Wilson Glory Destruction Meaning City Beautiful

T
The City Beautiful Movement 69
3 and aesthetic enjoyment. Burnham's plans for active recreation areas

within the lakefront park strip have worn well with critics, as have his
calls for expanded park and boulevard areas and for forest preserves.
The proposed cultural center in lakefront Grant Park, between Lake
The Glory, Destruction~ Michigan and the southern portion of the commercial core, has been less
commented upon, but its merits have been recognized despite its dated
neoclassical designs. The realization of Burnham's plan for widening
anet Meanin~} of Michigan Avenue north of the Chicago River has been hailed because it
opened underdeveloped areas to retail-commercial expansion. The critics
generally have approved his plans for reorganizing the city's passenger
the City .Beautiful and freight rail traffic and for improving the Chicago River.
Burnham's other proposals, associated with the allegedly narrow social
and aesthetic concerns of the City Beautiful, have fared less well. The
Move.ment commentators have been particularly antagonistic toward his grand- or
grandiose - civic center at the intersection of Congress and Halsted
streets, on the southwestern fringe of the downtown commercial district.
Here Burnham fashioned an overpowering centerpiece, a huge city hall
with a soaring dome resting npon an elongated drum. Fernand Janin's
sketches of the city hall, published with the plan, intended to flatter
Burnham's conception but outlined instead a gargantuan parody of an
William H. Wilson administration building or a capitol. Three analysts of the plan, Carl
Condit, Paul Boyer, and Mario Manieri-Elia, have understood the
purpose behind the huge building and its vast plaza, which was to inspire
the public to civic unity and adoration. But no one expressed the purpose
better than Burnham himself, who wrote of the "central administration
building, ... surmounted by a dome of impressive height, to be seen and
Daniel H. Burnham and the Plan of Chicago felt by the people, to whom it should stand as the symbol of civic order
and unity. Rising from the plain upon which Chicago rests, its effect may
Burnham and Bennett's magnificent Plan of Chicago ( 1909) symbolized be compared to that of the dome of St. Peter's at Rome."'
the maturation of the City Beautiful. Analyses of the plan accept the The other proposed government buildings, the city hall, and their
symbolism and divide its proposals into advanced elements looking accessories "would combine to unite the square into an harmonious
forward to contemporary planning and atavistic schemes expressive of a whole." Further, the civic center, "when taken in connection with this
City Beautiful already under attack when the plan appeared.' plan of Chicago ... becomes the keystone of the arch." After reviewing
Critics generally have approved of the plan's attention to the metro- the plan's elements of practicality, beauty, and harmony, Burnham
politan region, which Burnham defined as a 60-mile radius from the returned to "the center of all the varied activities of Chicago," where "will
Loop (Chicago's downtown). They have admired the system of diagonal rise the towering dome of the civic center, vivifying and unifying the
and circumference roads designed to ease crowding and congestion. They entire composition." 3
have applauded Burnham's attention to the lakefront, a concern of his The civic center had to bear so much heavy symbolic and ceremonial
virtually from the time of the World's Columbian Exposition. Burnham's weight and was so obviously costly that there would be doubts about its
bold conception of a continuous green strip from Jackson Park to the feasibility. The center conformed in a general way to prevailing civic
north city limits and beyond would banish or suppress the railroad along center theory but was without an existing anchor building such as the
Lake Michigan and open the vast water sheet to the citizens' recreational Colorado capitol in Denver. It was a mile or so from the northern and
eastern areas of downtown and far from the northern expansion of the
Reprinted by permission from William H. Wilson. !989. The City Beautiful Movement commercial city that the widening of Michigan Avenue was expected to
Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, pp 281-305. produce. Burnham himself disclaimed any commitment to specific
70 William H. Wilson The City Beautiful Movement 71
designs, writing that his were "suggestions of what may be done, for the were so, why did he bother to introduce plate after plate of perspective
report does not seek to impose any particular form." Manieri-Eiia's paintings revealing buildings uniformly clad and corniced?•
reasonable conclusion is that the civic center buildings involved "a kind The more plausible response to Burnham's critics identifies a valid role
of ceremony," and "illusionistic" inspiration "persuasive in direct pro- for his buildings. They served as the matrix for his proposals. Practically
portion to the improbability of their execution." In order to agree with superfluous but visually vital, they framed the reconstructed Michigan
his fundamental proposition, one need not accept Manieri-Eiia's con- Avenue and the new railroad stations and deferred without competition
tention that Burnham was boosting real estate in the civic center area. to the dominating dome of city hall. They were a pictorial representation
Burnham himself knew very well how little relation to reality his huge of Burnham's hopes for a dynamic cultural and commercial city where
hexagonal space could have. In the year of his plan's publication, the mere individualism was subordinated to the harmony of the greater
city and county broke ground for a new city hall and courthouse well good.
away from his proposed site. There was virtually no possibility of his Critics of the Plan of Chicago have decried Burnham's brief if trenchant
design becoming more than what it was, an awesome visual idealization references to the slum problem and his routine solutions, cutting boule-
of civic harmony.• vards through dilapidated housing and enforcing sanitation measures.
Commercial buildings of uniform, limited height appear in the Chicago Burnham and other City Beautiful planners were little concerned with
plan, a second source for the criticism of Burnham's supposedly alien, housing, it is true. Whether their approach is open to criticism is another
aristocratic, Parisian solution. In the absence of a clarifying statement matter, to be considered later. For now it may be said that housing details
from Burnham, there are two possible responses to the criticism. One is were outside the purview of the comprehensive planning of the era. The
that Burnham intended his city to adopt height limitations correspond- planner's task, instead, was to provide the spatial opportunity for good
ing approximately to the building heights in the perspectives housing at all income levels. Ensuring adequate housing for poor people
accompanying his plan. Height limitations were hardly unknown in was a matter for private initiative and for thoroughgoing housing code
twentieth-century American cities. They dated from the municipally inspection and enforcement. 7
imposed cornice height limits around Boston's famous Copley Square Burnham paid little attention to the automobile, an omission costing
and were inspired by desires for visual harmony, for abundant sunlight him additional credibility with the critics. A more charitable approach
and air, which excessively tall buildings would block, and for public safety would suggest how difficult it is to predict the future, especially without
in case of serious fires or other disasters. Denver had height limitations, any particularly sophisticated tools and substantial data on trends in
though Speer's "Skyscraper Bill" raised them late in 1908. So did Seattle. metropolitan areas. It is one thing to understand the American expec-
The Puget Sound city retained its 200-foot limit until 1912, when it tation of democratized technology- Burnham probably had some grasp
permitted the Smith Tower to rise forty-two stories. As Thomas Hines, of it - but quite another to gauge accurately when the inexpensive,
Burnham's biographer, has pointed out, Beaux-Arts buildings lining the durable mass car would arrive. It had not arrived by 1909. To judge
architect's conception of Michigan Avenue were scarcely squat. Uniform beforehand the urban, spatial, social. and economic impact of the mass
ranks of huge, block-long structures rose eighteen stories, although the automobile was a still greater challenge. The planners of the city practical
heights generally tapered off to the north, south, and west.' era might better be charged with dereliction. The compilers of City
For all the cohesion and rationality of the uniform facades and heights, Planning Progress in the United States: 1917 derided the City Beautiful, as it
and despite ample precedent, it is doubtful whether Burnham intended was fashionable to do, "but barely hinted at the congestion and parking
Chicago to adopt building height limitations. He wrote nothing about problems the automobile was already causing," problems that only
height limits, even while he lavished analytical prose upon a civic center "emerged clearly in the 1920s" with soaring car registrations.' It is un-
practically impossible to build in the shape or on the site projected. Thus, reasonable to criticize Burnham for failing to incorporate the car into the
it hardly seems likely that he seriously hoped for the adoption of a height- city plan when his supposedly scientific successors did not, though the
limit program that he did not bother to defend at all. Had he fought for mass car and its developing consequences were right under their noses.
building height limitations and facade uniformity, he would have added In fact most of the criticism of the Plan of Chicago, as well as much of
to the already formidable expenses of the plan with the huge costs of the praise, arises from a misunderstanding of the City Beautiful
demolition, exterior remodeling, and possible purchase of unusable air movement. While the critics correctly acclaim the plan for its sumptuous,
rights. He would have, additionally, created an aesthetic controversy evocative craftsmanship and correctly attribute its quality to the extra-
potentially inimical to his plan's success. Burnham's silence on the ordinary resources at Burnham's disposal, they do not see it for what it
subject could be interpreted as indifference to height limits, but if that really is - a typical, if grand, City Beautiful plan. Burnham's regional
sweep was one proof of his self-assessment as "a door opener"' who American Society of Landscape Architects from 1899. They joined the
grasped the implications of tendencies a little in advance of the rest. Many revived American Institute of Architects (AlA) and were joined in turn
cities grew fabulously after the turn of the century, projecting urban by the National Playground Association of America in 1906. Housing
regionalism beyond the era of the big city into the age of the metropolis. reformers and settlement house workers held conferences and organized
Mayor Robert Speer and others in Denver already had under consider- the Committee on Congestion of Population. Professional awareness
ation some sort of regional relationship with recreation areas in the reinforced specialization. The hallmarks of both included university
Rocky Mountains. Street traffic improvements similar to Burnham's curricula, a growing body of literature, prerequisites for professional
were embedded in Kessler's 1893 Kansas City plan and the 1901 plan for standing, and exclusivity. For a time professionals coexisted with en-
Harrisburg, in various Denver proposals, and in many other plans of the thusiastic laymen in such organizations as the American Park and
City Beautiful era. Outdoor Art Association (APOAA) and the American Civic Association
Burnham's lakefront park scheme was as sweeping in its way as his (ACA). But professional organizations and activities increasingly claimed
street plans were in theirs, but waterfront improvement ideas reached the specialists' time and energy. Although laymen, not professionals,
back at least as far as the senior Olmsted's Charlesbank in Boston, through were the primary targets of the City Beautiful bulletins of the American
Manning's River Front Park in Harrisburg, John Olmsted's plans for the League for Civic Improvement (ALCI) and the ACA, increasingly special-
Lake Washington boulevard in Seattle, and many more. Burnham's plans ized publications appeared; the Pittsburgh Survey, launched in 1907, the
for active recreation in the park deferred to a movement whose time had city planning issue of Charities and the Commons in 1908, and the appear-
come. His replanning of Chicago's rail traffic extended a City Beautiful ance of American City in 1909 were among several newer entrants in the
tradition in which he and his firm were much involved. Burnham field of urban problem writing.U
designed the monumental Union Station in Washington in conjunction The bureaucratization and professionalization of the planning and
with the massive rail reorganization in the capital city. He lost the Kansas other functions of city government were equally ominous for the City
City station job to Jarvis Hunt but was aware of the great rail relocation Beautiful. Beginning in the nineteenth century, municipal engineers
in the offing there. His firm's other union station designs testify to the rail deliberately preempted several planning areas, especially those involving
transportation activity associated with the City Beautiful. sanitation, street grading and surfacing, drainage, and the oversight of
Nor was the Plan of Chicago the swan song of the movement. Continued improvement construction. The search for discipline, accountability, and
development under existing comprehensive plans aside, Bogue's Plan of professional service in city government moved from "strong mayor"
Seattle was yet to appear, as was Kessler's Dallas plan. In sum, the Plan charter proposals, to the city commission form, and to reformers'
of Chicago was most extraordinary because of its generous funding by advocacy of the council-manager system. Simultaneously, the rise of the
Chicago's business elite, its comprehensiveness, and its evocative paint- quasi-independent, specialized commission heralded the increasing
ings and drawings of a sublime City Beautiful." bureaucratization of urban government. Most significant for the City
Beautiful movement was the establishment of the first city planning
commission at Hartford, Connecticut, in 1907. That body forecast a new
City Practical Criticisms of the City Beautiful reality. City governments would assume planning responsibilities and
retain professional planners, usurping the catalytic role of the lay
By the time Burnham's plan appeared, the reaction against the City activists, who were the backbone of such groups as the ACAP
Beautiful had set in. The attack combined valid criticism with ridicule and The planners welcomed the changes because they held out the hope of
misrepresentation, but it was effective. Opponents of the City Beautiful divorcing professional planning not only from various lay enthusiasms
succeeded in stigmatizing it as excessively concerned with monumen- but also from sponsoring elites, who might advance their own ideas with
tality, empty aesthetics, grand effects for the well-to-do, and general proprietary firmness. As Manning discovered in Harrisburg and John
impracticality. Most defenders of the City Beautiful offered little resist- Olmsted learned in Seattle, the experts' continuing supervision of a plan
ance to the onslaught and soon joined their attackers' ranks. The city did not ensure harmonious relations with its sponsors. Increasingly,
practical carried the battle because it benefited from three interrelated consulting planners worked with city governments directly, with private
developments: increasing specialization, rising professionalism, and developers, or with corporate planning groups more remote from elec-
burgeoning bureaucracy. toral politics than earlier organizations such as the Harrisburg League for
Specialization developed rapidly in the nineteenth and early twentieth Municipal Improvements. 13
centuries. The National Municipal League dated from 1894, and the All these developments were visible or were just below the horizon
74 William H. Wilson
when the First National Conference on City Planning convened in nizations such as the Consumer's League and the Red Cross. At the end
of the conference he proposed a "commission on land values in our great
Washington, D.C., during May 1909. Benjamin C. Marsh, a New York
cities, similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission," which would
housing reform enthusiast, organized the conference. Marsh was already
determine a "fair profit on the estate," Marsh having already decided to
on record against the City Beautiful as too concerned with cosmetic
display. Parks, civic centers, and other great public works were attractive, his own satisfaction that "a profit of three or four fold in a few years is ...
