November 16, 1966; Steven V. Roberts, “Mayor and the Slums: Logue’s Rejection of Post Underscores City Housing Ills,” NYT, November 17, 1966.

    42. Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 40–41, 44–45; also in Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 1:24–25; for a helpful analysis of the triangle of Rockefeller, Lindsay, and Logue, see Martin Nolan, “3 Strong Wills Converge in New York,” BG, June 22, 1968.

    43. Sydney H. Schanberg, “State’s Urban Agency to Be Led by Logue, Who Spurned City Job,” NYT, April 27, 1968.

    44. My treatment of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation and Logue’s role is based on Mitchell Sviridoff, ed., Inventing Community Renewal: The Trials and Errors That Shaped the Modern Community Development Corporation (New York: Community Development Research Center, New School University Milano Graduate School, 2004), 67–91, 198–240, quote from Judge Jones on 83; Logue, interview by Roberta Greene, January 23, 1976, New York, NY, for the Robert F. Kennedy Oral History Project at the John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, MA; Michael Woodsworth, Battle for Bed-Stuy: The Long War on Poverty in New York City (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 236–64; Karen Ferguson, Town Down: The Ford Foundation, Black Power, and the Reinvention of Racial Liberalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 220–31; Edward R. Schmitt, President of the Other America: Robert Kennedy and the Politics of Poverty (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2010), 146–68; Brian Purnell, “‘What We Need Is Brick and Mortar’: Race, Gender, and Early Leadership of the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation,” in The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America, ed. Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 217–44; Tom Adam Davies, “Black Power in Action: The Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Robert F. Kennedy, and the Politics of the Urban Crisis,” JAH 100, no. 3 (December 2013): 736–60; Kimberley Johnson, “Community Development Corporations, Participation, and Accountability: The Harlem Urban Development Corporation and the Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation,” Annals, AAPSS 594 (July 2004): 109–24; “To Save a Slum,” Newsweek, November 20, 1967; Leroy F. Aarons, “RFK Announces Big N.Y. Anti-Slum Program,” WP, December 11, 1966; Wolf Von Eckardt, “‘Bed-Stuy’ and Urban Attitudes,” WP, October 20, 1970.

    45. Logue also got caught in the political crossfires of two boards competing in the early years. Activists cynically referred to them as the “Black Board” (the Bedford-Stuyvesant Renewal and Rehabilitation Corporation, representing the community) and the “White Board” (the Bedford-Stuyvesant Development and Services Corporation, representing the funders).

    46. Logue, interview, Steen, February 4, 1985, Lincoln, MA, 17–18.

    47. Loewenstein, “Forgotten Failure,” 261.

    48. Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 3, 71. She notes that Paul Davidoff, the well-known advocacy planner, opposed the UDC in March 1968 because he feared it would not build enough low-income housing. His view would change.

    49. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 1:21–22; Logue, interview, Steen, February 4, 1985, Lincoln, MA, 27, 31; Schanber
g, “State’s Urban Agency to Be Led by Logue, Who Spurned City Job.”

    50. Moreland, 103; Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 6, 123–24; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 50–54, 73–74, 102–3.

    51. Logue commentary in Rockefeller in Retrospect, 209; “‘New Towns’ Plan Faces Tax Hurdle,” NYT, February 8, 1970; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 99–100; Moreland, 103–4.

    52. Loewenstein, “Forgotten Failure,” 261, 272; Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 38, 124; Peter Kihss, “State Starts Plans for 2 ‘New Towns,’” NYT, August 4, 1969.

    53. Logue, “Goals, Policies, Prospects of the New York State Urban Development Corporation,” July 1972, 4.

    54. David K. Shipler, “Across the State, Renewal Hopes Rise,” NYT, April 18, 1969; NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 43; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 67.

    55. On Newburgh: Douglas V. Clarke, “State Development Unit Will Assist Newburgh,” NYT, August 18, 1968; Clarke, “State Urban Aid Agency Maps Newburgh Debut,” NYT, January 26, 1969; Richard Schickel, “New York’s Mr. Urban Renewal,” NYT Magazine, March 1, 1970; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974, 64; Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 121–23.

