Saving America's Cities

by Lizabeth Cohen

    40. Bray, “SBDO’s Economic Development Role”; Logue to Peter Bray, August 10, 1982, with Logue comments on the Bray case study of SBDO economic development work, focusing on Gabriel Industries, and manuscript, “The South Bronx Development Office 1,” Bray, 13–17.

    41. Logue, interview by Jill Jonnes, August 9, 1984, quoted in South Bronx Rising, 384–85; also “Bathgate Tenants Move In,” South Bronx Developments (newsletter), March 1982, 1; Glynn, “Charlotte Street, the Bronx,” 30; Bathgate Industrial Park, promotional brochure, n.d. but c. 1981; New York City Public Development Corporation, brochure, n.d., 13; William R. Greer, “South Bronx, Once Symbol of Blight, Draws Industry,” NYT, January 15, 1984; John Lewis, “Blight Fighter Chalks Up Gains,” NYDN, February 21, 1984; Alan S. Oser, “Port Authority Fashions a Bronx Industrial Showcase,” NYT, July 7, 1985. By 2003, Bathgate supported 2,500 jobs; Peter Bray, “Rebuilding the South Bronx: The Role of the Public Entrepreneur,” lecture, April 2, 2003, Notre Dame University, Bray.

    42. Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…, (New York: SBDO, 1983), 20–25; “South Bronx Launches Employment Training Program,” South Bronx Developments, November 1982, 1, 6.

    43. On compaction, see Logue, interview by Bray; Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…, 26–27.

    44. Logue to Hon. Edward I. Koch, RE: Charlotte Gardens Marketing, May 12, 1983, EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 111, Folder “Mayor’s Office–Koch.” One of the first owners in Charlotte Gardens, Herb Sellers, valued how he could “walk around” his house; Michael Winkleman, “The Bronx: High-Rise, No-Rise,” Metropolis, April 1985, 34; also Carleton Knight III, “Ed Logue, Hard-Nosed Houser,” Architecture 74, no. 7 (July 1985): 61. See A. K. Sandoval-Strausz, “Latino Landscapes: Postwar Cities and the Transnational Origins of a New Urban America,” JAH 101, no. 3 (December 2014): 804–31, for Latin American and Caribbean use of yards.

    45. Quoted in John J. Goldman, “Master Rebuilder of Cities Hired to Revive the South Bronx, Epitome of Urban Decay,” LAT, December 26, 1978.

    46. Bray, “Rebuilding the South Bronx,” 16–17; Bray, interview.

    47. Logue, “Charlotte Gardens: Is There a Future for Single Family Homes in New York?,” March 17, 1985, EJL, 2002 Accession, Box 22, Folder “Charlotte Gardens,” 12.

    48. Edward Logue to Hon. Carlos C. Campbell, Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, Economic Development Administration, May 18, 1983, EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 107, Folder “Manufactured Housing–Correspondence”; Logue to William Eimicke, Deputy Secretary for Policy and Programs, Albany, December 16, 1983, EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 112, Folder “NYS”; Logue to Mayor Edward I. Koch, January 27, 1984, EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 111, Folder “Mayor’s Office–Koch”; SBDO, “South Bronx Manufactured Homes Program Project Area Description and Market Study,” November 10, 1982, Bray; Sandy Ewing to Logue, August 17, 1984, “RE: Housing Factory—My Final Report,” including SBDO, “Proposed Housing Factory at the Mid-Bronx Industrial Park,” May 29, 1984, Bray; Lee, interview.

    49. On Gliedman’s opposition to Logue, SBDO, and Charlotte Gardens, Bray, interview; Koch, interview by von Hoffman. Gliedman agreed to certify Charlotte Gardens only after he saw the enthusiasm for it. Logue told interviewer Frank Jones, “It’s becoming clear that [Gliedman] despises me and everything I believe in and stand for. It’s very mutual, by the way”; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 4:60–61.

    50. Richard Manson, interview by Alexander von Hoffman, March 8, 2001.

    51. Bray, “Rebuilding the South Bronx,” 20–21; Bray, interview; von Hoffman, House by House, 37 for Julie Sandorf’s vivid description of the transport.

    52. On Charlotte Gardens houses, Bray, “Rebuilding the South Bronx,” 18–19. By some accounts, the final unit cost of $114,000 represented a cost overrun of over 100 percent; Peter Bray, “Thesis Outline,” February 24, 1988, Bray, 9.

