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PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 THE MEETING OF MAY lo, 1922 
 
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PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 THE MEETING OF MAY lo, 1922 
 
 SPEAKERS 
 
 Robert W. de Forest 
 Charles D. Norton 
 Herbert Hoover 
 John J. Carty 
 Lillian D. Wald 
 Elihu Root 
 Charles Dana Gibson 
 Mrs. August Belmont 
 
 COMMITTEE 
 
 Charles D. Norton, Chairman 
 Robert W. de Forest John M. Glenn 
 
 Frederic A. Delano Dwight W. Morrow 
 
 Frank L. Polk 
 
 Frederick P. Keppel, Secretary 
 Flavel Shurtleff, Asst. Secretary 
 
 130 East Twenty-second Street 
 New York 
 
^ 
 
 J^'^'^ 
 
 The Call for the Meeting 
 
 T, 
 
 HE problems created by the concentration of population in and 
 about the City of New York are growing daily in seriousness and are 
 engaging the attention of an increasing number of our citizens. The 
 Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, organized for the improve- 
 ment of social and living conditions, have appointed to consider the 
 subject, a Committee consisting of Charles D. Norton, Chairman, 
 Robert W. de Forest, Frederic A. Delano, John M. Glenn, 
 DwiGHT W. Morrow and Frank L. Polk. But for his untimely 
 death, Alfred T. White, who was actively interested, would also 
 have been a member. Frederick P. Keppel has been named as secre- 
 tary and Flavel Shurtleff as assistant secretary of this Committee. 
 
 Substantial progress has already been made in the organization 
 of a series of basic studies looking forward to the formulation and 
 promotion, in cooperation with all concerned, of a regional Plan of 
 New York and its Environs. It is now desired to hold an informal 
 conference of those who are naturally interested, the public officials, 
 architects, engineers, artists, city planning experts and other public- 
 spirited men and women who in their own special fields and in their 
 own localities are already facing these problems. After consultation 
 with Elihu Root, Herbert Hoover, Alfred E. Smith and a 
 number of others who have already promised their cooperation, a 
 meeting at which a preliminary report will be presented and discussed 
 has been arranged for 8:15 p.m., May 10,192a, in the auditorium of 
 the Engineering Societies Building, ^^ West 39th Street. You are 
 cordially invited to attend this meeting. 
 
 Will you be kind enough to let me know by a reply on the en- 
 closed card addressed to 130 East 22nd Street, whether we may count 
 upon your presence on this occasion, which we trust will prove to be 
 the inaugural step in a movement of far-reaching importance for our 
 community? ^^ r» // o r" ; • 
 
 ir US tees Russell o age Foundation 
 
 Robert W. de Forest, President 
 Frederic A. Delano Charles D, Norton 
 John H. P'inlev Gertrude S. Rice 
 
 John M.Glenn Louisa Lee Schuyler 
 
 Dwight W. Morrow H ei.en (iould Shepard 
 
The Meeting of May lo, 1922 
 
 Robert W. de Forest, Presiding^ said: 
 
 THE purpose of this meeting is to tell those whom we 
 have invited to meet with us this evening what the 
 Russell Sage Foundation is doing to develop a com- 
 prehensive regional plan of New York and its vicinity, and to 
 invite their cooperation. 
 
 For more than a year the Sage Foundation has given serious 
 consideration to this subject. In doing so it has sought and ob- 
 tained, confidentially, suggestions and advice from a number of 
 people. It now wishes to broaden the circle of its advisers. 
 Moreover, this project of the Foundation is already confidentially 
 known to so many that it must inevitably soon become public. 
 Its scope should be authoritatively declared, so as to avoid any 
 possible misapprehension. 
 
 This authoritative declaration will be made by Mr. Charles 
 D. Norton, Chairman of the Committee on Plan of New York 
 and Its Environs. I shall not duplicate or qualify his announce- 
 ment. I shall confine what I say by way of introduction to an- 
 swering one or two questions that may at once suggest themselves 
 to this audience, and by emphasizing one or two parts of our 
 program. 
 
