This was not an easy book to write, and it got finished thanks in large part to four people: my wife, Shirley Hallam, who pushed me to write about this subject and read the manuscript out loud for me, not once but twice; my longtime editor, Nan Graham, who questioned at all the right moments and showed me when too much was too much; my patient publisher, Susan Moldow, who put up with numerous delays and made many useful suggestions; and my steadfast agent, Andrew Wylie.
The Icehouse
Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia
May 2002–October 2006
Notes
Prologue
1. See David R. Contosta, Suburb in the City: Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia,1850–1990 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1992), 83–90.
2. John Stilgoe, Borderland: Origins of the American Suburb, 1820–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 308.
Chapter 2: Seaside
1. Robert A. M. Stern, “The Suburban Alternative for the ‘Middle City,’” Architectural Record 164, no. 2 (August 1978): 96–98.
2. Robert A. M. Stern and John M. Massengale, The Anglo-American Suburb, Architectural Design Profile (London: Architectural Design, 1981). Long out of print, this book remains the most comprehensive source of design information about early garden suburbs.
3. See Witold Rybczynski, “Bauhaus Blunders,” Public Interest no. 113 (Fall1993): 82–90.
4. Tom Wolfe, “Introduction,” VIA 4 (1980): 9.
5. I wrote about Seaside in September 24, 1989, in The New York Times (“Architects Must Learn to Listen to the Melody”). My first visit was a month later, as architecture critic for Wigwag (see “Our Town” in the March 1990 issue).
6. Quoted by Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961),332.
7. See Philip Langdon, A Better Place to Live: Reshaping the American Suburb (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 119.
8. See Witold Rybczynski, “Tomorrowland,” New Yorker (July 22, 1996):36–39.
9. Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, “The Second Coming of the American Small Town,” Wilson Quarterly 16 (Winter 1992): 21.
10. Ibid., 22.
11. Ibid., 40.
Chapter 3: Epiphanies
1. See Witold Rybczynski, “The Art of the New Urbanist Deal,” Wharton Real Estate Review 6, no. 2 (Fall 2002): 56–64.
2. See Frank Jackson, Sir Raymond Unwin: Architect, Planner and Visionary (London: A. Zwemmer, 1985).
3. Raymond Unwin, Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909; New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994).
Chapter 4: Last Harvest
1. Alecia Swasy, “America’s 20 Hottest White-Collar Addresses,” Wall Street Journal (March 8, 1994): B1.
2. Amy Donohue, “Is Chester County the New Main Line?” Philadelphia (April 2003).
3. Dan Rose, Patterns of American Culture: Ethnography and Estrangement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), 49.
4. Nancy L. Mohr, The Lady Blows a Horn (Boyertown, Pa.: Horse Country Press, 1997), 114.
5. Tom Lea, The King Ranch (Kingsville, Tex.: King Ranch, 1957), 767.
6. Mohr, Lady Blows a Horn, 92.
7. See Daniel R. Mandelker, Land Use Law (Newark, N.J.: Matthew Bender & Co., 2003), 1–4.
8. Marc A. Weiss, The Rise of the Community Builders: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 81.
9. Ibid., 85; Yale Rabin, “Expulsive Zoning: The Inequitable Legacy of Euclid,” in Zoning and the American Dream: Promises Still to Keep, Charles M. Haar and Jerold S. Kayden, eds. (Chicago: Planners Press,1989), 103–7.
10. William A. Fischel, The Economics of Zoning Laws: A Property Rights Approach to American Land Use Controls (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 29.
11. National Land and Investment Co. v. Easttown Twp. Board of Adjustment, 419 Pa. 504, 215, A.2d 597 (1965).
12. Concord Township Appeal, 439 Pa. 466; 268 A.2d 765 (1970).
13. Girsh Appeal, 437 Pa. 237, 263 A.2d 395 (1970).
Chapter 5: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Estate
1. Quoted by John W. Reps, The Making of Urban America: A History of City Planning in the United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press,1965), 167.
2. Ibid., 166.
3. Howard Malcolm Jenkins, The Family of William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania, Ancestors and Descendents (Philadelphia: Howard Jenkins, 1899),219–20, 246.
4. J. Smith Futhey and Gilbert Cope, History of Chester County, Pennsylvania, with Geological and Biographical Sketches (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 174.
5. Jenkins, Family of William Penn, 65.
6. Quoted by A. M. Sakolski, The Great American Land Bubble: The Amazing Story of Land-Grabbing, Speculations, and Booms from Colonial Days to the Present Time (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), 7.
7. Ibid., 11.
8. Robert D. Arbuckle, Pennsylvania Speculator and Patriot: The Entrepreneurial John Nicholson, 1757–1800 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975), 5–7.
9. Robert D. Arbuckle, “John Nicholson and Land as a Lure in the Infant Nation,” Pennsylvania Heritage 9, no. 2 (Spring 1983): 9.
