Eyes on the Street
Page 52
“I never had a closer friend”: “We were as intimate as you can be without…” He pauses. “Without being intimate?” Yes.
“rather unhappy phone call”: Jason Epstein to JJ, June 22, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
“think no more about it”: JJ to Jason Epstein, June 30, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
“I have every confidence”: Jason Epstein to JJ, July 2, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
twenty-chapter outline: Compare JJ to Jason Epstein, June 30, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare, to JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 17, 1959, Rockefeller.
under no circumstances: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 23, 1959, Rockefeller.
“I am not rehashing old material”: Compare Jane’s words, and even their cadence, to those of another formally uneducated genius. In my book The Man Who Knew Infinity I tell of an Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who appeals to the distinguished English mathematician G. H. Hardy this way: “I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself.” Jane: “I am not rehashing old material on cities and city planning. I am working with new concepts about the city and its behavior.”
“have to give her what she needs”: Douglas Haskell to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 5, 1959, Rockefeller.
“a great and influential book”: William H. Whyte to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 1, 1959, Rockefeller.
“I’m averaging a chapter a week”: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, October 29, 1959, Rockefeller.
“her big chance”: William H. Whyte to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 1, 1959, Rockefeller.
“good, cold-blooded mood”: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 2, 1960, Rockefeller.
“working away quite happily”: JJ to Jason Epstein, January 11, 1960, Random House Papers, Box 535, Columbia Rare.
“if the remainder of the book”: Chadbourne Gilpatric to JJ, May 19, 1961, Rockefeller.
“sweetly meant inanities”: D&L, p. 248.
“Under the seeming disorder”: D&L, p. 65.
“I expected merely to describe”: Foreword, D&L, p. xxi.
“elaborately learned superstition”: D&L, p. 17.
“His aim was”: D&L, p. 24.
“pretty ticked off”: Kunstler, I, p. 5.
She did visit it: JJ to Herbert Gans, November 24, 1958, Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“on his hands and knees”: Kunstler, II, p. 1.
“show you how they worked”: Kunstler, I, p. 6.
“so feckless as a people”: D&L, p. 11.
“It is fluidity of use”: D&L, p. 238.
“Old ideas”: D&L, p. 245.
“The overcrowded slums”: D&L, p. 265.
“In cities, liveliness and variety”: This and the next five quotes appear on these pages, respectively, of D&L: 129, 117, 123, 435, 483, and 312.
“Frequent borders”: D&L, p. 346.
“a line of exchange”: D&L, p. 349.
“Near where I live”: D&L, p. 350.
“The floor of the building”: D&L, p. 252.
“They are extremely touchy”: JJ to Albert L. Ely III, March 29, 1962, Burns.
“There is something more”: JJ to Ellen Perry, October 11, 1959; this account is based on phone interview and correspondence with Ellen Perry Berkeley and correspondence between her and JJ that she made available. Berkeley went on to become a senior editor at Architectural Forum after Jane left. She wrote to Jane in 1996, “I feel as far from those days in NYC as you probably do. But I’ll never be so far from those days to [forget] how very nice you were to me.”
“The subjects she asked me to follow”: Ellen Perry Berkeley to author, June 11, 2012.
“People who are interested”: D&L, p. 20.
“There is a quality even meaner”: D&L, p. 21.
“This is the fourth draft”: JJ to Jason Epstein, December 15 (1960), Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“in an oblique way”: D&L, p. 559.
“What makes an evening primrose”: D&L, p. 563.
“nothing accidental or irrational”: D&L, p. 566.
“the triumph of the mathematical average”: D&L, p. 569.
“I am somewhat allergic”: Nathan Glazer to JJ, January 30, 1961, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“The task of science”: From a scrap headed “The New Sociology,” in Burns, 19:12.
“the freshness and immutability”: Laurence, “The Death and Life of Urban Design,” p. 165.
“I very strongly disagree”: JJ to Nat [Glazer], February 2, 1961, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“the most exciting book on city planning”: Epstein to JJ, November 22, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“Here is chapter 22”: JJ to Glazer, January 24 [1961], Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
CHAPTER 13: MOTHER JACOBS OF HUDSON STREET
blistering review: Lewis Mumford, “Home Remedies for Urban Cancer,” in Mumford, The Urban Prospect. Original title: “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies.”