 The first question you may instinctively ask is whether it is 
 not a project far beyond the resources of the Foundation. 
 Unquestionably it is, if the Foundation alone is expected to 
 carry this project to fruition. All that the Foundation can wisely 
 do is to outhne an initial plan in reliance on the cooperation of 
 others to perfect it and carry it out. 
 
 54S291? 
 

 PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 Another question which may be properly asked is whether any 
 such plan can be carried out without the action of public au- 
 thorities, city and state, and this question may lead to another 
 as to why some of the public officials, of at least the larger cities 
 concerned, should not be members of any committee on this 
 subject. Unquestionably, no such plan can be carried out except 
 by and through the public authorities, but the Foundation has 
 thought it unfair to these authorities to involve them in a plan 
 at the present time. Ultimately any plan must be presented to 
 these authorities for modification, acceptance or rejection. 
 These authorities to perform their proper functions as represent- 
 ing the people should be left at this initial stage in an absolutely 
 judicial position. They should not be now embarrassed by be- 
 ing asked to take any leading part, nor should the Foundation 
 and its advisers be now embarrassed by any personal or political 
 considerations. 
 
 A few words as to emphasis: To most people a City Plan suggests 
 nothing more than streets, open spaces and buildings, and is per- 
 haps limited to what may be called the "city beautiful." While 
 the project of the Sage Foundation unquestionably includes 
 streets, open spaces and buildings, and would not ignore the 
 element o-f beauty, its emphasis will be laid according to the 
 Foundation's charter on "The Improvement of Social and 
 Living Conditions." It is that plan which makes the city a better 
 place to live in and a better place to work in that most interests 
 the Sage Foundation. 
 
 The project of the Foundation, while not ignoring congested 
 Manhattan and almost equally congested Brooklyn, involves 
 a regional Plan of New York and includes not only Greater New 
 York but its Environs. With present methods of transportation, 
 the real New York includes every locality within easy commuting 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 or motor distance and embraces parts of the states of New 
 Jersey and Connecticut. It is perhaps in these environs that 
 city planning has its greatest opportunity. 
 
 Announcement of project^ by Charles D. Norton: 
 
 The present street plan of Manhattan Island was designed by 
 Commissioners Gouverneur Morris, Simeon DeWitt and John 
 Rutherford in 1811, when New York had a population of less 
 than 90,000. 
 
 In the report of the 18 11 Commission we find the following: 
 
 "* * * It may be a subject oj merriment that the commissioners have provided 
 space for a greater population than is collected at any spot on this side of 
 China. * * * It is not improbable that considerable numbers may be collected 
 atllaerlem before the high hills to the southward of it shall be built upon as a 
 city., and it is improbable that {for centuries to come) the grounds north of 
 Haerlem flat will be covered with houses. * * * 
 
 "It may be matter of surprise that so few vacant spaces have been left and 
 those so small; for the benefit of fresh air and consequent preservation of health. 
 Certainly if the City of New York were destined to stand on the side of a 
 small stream such as the Seine or the Thames , a great number of ample places 
 might be needful; but those large arms of the sea which embrace Manhattan 
 Island render its situation., in regard to health and pleasure ^ as well as to con- 
 venience of commerce^ peculiarly felicitous; when therefore^ from the same 
 causes., the price of land is so uncom?nonly great^ it seemed proper to admit the 
 principles of economy to greater influence than might., under circumstances of a 
 different kind, have consisted with the dictates of prudence and the sense of duty." 
 