    53. “South Bronx: Strength from Unity Reviving an Urban Wasteland,” LAT, July 26, 198; Thomas Glynn, “Interview with Anita Miller, a Warrior for the South Bronx,” Neighborhood, 37; Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…, 15. Also, MBD, “Dear Charlotte Gardens Homebuyer,” January 9, 1983, listing workshops offered; Bray. Worksheets and “Some Questions and Answers on Purchasing a Home in Charlotte Gardens” are impressively detailed and clearly presented in the folder “Charlotte Gardens: South Bronx Manufactured Homes Program,” Bray; on tax abatements, Julia MacDonnell Chang, “Financing the South Bronx Homeownership Project,” City Limits, May 1983, 22.

    54. Philip Shenon, “A Taste of Suburbia Arrives in the South Bronx,” NYT, March 19, 1983 (front page). A small sampling of other publicity, chronologically, includes “Ranch Houses? Where?,” editorial, NYT, March 24, 1983; “Factory-Built Subdivision Opens on Charlotte Street in So. Bronx,” Home Again for Housing and Community Professionals, Winter 1983, no. 1, 6; “Bronx Cheer,” Economist, May 14, 1983; “Renewal Project in South Bronx Proves Popular,” BG, August 19, 1983; “Middle-Class Eager to Buy Homes in Bronx Wasteland,” LAT, August 15, 1983; “Suburbia Comes to the South Bronx,” Architecture, October 1983, 65; “‘Pioneer’ Settlers Bring Glow to South Bronx,” NYT, January 14, 1984; and Mark Starr with David L. Gonzalez, “Ranch Houses at Fort Apache,” Newsweek, February 13, 1984.

    55. Koch quotes on Charlotte Gardens project from Joyce Purnack, “Metro Matters: He Reshaped the Places We Live,” NYT, April 24, 2000; Koch quote at dedication in Logue, “Charlotte Gardens: Is There a Future for Single-Family Homes in New York?,” 8; Logue quote from Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 4:62. While frustrated that “this has never been on the top of Ed Koch’s agenda,” Logue also recognized that “if you take office on January 1, 1978, what’s your problem? It isn’t the revitalization of the South Bronx … It’s the salvation of the goddamn city financials”; Logue, interview by Bray. Ironically, Koch had spent the first five years of his life in the Charlotte Street area of the Bronx. The invitee list for the Charlotte Gardens ribbon cutting was pages long and included elected officials; city, state, and federal employees from many departments; private-sector and nonprofit representatives; and members of dozens of Bronx community organizations—a testament both to how many people contributed to the project and to the SBDO’s ambitious public relations effort; Bray.

    56. Logue to Campbell, May 18, 1983, EJL, 36, and described in much of the press coverage.

    57. Litke, interview.

    58. “Suburbia Comes to the South Bronx,” Architecture; for more on Charlotte Gardens buyers, see John Lewis, “Blight Fighter Chalks Up Gains,” NYDN, February 21, 1984; Barbara Stewart, “Market’s Nod to a Rebirth,” NYT Magazine, November 2, 1997; Sandy Ewing to Logue, June 6, 1983, “RE: Charlotte Garden Applicants,” Bray.

    59. Logue to South Bronx Policy Group, January 13, 1982, EJL, Box 105, Folder “MH Meetings, Agendas”; “Phase 1 Residents,” November 16, 1983, EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 111, Folder “First Ten”; Winkleman, “The Bronx: High-Rise, No-Rise,” 35; Manny Fernandez, “In the Bronx, Blight Gave Way to Renewal,” NYT, October 5, 2007; Peter L. Bray, “Charlotte Gardens: Planning a New Community in the South Bronx,” September 20, 1984, Bray, 20–21.

    60. Julie Sandorf, “Crotona South/Mid-Bronx Homeownership Demand Study,” February 1985, Bray, 6–7; Sandy Ewing to Logue, June 15, 1983, “RE: Income Levels of Charlotte Gardens Applicants,” Bray.

    61. Analysis of Charlotte Gardens residents, prepared by Brian Goldstein, based on New York City Department of Finance—Digital Tax Map Online, http://gis.nyc.gov/dof/dtm/mapviewer.jsf, and information about buyers in EJL, 1985 Accession, Boxes 107, 108, 110, 111; also Stewart, “Market’s Nod to a Rebirth,” that, by 1997, only eight houses had been put up for sale.

    62. Carmen and Rafael Ceballo, interview by Peter L’Official, April 12, 2010, Bronx, NY; Josephine Cohn and Preston Keusch, interview by Peter L’Official, April 16, 2010, Bronx, NY; Riveras interviewed in “‘Pioneer’ Settle
rs Bring Glow to South Bronx,” and “Urban Homesteaders,” Time, January 30, 1984.

    63. “South Bronx Revival,” editorial, WP, January 17, 1984; “Suburbia Comes to the South Bronx,” Architecture.

