self-help inclination of local people were all visible and gaining momentum in the 1970s.
Jane Jacobs’s principles were in their ascendancy. The Moses-style strategies were in a free fall and fiercely resisted. Where they might have continued, the cessation of the federal money flow did the trick. Today, the New York City neighborhoods with the strongest appeal are the ones that reflect best Jacobs’s teaching; the ones in need of greatest help are the ones erased and replaced with Moses-style visions.
The world and this city have changed enormously in the intervening years. Change is the constant, unfolding in sometimes dramatic but often subtle ways. Yet as much as things change, the more they stay the same. Many of the kinds of things I wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s still go on today in different guises. In this book, I use some of the earlier New York stories to spotlight the larger issues they illustrate. Useful lessons and parallels can be drawn from many of those stories. Most assuredly, however, the contrast of the city now and then reflects today’s stark contrast to the topsy-turvy world of the 1960s and 1970s when a girl could be called a boy and nobody would blink an eye.
2
LANDMARKS PRESERVATION
Precursor of Positive Change
Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
DONOVAN RYPKEMA,
economist
F or this reporter, community and landmarks preservation battles were always a good story. The little guy versus the big one, a citizen taking on the heartless government and/or greedy developer, the local residents’ resistance to inappropriate change. It always added up to good journalistic fodder.
When I first started covering the occasional landmark struggle in the late 1960s, preserving old buildings was considered by many as simply a means of opposing progress or change. People were accused of not wanting change in their backyard or for other so-called illegitimate reasons. However, when I listened carefully to the local voices, this was clearly not the case, as this book argues in many ways. More than physical structures were at stake. The values of memory, human connection, vanishing quality, and public purpose were all wrapped up in architectural beauty.
As I kept writing about preservation, I observed the full spectrum of local issues and incremental change of which preservation was just one part and recognized it as a precursor of genuine positive change, the kind that fertilizes and enriches, not undermines and erodes. In many communities, people weren’t just fighting to preserve old buildings. They recognized that the threatened buildings and the varied uses contained in them were important threads in the urban fabric. And they weren’t just fighting to save them. They were buying some of them, fixing them up, opening new businesses, committing themselves to their community—all precursors of more good things to come, to be sure.
Of course, many demolition projects were opposed for reasons other than preservation. But, Jane Jacobs observed, “if you listen closely to people at public hearings, you will understand their fears.” Most opponents of a demolition and replacement plan were resisting the particular manifestation of change, not change itself; erosion, not progress, as Jacobs articulated. I found their stories compelling.
Urban planning professor Robert Fishman notes, “The city was caught up in this riptide of destruction that seemed to have no end” that combined with “a rolling wave of abandonment and sprawl in the terrible period of the ’70s and ’80s,” challenging some to wonder if cities were viable. 1 So, to me, the great value and real meaning of historic preservation were not just about preserving neighborhoods but about preserving urbanism and the city itself.
New York was not alone. Increasing numbers of civic resisters fought both highway and urban renewal projects across the country. With
Jane Jacobs’s principles were in their ascendancy. The Moses-style strategies were in a free fall and fiercely resisted. Where they might have continued, the cessation of the federal money flow did the trick. Today, the New York City neighborhoods with the strongest appeal are the ones that reflect best Jacobs’s teaching; the ones in need of greatest help are the ones erased and replaced with Moses-style visions.
The world and this city have changed enormously in the intervening years. Change is the constant, unfolding in sometimes dramatic but often subtle ways. Yet as much as things change, the more they stay the same. Many of the kinds of things I wrote about in the 1960s and 1970s still go on today in different guises. In this book, I use some of the earlier New York stories to spotlight the larger issues they illustrate. Useful lessons and parallels can be drawn from many of those stories. Most assuredly, however, the contrast of the city now and then reflects today’s stark contrast to the topsy-turvy world of the 1960s and 1970s when a girl could be called a boy and nobody would blink an eye.
2
LANDMARKS PRESERVATION
Precursor of Positive Change
Preservationists are the only people in the world who are invariably confirmed in their wisdom after the fact.
DONOVAN RYPKEMA,
economist
F or this reporter, community and landmarks preservation battles were always a good story. The little guy versus the big one, a citizen taking on the heartless government and/or greedy developer, the local residents’ resistance to inappropriate change. It always added up to good journalistic fodder.
When I first started covering the occasional landmark struggle in the late 1960s, preserving old buildings was considered by many as simply a means of opposing progress or change. People were accused of not wanting change in their backyard or for other so-called illegitimate reasons. However, when I listened carefully to the local voices, this was clearly not the case, as this book argues in many ways. More than physical structures were at stake. The values of memory, human connection, vanishing quality, and public purpose were all wrapped up in architectural beauty.
As I kept writing about preservation, I observed the full spectrum of local issues and incremental change of which preservation was just one part and recognized it as a precursor of genuine positive change, the kind that fertilizes and enriches, not undermines and erodes. In many communities, people weren’t just fighting to preserve old buildings. They recognized that the threatened buildings and the varied uses contained in them were important threads in the urban fabric. And they weren’t just fighting to save them. They were buying some of them, fixing them up, opening new businesses, committing themselves to their community—all precursors of more good things to come, to be sure.
Of course, many demolition projects were opposed for reasons other than preservation. But, Jane Jacobs observed, “if you listen closely to people at public hearings, you will understand their fears.” Most opponents of a demolition and replacement plan were resisting the particular manifestation of change, not change itself; erosion, not progress, as Jacobs articulated. I found their stories compelling.
Urban planning professor Robert Fishman notes, “The city was caught up in this riptide of destruction that seemed to have no end” that combined with “a rolling wave of abandonment and sprawl in the terrible period of the ’70s and ’80s,” challenging some to wonder if cities were viable. 1 So, to me, the great value and real meaning of historic preservation were not just about preserving neighborhoods but about preserving urbanism and the city itself.
New York was not alone. Increasing numbers of civic resisters fought both highway and urban renewal projects across the country. With
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