 These "principles of economy" applied to Manhattan Island in 
 181 1 have yielded their logical and disastrous harvest of congestion 
 and confusion in 1922. Embraced by "those large arms of the sea,"- 
 rigidly bound to a street scheme designed in 181 1, Manhattan has 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 leaped into the air; it has tunneled and bridged the rivers; it has 
 thrust out its transportation arms until men and women travel fifty 
 miles to their daily labor in the city; until the great area of which 
 Manhattan is the center is in 1922 the home of no less than nine 
 millions of people. Deep-seated structural defects leave masses of 
 this population in an environment ill suited for human happiness 
 and welfare. Traffic in existing streets is congested to the point 
 where it places intolerable burdens upon commerce and endangers 
 human life. Although the public, the liberal press, the engineering 
 and artistic professions have repeatedly voiced the need, there exists 
 no comprehensive regional Plan of New York and its wide Environs. 
 Many admirable local plans have been developed, but no inspiriting 
 vision of the far future guides us in our present expenditures of 
 money and of civic effort. Without a guiding Plan, what of New 
 York one hundred years hence ? Momentous decisions are being con- 
 stantly made, decisions that are local, piecemeal and unrelated to 
 the larger trends. The time has come for unified planning in the 
 interest of the whole people. 
 
 Unhampered by the fears of the Commissioners of 181 1, lest their 
 plans become "subject of merriment" if too large an area were 
 included, all of the communities in which people make their 
 homes who gain their daily livelihood in New York, from the New 
 Jersey shore, through Princeton, to West Point, and Bridgeport, 
 and including all of Long Island, will recognize their common inter- 
 est in comprehensive planning; will share a common wish to make 
 of New York and its Environs a better place in which to work and to 
 live. Precisely as a family rejoices in the development and embellish- 
 ment of its home, so our citizens and their children's children will 
 watch with deepest satisfaction the gradual development of their 
 fair Estate, of New York and its Environs, in accordance with some 
 cherished Plan. 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 City Planning requires imagination, it requires vision; it requires 
 a long continuing study of facts, and it costs a substantial sum of 
 money. There is no public treasury which can be drawn upon to 
 create such a Plan, for no one governmental agency has jurisdiction 
 over all of that area which includes portions of three states and many 
 municipalities. 
 
 The Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation, organized for the 
 improvement of social and living conditions — ^mindful of the explicit 
 request in Mrs. Sage's deed of gift, that a portion of the income be 
 applied exclusively for the benefit of New York City and vicinity, and 
 desiring to serve the public interest — have made an appropriation 
 which, together with a large number of contributions from interested 
 citizens, will provide a sum sufficient to meet the necessary expense of 
 developing a comprehensive regional Plan of New York and its 
 Environs. They have appointed a Committee consisting of Charles 
 D. Norton, Chairman, Robert W. de Forest, Frederic A. De- 
 lano, John M. Glenn, DwightW. Morrow and Frank L. Polk, 
 to organize the work and to that end to cooperate with groups 
 of citizens and public officials in the boroughs, municipalities 
 and local communities throughout the whole area. 
 
 But for his untimely death, Alfred T. White, who was actively in- 
 terested in the project, would have been a member of the Committee. 
 
 Avoiding duplication of effort, the Committee propose to ap- 
 proach their difficult problem by first organizing a series of prelimi- 
 nary inquiries with a view to developing and recording those basic 
 facts and fundamental considerations which are requisite to inform 
 public opinion and to guide the future city planners. There will be 
 organized at least four such inquiries, as follows : 
 
 I. Economic and Industrial: An analysis of the fundamental 
 reasons for the existence of this great center of industry and com- 
 merce, its potentialities and the sound limitations on its future 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 development; an inquiry into economic and occupational activities, 
 those that create populous districts and those that follow population ; 
 a study of the land within the area, its use and taxation. 
 
 2. Physical: The mapping of existing topographical and other 
 physical conditions, including railway and water transportation, 
 harbor, "free port" and terminal facilities, bridges, ferries, main 
 highways, park and recreation spaces, public and quasi-public build- 
 ings, and density and distribution of day and night population; the 
 compiling of existing local schemes for improvement. 
 
 3. Legal: A study of existing law as it controls or affects a Plan 
 for the area which includes portions of three states; an analysis of 
 the law of zoning, excess condemnation, stabilization of official city 
 maps, shore rights and land under water, and other subjects relat- 
 ing to City Planning. 
 
 4. Social and Living Conditions: Studies designed to bring to 
 the attention of the city planners those factors which have direct 
 bearing upon human values and social welfare, and make for health- 
 ful and satisfactory housing and home surroundings, efficient work 
 and wholesome leisure time. 
 
