Saving America's Cities

by Lizabeth Cohen

    89. Logue, interview, Steen, October 31, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 6.

    90. “The New City,” in Robert A. M. Stern, New Directions in American Architecture (New York: George Braziller, 1969), 105–13; Steven Conn, Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 70–75, 94–113, 245–51, 266–69; Cathy D. Knepper, Greenbelt, Maryland: A Living Legacy of the New Deal (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); Julie D. Turner, “To Make America Over: The Greenbelt Towns of the New Deal” (Ph.D. dissertation, Miami University, 2010); Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Suburban Alchemy: 1960s New Towns and the Transformation of the American Dream (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001); Carol Corden, Planned Cities: New Towns of Britain and America (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Library of Social Research, 1977); Mark Reinberger, “Peachtree City, Georgia: Progressivism in a Post-War Southern New Town,” JPH 13, no. 3 (August 2014): 247–72; Logue, interview, Steen, December 2, 1988, Lincoln, MA, 34.

    91. For a comprehensive survey of the substantial literature on New Towns, see Rosemary Wakeman, Practicing Utopia: An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016). Also D. Burtenshaw, M. Bateman, and G. J. Ashforth, The City in Western Europe (Chichester, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 1981), 284–302. For more on British New Towns, see “The New Towns Record, 1946–2002,” primary sources compiled by Anthony Burton and Joyce Hartly (London: i-documentsystems, 2002); Frederic J. Osborn and Arnold Whittick, New Towns: Their Origins, Achievements and Progress (London: Leonard Hill, 1977); Stephen V. Ward, Planning and Urban Change, 2nd ed. (London: Sage Publications, 2004); John R. Gold, The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 (London: Routledge, 2007).

  For other countries: Heikki von Hertzen and Paul D. Spreiregen, Building a New Town: Finland’s New Garden City Tapiola, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973); David Pass, Vällingby and Farsta—from Idea to Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1973); Kenny Cupers, The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 183–219; Jack A. Underhill with Paul Brace and James Rubenstein, French National Urban Policy and the Paris Region New Towns (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1980); Carlos C. Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live (Reston, VA: Reston Publishing, Prentice-Hall, 1976), “Learning from the Europeans,” 233–40; Jennifer S. Mack, “New Swedes in the New Town,” and Michelle Provoost, “WiMBY!’s New Collectives,” in Kenny Cupers, Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture (London: Routledge, 2013), 121–37, 183–98.

    92. Logue, interview, Steen, December 2, 1988, Lincoln, MA, 35; Logue, “The Need for Urban Growth Politics,” AIA Journal 5, no. 5 (May 1971): 18–22; Logue, interview by Carlos Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 210.

    93. “Fort Lincoln Urban Renewal Area,” National Capital Planning Commission Redevelopment Land Agency, 1967; Jared Stout, “NCPC Best Plan for Racially Balanced ‘New Town,’” WP, August 9, 1968; Wolf Von Eckardt, “Fort Lincoln: Tugging the Bottom Card,” WP, March 23, 1969; Wolf Von Eckardt, “Holding Down the Fort: The Unfulfilled Promises of Ft. Lincoln,” WP, January 26, 1980; Martha Derthick, “Defeat at Fort Lincoln,” Public Interest 20 (Summer 1970): 3–39; Martha Derthick, New Towns In-Town: Why a Federal Program Failed (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 1972); Howard R. Moskof, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, April 21, 2006, Chevy Chase, MD. Fort Lincoln New Town finally did get built by a private developer, with economic diversity in housing types but not race, as it is almost all black, with large representations of Jamaicans and Africans; Linda Wheeler, “Fort Lincoln: Finding a Leafy Enclave,” WP, July 18, 1992; “LBJ’s ‘Great Society’ Spawned Fort Lincoln Development Plan,” Common Denominator, May 6, 2002; Clarence Williams, “Hope Stirs in Fort Lincoln,” WP, April 30, 2007; “Washington, DC (Fort Lincoln New Town),” NeighborhoodScout, https://www.neighborhoodscout.com/dc/washington/fort-lincoln-new-town.

    94. Lefkowitz, interview, on speed of undertaking New Towns and staff tours; John Stainton, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, May 30, 2007, Jamaica Plain, MA. Overviews of the New Town Program in Robert T. Dormer, “Three New Towns,” JH, February 1979, 87; Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 221–69.