he wrote, but the poor only occasionally could afford to "escape from unsafe and unnecessary and undemocratic." Marsh could hardly have
their squalid, confining surroundings to view the architectural perfection better expressed the latter-day left-progressive faith in statistics, publicity,
and to experience the aesthetic delights of the remote improvements." and the beneficence of drastic governmental intervention. 1 '
Marsh mixed practicality with his humanitarianism. He called for zoning, Nor could he have more decisively repudiated the City Beautiful belief
especially limits on factory location, for height limits, efficient trans- in the ability of uplifted, enlightened citizens to work through their
portation, parks and playgrounds in crowded districts, and excess private destinies harmoniously amid scenes of surpassing public beauty,
in a city organized for utility and efficiency. But if any supporter of the
condemnation. 14
The conference attendees ranged from housing reformers through City Beautiful believed that Marsh and his fellows represented merely a
architects, planners, and engineers, to socially aware businessmen. fad, a passing squall, he was soon disabused. In December 1 909 architect
Politically the group found equilibrium in the moderate left. The sessions Cass Gilbert flayed the City Beautiful at the annual meeting of the AlA.
"If .I were disposed to delay, interrupt, or confuse the progress of city
reflected Marsh's efforts to condemn the City Beautiful and move
planning toward practical humanitarianism as defined by specialists. development I would publish the phrase 'city beautiful' in big head lines
Robert Anderson Pope, a New York landscape architect, took up the in every newspaper," Gilbert declared. "Let us have the city useful, the
rhetorical cudgels against the City Beautiful movement. The movement's city practical, the city livable, the city sensible, the city anything but the
great sin was masking the "true nature" and "proper aim" of city city beautiful." Gilbert called for "a city that is done, completed, a city
planning, which was "to remedy congestion" of population. Population sane and sensible that can be lived in comfortably. If it is to be a city beau-
"congestion" was, not surprisingly, the hobby of Marsh, the guiding spirit tiful it will be one naturally." Gilbert's tirade was a hit. "The sentiment
of the Committee on Congestion of Population. Pope attacked the City against the 'city beautiful' term was unanimous." According to one
Beautiful for encouraging the assumption that "the first duty of city account, the AIA delegates issued a search warrant for "the originator of
'city beautiful'. The culprit had not been discovered at three o'clock this
planning is to beautify." The movement had "made the aesthetic an
objective in itself." Pope decried "the expenditure of huge sums for exten- afternoon." 17
Robinson fell into line. Reporting on the "unanimous and hearty
sive park systems ... inaccessible improvements ... made available to
but a small portion of the community - the wealthy and leisure classes, applause" that greeted Gilbert's remarks, he insisted that the people who
who of all society needs these advantages the least." Moreover, "we have were "doing most to make cities beautiful, long ago gave up use of the
rushed to plan showy civic centers of gigantic cost," inspired by "civic phrase." They now understood the source of urban beauty: the "adap-
vanity, . . . when pressing hard-by, we see the almost unbelievable tation to purpose and cooperative harmony of parts." Arnold Brunner
congestion with its hideous brood of evil: filth, disease, degeneracy, echoed Gilbert's and Robinson's themes at the ACA's 1910 convention.
pauperism, and crime. What external adornment can make truly beauti- "To the average citizen the 'city beautiful' suggests the city impossible,"
he asserted. Brunner insisted that "boards of aldermen and city treasurers
ful such a city?" 15
Other speakers joined Pope in praising European, especially German, are apt to believe that it means an attempt to tie pink bows on the lamp
cities for improving housing and thereby raising the character and qual- posts." George B. Ford, a Columbia University planning instructor, took
ity of their inhabitants. They asserted, with Pope, that a city planned for up the cry before the ACA in 1911. The City Beautiful, Ford charged, was
social benefit and economic efficiency would be beautiful. Marsh's too often concerned with "superficialities," with "frills and furbelows,"
speeches featured propositions for effective urban improvement: a survey and was "dazzling," but it was a mistake to advance the City Beautiful
of existing conditions bent on an "ascertaining of the facts," which would "before the problems of living, work and play have been solved. "18
At last the leading lay apostle of the City Beautiful capitulated.
discredit "corporate interest"; dissemination of the facts through publicity
campaigns; and the creation of powerful planning commissions able to Although McFarland did "not at all agree with his separation of what he
enforce planned change. Marsh called on the federal government to con- called the aesthetic from the practical," Ford's attack shook the ACA pres-
duct a civic census of American cities in conjunction with a nationwide ident. The effect of Ford's charges was evident when McFarland stepped
city planning committee organized along the lines of other national orga- forward to address the 1912 convention of the ACA on "Not Only the
City Beautiful." In a speech that surrendered to functionalist aesthetics, Louis, but I haven't heard how the execution is getting on," he wrote to
he ridiculed laymen who clung to the idea of the City Beautiful as "a his wife. "I think they wanted $30,000,000 to carry out the St. Louis
tawdry soldier's monument, flanked by a monstrous flagpole, several scheme .... It's hard to persuade economical practical voters and taxpay-
dismounted cannon ... and four or five enormous telephone poles." ers to spend that much in improving the plan of the city.""
When cities were made clean, practical, and efficient, then they would Another problem involved the phrase City Beautiful itself. By 1909 it
be beautiful. McFarland looked back to the World's Columbian had been in service for a decade and was becoming a bit timeworn. It was
Exposition, taken in his own time to be the starting point of city planning, a protean phrase, comprising activities as disparate as a women's club
but with an eye to its utility. Planners "properly" admired and emulated agitating for improved trash collection and Daniel Burnham superin-
"that glorious 'White City' that the great Burnham gave to us in 1893," tending the corps of designers at work on the Plan of Chicago.
he said. Planners needed to recall, however, that the fair was "both Unfortunately, City Beautiful denoted aesthetic concerns, not necessar-
convenient and beautiful, both sanitary and sightly, and therefore truly ily an important consideration in housing surveys, recreation, or land-use
admirable."" control. City Beautiful devotees such as Robinson, Kessler, and
These assaults on the City Beautiful caricatured the movement as being McFarland could embrace playgrounds, zoning, and improved housing
as concerned with the wealthy as it was indifferent to the poor and as without betraying the movement, but their eclecticism did not deflect the
obsessed with surface aesthetics as it was disregardful of practicality. It bureaucratic thrust toward utilitarianism."
was, furthermore, outrageously expensive, an affront to responsible Finally, the City Beautiful was a victim of its own success. Citizen
citizens and public officials. Attacks on the City Beautiful reflected the activists achieved or approximated their goals in Chicago. Denver.
changing relationships among citizen activists, professional planners, and Harrisburg, Kansas City, and other places. Utility wires went under-
urban governments. Ideas not professionally or bureaucratically ground. Graceful street furniture replaced crude utility poles or grotesque
approved could be denounced as allegedly expensive and impractical. drinking fountains. Billboards were tamed by municipal regulation and
Moreover, by I 909 there was some impatience with the optimism of the self-imposed restrictions of the bill posters. 24 Park, parkway, and
early progressivism, when men of lofty purpose and goodwill would boulevard systems expanded while their older segments were developed.
refashion American cities. Perhaps the panic of 1907, the portentous elec- Many civic centers were planned, and some were built. Public and semi-
toral successes of Socialists, and the bureaucratic routinization of reform public buildings usually improved in design and commodiousness,
all made Robinson's and McFarland's hopeful urgings seem a little whether or not they were grouped along civic center malls. All this was
threadbare." expensive, however, and as the years of construction went by, there were
Nor were the grand city plans all that successful. Some remained partly fewer fresh victories to inscribe on the banners of the City Beautiful. It
or wholly unbuilt, unable to confer their presumed psychic and material became easier for critics to attack the City Beautiful for aesthetic obses-
benefits on the citizenry. "Practically all the planning of cities and 'ad- sions and to ignore the movement's long-standing concerns in such areas
ditions' to cities ... has been done by Engineers," Olmsted, Jr., wrote in as recreation, traffic and smoke control, and urban efficiency. This city
a candid, perceptive letter, "and while most of it has been very badly done practical critique was a caricature - but it was credible enough to be
their work has simply met the standards and demands of their com- accepted for years, in the absence of careful studies of the City Beautiful
munities." Landscape architects had planned, usually, better than movement. In 1962 an otherwise thoughtful analysis declared the City
engineers, with regard for aesthetics and for life's amenities, but their Beautiful to be "a narrow and pathetically fragile ideal, remote from
work was "a drop in the bucket" compared with the influence of business, commerce, industry, transportation, poverty, and similar
municipal engineers in the lives of the people. For "real results" in mundane but integral features of urban life." 25 Few critics questioned,
planning "and not just a continuation of the interesting but ineffective then or later, whether the presumably more realistic and more humane
talk and theorizing that has been going on for some years now upon this city practical could, or did, advance comprehensive planning with greater
subject, it is essential that able and influential municipal engineers should effectiveness.
take a more prominent part in the movement."" The junior Olmsted was one who looked into the pit that the city prac-
Frederick's half-brother John addressed the related issue of taxpayer tical plapners were digging for themselves and saw problems almost
resistance to expensive grand plans at a time when he yet believed that beyond imagination. Olmsted confessed to the Second National
he would be chosen to help design what became Seattle's Bogue plan. "It Conference on City Planning his dismay over "the appalling breadth and
is going to be much harder to get the money for expensive schemes here ramification" of planning and "the play of enormously complex forces
than it was in the case of Cleveland. Grand schemes were devised for St. which no one clearly understands and few pretend to." Olmsted's
an occasional place that got out of control. like Harrisburg." James
solution was to divide the planning task among specialists. from whom a
Marston Fitch found "a lot of Baron Haussmann and precious little
comprehensive plan would somehow emerge. He glossed over the danger
democracy in these vast geometries of befountained plazas and inter-
of lost or compromised comprehensiveness with the statement that
anyone who fashioned "any smallest element" of the plan was responsible secting boulevards." For Fitch, their "vastly important role" was
for the welfare of the entire city. Olmsted's rhetorical resolution of the "introducing the concept of planned reconstruction into the popular
city practical dilemma was as fatuous as any City Beautiful formulation. mind. However pompous and autocratic the solutions, they were at least
John Nolen and other city practical planners, far from abandoning the admissions that real problems did exist." The movement by and by
"involved many well-intentioned souls" who eventually understood
City Beautiful. appropriated the movement's emphasis on civic
consciousness and utility as well as its naturalistic and formal designs. "that the problem was much more than one of simple face-lifting." 27
Unfortunately, the critics of the 1930s and 1940s molded their social
Axial. neoclassical City Beautiful war memorial proposals flourished in
the wake of World War I. Mel Scott found that the application of the and aesthetic biases into a critical framework. It is doubtful whether any
survey technique or other city practical mechanisms neither eliminated City Beautiful plan succeeded or failed because it was judged to be
unworkable by city practical standards, included a civic center, or was
biases or assumptions nor guaranteed a plan's implementation."
neoclassical. As for the success rate of City Beautiful plans, comparing
City Beautiful successes with later efforts would be a study in itself. In its
Later Attacks on the City Beautiful absence, a present judgment is that the full implementation of compre-
hensive plans is modest in all eras.