 After these inquiries have laid solid foundations upon which to 
 base sound planning, the man, or the group of men, will be found 
 to plan for New York and its Environs as George Washington and 
 Pierre I'Enfant planned for Washington, or Burnham and Bennett 
 and their committees of business men planned for Chicago; to create 
 a Plan which, with wide public participation and approval, shall 
 embody and record the best thought of our engineers, our artists 
 and architects, our public servants, our social workers and econo- 
 mists, and far-seeing business men. 
 
 Plans, when sufficiently advanced, will be submitted to the public 
 at large for study and criticism through groups of citizens represent- 
 ative of each community in the great area involved. They will be 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 offered in no arbitrary spirit, but rather in the faith that the public 
 will welcome comprehensive planning, and will endeavor through 
 the proper public authorities and citizen organizations to realize to 
 the utmost, as the decades pass, the social, the industrial, the com- 
 mercial and the artistic values of this great world capital and port. 
 
 The Committee will propose no abnormal expansion of public ex- 
 penditure. With a wisely conceived Plan public funds which will be 
 expended in any event can be directed into projects of permanent 
 constructive value; without a Plan millions are likely to be wasted in 
 desultory or ill-considered public works. 
 
 This project is presented for the first time to this representative 
 conference of public officials, engineers, architects, artists and other 
 public-spirited citizens, for here it is that we must find the love of 
 order and of beauty, the lofty vision, and the skilled hands which 
 shall depict for a vast population the dramatic and stirring possi- 
 bilities of the centuries to come. 
 
 Mr. Norton added: 
 
 The Committee is faced with this dilemma. Desiring the co- 
 operation of many people in many communities, early and frank 
 announcement of the project is necessary; but the method chosen 
 to approach the problem, while sound and original in planning 
 ventures, is necessarily slow and laborious. Enlisting as we do 
 the ablest men and women, who are always the busiest people, 
 these inquiries cannot be hastened. 
 
 There is danger lest the mere announcement of the project 
 arouse too great expectations of immediate results, expectations 
 which at best cannot be realized until after much study and the 
 lapse of considerable time. 
 
 It is, however, perfectly fair to ask what the Committee has 
 done and in detail how they propose to proceed. 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 For more than a year the Physical Survey has been under way. 
 With a staff of engineers assisting him, Nelson P. Lewis, former 
 Chief Engineer, Board of Estimate and Apportionment, City 
 of New York, and former President of the National City Plan- 
 ning Conference, has been studying the density and trends of 
 population, mapping the whole area and learning what public 
 officials and engineers are doing, or can do, in the development of 
 forest reserves, parks, playgrounds as well as in the development 
 of railroad, port, harbor and transit facilities. Mr. Lewis has the 
 aid and advice among others of D. L. Turner, B. F. Cresson, Jr., 
 Jay Downer, Morris R. Sherrerd, Frederic Law Olmsted and 
 George C. Whipple. 
 
 Incidentally, with the aid of a special group including William 
 Adams Delano, Jules Guerin, Isaiah Bowman, George D. Pratt 
 and Sherman Fairchild, Mr. Lewis will endeavor to develop a 
 new type of map for city planners, in which the painter with his 
 mastery of arrangement and of color, will be guided by the ac- 
 curate contours of the engineer and the new viewpoint of the 
 aerial photographer. 
 
 The Legal Inquiry has been under way for six months under the 
 direction of Edward M. Bassett, former Chairman, Zoning Com- 
 mission of New York and present counsel. Zoning Committee, 
 aided by Frank B. Williams, legal investigator in city planning, 
 who is giving his entire time. Interesting legal questions arise. 
 What planning powers are lacking in the various communities? 
 How can they effectively cooperate with each other? Is the pub- 
 lic ownership of aqueduct, water supply and canal lands such 
 that future populations can enjoy them as open places? How 
 far can zoning be adopted by areas outside of cities? To what 
 extent can ungranted foreshore and land under water, now owned 
 by the states, be preserved for future recreational use? How can 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 official highway and park layouts, especially in sparsely populated 
 districts, be created and stabilized? Mr. Bassett's advisers in- 
 clude James Byrne, President, Association of the Bar of the City 
 of New York, Charles E. Hughes, Julius Henry Cohen, Isaac N. 
 Mills, and Chancellor James F. Fielder of New Jersey. 
 