10. Sakolski, Great American Land Bubble, 156–57.
11. Quoted by William Graham Sumner, The Financier and the Finances of the American Revolution, vol. 2 (1891; repr., New York: Augustus M. Kelley,1968), 241.
12. Ibid., 265.
13. Quoted by Arbuckle, Pennsylvania Speculator, 197.
14. Ibid., 204.
Chapter 6: Joe’s Deal
1. There is a distinct correlation between pro-and anti-growth areas and the division of America in red and blue voting blocs. See Joel Kotkin, “Suburban Tide,” Blueprint (March 15, 2005).
2. Hazel A. Morrow-Jones et al. “Consumer Preference for Neotraditional Neighborhood Characteristics,” Housing Policy Debate 15, no. 1 (2004): 195, 186.
3. Ibid., 196.
Chapter 7: On the Bus
1. The Lexicon of the New Urbanism (Miami: Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co.,1999), F-3.1.
2. See Mark J. Eppli and Charles C. Tu, Valuing the New Urbanism: The Impact of the New Urbanism on Prices of Single-Family Houses (Washington, D.C.: Urban Land Institute, 1999).
Chapter 8: Meetings
1. Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 67.
Chapter 9: Scatteration
1. Anthony Downs, “Some Realities About Sprawl and Urban Decline,” Housing Policy Debate 10, no. 4 (1999): 961.
2. Stephen Malpezzi, “Estimates of the Measurement and Determinants of Urban Sprawl in U.S. Metropolitan Areas” (unpublished manuscript, Center for Urban Land Economic Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1999), 23–27.
3. See William A. Fischel, The Economics of Zoning Laws: A Property Rights Approach to American Land Use Controls (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
4. Gregg Easterbrook, “Suburban Myth,” New Republic (March 15, 1999):19.
5. John Tierney, “The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road),” New York Times Magazine (September 26,2004): 61.
6. Reid H. Ewing, “Characteristics, Causes, and Effects of Sprawl: A Literature Review,” Environmental and Urban Issues 15, no. 2 (January 1988): 1.
7. Peter Gordon and Harry Richardson, Letters to the editors, Journal of the American Planning Association 63, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 27.
8. Randal O’Toole, The Vanishing Automobile and Other Urban Myths (Brandon, Ore.: Thoreau Institute, 2001), 392.
9. Witold Rybczynski, “Measuring Sprawl,” Wharton Real Estate Review 6, no. 1 (Spring 2002): 101–2.
10. Jerry Adler, “Bye, Bye, Suburban Dream,” Newsweek (May 15, 1995):45.
11. Rybczynski, “Measuring Sprawl,”
101–2.
12. Peter Gordon and Harry W. Richardson, “Are Compact Cities a Desirable Goal?” Journal of the American Planning Association 63, no. 1 (Winter1997): 103.
13. Downs, “Some Realities,” 955.
14. Development Panel, Zell-Lurie Real Estate Center Members Meeting, Philadelphia, October 21, 2003.
15. See, for example, F. Kaid Benfield et al., Once There Were Greenfields: How Urban Sprawl Is Undermining America’s Environment, Economy, and Social Fabric (New York: Natural Resources Defense Council, 1999).
16. George Galster et al., “Wrestling Sprawl to the Ground: Defining and Measuring an Elusive Concept,” Housing Policy Debate 12, no. 4 (2001): 681–82.
17. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 511.
18. Robert O. Harvey and W.A.V. Clark, “The Nature and Economics of Urban Sprawl,” Land Economics 41, no. 1 (February 1965): 1–9.
19. Edward P. Eichler and Marshall Kaplan, The Community Builders (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 169.
20. Real Estate Research Corporation, The Costs of Sprawl: Environmental and Economic Costs of Alternative Residential Development Patterns at the Urban Fringe, vol. 1, Detailed Cost Analysis (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of.ce, 1974).
21. See Robert W. Burchell et al., The Costs of Sprawl — Revisited (Washington,D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998), i; Benfield et al., Once There Were Greenfields, 96–97.
22. Burchell et al., Costs of Sprawl, 26.
23. William Schneider, “The Suburban Century Begins,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1992): 33.
24. John Nolen, New Towns for Old (1927; repr., London: Routledge/ Thoemmes Press, 2001), 119.
25. Easterbrook, “Suburban Myth,” 19.
26. Karen A. Danielson et al., “Retracting Suburbia: Smart Growth and the Future of Housing,” Housing Policy Debate 10, no. 3 (1999): 513–15.
27. Anthony Downs, “What Does ‘Smart Growth’ Really Mean?” Planning 67, no. 4 (April 2001): 23, 25.
Chapter 10: More Meetings
1. James R. Hagerty, “Home Construction Continues at Robust Pace,” Wall Street Journal (January 20, 2005): D2.
Chapter 12: On the Way to Exurbia
1. The term was coined by Auguste C. Spectorsky in The Exurbanites (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1955).
2. David Brooks, “Take a Ride to Exurbia,” New York Times (November 9,2004): A23.
3. H. G. Wells, Anticipations: Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought (Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz,1902).