Another, later critique censured the movement for its limited achieve- A less biased examination of nationwide City Beautiful planning
ments. The analysis rests on a number of assumptions. The first suggests that a variety of reasons lay behind the limited success of the
assumption is the city practical belief in the impossibility of completing City Beautiful. The low proportion of plans in the South (an even distri-
City Beautiful plans. It built on criticisms about unfulfilled plans; these bution by states, territories, and possessions should have produced about
criticisms were made in the early years of the city practical. before greater fifty) indicates that conditions in the region and not the City Beautiful
experience provided a better perspective. The second assumption failed should explain the South's relatively weak planning impulse. Of the 233
to acknowledge the centrality of politics to the City Beautiful and reduced planning activity reports in the 1917 compendium City Planning Progress,
the movement partly or wholly to civic center design exercises. Then it only 34 concerned cities in the states of the Old Confederacy. Of the 34,
declared the alleged design movement a failure because so few civic more than half involved cities in southwestern Texas and in the upper
centers were built. Thirdly, the critics asserted a functionalist or southern states of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee."
"American" aesthetic against the neoclassicism of many City Beautiful Some southern City Beautiful proponents seemed to exhaust them-
designs, assuming that the designs were rejected because they were dated selves in the early stages of the planning struggles. The Woman's Club of
foreign imports false to American needs or ideals. Beyond these three Raleigh, North Carolina, hired Robinson in 1912, who submitted a typi-
assumptions, the critics believed that the city practical and subsequent cal Robinsonian effort the next year. The club printed and sold copies of
planning eras enjoyed a significantly higher rate of implementation than the plan but failed to agitate for concomitant political or administrative
did the City Beautiful. Almost the only positive value of the City reforms. It may have been that Robinson's suggestions were insufficient
Beautiful, in this view, was its success in stimulating public thought and to gather popular support, but there is no way of knowing, for the
Woman's Club conducted no further promotion ofthe plan, such as news-
discussion of planning.
This strident criticism dominated in the 1930s and 1940s and persisted paper followup stories or reprinted excerpts. Greensboro, North Carolina,
much longer. Two examples will impart the flavor. Henry S. Churchill hired Robinson in 1917, but he died before completing a plan. The
noted in 1945 how "scarcely a single city carried out, except in minor Greensboro movement died with the planner. In Birmingham, Alabama,
details, any plan that was drawn up. Of the 135 published reports, nearly transplanted Yankees and native southerners worked for civic improve-
every one was filed in the City Engineer's office and forgotten." The few ments under the leadership of the chamber of commerce. Warren
exceptional cities "carried out only plans relating to large and spectacu- Manning produced a civic center and park system plan in 1919, the late
lar public works," while they avoided "real replanning." To Churchill, the date indicative of cultural lag. Unfortunately Birmingham's inadequate
City Beautiful "plan generally meant the paper architectural develop- parks were little improved and expanded, especially in black areas, and
ment of a civic center," one with a domed building, fountains, and marble "Manning's plans came to naught." Labor spokesmen opposed spending
paving. "Fortunately, little of it came to pass, except in Washington and municipal funds on civic improvements until free school textbooks and
i other services were provided. The Sloss- Sheffield Steel and Iron Company planning for that very reason. Although willing to advise Mayor Seth
defeated the city's smoke abatement efforts in a series of maneuvers Low of the need for an independent, well-salaried commission to pursue
extending over several years. These and other problems frustrated the a comprehensive plan with expert, specialized advice, he would not
southern City Beautiful, but they were unrelated to aesthetics." become personally involved with "any but an ideal proposition, which is
The areas outside the Deep South, where the greater proportion of City not very likely to be made. The difficulties to be overcome here, are, so
Beautiful plans appeared, were those enjoying the most City Beautiful far as the Borough of Manhattan are [sic] concerned, insuperable, and
success. Again, however, design considerations played a negligible or with but a few years of breath left to hope for, there are several ways in
modest role.' City Beautiful planning succeeded most often in commer- which I could put in my time more effectively. "32
cial cities similar to Kansas City, Denver, and Seattle, although The critics of City Beautiful achievement have one more high card to
manufacturing did not militate against the City Beautiful when it play: San Francisco. In 1905 Burnham, with Bennett's collaboration,
involved light industry and processing. Heavy-industry cities and single- completed his excellent planning report for the bay city elite. On 18 April
industry towns fared less well, perhaps because they held a higher 1906, the great earthquake and fire destroyed most newly printed copies
proportion of laborers likely to be skeptical of sweeping improvement of the plan while they reduced some 4 square miles of San Francisco to
plans. They may have lacked a large, powerful, dedicated middle class. a charred ruin. Within four years the city was rebuilt almost entirely as
Plans were prepared for eastern cities, but with some exceptions - the it had been, without reference to Burnham's plan. The failure allows the
reconstruction of politically anomalous Washington, the earlier Boston plan's most careful interpreter the pleasure of declaring San Francisco to
metropolitan park system, Philadelphia's Fairmount Parkway- much less be "better off" without the plan while condemning private property inter-
was done. Sheer size, high land values inhibiting large public works, ests for preventing its realization. Many of Judd Kahn's observations
diversity of interests, and fragmented leadership played negative roles. about Burnham's plan and the City Beautiful movement in general are
Smaller cities sometimes fared better, if, like Harrisburg, they were state intelligent and sympathetic, but his point that the plan required an
capitals or for some other reason contained a significant middle class.'" imperial power lacking in the American system is not well taken. The
New York's City Beautiful failed principally because, as its historian point is, instead, that existing cities may be replanned through politics,
demonstrated, it suffered through a long gestation. When it finally but cities destroyed are almost always reconstructed on the old street
emerged as the Report of the New York Improvement Commission in 1907, it pattern, and their damaged areas are rationalized with commercial
was an orphan without adequate media or community support, another considerations in mind. Baron Haussmann possessed imperial authority,
reflection of the city's scattered interests and leadership. But its historian true, but he worked with an existing city."
condemned the plan, instead, for its "static conception," its failure to "pay Kahn surveyed post-World War II reconstruction and found the "over-
enough attention to the vast economic resources of the city and the way all pattern" to be "one of continuity"- in other words, rebuilding on the
in which these resources could be better developed through planning," preexisting lines. There were a "number of cities in which street plans
and its "overemphasis on aesthetic considerations" resulting in "slighted were modified and a few in which more extensive changes were accom-
social concerns." All this criticism poured out upon a plan devoted to plished," yet Kahn admitted that "disaster seems more likely to beget
unifying the city through an expanded park and boulevard system, substantial continuity in urban form, rather than radical innovation." The
improved traffic circulation, and revitalized piers, including recreation post-World War II reconstruction is all the more remarkable when the
piers, among many other proposals. 31 international growth of planning lore and planning consciousness from
If such ritualistic condemnation of the City Beautiful in the face of its Burnham's time is considered. Human beings confront urban destruction
social, economic, and utilitarian concerns does not advance the analysis with a powerful urge to rebuild. Across time, cultures, and systems of land
of failure, what does, beyond naming New York's diversity and frag- ownership, existing cities may be more or Jess replanned and modified.
mentation? Herbert Croly, in his 1907 criticism of the plan, grasped Destroyed cities, including San Francisco, usually are restored. 34
another part of the problem when he cited the stupefyingly high land The civic center problem raises issues similar to those already discussed.
costs "in the central part of the older city," leading the city fathers to Beginning two or three years after the publication of the 1902 plan for
"inevitably adopt the cheapest plan which has any promise of being Washington, civic center designs were important, if not central, to the
adequate." But the high costs of a comprehensive plan depended upon City Beautiful. The failure of civic center plans, while not synonymous
New York's size, density, and economic dynamism. New York had long with an unsuccessful City Beautiful movement, calls into question its
since lost the plasticity allowing for a relatively inexpensive implemen- methods and goals. For the plans did fail. Joan E. Draper has identified
tation. Charles F. McKim refused to have anything to do with New York seventy-two civic center plans. Perhaps a tenth of them were begun
during the City Beautiful era, and very few after that time. Draper neoclassicism from the exposition, just as they did its formality and
isolated five circumstances affecting a center's fate: " ( 1) the quality of axiality. The critics expressly or implicitly follow the convictions of the
project leadership; (2) the financial situation of the city and funding embittered Louis Sullivan, who declared that the Chicago fair foisted
methods for the project; (3) the city's legal powers; (4) the degree of neoclassical architecture on the country. Burnham unwittingly lent
cooperation from potential tenants (city, state, federal, and semipublic strength to Sullivan's charge with his assertions that the exposition
agencies); and (5) thefeasibility of the plan in physical terms." Her induc- inspired civic centers. 38
tion is sound and, excepting her point 4, could be applied to almost any Despite Burnham's inadvertent support, there is a false ring to
public improvement project, including the park and boulevard systems Sullivan's charge that the fair clouded the public mind with the neoclassic
identified with the City Beautiful. 35 and throttled the development of native American architecture. Thomas
A full response to the issue of civic center failure involves two E. Tallmadge challenged Sullivan in 1927, three years after the architect's
additional considerations. First, cost is an independent variable in the celebrated autobiography appeared. The challenges have continued and
civic center case. Civic centers, apart from the other features of their may be summarized as follows. The fair did not end Sullivan's career, nor
accompanying plans, were necessarily expensive. Unlike parks, boule- Frank Lloyd Wright's, nor that of any other advanced architect. Sullivan
vards, street furniture, or other elements of the City Beautiful ensemble, continued with his designing, and Wright built Prairie-style houses into
they could not, usually, be gradually acquired. Government functions the twentieth century. Chicago school buildings and Prairie school resi-
depended upon the immediate acquisition of adequate land and the dences appeared until the eve of World War I. Moreover, Sullivan's
timely construction of at least some essential buildings. Necessity and Transportation Building at the Chicago fair hardly qualified him to be an
civic center theory both dictated a center near the commercial-retail core, architectural seer. Its structure, beneath a mediocre exterior, was less
where land was expensive. Neoclassical buildings finished to the advanced than some others at the exposition. Sullivan himself developed
standards of the day were costly as well. After World War I, construction a repugnantly toplofty personality, while Wright reveled in his role of
costs rose to double and more above those of the City Beautiful era, feisty maverick. Neither man conceived of city planning ideas congenial
inhibiting late starts on civic centers during the 1920s." to the local elites who retained planners. Shifts in emphasis of Chicago
Second, too many people perceived civic centers to be, in themselves, school architects from commercial to residential design and public infat-
impractical solutions to problems of poor government organization and uation with arts other than architecture also explain the expiration of the
inadequate civic idealism. This does not mean that they opposed neo- Chicago school style. 19
classical aesthetics. Rather, as in Kansas City and Seattle, they weighed These challenges may be expanded in several directions. Taking
high costs, extreme centralization of government activity, loss of private Sullivan first, for all his daring innovation, he was not a high-quality
revenue- and tax-producing property, and the impact on the immediate planner. He entertained few notions of the city as ensemble, and the
area of the civic center against the presumed benefits. Not surprisingly, Burnham firm excelled him in interior building design. In his lyrical-to-
they found the monetary and other costs overwhelming. The realities of bombastic Kindergarten Chats Sullivan did not ask the capitalist to shut up
civic center politics caution against reading later aesthetic norms, shop but rather to develop a social conscience in architecture. It is diffi-
advanced by the architectural and critical avant-garde, into the struggles cult to imagine a building more congenial to private enterprise than the
over realizing the City Beautiful. They also caution against arguing that skyscraper, the style of which Sullivan did so much to advance, or an
civic centers and related improvements were meant to increase central- institution more representative than the bank, small examples of which
ization. City Beautiful advocates saw civic centers as enhancing he designed in the declining years of his practice. As for Wright, nothing
efficiency, not centralization. They may have subconsciously promoted save his personal lapses stayed his work. He was in full career as
centralization, but if they did, their unstated agenda left many downtown America's reigning architectural genius when he died, nearing ninety-
businessmen unimpressed. Moreover, the street widenings, radial streets, two, in 1959. Wright's city plans, when they did come, were unrealistic.