    64. Starr with Gonzalez, “Ranch Houses at Fort Apache”; Sam Roberts, “Charlotte Street: Tortured Rebirth of a Wasteland,” NYT, March 9, 1987; Goldstein, analysis of Charlotte Gardens residents, 1520 Crotona Park East deed, originally held by David and Irma Rivera, passed to Belia and John Clark, July 1995.

    65. Edward J. Logue to John Goldman of LAT, May 27, 1982, EJL, Box 107, 1985 Accession, Folder “MH Correspondence, Miscellaneous.”

    66. Liebman, interview. For other criticism of the low density, see Bradford McKee, “South Bronx,” Architecture, April 1995, 86–95; Richard Plunz, letter to the editor, NYT, November 5, 1997; Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Living City: How America’s Cities Are Being Revitalized by Thinking Small in a Big Way (Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1994), 133–34.

    67. Norval White and Elliot Willensky, AIA Guide to New York City, 4th ed. (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2000), 562. Interestingly, in the 2010 edition, this text was removed and in its place was substituted “President Clinton returned in 1997 to a rebuilt neighborhood, transformed into suburbia”; White and Willensky with Fran Leadon, AIA Guide to New York City, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 835.

    68. “Her Critical Judgments Were Built to Last,” WSJ, January 8, 2013; Ada Louise Huxtable, “The Man Who Remade New York,” On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change (New York: Walker, 2008), 342.

    69. Litke, interview; Winkleman, “A Slice of the Pie,” in “The Bronx: High-Rise, No-Rise,” 29. Bray concluded that Logue never intended to make a design statement, only a social statement: “The house that is the house of choice for millions of white Americans should be available to minorities, who are often excluded by discrimination from buying those houses in the suburbs”; Peter Bray, “MIT Thesis Outline,” February 24, 1988, Bray, 14.

    70. Edward J. Logue to Melvin Senchak, HUD, December 28, 1982, with attachment “Architects [sic] Services and Responsibilities,” EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 113, Folder “MH Tessler, Jul–Dec ’82.” I. M. Pei concurred that developers, whose “interest is their bottom line,” usurped the place of architects: “They want to be celebrities themselves. So the architect becomes secondary”; Ieoh Ming Pei, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 11, 2007, New York, NY.

    71. Ellen Seidman, “Don’t Blame the Community Reinvestment Act,” and Mark A. Willis, “Community Reinvestment: The Broader Agenda,” American Prospect, July–August 2009, A15–17, 26–29.

    72. See, for example, my own analysis of the typological breakdown of prominent modernist Paul Rudolph’s projects. His public work grew over the 1950s and 1960s, the heyday of federal urban renewal; peaked between 1966 to 1970; and began a steep decline from 1971 to 1975 from which it never recovered; “Paul Rudolph, Projects, 1946–95,” graph, in Lizabeth Cohen and Brian D. Goldstein, “Paul Rudolph and the Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal,” in Reassessing Rudolph, ed. Timothy M. Rohan (New Haven, CT: Yale School of Architecture, 2017), 16.

    73. Kathleen Teltsch, “Once Desperate, a Bronx Housing Group Earns Praise,” NYT, October 30, 1987.

    74. On Genevieve Brooks: Teltsch, “Once Desperate, a Bronx Housing Group Earns Praise”; Breslin, “On These Sidewalks of New York,” 106; Les Christie, “The Greatest Real Estate Turnaround Ever,” CNNMoney, November 25, 2009.

    75. Julie Sandorf, interview by Alexander von Hoffman, November 9, 2000, New York, NY; Logue, “Charlotte Gardens: Is There a Future for Single Family Homes in New York?,” 25; SBDO, “Charlotte Gardens Manufactured Homes Program,” March 23, 1983, Bray, 2.

    76. Bray, interview.

    77. Sandy Ewing to Logue, July 14, 1983, “RE: MBD’s Charlotte Gardens Candidates,” EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 111, Folder “MH Mid Bronx Desperadoes, 1981–Aug 1983.” For more subtle evidence of tension between the SBDO and the MBD, see the published SBDO Report of 1983, Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…, which contained an erratum slip with an apology that complimentary mention of the MBD’s role had inadvertently been left out, suggesting that the MBD had protested. In another example, when Brooks was interviewed upon receipt of a major service award, she made no mention of the SBDO’s role in Charlotte Gardens; Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…, 16, attached erratum slip; interview with Genevieve Brooks, Makers, https://www.makers.com/profiles/591f26dea8c7c425e029ca7a/5547c499e4b0f61941cd91f2.

    78. Sandorf, interview by von Hoffman; Logue to Xavier Rodriguez, Board No. 3, December 13, 1983, EJL, Box 106, Folder “Community Board No. 3,” with his apology for not adequately recognizing community leaders when Governor Cuomo visited and reiterating his respect for them.