4. Ibid., 47.
5. David G. De Long, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Evolution of the Living City,” in Frank Lloyd Wright and the Living City, David G. De Long, ed.(Milan: Skira editore, 1998), 20–24.
6. David G. De Long, “Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932,” in Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for an American Landscape, 1922–1932, David G. De Long, ed. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1996), 20.
7. A streetcar line was planned for Palos Verdes Estates, but by the time that construction began, the automobile was ascendant and the line was never built. For background on Palos Verdes, see Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 331–35.
8. Only a few drawings of the Doheny project have survived but no site plan. The project is reconstructed in De Long, “Designs for an American Landscape,” 19–30.
9. Ibid., 20.
10. This was three years before he actually visited New York City. Le Corbusier, “A Noted Architect Dissects Our Cities,” New York Times Magazine (January 3, 1932): 10–19.
11. Ibid., 11.
12. The famous International Style exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York opened in February 1932.
13. Frank Lloyd Wright, “‘Broadacre City’: An Architect’s Vision,” New York Times Magazine (March 20, 1932): 8–9.
14. Ibid., 8.
15. Frank Lloyd Wright, The Disappearing City (New York: William Farquhar Payson, 1932), 44.
16. Quoted by John Sergeant, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Houses: The Case for Organic Architecture (New York: Whitney Library of Design,1975), 134.
17. Frank Lloyd Wright, When Democracy Builds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945), 38.
18. Sergeant, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Houses, 134.
19. Frank Lloyd Wright, The Living City (New York: Horizon Press, 1958),230.
20. Wright, “‘Broadacre City,’” 9.
21. For example, De Long, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Evolution of the Living City,” 28.
22. Wright, When Democracy Builds, opp. 55.
23. George Collins, “Broadacre City: Wright’s Utopia Reconsidered,” in Four Great Makers of Modern Architecture: Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Wright (New York: Trustees of Columbia University, 1963), 67; Neil Levine, The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 220; Ada Louise Huxtable, Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: Viking Penguin, 2004), 201.
24. Brendan Gill, Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987), 337–38.
25. Lewis Mumford, The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961), 633.
26. Joel Garreau, Edge City: Life on the New Frontier (New York: Doubleday,1991), 10.
27. Frank Lloyd Wright, The Natural House (New York: Horizon Press,1954), 134.
Chapter 13: Design Matters
1. Raymond Unwin, Town Planning in Practice: An Introduction to the Art of Designing Cities and Suburbs (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909; New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 367.
2. Ibid.
3. Susan L. Kaus, A Modern Arcadia: Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and the Plan for Forest Hills Gardens (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press,2002), 91.
4. Protective Restrictions Palos Verdes Estates (Palos Verdes Estates: Los Angeles, 1923), 1.
5. Anton C. Nelessen, Visions for a New American Dream: Process, Principles, and an Ordinance to Plan and Design Small Communities (Chicago: Planners Press, 1994), 81–102.
6. Ibid., 91.
7. Pennsylvania Municipalities Planning Code, Article VII-A, 68.
Chapter 14: Locked In
1. Clifford J. Treese, Community Associations Factbook (Alexandria, Va.: Community Associations Institute, 1999), 19.
2. “Declaration of Covenants, Easements, Conditions and Restrictions of New Daleville, A Planned Community,” New Daleville Associates, L.P.,January 16, 2004, 41–45.
3. American Housing Survey, 2001; Community Associations Institute, 2003.
4. Evan McKenzie, Privatopia: Homeowner Associations and the Rise of Residential Private Government (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994),122–49.
5. Richard Briffault, “A Government for Our Time: Business Improvement Districts and Urban Governance,” Columbia Law Review 365 (March 1999).
6. National Survey of Community Associations Homeowner Satisfaction (Alexandria, Va.: Community Associations Institute, 1999), 6, 5.
7. Quoted by John Tierney in “The Mansion Wars,” New York Times (November 15, 2005): A27.
Chapter 15: House and Home
1. National Association of Home Builders, 2003.
2. I have written about the Dutch episode in Home: A Short History of an Idea (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986), 51–75.
3. Stefan Muthesius, The English Terraced House (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 1.
4. D. Benjamin Barros, “Home as a Legal Concept,” Santa Clara Law Review 46, no. 2 (2006): 260.
5. Housing Statistics in the European Union 2002 (Delft: OTB Research Institute for Housing, Urban and Mobility Studies, 2000). Two-thirds of the Norwegian housing stock is houses, although this is slightly overstated since Norwegian statistics lump together one-and two-family houses. Housing Statistics (Oslo: Norwegian State H
ousing Bank, July 2003).
6. Houses are 90 percent of the housing stock in Ireland, 80 percent in Australia, and 70 percent in Canada. Australian State of the Environment Report, 2001; Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, 2004 Canadian Housing Observer.
7. Sixty percent of urban dwellings in the United States are single-family houses. National Housing Survey, 2001.
8. Werner Blaser, Courtyard Houses in China: Tradition and Present (Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag, 1979), 5.
Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town Page 27