boulevards, and outlying parks associated with the City Beautiful could No antidote for pressing urban problems, Broadacres instead visualized a
be interpreted as assisting decentralization. 37 suburbanized middle-class utopia held together by ubiquitous auto-
Design-oriented detractors of the City Beautiful have attacked its archi- mobiles, telephones, and televisions."
tectural handmaiden, neoclassicism. The argument runs essentially as So far as the Chicago school goes, its demise has as much to do with its
follows: The World's Columbian Exposition imposed a derivative, passe own design sclerosis as with anything else. William H. Jordy remarked
style upon America. Neoclassicism had no proper relation to American on the inability of Chicago architects to develop new wall and window
aspirations, ideals, or building needs, yet City Beautiful planners adopted treatments after 1900. Sullivan, though he continued his innovation
in detail, achieved his final breakthrough, the Schlesinger, Mayer Americans, in contrast to Europeans, would not assent to significant
department store, in 1899. These failures of vision and imagination are land-use controls until planners could demonstrate the capitalist utility
as serious as any of those charged against the architects of the City Beauti- of zoning. 43
ful. As for the Prairie school, some of its practitioners fed upon City A one-paragraph summary cannot do justice to the Marxist analysis,
Beautiful ideas. Mark L. Peisch's sensible study notes the positive impact nor can a non-Marxist rebuttal hope to satisfy Marxists. With those
of the Columbian Exposition upon several Chicago architects and how caveats entered, the way is open for some observations. First, most of the
Walter Burley Griffin used City Beautiful devices such as axes, groupings, Marxist critique of the City Beautiful has been advanced by non-
and waterscapes in his 1913 plan of Canberra. 41 Marxists: the relationship to imperialism; the thrust toward
The Chicago fair and the City Beautiful hardly impeded the rise of the utilitarianism, improvement, social control, and civic idealism; and the
skyscraper. City Beautiful planners usually left commercial-retail cores to lack of detailed concern for housing. The critique, in other words, does
their own devices, except for individual building designs and schemes for not necessarily spring from the Marxist beliefs in the depravity of the
functional definition and traffic relief. City Beautiful architects created proletariat. The Marxists themselves, beyond their dialectical conclu-
low public buildings more useful to the governments of their day than sions, disagree on such matters as the application of the business cycle to
skyscrapers. When they designed commercial buildings, they sometimes planning and the definition of the City Beautiful movement. A word
employed neoclassical detailing on the lower floors. Above five or six about housing: Given popular attitudes that place "adequate" housing
stories, however, the motif became attenuated or lost in mass and sil- well down on the list of desirable goods, an ever-expanding definition of
houette as the buildings rose. Talbot F. Hamlin's straightforward, popular adequate housing responding to the rising level of prosperity and to
discussion of the "American style" argued convincingly that the suburbanization, and poor housing in countries having a less potent
"American" quality of the skyscraper lay in its proportions, not in its ideology of private property (or none at all), it does not seem so strange
ornamental detail. As Lewis Mumford deftly phrased it, tall commercial for the City Beautiful movement to place housing beyond the scope of its
architecture is for "angels and aviators," not for the terrestrial critic. The full treatment. Settlement house workers and others were studying the
City Beautiful influenced the main run of skyscraper design much less housing questions without, at the same time, dealing effectively with
than technology, ground rent, labor costs, land-use controls, and tax many of the other problems engaging the City Beautiful planners. It was
policy. Sullivan's statement condemning neoclassicism reflects the pain a sensible division of labor."
of a picturesque secessionist whose designs and ideas fail to conquer. Nor The origin and spirit of the City Beautiful idea refute the Marxist belief
had the neoclassic conquered. Both styles continued, before and after in beautification as the willing tool of capitalism. The phrase City Beautiful
1893, borrowing from one another as well as battling. Both helped to had been around at least from the time Frances Hodgson Burnett, in her
prepare the path for the International style and its successors. 42 1895 formula novel, applied it to the Chicago fair. But the inspiration for
More recently the City Beautiful has come under the critical scrutiny its widespread use derived from the lecture series of the Arts and Crafts
of Marxist historians. They argue that the City Beautiful movement, Exhibition Society in England, published in 1897. Two years later
responding to imperialistic impulses and economic cycles, strove to create Robinson and Municipal Affairs applied its arguments to American cities,
spatial order and unity in the city. The effort epitomized new govern- and the gathering movement had a slogan. The English lecturers had
mental efforts to rationalize the urban chaos produced by capitalism and emphasized two themes: The city, the home of all citizens, should be
to allow private enterprise to function more efficiently. The movement beautiful; and its beautification involved a substantial restraint on private
attempted to impose discipline and control upon the masses through enterprise. The problem, in their view, was not the inadequacy of indi-
visual and spatial manipulation. It tried to provide a noble idealism and vidual housing but the pathetic state of humanity's common room, the
the symbolism of a purified city in neoclassic design. Consultant-planners city. T. J. Cobden-Sanderson declared that "Art must be controlled and
such as Robinson were bound to fail, or achieve limited success, partly directed" toward "the creation of the City Beautiful, the beautiful house
because of their fake aestheticism and altruistic rhetoric. Worse, they of Mankind." Halsey Ricardo spoke for the psychic benefits of a beauti-
could not or would not understand that private enterprise itself was the ful, polychromatic city. "Strong and brave," he urged, "let us go out to
cause of urban malformations. Therefore, they could only arrange, at our fight clothed with the distinction that colour can give us, and cheered
best, a somewhat brighter facade behind which capitalism continued its by the camaraderie ... the day's work done, there is the city beautiful-
dirty work of exploitation. The limits of the City Beautiful were no more firm, stable, our home." 45
evident than in its failure to deal with housing, for an effective housing The curbs on capitalist activity involved more than those necessary to
program would have challenged exploitative, speculative land values. secure public land and construct various improvements. W. R. Lethaby
denounced the "sticky slime of soot" falling from the London sky. Walter a sigh of relief over the declining use of City Beautiful, but he did not
Crane attacked advertising posters, "often vulgar, coarse, and debased." discourage beauty. Indeed, he stressed the need for park development
Ricardo referred to the struggle "against want and disease, dirt and and the intelligent placement of public buildings. The publication in 1922
disorder." Capitalism might survive a cleanup of London soot, strict of Werner Hegemann and Elbert Peets's The American Vitruvius: An
advertising regulation, and the controls necessary to defeat "want and Architects' Handbook of Civic Art testified to the survival of traditional civic
disease, dirt and disorder." If it survived, it would be as an economic design. The 1922 National Conference on City Planning heard two papers
arrangement much modified from the late nineteenth century's. In any on beautification as an integral part of planning. Two years later Lewis
case the issue was not the destruction or survival of capitalism. It was the Mumford let fly a scathing criticism of the City Beautiful in his now
creation of the City Beautiful. 46 famous Sticks and Stones. But he was far too perceptive to dismiss the
Nor is it correct to claim that the struggle for the City Beautiful involved movement outright. "The civic center and the parkway represented
the more insightful. progressive capitalists versus the retrograde indus- the better and more constructive side of it", as did railroad stations. In the
trial capitalists, who wanted to keep their chimney soot. No such neat next decade, when Mumford the critic metamorphosed into Mumford
vocational divisions existed, as examinations of Kansas City, Harrisburg, the planner, he proposed many City Beautiful concepts and designs for
and Seattle have demonstrated. Appeals to economic self-interest accom- Honolulu: vistas, formal parks in town and wilder ones in remoter areas,
panied improvement campaigns in those cities and others, to be sure. But and a comprehensive view of the organic city ranged against the special
they rested on a belief in human rationality, a realistic assessment of claims of neighborhoods. The Hubbard and Hubbard's text of 1929
existing socioeconomic arrangements, and a conviction that the private praised contemporary city planning, located its origins in the late nine-
enterprise system was generally beneficial. They were not born of a blind teenth century, and defused "the bugbear of the 'City Beautiful."'"