“a bunch of mothers”: Kunstler, II, p. 24.
“a room to work in”: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 17, 1959, Rockefeller.
Bethune Street: Knox Burger to JJ, November 19, year uncertain, possibly 1998, Burns, 7:6; interview, Jim Jacobs.
Macy’s: Jane to a Mr. O’Connell, January 25, 1997, Burns, 2:11.
“an outdoor home base”: D&L, p. 106.
“Little tots are decorative”: D&L, p. 104.
“Adolescents are always being criticized”: D&L, p. 113.
A photograph of Jimmy and Ned: Matter, p. 132.
block printing mixed with cursive: Mary Jacobs to her grandmother, Mrs. Butzner, April 10, 1967, Burns, 23:6; see also Mary (by now Burgin) and her husband, Mel, to JJ, August 12, 2000, Burns, 7:7.
CHAPTER 14: THE PHYSICAL FALLACY
“How funny you are”: Frank O’Hara, “Steps,” in Stephen Wolf, ed., I Speak of the City: Poems of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
“I want to get”: JJ to Nathan Glazer, January 24 [1961], Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“truly a great, important”: Elias Wilentz to Jason Epstein, March 27, 1961, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
“thoughtful and thought-provoking”: Chadbourne Gilpatric to JJ, March 27, 1961, RG 12, Series 200R, Box 390, Folder 338, Rockefeller.
magazines were lining up: Chadbourne Gilpatric memo, June 7, 1961, of conversation with Jason Epstein, RG12, Box 170, Rockefeller.
prepublication copies: September 18, 1961, memo, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
“Jane—TERRIFIC!”: William H. Whyte to JJ, October 3, 1961, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.
“Hers is a huge, a fascinating”: Orville Prescott, New York Times, November 3, 1961.
“It is a considerable achievement”: John Kouwenhoven, New York Herald Tribune, November 5, 1961.
“A new, passionately argued”: “Deplanning the Planners,” Time, November 10, 1961, p. 57.
“unmistakably seminal”: Edward T. Chase, “Cities Should be for People,” Commonweal, December 22, 1961.
“enormous intellectual temerity”: John Chamberlain, Wall Street Journal, November 3, 1961.
“a window of January air”: Edwin Weeks to JJ, January 29, 1962, Burns, 2:3.
a hot ticket: This correspondence is drawn from Burns, 2:3.
“Laws of the Asphalt Jungle”: Account drawn from Walter McQuade, The Nation, March 17, 1962, pp. 241–42; press release, Museum of Modern Art, February 2, 1962; untitled summary by Sidney Frigand and Peter Lapham of MOMA panel discussion, February 14, 1962, Commissioner Goldstone Papers, New York Municipal Archives.
“the enchanted ballerina”: Morton Hoppenfeld, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28, no. 2 (1962).
visiting Pittsburgh: Account drawn from James V. Cunningham, “Jane
Jacobs Visits Pittsburgh,” New City, September 15, 1962; press release, “Jane Jacobs, Anti-City Planner, Will Spend Week Here Lecturing,” University of Pittsburgh, January 25, 1962; William Allan, “City Planning Critic Gets Roasting Reply,” Pittsburgh Press, February 22, 1962.
“I am filled with delighted admiration”: Eugene Raskin, in “Abattoir for Sacred Cows.”
“Khrushchev see the North End”: Matter, p. 51.
“What a dear, sweet character”: Matter, p. 15.
Mooritania: Matter, pp. 53–54.
“like two Japanese wrestlers”: Jason Epstein to JJ, December 1, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“a morbid and biased catalog”: D&L, p. 28.
“I held my fire”: Miller, p. 474.
“Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies”: Quotations that follow drawn from reprint of article in Lewis Mumford, The Urban Prospect, pp. 182–207.
“like a chestful of combat ribbons”: Miller, p. 475.
“born and bred New Yorker”: Mumford, “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies,” p. 193.