  On Rochester: Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 124–25, 190–96; Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 49–51; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:1; Logue, interview, Steen, April 9, 1990, Boston, MA, 37–42; NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 39–41; NYSUDC Annual Report 1970, 47, 60–61; Rochester Public Library, Local History Division, Pamphlet File: “Housing—Projects (Urban Development Corporation)” and “City Planning–Industrial Centers,” miscellaneous brochures; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 38, 45, 47, 49, 51, 70; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 17, 21, 48, 51–52, 77, 80–81, 84; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 16–17, 21–22, 24–25, 27, 30, 42–43; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974, 13, 36, 63.

  On the Buffalo Rudolph project: Logue, interview, Steen, February 4, 1985, Lincoln, MA, 32–33; Logue, interview, Steen, April 9, 1990, Boston, MA, 20; Mark Byrnes, “The Slow Death of a Brutalist Vision for Buffalo,” Atlantic CityLab, June 10, 2015; NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 24–25, 53; NYSUDC Annual Report 1970, 28–29, 68; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 38; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 17; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974.

  On Schomburg Plaza: NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 24, 34; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 35; Hilary Ballon, “Schomburg Plaza,” in Affordable Housing in New York: The People, Places, and Policies That Transformed a City, ed. Nicholas Dagen Bloom and Matthew Gordon Lasner (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 219–23.

  On Niagara Falls: Logue, interview, Steen, January 16, 1991, Boston, MA, 27–28; Terence Cooper, “Downtown Urban Renewal Results in Economic, Social, Aesthetic Restoration for Niagara Falls,” JH 36, no. 1 (January 1979): 25–28; NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 38, 53; NYSUDC Annual Report 1970, 45; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 41, 70; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 22; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 12, 17; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974, 7, 45, 52.

  On Hurricane Agnes: Lawrence Van Gelder, “$72-Million Plan Is Proposed to Redevelop Elmira,” NYT, October 15, 1972; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 22–23, 25–33; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 13, 69; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974, 52; Logue, interview, Steen, January 6, 1991, Boston, MA, 29.

  On Carlken Manor: NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 50, 70; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 27.

    56. On the anticipated population increase, New Communities for New York: A Report Prepared by the New York State Urban Development Corporation and the New York State Office of Planning Coordination, 1970, 3, 11.

    57. David K. Shipler, “Across the State, Renewal Hopes Rise,” NYT, April 18, 1969; Lindsay quote from NYDN in Maura Ewing, “Innovation and Neglect: Sea Rise and Sea Park East,” Urban Omnibus, November 19, 2014, http://urbanomnibus.net/2014/11/innovation-and-neglect-sea-rise-and-sea-park-east/.

    58. Quote in Nolan, “3 Strong Wills Converge in New York”; Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 42–43.

    59. David K. Shipler, “The Changing City: Housing Paralysis,” NYT, June 5, 1969; Shipler, “Sense of Crisis Over Housing Grips Officials,” NYT, November 16, 1969; Walsh, “Public Authorities and the Shape of Decision Making,” 204; also see Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:1–3 on how New York City came around.

    60. Richard Rogin, “New Town on a New York Island Named Welfare,” City 5, no. 3 (May–June 1971): 44.

    61. Jay Curtis Getz, “The Progressive Technician and Mr. Urban Renewal: Lawrence Veiller, Edward Logue, and the Evolution of Planning for Low-Income Housing” (M.A. thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1990), 115; NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 29; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 20–21.

    62. Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 122–23; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:3–4.

    63. On Janet Murphy, see Goldman, interview; Lefkowitz, interview. On Lefkowitz and Logue, Lefkowitz, interview; Smith, On His Own Terms, 671; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 1:23 for Logue’s awareness that Lefkowitz was sent to watch him.

    64. Ted Liebman, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, October 15, 2006, New York, NY. Liebman began working at the UDC in August 1969.