    95. Syracuse Herald-Journal, May 28, 1969, quoted in Harvey H. Kaiser, The Building of Cities: Development and Conflict (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978), 82; Buffalo Evening News, November 24, 1969, quoted in Ed Durbin, “Contesting Suburbia: The Struggle for Suburban Space in Western New York,” Oxford University Paper, May 2012; Logue, “A Summing Up,” from “The Proceedings of the Conference at Tarrytown,” 1970, 224; Virginia Ross, “UDC: Detour on the Road to ‘New Town,’” Buffalo Magazine, October 1971, 32; “Some Things Worked, Some Didn’t; Subsidized Housing Faltered,” Syracuse Herald-American, October 11, 2000.

    96. On Lysander: NYSUDC Annual Reports 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, and 1974; Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 257–64; Weisman, “Nelson Rockefeller’s Pill,” 40 for Schlitz quote; Kaiser, “Lysander (Radisson)” chapter in The Building of Cities: Development and Conflict, 68–102; Radisson: Building Today for Tomorrow, supplement to The Baldwinsville Messenger, n.d.

    97. Only a fraction of the scale planned for was actually built. On Audubon: “General Project Plan for the Amherst New Community,” Kermit Carlyle Parsons Papers, #15-2-1420, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library; A New Community in Amherst, Vol. 1: The Plan (New York: New York State Urban Development Corporation, Planning Consultants: Llewelyn-Davies Associates, n.d.); Durbin, “Contesting Suburbia”; David Foster Parker, “The Audubon Experiment in New Community Development” (DPA dissertation, SUNY Albany, 1980); NYSUDC Annual Report 1969, 46, 52; NYSUDC Annual Report 1970, 56, 69; NYSUDC Annual Report 1971, 40; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 20, 50–51; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 12; NYSUDC Annual Report 1974, 7.

    98. My discussion of Roosevelt Island is based on Philip Johnson and John Burgee, The Island Nobody Knows (NYSUDC, October 1969); Yonah Freemark, “Roosevelt Island: Exception to a City in Crisis,” JUH 37, no. 3 (May 2011): 355–83; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 74–82, 110–17, 157; Judith Berdy and the Roosevelt Island Historical Society, Images of America: Roosevelt Island (Charleston, SC: Acadia, 2003); Timothy D. Berg, “Reshaping Gotham: The City Livable Movement and the Redevelopment of New York” (Ph.D. dissertation, Purdue University, 1999), 83–119; Affordable Housing in New York, 198–201, 234–39; Robert A. M. Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman, New York 1960 (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), 640–59; Municipal Art Society Panel on Logue and Roosevelt Island, March 7, 2001, full transcript, http://www.edlogue.org/docs/Logue-Roosevelet_03-07-01.pdf. The papers for the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation are in NYSA.

    99. Johnson and Burgee, Island Nobody Knows; also see Philip Johnson and John Burgee, “The Plan for Welfare Island,” technical report, October 7, 1969, prepared for NYSUDC.

  100. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:5. Logue and Johnson were already acquainted professionally; Philip Johnson to Logue, December 8, 1964, and Philip Johnson to Logue, February 21, 1966, EJL, Series 6, Box 150, Folder 413.

  101. Ada Louise Huxtable, “This Time They Mean It,” NYT, October 19, 1969; Huxtable, “Quality Design with Amenities,” NYT, October 7, 1970; Peter Blake, “The Island Nobody Knows,” New York, November 10, 1969, 63; Paul Goldberger, “New Urban Environment: Roosevelt Island Is Exhilarating Now but Status as Community Is Years Off,” NYT, May 18, 1976; also Goldberger, The City Observed: New York, a Guide to the Architecture of Manhattan (New York: Random House, 1979), 331–37.

  102. Anthony Bailey, “Manhattan’s Other Island,” NYT, December 1, 1974.

  103. Johnson and Burgee, Island Nobody Knows, 3, 15.

  104. Judy Berdy, “Preserving Social History on Roosevelt Island,” May 23, 2005, Roosevelt Island Historical Society website, htt
p://rihs.us/?page_id=2.