trust in capitalism or capitalists. Perhaps the most amazing restatement of the City Beautiful ideal was
George B. Ford's, delivered to the 1929 National Conference on City
Planning. "Yes, most of our towns are colorless and anything but inspir-
The Survival of the City Beautiful ing and so perhaps a wistful longing comes over us to recapture some of
the beauty of life." declared a man who led the charge against the City
The ideals of the City Beautiful survived in spite of the critics' best efforts. Beautiful. Saying that "the demand for beauty is innate," Ford called for
The phrase City Beautiful continued popular for years with laymen, who more than making "our towns merely safe, healthy and convenient." He
applied it to a variety of planning and improvement concerns. In 1928 reminded his listeners that beauty "is not a cosmetic" but "is fundamental
the magazine of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce urged each home- and basic to the design of any object." He lamented how "our towns, so
owner to adapt an exterior lighting plan and "develop our residential well planned for safety, health, and efficiency, have failed to inspire our
sections into veritable fairylands after sundown." The use of outdoor enthusiasm." Ford called for new efforts at tree planting. Of street fixtures
lighting would demonstrate how the "quest of the 'City Beautiful' and furniture, he says, "We may not be conscious of them, but sub-
proceeds continuously in America." Two years later the president of the consciously they give us a sense of well-being and satisfaction and a
Dallas Chamber told his organization's annual meeting that "the love certain unconscious pride in the street." His praise of beauty and of "The
of beauty prompts and motivates most of our individual desires." Urban City Beautiful" was so fulsome, it is tempting to interpret it as the re-
beauty in architecture, landscaping, and other arts "differentiates cantation of a dubious devotion to the city practical. It is evidence,
grandeur from mere size" and "leaves its imprint upon the very soul of certainly, that City Beautiful positions were defended for a generation
citizenship." A beautification program would :q1ean "that Dallas might be after they first came under siege.<'
known throughout the land not only as the 'City of the Hour.' but also In 1943 Harland Bartholomew praised the practicality of City Beautiful
as the 'City Beautiful.'" McFarland, inveigh as he might against the use plans. "Unfortunately," he wrote, "most of these first comprehensive city
of City Beautiful, could not keep the phrase out of circulation. 47 plans were considered too visionary or impractical or were misconstrued
Critics and planners could censure or ignore the City Beautiful. but to be schemes intended chiefly for beautification of the city. Their more
they did not rule out urban beautification altogether; nor did most of fundamental objectives, intended to correct mistakes and bring about a
them completely condemn the movement. Thomas Adams's 1915 state- more orderly growth, were seldom appreciated." Bartholomew's appreci-
ment of city practical planning "factors" would not have caused a quarrel ation was unusual in a depression and wartime America not so hostile to
with a City Beautiful advocate. Nelson P. Lewis, a New York engineer and the City Beautiful as it was forgetful. 50
bureaucrat, took a city practical view of planning in 1916 and breathed In the late 1940s and 1950s professional planners and architectural
modernists held the field, but two books forecast a reawakening to the Landscape, and City Planning." Historical scholarship on the City
classical heritage. Christopher Tunnard's The City of Man (1953) was at Beautiful era and its artifacts, designs, and planning politics continued
once urban and community history, a celebration of the humane en- into the 1980s. Reinforcement of the City Beautiful belief in the psycho-
vironment, a condemnation of modernist self-indulgence, and a recovery logical and economic value of urban plants came when the first
of neoclassical civic design. Henry Hope Reed, Jr.'s, paean to the grace, International Symposium on Urban Horticulture, held in 1983, devoted
proportion, utility, and humanity of neoclassicism and to City Beautiful several papers to the subject.''
planning appeared in 1959. Mainstream architectural historians ridiculed Simultaneously local planning staffs, planning consultants, commis-
The Golden City and its author, but Reed's book foretold a resurgence of sions, city councils, and critics sought to recapture their legacy of urban
neoclassical appreciation. 51 beauty. In 1956 a Dallas master planning committee compared the Turtle
The ferment of the 1960s focused fresh attention on American cities. Creek improvement, finished along the lines of Kessler's recommend-
A rejuvenated search for the urban past arose from nostalgia, preser- ations, with the ragtag Mill Creek area. Along Turtle, read a photograph
vationism, fresh scholarship, a yearning for individual and neighborhood underline, "residential values enhanced and stabilized as the direct result
stability amid a whirligig of change, dissatisfaction with "modern" of following a Kessler recommendation." On Mill, cheap construction
commercial and domestic architecture, and disaffection from contem- "necessitated installation of a storm sewer at cost of over $4,000,000 ....
porary city planning. The 1962 protest against the demolition of the Residential decay is prevalent here today." In the 1970s and 1980s other
magnificent, neoclassical Pennsylvania Station drew attention to the Dallas authors bemoaned the loss of Mill Creek, revived Kessler's idea of
emerging attitudes. Lewis Mumford, who forty years before declared a lake in the Trinity River bottoms, and praised Lake Cliff Park in the Oak
railroad stations to be among the great artifacts of the City Beautiful. Cliff section. In Denver in 1971 and again in 1973, the city council
walked a picket line in front of the vast building. The protesters failed to imposed building height limitations around the Civic Center area,
halt the great monument's demise, but they helped to spark the preser- responding partly to pressure from the private Civic Center Association.
vation movement. Vincent Scully, no uncritical friend of the City The actions were intended to preserve the Rocky Mountain views and
Beautiful. was not alone when in 1969 he published second thoughts: "A prevent skyscraper encroachments on the center. In 1976 the council
later generation was to deride [Penn Station's] formal dependence upon designated the Civic Center area as a historic district. 54
the Baths of Caracalla. One is less sure than one used to be that such was Harrisburg's Susquehanna riverfront area has become dowdy with age
a very relevant criticism .... It was academic building at its best, rational but still graciously hosts civic celebrations such as Fourth of July fire-
and ordered according to a pattern of use and a blessed sense of civic works displays. In the early 1960s the Kansas City Board of Park
excess." Nor were the contributions of landscape architects forgotten, as Commissioners published an illustrated historical booklet, Cowtown 1890
when in 1964 Leonard K. Eaton published his appreciation of Jens Becomes City Beautiful 1962, proudly reviving the once ridiculed phrase.
Jensen. 5 2 Kansas City's public fountains spout and splash, and its Civic Center, built
The momentum gathered. Ada Louise Huxtable forcefully criticized far away from the Union Station during the Boss Pendergast era, is attrac-
contemporary architecture and lovingly evoked Beaux-Arts tradition for tively maintained. Seattle's city government has been especially sensitive
New Yorkers and the nation. In 1974August Heckscher published Alive in to its civic areas and to the Olmsted legacy. The city's neighborhood asso-
the City: Memoir of an Ex-Commissioner, a sympathetic appraisal of the New ciations have demonstrated a remarkable vitality and success in
York City parks from his commissioner's perspective. Three years later, improving the quality and integrity of their communities. The parks and
in Open Spaces: The Life of American Cities, he performed the same service boulevards continue to be attractive."
for the rest of the country, praising half-forgotten City Beautiful plans The City Beautiful revival continued despite the publication in 1961 of
and suggesting how their built features could be recaptured for contem- Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Her landmark
porary use. George E. Condon detailed the beginnings of the revival of work condemned the professional planners' macroscale mentality and
Cleveland's mall area, and the Da Capo Press republished Burnham's Plan stimulated a neighborhood revival movement already well under way.
of Chicago. Walter C. Kidney's The Architecture of Choice ( 1974) assayed the The book was trenchant and close-grained in argument, but it also
substyles of the neoclassical. A preservationist and architecture buff could contained a condemnation of the City Beautiful movement written from
better comprehend styles through such books as John J.-G. Blumenson's ignorance of its purpose and achievements, as well as special pleading and
IdentifYing American Architecture (1977). In 1979 the Brooklyn Museum faulty logic. Fortunately for the survival of City Beautiful artifacts,
published the sumptuous The American Renaissance, 1876-1917, which Jacobs's many adherents read her book selectively."
contained Richard Guy Wilson's thoughtful essay on "Architecture, There is, of course, some validity to the critics' comments, however
limited it might be. The City Beautiful movement attempted too much. City movement, which proposed radical deconcentration and the
America's fragmented politics were a formidable barrier to the coordi· destruction of the great cities. The Garden City movement and its heirs
nated physical overhauling of widely varying sizes and types of cities have thrilled academics with their altruistic systems involving significant
ranged across a continent. Enthusiastic organizing, speech making, and restrictions on private ownership and enterprise. The fact is, however.
writing were no substitute for determined and intelligent action in ·each that the Garden Cities and their successors have at best become suburbs
and every city. Too often a published plan and citizen idealism passed for with fairly typical suburban dynamics."
purposefulness. The City Beautiful movement was fundamentally an urban political
The movement was too naive and hopeful, socially and architecturally. reform movement. It left a legacy of civic activism and flexibility in the
McFarland's writings are a case in point. "It is well known that environ- urban political structure. The professional planning expert advanced to
ment very greatly influences human beings," the hyperactive, diminutive the fore during the era. but the network of concerned, politically aware
printer wrote in 1908. That was well enough. but the moralistic laymen was equally important to City Beautiful success. The network
McFarland had a corollary to deliver. "The education in ugliness that is survived in the ACA and found outlets in general and specialized peri·
constantly proceeding through the special privilege assaults of the bill- odicals, conventions. and speeches. Women, usually middle-class
boards is not an education that tends towards the production of good women, learned how to make their communities aware of problems of
citizens." It is easy to imagine, behind the charming simplicity and direct· sanitation, cleanliness. and public beauty. The physical legacy - tree-
ness of McFarland's statements, a chilling assumption of an adroit shaded boulevards, undulating parks. and graceful neoclassic buildings
environmental manipulation that would produce "good citizens." rich in ornament and craftsmanship- remain to remind later generations
McFarland could not have achieved such a drastic physical reshaping of of ancestors who built for their own times. to be sure. but who
cities, and anyway, such a reformation almost certainly would not have consciously tried to create a future city of order. system, and beauty. We
created McFarland's "good citizens." Later generations inherited must, therefore, consider not only what City Beautiful planners designed
McFarland's environmentalism. but they are also the legatees of totali- and wrote but also what they did. The City Beautiful mode of civic scale
tarianism's horrible brutalities. It is understandable. if nonsensical. for was for a time so pervasive that even the architects of skyscrapers
them to read into environmentalist statements an ignorance of the respected it. As Thomas Bender and William R. Taylor have written, the
complexity of urban life and an overweening desire for close control of design and detailing of the first five or six stories of the early skyscrapers
the citizen. 57 responded to sidewalk and street viewing.'"
Moreover. the architectonic visions of the movement's civic design The movement generated a large and continuing interest in the
phase invited the ridicule and reductionist critiques of the city practical. improvement and preservation of beauty in Washington. D.C. While
Changes in architectural taste and in society invite us to depreciate acknowledging Washington's "undemocratic and arbitrary form of
outmoded styles. Nothing else earns a certificate of critical acuity as government." McFarland appealed to "the opportunity Washington
rapidly and easily as an attack on the architecture of the immediate past affords for working out the physical details of city improvement in a
from the perspective of the present. It is equally facile and as intellectu· broader fashion than is likely to be practicable under the ordinary condi·
ally slipshod to compare architecture in the mode of the good· natured lions." McFarland understood Washington's oxymoronic quality. It was
City Beautiful with that of a repressive totalitarianism." politically anomalous and therefore of no practical use to the citizen
activist in the midst of a struggle over a bond issue, but its inspirational
possibilities were potentially unbounded. 61
The Contributions of the City Beautiful The City Beautiful movement also illuminates some issues of continu-
ity and change in urban America. The City Beautiful assumed. without
The limitations of the City Beautiful movement and of its critics aside, the acknowledgment. much of the Olmstedian rhetoric about the value of
movement achieved much. It spoke to yearnings for an ideal community urban beautification. City practical planners embraced beauty in the
and to the potential for good in all citizens. Therein lies its most impor- cityscape despite their denunciations of the City Beautiful. The spirit of
tant but least remarked contribution. For all its idealistic rhetoric, the each era differed one from the other, underlining the simultaneity of con·
movement was imbued with the courage of practicality. for it undertook tinuity and change. 62
the most difficult task of all; to accept its urban human rna terial where Its development of the comprehensive plan marked the City Beautiful
found, to take the city as it was. and to refashion both into something era's great departure from the past. The adjective comprehensive has so
better. Contrast its realism with the contemporaneous antiurban Garden often modified the noun plan as to rob comprehensive of all meaning.