    65. Lawrence P. Goldman, Eulogy at Edward J. Logue Memorial Service, April 27, 2000, Boston, 2; Goldman comment, “Operations: How the UDC Program Worked,” Panel No. 1, “Policy and Design for Housing: Lessons of the Urban Development Corporation, 1968–1975” conference, CUNY Graduate Center, June 11, 2005, transcript, 33.

    66. Richard Kahan, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 15, 2007, New York, NY.

    67. Paul Byard, “Edward J. Logue, AIA Memorial,” at “2nd Annual Ratensky Housing Lecture Celebrating the Work of Housing and Planning Czar Edward J. Logue,” Seagram’s Tower, New York, NY, May 24, 2000.

    68. Housing New York: Ed Logue and His Architects, brochure from the exhibition presented by the Architectural League and the Municipal Art Society, Urban Center, New York, NY, February 5–April 14, 2001, 3.

    69. Quote in Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 3:28–29; Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 38; Joseph P. Fried, “The Roof Falls In,” Nation, August 16, 1975, 104; John Fischer, “The Easy Chair: Notes from the Underground,” Harper’s, February 1970, 14.

    70. Lefkowitz, interview; Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 38; Anthony Pangaro, interview by Cohen, June 24, 2009, Boston, MA; “Legislator Assails ‘Logue’s Lush Lair,’” NYT, March 27, 1971.

    71. Alan S. Oser, “Logue Forecasts 1973 Slowdown in U.D.C. Pace,” NYT, August 12, 1973.

    72. Logue, “NAHRO’s 1968 Workshops in Community Development,” 461.

    73. Reilly and Schulman, “State Urban Development Corporation,” 137.

    74. Franklin Whitehouse, “Major Builders Determined to Spur Housing in City,” NYT, April 4, 1971.

    75. Kristof, “Housing,” 192.

    76. Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 2.

    77. Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 10–11, 16–19; Allan R. Talbot, “The Easy Chair: Boston’s Bristly Mr. Logue,” Harper’s, November 1966, 30; Kristof, “Housing,” 196–97; Goldman, interview; Lefkowitz, interview.

    78. Richard Ravitch, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, October 22, 2007, New York, NY.

    79. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 4:7; “After the Pratfall: UDC Dusts Off the Debris of Default,” AR 158, no. 6 (Mid-October 1975): 124; also Loewenstein, “Forgotten Failure,” 263.

    80. Talbot, “Easy Chair: Boston’s Bristly Mr. Logue,” 28.

    81. Kristof, “Housing,” 189, 195; Fischer, “Easy Chair: Notes from the Underground,” 22; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 109; Moreland, 126; Oser, “Logue Forecasts 1973 Slowdown in U.D.C. Pace,” NYT, August 12, 1973.

    82. Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 37–39, 51, 109; Loewenstein, “Forgotten Failure,” 272; Loewe
nstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 30, 122; Lefkowitz, interview; Mary Perot Nichols, “On a Shifty Foundation: The Houses Rocky Built,” New Republic, July 17, 1976, 27.

    83. Logue, “A Summing Up,” from the New York State Urban Development Corporation, Urban America, “The Proceedings of the Conference at Tarrytown,” New York, NY, 1970, 221.

    84. Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 27; also Talbot, interview.

    85. Logue, interview, Steen, March 3, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 36, also 4, 46–47.

    86. Kaplan, “Bridging the Gap,” 72.

    87. Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 75.

    88. Logue, “NAHRO’s 1968 Workshops in Community Development,” 460; Logue, “What Sort of Future for Boston? A Look at Home from Abroad,” Boston University Journal 18, no. 1 (Winter 1970): 49–50; Logue, interview by Franziska Porges Hosken, 1971, audiotape, Rotch Architecture and Design Library, MIT; “Rockefeller Asks City Plan Liaison,” NYT, November 19, 1969; “New York Plan Makes Concentration a Virtue,” NYT, November 23, 1969.