  105. The idea for the renaming was originally proposed in a NYT editorial, April 12, 1970; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:9; Stern et al., New York 1960, 649. The bust of Roosevelt had been sculpted by Jo Davidson in 1933. Also Logue, “Reflections on Roosevelt Island,” July 2, 1998, 4, courtesy of Ivan Steen; Logue to Robert Geddes, September 21, 1992, courtesy of Robert Geddes; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:16–18; Ted Liebman, interview by Yonah Freemark, April 25, 2008, on Kahn and Logue as fans of FDR; “Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park,” http://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org; “Timeline: The FDR Memorial for Roosevelt Island,” provided by Cooper Union, The Main Street Wire, January 22, 2005; Coming to Light: The Louis I. Kahn Monument to Franklin D. Roosevelt for New York City (January 10–February 5, 2005), Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 2005, which includes in its frontispiece a quote from Kahn with his reasons for a garden and a room.

  106. Dormer, “Three New Towns,” 86–89; Freemark, “Roosevelt Island.”

  107. Logue blamed Johnson and Burgee for this “stupid mistake.” They were told that the build-out had to be five thousand units of housing, but the plan they produced only accommodated four thousand, which obligated Logue to make changes, including building higher; Logue, interview, Steen, October 31, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 32.

  108. Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 211; Logue, interview, Steen, October 31, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 32–33.

  109. Logue, “Piecing the Political Pie,” Saturday Review, May 15, 1971, 29; Logue, interview, Steen, October 31, 1986, Lincoln, MA, 15.

  110. Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 209, 214.

  111. Brochure, “UDC and Housing Policy,” New York State Development Corporation, n.d., Kermit Carlyle Parsons Publications, Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Collection #6691, Box 2.

  112. Logue, “Goals, Policies, Prospects of the New York State Urban Development Corporation,” July 1972, 7.

  113. Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (New York: New American Library, 1966), 429–33; Michael L. Gillette, Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History (New York: Twayne, 1996), 32.

  114. Logue, interviews, Steen, Lincoln, MA, October 31, 1986, 16–23, and March 3, 1986, 32, for Logue quotes; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 4:21; also John Zuccotti, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, December 10, 2007, New York, NY; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 115–16; “‘… Hung, Drawn and Quartered’: The Adam Yarmolinsky Story,” BG, August 13, 1964; Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 214; “Welfare Island: A Problem for Housing,” NYT, February 16, 1972; Richard Ravitch, So Much to Do: A Full Life of Business, Politics, and Confronting Fiscal Crisis (New York: Public Affairs, 2014), 51–53.

  115. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 2:13–14.

  116. Logue, “Goals, Policies, Prospects of the New York State Urban Development Corporation,” 7; Logue made similar points for a larger audience in “Piecing the Political Pie,” Saturday Review, 29.

  117. “Roosevelt Island, Eastwood,” Josep Lluís Sert Papers, Special Collections, HGSD (hereafter Sert).

  118. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 3:42; Ewing, “Innovation and Neglect: Sea Rise and Sea Park East.”

  119. Loewenstein, Private Benefits, Public Costs, 26.

  120. Kahan, interview; NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 39; “Celebration,” NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 51.

  121. Edith Evans Asbury, “Pickets Mar Housing Dedication Here,” NYT, July 26, 1972, in Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 159. Logue responded characteristically by saying that the protesters were only exercising their rights to “free speech”; Logue, interview, Steen, August 3, 1988, Boston, MA, 10.

  122. Hilary Ballon, “Schomburg Plaza,” in Affordable Housing in New York, 221.

  123. “Learning from Twin Parks,” AF 138, no. 5 (June 1973): 62–67; Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 147–48; Mariana Mogilevich, “Designing the Urban: Space and Politics in Lindsay’s New York” (Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard, 2012), 169–86; NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 35; Nicholai Ouroussoff, “By the Architects, for the People: A Trend for the 2010s,” NYT, May 3, 2010; Susanne Schindler and Juliette Spertus, “A Few Days in the Bronx: From Co-op City to Twin Parks,” Urban Omnibus, July 25, 2012, https://urbanomnibus.net/2012/07/a-few-days-in-the-bronx-from-co-op-city-to-twin-parks/; Yonah Freemark and Susanne Schindler, “Twin Parks,” in Affordable Housing in New York, 226–30.

  124. Jane Jacobs, interview by James Howard Kunstler, “Godmother of the American City,” expanded from Metropolis, March 2001, in Jane Jacobs: The Last Interview and Other Conversations (Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2016), 81. In early 1967 on a speaking tour of Britain, Jacobs complained after spending an evening with planners, “These people are tiresome beyond belief about their new towns, etc. I wish they would just leave me alone”; quoted in Robert Kanigel, Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016), 260.