Restoring content to comprehensive assumes that a truly comprehensive in nearby residents. David Dillon, Dallas's insightful architectural critic,
plan is pervasive, reaching into all or almost all parts of the city; that it warned of the high-rise buildings, many of indifferent-to-ghastly design,
attempts to deal with a broad range of urban problems; and that, conse- crowding the margins of Turtle Creek. Denver's Pioneer Monument stands
quently, it is multifunctional. deserted in a tiny, uninviting triangle reduced to accommodate noisy
By such a definition few of the senior Olmsted's plans were compre- automobile traffic, its basin empty, its fountain jets turned off. In Kansas
hensive, although the later ones addressed the issues of recreation, City, Jarvis Hunt's grand Union Station, now disused, molders away. 64
controlled urban growth, and residential area development, among The shabby treatment of some City Beautiful artifacts underscores the
others. They were multifunctional, but they left important central areas reality: However much it may be praised or fondly recalled, the City
untouched. Andrew Green's 1865 plan for Manhattan Island above Beautiful movement is over and cannot be revived in the megalopolitan
Fifty-ninth Street was all-embracing but geographically limited. A single- era. Even sympathetic critics find City Beautiful sumptuousness a little
function plan, a sewage disposal system for example, meets only one too much. As Joan Draper remarked, when the San Francisco Civic
urban need, albeit an essential one. It cannot be comprehensive, no Center was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, the
matter how elegantly designed, no matter what insights into urban struc- revived interest in neoclassic design did not lead anyone to propose
ture and form its designer gains wltile developing it. Nor does deciding creating new neoclassical monuments. 65
where certain buildings or institutions should be scattered about make Still, a neoclassical revival might not be a bad idea. A look around the
one "a comprehensive city planner" unless the placing is done with refer- later public architecture of Denver's Civic Center area does little to inspire
ence to a comprehensive city plan. Partial plans were often intelligently faith in the individuality of architects restrained only by "funding," "the
designed, carefully integrated with other activities, and systematically site," and "the problem." The Denver Art Museum appears to be thrown
carried out, but none of that makes them comprehensive." up by a Mesa Verde chieftain to keep his treasures safe from the hordes.
The City Beautiful movement produced the first comprehensive plans Its slabby bulk, too close to the City and County Building, dominates the
based on a theory of the organic city. The park and boulevard systems older structure's tower. The Colorado State Judicial Building stands on
would provide varied recreational and educational opportunities, help two legs at either end of a giant cutout first floor. The four floors above
shape cities while they directed their growth, open up new residential threaten to press down upon the void and bow the building in the middle.
developments, divide urban areas into functionally separate subdistricts, It is an unsettling experience either to view this strange white concoction
and assist in the development of transportation and other utilities. Civic or to walk underneath it, through the cutout. Next to the judicial building
centers adjacent to retail-commercial cores would rationalize and is the dark brown Colorado Heritage Center, looking like nothing so
centralize governmental functions, enhance civic pride through inspir- much as a wedge of chocolate cake badly cut and indifferently dropped
ational scenes, and build civic patriotism by providing a place of on a plate by a Brobdingnagian hostess. The site and design make the
democratic mingling and celebration. The civic center and the park and structure practically incapable of expansion, an unfortunate circum-
boulevard system, together with playgrounds, would pervade the city stance in a building dedicated to the perpetual collection and preservation
with their positive influences. Later planners would decry the City of Colorado's past. Only the 1950s brick-and-glass public library fits
Beautiful as much as they wished, but they owed it a heavy debt- their comfortably into its corner of the Civic Center and blends well with its
own concept of comprehensiveness. surroundings.
Despite the City Beautiful's contributions, its legacy is not always It was not just the City Beautiful era in which reach exceeded grasp.
appreciated or preserved. The realities of urban budget constraints, the So it becomes all the more important to remember what the City
pressures of the private automobile, and changes in citizen interest and Beautiful advocates were reaching for, an ordered society in which digni-
use combine with public indifference to wreak havoc with some City fied, cooperative citizens of whatever station or calling moved through
Beautiful survivals. Harrisburg's boulevard system is a shambles of scenes suffused with beauty. It was a glorious ideal, incapable of realiz-
neglect, obliterated in places by trafficways. Wildwood Park is a ruin, its ation, but eternally beckoning. No one captured the spirit of the ceaseless
lake silted, its pathways overgrown and befouled with trash illegally quest better than Jules Guerin in a painting for the Plan of Chicago. In it,
dumped, its meadow the site of a freeway interchange- in all a mockery the viewer is suspended above Lake Michigan, near the yacht harbor,
of McFarland's praise for the reclaimed Harrisburg of the I 91 Os and looking west over the city. It is dusk. A thin band of fading vermilion
1920s. White Rock Lake Park in Dallas, City and Washington parks in lingers above the western horizon. The city lights long since should have
Denver, and Green Lane Park in Seattle attract crowds far beyond their been turned on, but it is as though the citizens by common agreement
capacity, creating maintenance headaches and, in some cases, heartburn have kept them off. There is purpose in their unity. How else could the
viewer focus upon the dome of the great city hall, as the sun's last rays 12 Schultz and McShane, "To Engineer the Metropolis" Journal of American
light it in glowing gold? History 65 (September 1978), 398-402; Clay McShane, "Transforming the
Use of Urban Space: A Look at the Revolution in Street Pavements,
Notes 1880-1924," Journal of Urban History 5 (May 1979): 295-300; and Scott,
American City Planning, 80-81.
1 Commentaries on the Plan of Chicago include Boyer, Urban Masses and Moral 13 For Manning and Harrisburg, see McFarland to Woodruff, 26 Nov. 1915,
Order, Paul Boyer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978) box 13, McFarland Papers, Pennsylvania State Archives. For expert
270-76; Carl W. Condit, Chicago, 1910-29: Building, Planning, and Urban planners' changing relationships, see Scott, American City Planning, II 0-269,
Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973 ), 59-85; Wilbert R. especially 227-37.
Hasbrouck, "Introduction" to the reprinted Plan of Chicago Hasbrouck 14 Benjamin C. Marsh, "City Planning in Justice to the Working Population,"
Chicago: Commercial Club, I 909, v-viii; Hines, Burnham (New York: Oxford Charities and the Commons !9 (I February 1908): 1514-18.
University Press, 1974), 312-45; Horowitz, Culture and the City (Lexington, 15 Robert Anderson Pope, "Some of the Needs of City Planning in America,"
Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 220-25; Mario Manieri-Elia, in U.S. Congress, Senate, City Planning, including Program of First National
"Toward an 'Imperial City': Daniel H. Burnham and the City Beautiful Conference on City Planning, Washington D.C., May 21 and 22, 1909
Movement," in The American City: From the Civil War to the New Deal, Giorgio (Washington, 1910), 75.
Ciucci et al (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979), 89-112; Reps, Making of Urban 16 Ibid., 76-79; John Nolen, "What is Needed in American City Planning," in
America, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1965), 517-24; Scott, U.S. Senate, City Planning, 74-75; Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., "The Scope
American City Planning (Berkeley and LA: University of California Press, and Results of City Planning in Europe," in ibid., 63-70; Marsh, "A National
1969) 100-109; and Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Constructive Programme for City Planning," in ibid., 61-62; and idem,
Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930 (Philadelphia: Temple "Economic Aspects of City Planning," in ibid., 104-5.
University Press, 1983 ), 73-81. 17 The report from the delegate of the Washington State Chapter incorporated
2 Burnham and Bennett, Plan of Chicago, Chicago: Commercial Club, 1909, a newspaper clipping describing Gilbert's speech, WSC Papers, Records,
116. 1894-1910, 173-74. An interpretive biography of Gilbert is Geoffrey
3 Ibid., 117, 118. Blodgett, "Cass Gilbert, Architect: Conservative at Bay," Journal of American
4 Ibid., 116; and Manieri-Elia, "Toward an 'Imperial City,'" 95. For the city- History 72 (December 1985): 615-36. Despite Blodgett's title, Gilbert's attack
county building, see Condit, Chicago, 1910-29, 178-82; and Joan E. Draper, on the City Beautiful identified him with the planning and architectural
"Paris by the Lake: Sources of Burnham's Plan of Chicago," in Chicago avant-garde. See also an account of a Gilbert speech in P-1, 28 Nov. 1909.
Architecture, 1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis, ed. John Zukowsky (Munich: 18 [Charles Mulford Robinson], "Notes and Comments: A Protest That Is
Prestel-Verlag, in association with the Art Institute of Chicago, 1987), Timely," Architectural Record 27 (February 1910): 202-3; Arnold Brunner,
107-19. Washington Star, 16 Dec. 1910; and George B. Ford, "Digging Deeper into
5 For height limitations in Denver, see Pickering, "Blueprint of Power" Ph.D. City Planning," American City 6 (March 1912): 557-62. See also Robinson's
diss., University of Denver, !978,),3:1zJJi!\l\~)I_l.Seattle, se~.l-/.eil, "Paris or review of Ford's article in "A Broader and Saner City Planning," ibid.,
555-56.
New York?" Pacific Quarte[l)i•. , Z!'t.,,{Jf'.Rc> {~§'%b.}'fJYfh1l:''Mc.• ?.~:c;73-, .!fines,
"The Convention of the American Civic Association," 21 Dec. 1911, box 14,
..~-urn ham, 3 3 4-3 5 . ..q;-;_ :;:·,~L-~·:.,·:R:\1~-- ·:>_ ,~ -~;, "L-:~,: :..\~.,-:.. ·: ;;,,:;;'.: -';_...!:1,",_; ; d' ;;~;,:. ._:,~_>,::~·:; :, -:---· :~;~,,,, :-~;_ 19
6· Burnham and Bennett, Pl!{n qfCht~a.ifi>;plates cxll,:exv; i:Vxi;,pcxi, an<! cxxii. McFarland Papers; and ACA, Department of City Making, Not Only the City
~~~~~~~: ~~mmercial Club;'1?:~9,~';•:;·;.;,;;: .. ·,, ;:·;"~':;
8 ;,, •. '~.';':' "''''·'•''• ·•···
Beautiful, no. 8, ser. 2 (Washington, D.C., 1913), 3, 10.
7 20 For McFarland's analysis of his role, see McFarland to John Nolen, 15 Feb.
8 Ford, ed., City Planning Progress (Washington D.C., American Institute of 1909, John Nolen Papers, Collection 2903, Department of Manuscripts and
Architects, 1917), iii; Scott, American City Planning, 167-68, 187. University Archives, Cornell University.
9 Quoted in Hines, Burnham, 369. 21 Olmsted to Benjamin C. Marsh, 21 Apr. 1909, folder 2921-1, box 183, Olmsted
I0 A list of buildings completed by Burnham's firms is in Hines, Burnham, Records, Library of Congress.
371-83. 22 Olmsted to Olmsted, 12 Dec. 1909, folder 163, box 20A, Olmsted
II Hancock, "John Nolen" (Ph.D. diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1964), Correspondence. Loeb Library, Graduate School of Design, Harvard
137-42; Newton, Design on the Land (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of University.
Harvard University Press, 1971 ), 385-87; Peterson, "Origins of the 23 McFarland's concern for the creation of new slums by failing to provide for
Comprehensive City Planning Ideal" (Ph.D. diss .. Harvard University, 1967), the dispossessed from cleared slums is in his letter to Graham Romeyn
373-425; and Scott, American City Planning, 71-100. For the emergence of Taylor, 14 Dec. 1912, box 9, McFarland Papers.
city planning professionalism and specialized publications, see Kirschner, 24 For billboards, see Kristin Szylvian Bailey, "'Fighting Civic Smallpox': The
Paradox of Professionalism (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 4-10. Civic Club of Allegheny County's Campaign for Billboard Regulation,
r The City Beautiful Movement 97
1896-1917," Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 70 (January 1987): Power: Great Fires and the Process of City Growth in America (Cambridge:
3-28; and William H. Wilson, "The Billboard: Bane of the City Beautiful." Cambridge University Press, 1986).