Sunnyside Gardens: The community still exists.
in the spirit of Ebenezer Howard: In a review of a new edition of Howard’s Garden Cities of To-morrow, Mumford calls Death and Life a “preposterous mass of historic misinformation and contemporary misinterpretation…[in which] she exposed her ignorance of the whole planning movement by seeking to make Howard responsible for all the mistakes made in modern planning.” Lewis Mumford, “Revaluations I: Howard’s Garden City,” New York Review of Books, April 8, 1965.
“not utopia”: Mumford, “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies,” p. 194.
“Her simple formula”: Mumford, “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies,” p. 197.
“driven Mumford into schizophrenia”: Dwight, unknown last name, on New Yorker letterhead, to JJ, December 6, [1961], Burns, 2:3.
“I laughed”: Rochon, “Jane Jacobs at 81.”
“quite a sexist”: Dillon, p. 42.
“When two people”: Miller, p. 474.
“I’m not sure whether”: Herbert Gans to JJ, January 19, 1962, Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“What is lively”: In Gans’s typed notes about Death and Life, Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“No child of enterprise”: D&L, p. 105.
“She doesn’t accept the existence”: Morton Hoppenfeld, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 28, no. 2 (1962).
“She imposes her tastes”: A. Melamed, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 28, no. 2 (1962).
“a brilliant personal diatribe”: Catherine Bauer Wurster, in “Abattoir for Sacred Cows.”
“a brilliant and distorted book”: Kevin Lynch, in “Abattoir for Sacred Cows.”
“mixing apples with battleships”: “North End Here to Stay, Boston Planners Declare,” Boston Sunday Globe, October 15, 1961. The planner quoted is Donald M. Graham.
“no direct, simple relationship”: D&L, p. 147.
“the physical fallacy”: Herbert Gans, “City Planning and Urban Realities,” Commentary; reference to the physical fallacy appears on p. 172; see also typed notes about D&L in Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare; Herbert Gans, “Jane Jacobs: Toward an Understanding,” pp. 213–15.
“old-hat stereotypes”: JJ to Herbert Gans, January 19, 1962, Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“she broke off relations”: Herbert J. Gans, “Jane Jacobs: Toward an Understanding,” p. 213.
Mr. and Mrs. McLean: See Ellen Lurie, “A Study of George Washington Houses: The Effect of the Project on Its Tenants and the Surrounding Community,” 1955–1956, Union Settlement Papers, Box 11, Folder 13, ColumbiaRare. For an imaginative reconstruction of Lurie see Zipp, “Superblock Stories.” Lurie died, at age forty-seven, in 1978.
“a question to put”: Jason Epstein to JJ, December 22, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“a poor idea”: JJ to Jason Epstein, December 27, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“was more firmly convinced”: Jason Epstein to JJ, December 28, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“Jason is very worried”: Nathan Glazer to JJ, January 30, 1961, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.
“the discrimination which operates”: D&L, p. 371.
“touched some sensitive chords”: Arthur T. Row, Yale Law Journal 71 (1962): 1597–1602.
“inept introspective scholarship”: Paul A. Pfretzschner, “Panning the Planners,” Antioch Review 22, no. 1 (spring 1962): 130–36.
“conveniently overlooks”: A. Melamed, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 28, no. 2 (1962).
“remarkable appraisal”: Jerome Zukosky, letter to the editor, Commentary, July 1, 1962.
CHAPTER 15: WEST VILLAGE WARRIOR
“People who have seen her”: Kramer.
“If you write a press release”: Laura Hansen, “Claire Tankel,” oral history interview, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, March 1, 1997, and February 20, 1998.
urban oasis was threatened: This account is built up in part from Fishman, “Revolt of the Urbs”; oral histories in the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation archives; Flint, chapter 3.
“a cumbersome kind of name”: KentVillage, p. 3.
the winning strategy: KentVillage, p. 5.
“the backroom boss”: Susan DeVries, “Norman Redlich,” oral history interview, Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, March 6, 1997.
“had every reason to expect”: KentVillage, p. 5.
“We expect you do it”: KentVillage, p. 6.