  125. Margaret Mead, epilogue to Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 267.

  126. Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 306; minority figure from 1974.

  127. Mark Lamster, “Rethinking Roosevelt Island,” Design Observer, January 14, 2012, http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=32188.

  128. Logue, “A Summing Up,” from “The Proceedings of the Conference at Tarrytown,” 1970, 224.

  129. Campbell, New Towns: Another Way to Live, 210.

  130. William Lucy, “Logue on Cities,” Planning 51 (August 1985): 15.

  131. George M. Merry, “Logue Heads for Statewide Approach in N.Y. Renewal Setup,” CSM, May 3, 1968.

  132. My discussion of Logue and the UDC’s involvement in Harlem, including the struggle over the state office building and the creation of the Harlem Urban Development Corporation, is based on the following sources: Johnson, “Community Development Corporations, Participation, and Accountability,” 109–24; Louella Jacqueline Long and Vernon Ben Robinson, How Much Power to the People? A Study of the New York State Urban Development Corporation’s Involvement in Black Harlem (New York: Faculty-Student Technical Assistance Project, Urban Center, Columbia University, 1971); A Profile of the Harlem Area, Findings of the Harlem Task Force, December 1973; Harlem the Next Ten Years: A Proposal for Discussion (New York: Harlem Urban Development Corporation, June 1974); Brian Goldstein, “‘The Search for New Forms’: Black Power and the Making of the Postmodern City,” JAH 103, no. 2 (September 2016): 375–99, and the larger discussion in his book, The Roots of Urban Renaissance: Gentrification and the Struggle over Harlem (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017), 47–51, 85–118, 128–35, 143–52; Brilliant, Urban Development Corporation, 83–90, 118–32; Siskind, “Shades of Black and Green,” 252–56, 260–62; Peter Siskind, “‘Rockefeller’s Vietnam’? Black Politics and Urban Development in Harlem, 1969–1974,” paper presented at Gotham Center, CUNY Graduate Center, October 6, 2001; Ivan Steen, “Edward J. Logue, the New York State Urban Development Corporation, and New York City,” paper presented at Gotham Center, CUNY Graduate Center, October 6, 2001, in possession of the author; and relevant Amsterdam News articles, 1968–1982.

  133. “Harlem Towers Signal New Day,” Amsterdam News, February 10, 1968.

  134. Charlayne Hunter, “State Aide Assailed on Proposed Plan for Site in Harlem,” NYT, December 12, 1969.

  135. Ada Louise Huxtable, “The State Office Building Dilemma,” NYT, November 2, 1969, in Siskind, “Shades of Black and Green,” 255.

  136. “State Building Now Postponed; Rocky Gives In to Area,” Amsterdam News, July 5, 1969.

  137. Charlayne Hunter, “Development Unit Set Up for Harlem,” NYT, July 14, 1971; Bill Kovach, “State Unit Offers Aid on Facilities for Harlem Site,” NYT, September 19, 1969, on Logue’s search for a representative group.

  138. Harlem Urban Development Corporation, “The Harlem Urban Development Corporation: A Review of Structure, Programs, Pe
rformance,” 7, in Steen, “Edward J. Logue … and New York City,” 8.

  139. Temporary Commission of Investigation of the State of New York, An Investigation into the Creation of the Harlem Urban Development Corporation and Its Operations from 1981–1995 (New York, April 1998).

  140. Nelson Rockefeller to Edward Logue, January 15, 1973, EJL, Box 321, Folder “Correspondence: Nelson A. Rockefeller (1973 Jan–Feb),” and Edward Logue to Nelson Rockefeller, September 22, 1971, EJL, Box 321, Folder “Correspondence: Hugh L. Carey (1974–75)” in Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State, 138.

  141. Freemark, “Entrepreneurial State,” 138.

  142. Rudy Johnson, “Less Profit Seen in Ghetto Housing,” NYT, March 31, 1973.

  143. NYSUDC Annual Report 1973, 64. It is worth noting that Logue’s years at the UDC corresponded with the U.S. Department of Labor’s implementing of the Philadelphia Plan, a requirement to set goals and timetables in hiring minority workers within the highly discriminatory construction trades.

  144. “Harlem on the Move—State Office Building Opening,” Amsterdam News, March 16, 1974.

  145. NYSUDC Annual Report 1972, 72.

  146. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 4:11–12.