Journal of Urban History 13 (August 1987): 394-425. 34 Kahn, Imperial San Francisco, 200, 201. Other examinations of Burnham's
25 Roy Lubove, The Progressives and the Slums: Tenement House Reform in New York plan are in Hines, Burnham, 174-96; and Mellier G. Scott, The San Francisco
City, 1890-1917 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), 220. Bay Area: A Metropolis in Perspective (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
26 For "appalling" and "play" quotations, see Olmsted, "Introductory Address California Press, 1959), 79-121.
on City Planning," in Proceedings of the Second National Conference on City 35 Draper, San Francisco Civic Center (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, 1979),
Planning and the Problems of Congestion (Boston, 1912), 15, 16; for "any" 12 (quotation, 19). The one-tenth of centers begun is my estimate, not
quotation, "How to Organize a City Planning Campaign," in ibid., 304. For Draper's.
Nolen, see Hancock, "John Nolen," 324-33, 508-16. See also Nolen, 36 For comparative construction costs, see Hines, Burnham, 386.
Replanning Small Cities: Six Typical Cities (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1912); 37 For the centralization-decentralization dichotomy, see Samuel P. Hays, "The
and idem, New Ideals in the Planning of Cities, Towns and Villages (New York: Changing Political Structure of the City in Industrial America," Journal of
American City Bureau, 1919), 5-7, 10-11, 25-30, 78-83. For war memori- Urban History I (November 1974): 6-38. See also William W. Cutler III, "The
als, see the following articles in American City: "The Proposed Liberty Persistent Dualism: Centralization and Decentralization in Philadelphia,
Memorial Square and Civic Center for Berkeley, California," vaL 20 (May 1854-1975," in The Divided Metropolis: Social and Spatial Dimensions of
1919): 428-29; and "Grand Rapids Considering a Memorial Building," ibid.: Philadelphia, I800-I975, ed. William W. Cutler III and Howard Gillette
429; 0. B. McClintock, "Minnesota Proposes a Memorial Hall," vaL 21 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 257, 260, 262, 263,
(September 1919): 252; and "Civic Centers as War Memorials," vaL 21 38 Sullivan, Autobiography of an Idea (New York: Dover Publications, 1956),
(October 1919): 330-34. Scott, American City Planning, 120-22. 321-25. The most recent biography of Sullivan is Robert Twombly, Louis
27 Henry S. Churchill, The City Is the People (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Sullivan: His Life and Work (New York: Viking Penguin, 1986).
World, 1945; reprint, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), 82, for 39 Tallmadge, Architecture in America (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1927),
"scarcely" and "carried" quotations; and 69, for "plan" quotation. James 196-97; David H. Crook, "Louis Sullivan and the Golden Doorway," Journal
Marston Fitch, American Building: The Historical Forces That Shaped It, 2d ed., of the Society of Architectural Historians 26 (December 1967): 250-58; Dimitri
rev. and en!. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972), 239-40. Fitch's book Tselos, "The Chicago Fair and the Myth of the 'Lost Cause,'" ibid., 259-68;
was first published in 1947. Hines, Burnham, 98-100; Burg, Chicago's White City (Lexington, Ky,:
28 Ford, ed., City Planning Progress, v-vi. Most of the plans dated from the City University Press of Kentucky, 1976), 303-9; and David S. Andrew, Louis
Beautiful era. Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture: The Present Against the Past
29 Huggins, "City Planning in North Carolina" (North Carolina Historical Review (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985), 136-39. For Wright, see Scully,
46, October 1969), 383-87, 390. Carl V. Harris, Political Power in Birmingham, American Architecture and Urbanism (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969),
1817-1921 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1977), 164-67 138; and Thomas S. Hines, "The Paradox of 'Progressive' Architecture:
(quotation, 166), 229-31. Urban Planning and Public Building in Tom Johnson's Cleveland," American
30 See Ford, ed., City Planning Progress, 5-193; and Hancock, "John Nolen," Quarterly 25 (October 1973): 445, 447. American architects attacked
334-44. neoclassicism and the civic center concept at least as early as 1911, but their
31 Harvey A. Kantor, "The City Beautiful in New York," New-York Historical ideas were neither dominant among their colleagues nor very popular. See
Quarterly 57 (Aprill973): 149-67 (quotations, 170, 171 ). See also Robert A. Ernest Flagg, "Public Buildings," 42-55; and Irving K. Pond, "Discussion,"
M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and John Montague Massengale, New York in Proceedings of the Third National Conference on City Planning (Boston, 1911 ),
I900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism, I890-I9I5 (New York: Rizzoli, 74-77.
1983), 7-143. 40 Louis Sullivan, Kindergarten Chats (New York: George Wittenborn, 1947).
32 Herbert Croly, "'Civic Improvements': The Case of New York," Architectural For Sullivan as planner and businessman, see Andrew, Sullivan, 75-112,
Record 21 (May 1907): 350. McKim to Charles Moore, 8 Jan. 1903, 128-34. Wright's planning ideas are in his The Living City (New York:
Scrapbook: Park Commission Correspondence, Mr. McKim, 1901-1903, Horizon Press, 1958). Colin Rowe, The Mathematics of the Ideal Villa and Other
Charles Moore Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. Essays (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976), contrasts Sullivan's lack of interior
33 Judd Kahn, Imperial San Francisco, 4 ("better off" quotation), and for Kahn's planning with Wright's concern for the plan, 96, 98-99. Fishman, Urban
discussion of the influence of property and statement of his belief in the Utopias (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 122-60.
efficacy of centralized government in replanning, see 177-216. See also 41 Jordy, American Buildings: Progressive and Academic Ideals (Garden City, N.Y.:
William Issei and Robert W. Cherny, San Francisco, I865-I932: Politics, Power, Doubleday & Co., 1972), 3:63-70, 83-179; Mark L. Peisch, The Chicago School
and Urban Development (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California of Architecture: Early Followers of Sullivan and Wright (New York: Random
Press, 1986): 109-16, 170-72. For rebuilding after devastating fires in House, 1964), 4, 13-15, 18, 32-33, 70, 105-24, 144-45, illus. 28.
Chicago, Boston, and Baltimore, see Christine Meisner Rosen, The Limits of 42 For discussions of the parallelism of neoclassical and other styles, see
f The City Beautiful Movement 99
Christopher Tunnard and Henry Hope Reed, American Skyline: The Growth Exhibition Society (London: Rivington, Percival & Co., !897), 43-44; Halsey
And Form of Our Cities and Towns (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1955), Ricardo, "Of Colour in the Architecture of Cities," 259.
179-215; and Tunnard, Modern American City (New York: VanNostrand 46 W. R. Lethaby, "Of Beautiful Cities," in Art and Life, 99; Walter Crane, "Of
Reinhold Co., 1968), 89-92. Talbot F. Hamlin, The Enjoyment of Architecture the Decoration of Public Buildings," in ibid., 139; and Ricardo, "Of Colour
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), 266-97. Lewis Mumford, Sticks in the Architecture of Cities," in ibid., 259.
and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization, 2d rev. ed. (Bani 47 "Patriotic Residents of Dallas Can Solve 'City Beautiful' Problem," Dallas 7
and Liveright, 1924; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1955), 174. For (December !923): 22, 23; and Arthur L. Kramer, "Beauty in City Building,"
the impact of neoclassicism on federal government construction, see Lois A. ibid. 9 (January 1930): 9, 21. Wilson, "J. Horace McFarland," Journal of
Craig et al., The Federal Presence: Architecture, Politics, and Symbols in United Urban History 7 (May 1981), 329, 330-31.
States Government Building (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978). A different inter· 48 Thomas Adams, "Some Town Planning Principles Restated," American City
pretation of the neoclassical impact on commercial architecture is Jack 12 (March 1915): 213; Nelson P. Lewis, The Planning of the Modern City: A
Tager, "Partners in Design: Chicago Architects, Entrepreneurs, and the Review of the Principles Governing City Planning, 2d ed. rev. ( !9!6; New York:
Evolution of Urban Commercial Architecture," South Atlantic Quarterly 76 John Wiley & Sons, !923), 23, 25; Hegemann and Peets, The American
(Spring 1977): 212-!8. For a discussion of "civic horizontalism and corpo- Vitruvius (New York: Benjamin BJorn, !972), John Nolen, "The Place of the
rate verticality," in the New York context, see Thomas Bender and William Beautiful in the City Plan: Some Everyday Examples," in Proceedings of the
R. Taylor, "Culture and Architecture: Some Aesthetic Tensions in the Fourteenth National Conference on City Planning (Springfield, Mass., 1922),
Shaping of Modern New York City," in Visions of the Modern City: Essays in !33-47; Andrew Wright Crawford, "The Value of Art Commissions in City
History, Art, Literature, ed. William Sharpe and Leonard Wallack (Baltimore: Planning," in ibid., !48-58. Mumford, in Sticks and Stones, criticizes the City
Johns Hopkins University Press, !987), !89-2!9. Beautiful, !23-5! (quotation, 131). For the Honolulu plan, see Mumford,
43 Manieri-Elia, "Toward an 'Imperial City/" 1-121; and Francesco Dal Co, City Development: Studies in Disintegration and Renewal (New York: Harcourt,
"From Parks to the Region: Progressive Ideology and the Reform of the Brace & Co., 1945), 86-!53. Mumford's mentor, Patrick Geddes, criticized
American City," in Ciucci et al., American City, 143-221; M. Christine Boyer, "town planning" in the United States but also found much to admire, in
Dreaming the Rational City: The Myth of American City Planning (Cambridge: Cities in Evolution: An Introduction to the Town Planning Movement and to the
MIT Press, !983 ), 3-82, I 14-36; Marcuse, "Housing in Early City Planning", Study of Civics ( !9!5; reprint, New York: Howard Fertig, !968), 232-37, 248.
!53-76; and Richard E. Foglesong, Planning the Capitalist City: The Colonial Theodora Kimball Hubbard and Henry Vincent Hubbard, Our Cities To-Day
Era to the 1920s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, !986), !63-66, and To-Morrow: A Survey of Planning and Zoning in Progress in the United States
206-!0, 2!6. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, !929), 5-78, !25, !35, 140, 2!6-!7,
44 For imperialism, see Burchard and Bush~ Brown, Architecture of America 238, 248-51, 263-80 (quotation, 263).
(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., !96!), 295. For social control and related 49 George B. Ford, "What Makes 'The City Beautiful'?" in Planning Problems of
issues not cited or discussed elsewhere, see Fran~oise Choay, The Modern Town, City and Region: Papers and Discussions at the Twenty-first National
City: Planning in the Nineteenth Century (New York: George Braziller, Conference on City Planning (Philadelphia: Wm. F. Fell Co., 1929), !70, !7!,
Publisher, !970), 7-32, 97-1!0; Stephen Kern The Culture ofTime and Space, !72-73.
1880-1918 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 39-40, 56, 50 Harland Bartholomew and Associates, Your Dallas of Tomorrow: Master Plan
99-!00, 139, 209-!0; Weinstein, Corporate Ideal (Boston: Beacon Press, for a Greater Dallas, Report Number One: Character of the City (Dallas: City Plan
!968), ix-x, 94-96; and Wiebe, Search for Order (New York: Hill & Wang, Commission, !943), 31. A biography of Bartholomew and his place in city
1967), xiii-xiv, 149. For Marxist disagreements, see Manieri-Elia, "Toward planning is Norman John Johnston, Harland Bartholomew: His Comprehensive
an 'Imperial City,"' 49-52, 9!; Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City, 5; Dal Co, Plans and Science of Planning (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms, !964).