“all these little elves”: KentVillage, p. 8. When, years later, she sent her son Ned a transcript of Kent’s oral history of her, Jane suggested he might want to simply “enjoy it yourself as a piece of life, in which you shared importantly in so many ways, young as you were,” JJ to Ned Jacobs, January 28, 2001, Burns.
“passed the word”: Susan DeVries, “Norman Redlich,” oral history interview, Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation, March 6, 1997.
ribbon-tying: When The New York Times reported on the closure, it referred to Jane as “Mrs. Jane Jacobs, the author.” This was almost three years before the publication of D&L, and even before she went under contract for the book with Random House.
“tough political pressure”: D&L, p. 472.
“issue-oriented politics”: KentVillage, p. 9.
Robert Moses: See Caro; Ballon and Jackson; Mennel, “A Fight to Forget,” in which he quotes a 1962 Moses letter to an acquaintance: “Jane Jacobs isn’t really worth refuting. She has the Architectural Forum following and the professional critics with her, but nobody with any experience or responsibility is impressed by such captious owl dropping…La Jacobs doesn’t know this metropolis or any other. In an examination on facts she would not get 40%. After all, you must start with knowledge, not cyanide.”
“All new work”: Robert Moses, “What Happened to Haussmann,” Architectural Forum (July 1942): 57–66.
“partisans, enthusiasts”: Cited in Robert Fishman, “Revolt of the Urbs,” p. 122.
“did more harm to New York”: Ethics, p. 187. See also Amateau, “Jane Jacobs, Urban Legend”: “It makes me sick when I hear, ‘People are too timid and you need someone with the boldness of Robert Moses,’ Jacobs said. ‘Well, if you like a big dictatorship and life under a dictator you had the closest thing to it under Robert Moses.’ ”
“NOBODY, NOBODY, NOBODY”: Kunstler, II, p. 24. Jane says here that she saw Moses only once. However, in an article in Building Design, May 5, 2006, p. 9, Richard Sennett recalls Jane taking on Moses at a public meeting:
In her public encounters with him, she was anything but politically naïve. Other people would scream at Moses but she just politely asked him questions like: “How do you know this is what people want?” “Do you know any of the people in this room?” “Who do you know?” It drove him crazy. Rather than telling him the community was against him, she focused on his
position. I was at one meeting where she asked him “What is beautiful for you?” She put him on the defensive.
“cut off our sidewalks”: Matter, pp. 67, 71. KentVillage, pp. 16–18, 23–24; see also Vicki Weiner, “Anthony Dapolito,” oral history interview, New York Preservation Archive Project, October 5, 1997.
“this brave, inquiring little boy”: KentVillage, p. 23.
the plan: Matter, p. 67.
“any demand of incidental play”: D&L, p. 114.
“a mindless, routinized”: D&L, p. 162.
“That’ll be too late”: Matter, pp. 67, 71.
before they went in to see him: Vicki Weiner, “Anthony Dapolito,” oral history interview, New York Preservation Archive Project, October 5, 1997.
“I knew at once”: KentVillage, p. 18.
fourteen-block stretch: John Sibley, “Two Blighted Downtown Areas Are Chosen for Urban Renewal,” New York Times, February 21, 1961.
$300,000: Interview, Pierre Tonachel, who furnished me with “The City’s Request for a Survey: What It Means to All of Us,” by the Committee to Save the West Village, no date, as well as many other documents bearing on the West Village urban renewal struggle, including official documents, legal correspondence, clippings, neighborhood newsletters, and other materials related to the West Village and dating to 1961—hereafter “Tonachel papers.”
Elizabeth Squire: Robert de Vaughan to John & Elizabeth Squire, February 15 and 26, 1961; deposition by Elizabeth Squire, April 26, 1961; Tonachel papers.
“disconnected the doorbell”: Dallas Morning News, May 9, 1962.
The battle for the West Village: Account built up from Tonachel papers; Flint, chapter 4; Projects, pp. 366–68; Transatlantic, pp. 146–60; Stern, Mellins, and Fishman, New York 1960, pp. 247–49; Frigand; Moser; Hock; KentVillage, pp. 18–21, 25–31; interviews, Ned and Jim Jacobs; see also Ned Jacobs, “Changing the World by Saving Place,” Alternatives Journal (summer 2002).