    79. For Father Smith’s praise of Logue as a “visionary” who “if he hadn’t pushed for Charlotte Gardens, that wouldn’t have gotten done,” see Father William Smith, interview by Alexander von Hoffman, November 28, 2000. For Logue’s compliments toward his MBD partners, see MLogue, interview; Logue, “Life as a City Builder—‘Make No Little Plans,’” Yale Reunion Book, March 26, 1991, 22; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 5:1, 9.

    80. Meanwhile, in the South Bronx…; Karolyn Gould, interview by Lizabeth Cohen, June 12, 2007, New York, NY, and Karolyn Gould, email message to author, October 3, 2006; Bray, interview; Peter Cantillo, interview by Peter Bray, n.d.

    81. Jack Flanagan quote in Peirce and Hagstrom, “Two Years After Carter’s Visit,” 1647; Veralyne Hamilton quote in Jonnes, South Bronx Rising, 327–28. For Logue’s advice on working with community groups, Jack Towe, letter to the editor, Planning, September 1984, 26.

    82. Bruce Porter, “Ford, Logue and the South Bronx: A Report to the Ford Foundation, Confidential,” Ford Foundation Records, Series II: Program and Grant-Related Files, Office Files of Bernard McDonald, Urban Poverty Program, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, NY (hereafter Ford), Box 3, Folder 6, November 21, 1980, 9. This report has a lengthy discussion of Logue’s interactions with the South Bronx community, 9–19.

    83. Bray, interview; Cantillo, interview by Bray, saw the mutual benefit. On the establishment of community boards in 1975 and mayors’ dislike of them, see Bruce Berg, New York City Politic: Governing Gotham (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 277–79.

    84. Brooks quoted in Jim Yardley, “Clinton Praises Bronx Renewal as U.S. Model,” NYT, December 11, 1997; Brother Patrick in Porter, “Ford, Logue and the South Bronx,” 12.

    85. Bray has a fascinating final chapter in his thesis draft, “Public Sector Assessment,” where his interviews with New York City public officials revealed “tremendous ambivalence about Logue” and wariness, based on his history, that “he was seeking or would be provided with an independent power base with control over vast amounts of federal funds.” Hence, the SBDO was subject to regular city processes and granted no special dispensations. Nonetheless, over time, officials came to appreciate “SBDO’s possession of knowledge regarding the community and its actors … [One] official explained that SBDO has been an important resource in terms of assessing the political sentiment of the local community towards certain projects”; Bray, MIT thesis draft, chapter 6, Bray.

    86. Porter, “Ford, Logue and the South Bronx,” 20; Frederick O’R. Hayes, Sharon L. Franz, Joan M. Leiman, Jerry E. Mechling, “The South Bronx Development Organization: What It Has Accomplished and How It Is Viewed,” April 15, 1982, report by the Frederick O’R. Hayes Associates for the Fund for the City of New York, 33–43, 59–60.

    87. Von Hoffman, House by House, 31; Breslin, “On These Sidewalks of New York,” 108; Peirce and Hagstrom, “Two Years After Carter’s Visit,” 1644; Jensen, Devastation/Resurrection: The South Bronx, 84–85; Neil R. Peirce, “South Bronx Rising,” WP, October 4, 1979; Gratz, Living City, 82–85, 10
3–10, 127–39.

    88. Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 5:10.

    89. Louis Gigante quote from conference transcript, “New Homes for New York Neighborhoods,” 1984, 58–60, cited in Orlebeke, New Life at Ground Zero, 174–75.

    90. On Nighthawks: von Hoffman, House by House, 39; Bray, interview, 89; Koch, interview by von Hoffman; Logue, interview, Jones, Tape 5:3. Nonetheless, transforming vigilante Nighthawk gang members into vigilant night guards required patience and supervision. Problems included guards sleeping and watching TV on duty, entertaining girlfriends, vandalizing houses and SBDO equipment, playing with firecrackers, and pulling pranks like ordering limousines; EJL, 1985 Accession, Box 112, Folder “Security 1982–Aug. ’83”; “Security Sept. ’83–Dec. ’84.”

    91. Logue, letter to the editor, NYT, April 7, 1983. On Logue’s praise for Catholic clergy in the South Bronx, see Joseph Giovannini, “The Appeal of Bronx Living,” NYT, July 5, 1984; Jonnes, South Bronx Rising, 379. On the Catholic Church’s impact in the South Bronx, see Porter, “Ford, Logue and the South Bronx,” 4–8; Glynn, “Neighborhood,” 21. Brother Patrick Lochrane of Saint Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church served as chair of Community Board No. 6 and was also an activist partner to SBDO; “Community Profile: Brother Patrick Lochrane,” South Bronx Developments, May–June 1983, 4.