"From Parks to the Region," !76-78; and Fogelsong, Planning the Capitalist 51 Christopher Tunnard, The City of Man (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
City, 89-!66. For housing problems, see Boyer, Dreaming the Rational City, 1953); Henry Hope Reed, Jr., The Golden City (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday
!00; and Robert B. Fairbanks, "From Better Dwellings to Better & Co., 1959). For comments on Reed, see Burchard and Bush-Brown,
Community: Changing Approaches to the Low-Cost Housing Problem, Architecture of America, 295-96, 45!, 490; and Larkin, Art and Life in America
!890-!925," Journal of Urban History !! (May !985): 3!4-34. For settle- (New York: Holt, Reinehart & Winston, 1960), 47!.
ment house workers, see Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social 52 For criticisms of planning and planners, see Edward P. Eicher and Marshall
Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890-1914 (New York: Oxford Kaplan, The Community Builders (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
University Press, !967), 73-74. California Press, 1967); and Marshall Kaplan, Urban Planning in the 1960s: A
45 For the novel, see Burg, Chicago's White City, 290-92. For quotations, see Design for Irrelevancy (New York: Praeger Publishers, !973; Cambridge: MIT
Cobden-Sanderson, "Of Art and Life," in Art and Life, and the Building and Press, 1974), especially 85-!03. A 1960s planner who had some appreci-
Decoration of Cities: A Series of Lectures by Members of the Arts and Crafts Exhibition ation for the City Beautiful movement was Edmund K. Faltermayer, Redoing
Society, Delivered at the Fifth Exhibition of the Society in 1896, Arts and Crafts America: A Nationwide Report on How to Make Our Cities and Suburbs Livable
(New York: Harper & Row. 1968), 24, 25, 46, 191, 225-26. Lorraine B. 21-22, 24; and David Dillon, "City Park with a View," DMN, 26 Apr. 1984.
Diehl. The Late, Great Pennsylvania Station (New York: American Heritage Denver Post, 27 Feb. 1973, 28 Apr. 1976; and Cervi's Rocky Mountain Journal
Press, 1985), 18-20, 26-28, 147-48. Scully, American Architecture and 31 (July 1972).
Urbanism, 142. Leonard K. Eaton, Landscape Artist in America: The Life and 55 Kansas City Board of Park Commissioners, Cowtown 1890 Becomes City
Work of Jens Jensen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964). Beautiful1962: The Story of Kansas City's Parks (Kansas City, 1962); Urban
53 Ada Louise Huxtable, Kicked a Building Lately? (New York: Quadrangle Design Advisory Board, Designing a Great City (Seattle: City Planning
Books, 1978), 3-5, 8-12, 217-21. 221-24; August Heckscher, Alive in the Commission, 1965), 3, 6, 7, 28; City Planning Commission, Framework for
City: Memoir of an Ex-Commissioner (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, Tomorrow: City Planning for Seattle (Seattle, 1966), 2--4; and Dennis Ryan,
1974); idem, Open Spaces (see chap. 3, n. 30); George E. Condon, Cleveland "Lay of the Land," Planning 49 (March 1983): 18-21. For Seattle organiz-
The Best Kept Secret (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co .. 1967), 352-56; ations, see Barrett A. Lee et al., "Testing the Decline-of-Community Thesis:
Kidney, The Architecture of Choice (New York: George Braziller, 1974), John Neighborhood Organizations in Seattle, 1929 and 1979," American Journal
J.-G. Blumenson Identifying American Architecture: A Pictorial Guide to Styles of Sociology 89 (March 1984): 1161-88.
and Terms, 1600-1945 (Nashville: American Association for State and Local 56 For Jacobs on the City Beautiful. see her Death and Life of Great American Cities
History, 1977); Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences, The American (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 24--25. Jacobs may be correct in her claim
Renaissance, 1876-1917 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979) (Wilson's essay that parks do not by themselves raise property values, a subject of much
is on pages 74--109). Scholarly production, in addition to works already debate, but she loads her argument with a discussion of four small
cited, includes two articles by Michael P. McCarthy: "Chicago Businessmen Philadelphia squares obviously unable to control the construction around
and the Burnham Plan," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 63 them, 92-lOl. Her discussion of a "clay dog"-making beach replaced by a
(Autumn 1970): 228-56; and "Politics and the Parks: Chicago Businessmen park lawn is poignant but it draws a false analogy between the action of
and the Recreation Movement," ibid. 65 (Summer 1972): 158-72. See also waves and sun on clay deposits and the values of unplanned human
Elizabeth Anne Mack Lyon, "Business Buildings in Atlanta: A Study in activity, 446-47. For one criticism of Jacobs, see Fitch, American Building,
Growth and Form" (Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1971). Joseph L. Arnold, 298-307. For another criticism of the City Beautiful with little practical
"City Planning in America," in The Urban Experience: Themes in American effect on the growing interest in the movement see Robert Goodman, After
History, ed. Raymond A. Mohl and James F. Richardson (Belmont, Calif.: the Planners (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971), 60, 98-103, 122, 130.
Wadsworth Publishing Co .. 1973), 14--43, as a brief. interpretive review. 57 McFarland to Editor, Jersey City Journal, 21 Mar. 1908, box 15, McFarland
Joanna Schneider Zangrando, Monumental Bridge Design in Washington, D.C., Papers.
as a Reflection of American Culture, 1886 to 1932 (Ann Arbor: University 58 Goodman, After the Planners, illustrations on 104, 105.
Microfilms, 197 4 ), is detailed and excellent. Among more recent articles are 59 For various problems of the Garden City and "back-to-the-land" move-
Ralph L. Pearson and Linda Wrigley, "Before Mayor Richard Lee: George ments see Park Dixon Goist "The City as Organism: Two Recent American
Dudley Seymour and the City Planning Movement in New Haven, Theories of the City" (Ph.D. diss .. University of Rochester, 1967), 5; Fred-
1907-1924," Journal of Urban History 6 (May 1980): 297-319; John Fahey, erick C. Howe, The Modern City and Its Problems (New York: Charles Scribner's
"A. L. White, Champion of Urban Beauty," Pacific Northwest Quarterly 72 Sons, 1915), 6-8; and Merwin Robert Swanson, "The American Country
(October 1981): 170-79; and Shirley Leckie, "Brand Whitlock and the City Life Movement, 1900-1940," (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1972),
Beautiful Movement in Toledo, Ohio," Ohio History 91 (1982): 5-36. On 13-17, 25-29, 34--35. For a sympathetic treatment of Ebenezer Howard and
urban horticulture, see David F. Karnosky and Sheryl L. Karnosky, eds., the Garden City idea, see Fishman, Urban Utopias, 23-88. For the relation-
Improving the Quality of Urban Life with Plants: Proceedings of the June 21-23, ship between sanitation and the City BeautifuL see Melosi, Garbage in the
1983, International Symposium on Urban Horticulture, New York Botanical Cities (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1981), 110-13.
Garden publication no. 2 (Millbrook, N.Y.: Institute of Urban Horticulture, 60 Bender and Taylor, "Culture and Architecture." For the impact of women
1985), especially the following articles: Harold B. Tukey, Jr .. "An Overview on their communities, see Karen J. Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True
of Urban Horticulture," 1-6; David R. DeWalle, "Amenities Provided by Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers,
Urban Plants," 7-14; John F. Dwyer, "The Economic Values of Urban 1980), 93-115, 119.
Plants," 15-27; Charles A. Lewis, "Human Dimensions of Horticulture," 61 McFarland to Clinton Rogers Woodruff, 31 Dec. 1913, box 12, McFarland
35--44; and Rachel Kaplan, "Human Response to Plants and Landscapes," Papers. For a sampling of the new extensive material on Washington, see
45-60. ACA resolution, "Referring to the Improvement of the City of Washington
54 Statements not cited in this and subsequent notes are based on my obser- and District of Columbia under Plans of the Commission Appointed by the
vations. Dallas Master Plan Committee, A Look At Past Planning for the City of Senate of the United States" (1904) file 2823, box 135, Olmsted Records:
Dallas (Dallas, 1956), 7-8; Patsy Swank, "Mill Creek," Vision 2 (March and American Institute of Architects et al., An Appeal to the Enlightened
1979): 6; Jane Summer, "Getting to the Bottom of Town Lake," Dallas Life: Sentiment of the People of the United States for the Safeguarding of the Future
Sunday Magazine of the Dallas Morning News 1 (14 November 1982): 10-12, Development of the Capital of the Nation (Washington, D.C .. 1916). Unfinished
Washington, not historical continuity, was part of an inspiration for a 1960s

effort to beautify the city, although a few of the participants in the
4
movement were aware of their predecessors. See Lewis L. Gould, Lady Bird
Johnson and the Environment (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1988),
62
37-135.
Elements of City Beautiful plans survived in later planning schemes, a
phenomenon noted as early as 1927 by Jacob L. Crane, Jr., "Errors to Avoid
Tne De,atn ar1at J. . ife
in City Planning.'' in Official Proceedings of the Thirty-third Annual Convention
Held at Dallas, Texas, November 14-18, 1927, American Society for Municipal
Improvements (St. Louis, 1928), 98.
ol ~r-eat Am·er-ican
'--' ., _--<>,.-----,-_,------_-_,____ , ___ .__. -------- _- --- -, ______ - -'- _-· '- '
63 Dana F. White claims the status of comprehensive planner for the senior
Olmsted, and David C. Hammack claims it for Andrew Green and others.
See White, "Frederick Law Olmsted, the Place Maker," in Two Centuries of
Cities
American Planning, ed. Daniel Schaffer (London: Mansell, 1988), 87-112;
and Hammack, "Comprehensive Planning before the Comprehensive Plan:
A New Look at the Nineteenth-Century American City," in ibid., 139-65
(quotation, 156).
64 McFarland to Richard B. Watrous, 27 Sept. 1915, box II; and toW. C. Reed,
4 Oct. 1921, box 8, McFarland Papers, DMN, 9 June 1980. David Dillon,
"The Strangling of Turtle Creek," DMN, 8 July 1984; idem, and "A Changing
Turtle Creek," DMN, 5 Aug. 1984. For the Kansas City Union Station, see
Roy Kahn, "Tackling 'Impossible' Buildings," Historic Preservation 38
(May/June 1986): 42, 44. Although it concerns parks, Patricia O'Donnell's
"Historic Preservation as Applied to Urban Parks," in The Yearbook of
Landscape Architecture: Historic Preservation (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold Co., 1983), 35, 53, deals effectively with difficult problems of This chapter is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is
changing uses, design, and restoration. also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning
65 Draper, San Francisco Civic Center 59. and rebuilding, different and even opposite from those now taught in
everything from schools of architecture and planning to the Sunday
supplements and women's magazines. My attack is not based on quibbles
about rebuilding methods or hairsplitting about fashions in design. It is
an attack, rather, on the principles and aims that have shaped modern,
orthodox city planning and rebuilding.
In setting forth different principles, I shall mainly be writing about
common, ordinary things: for instance, what kinds of city streets are safe
and what kinds are not; why some city parks are marvelous and others
are vice traps and death traps; why some slums stay slums and other
slums regenerate themselves even against financial and official opposi-
tion; what makes downtowns shift their centers; what, if anything, is a
city neighborhood, and what jobs, if any, neighborhoods in great cities
do. In short, I shall be writing about how cities work in real life, because
this is the only way to learn what principles of planning and what prac-
tices in rebuilding can promote social and economic vitality in cities, and
what practices and principles will deaden these attributes.
From The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Copyright© 1961 by Jane
Jacobs. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

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T

The City Beautiful Movement 69

3 and aesthetic enjoyment. Burnham's plans for active recreation areas

Washington, not historical continuity, was part of an inspiration for a 1960s

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