 The Social and Living Conditions Survey naturally divides 
 into several heads: among them I will mention public health; 
 housing; leisure time and recreation facilities; the environment 
 of hospitals and custodial institutions. Shelby M. Harrison, 
 Director of Surveys, Sage Foundation, is giving his entire time 
 to the organization of this work. One typical subdivision, that of 
 public health, has been placed under the supervision of Dr. Her- 
 mann M. Biggs, aided by a group of authorities including among 
 others Dr. George David Stewart, President, Academy of Medi- 
 cine, Dr. Walter B. James, Dr. Josephine Baker, Dr. Thomas W. 
 Salmon, Miss Clara D. Noyes, Dr. Winford Smith and Dr. 
 William H. Welch of Johns Hopkins. 
 
 It is not necessary to say more in illustration of our method. 
 Never before, I believe, has a City Plan been approached in just 
 this deliberate way: preceded by inquiries so comprehensive. 
 The results of these inquiries will be published from time to 
 time — not voluminous reports covering the whole range of hu- 
 man knowledge on each subject — but authoritative, carefully 
 edited and, we hope, brief reports, strictly limited to those phases 
 of each subject of vital concern to city planners. 
 
 As Executive Secretary, the Committee has enlisted Frederick 
 P. Keppel, former Dean of Columbia College, and former As- 
 sistant Secretary of War. Mr. Keppel will leave his present 
 post with the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris 
 and move to New York in September, and will be assisted by 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 Flavel Shurtleff, Secretary of the National Conference on City 
 Planning, with offices in the Sage Foundation Building. 
 
 The Committee will include among its general counselors 
 and advisers such citizens as Elihu Root, Alfred E. Smith, 
 Herbert Hoover, A. C. Bedford, Irving T. Bush, William Fellowes 
 Morgan, Frederick B. Pratt, Nicholas Murray Butler, Mrs. Otto 
 Wittpen,Hugh Frayne, Virginia Gildersleeve, Morgan J. O'Brien, 
 Amey Aldrich, John J. Carty, Frances Perkins, Lawson Purdy, 
 Mary E. Dreier, Felix Warburg, Darwin P. Kingsley and 
 Lillian D. Wald. Instantly there come to mind the names of 
 public officials whom we would wish to have on any list of 
 advisers. Mr. de Forest has, however, well stated our desire 
 not to embarrass or involve them, at this juncture, in what is 
 essentially a private venture in cooperation, engaged in by pri- 
 vate citizens who have become deeply interested in the high 
 cost of not planning. But public officials too are citizens and 
 neighbors and friends, and as such we shall endeavor to keep 
 them fully informed of our activities and freely seek their com- 
 ment and advice. 
 
 Planning for so wide an area and on so large a scale requires 
 group judgment. The group certainly will include the Archi- 
 tect, the Engineer, the Lawyer, the Painter, the Sculptor, the 
 Landscape Architect, the Social Worker, the Economist and 
 the Business Man. And the work itself will develop and dis- 
 cover the man, the Planner, to lead that group. He is here, the 
 spiritual descendant of Pierre L'Enfant, of Charles McKim, of 
 Daniel Burnham. We shall find him and that group will depict 
 for us the New York of a hundred years hence, a city great not 
 merely in numbers, but great in that all its citizens, the rich and 
 the poor, the strong and the weak, can take just pride in its power 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 and its beauty, can share in those durable satisfactions of Hfe 
 which are the natural outgrowth of orderly thinking and wise 
 planning. 
 
 Herbert Hoover: 
 
 The action of the Trustees of the Russell Sage Foundation in 
 providing for the survey by engineers and other experts of the 
 economic and social situation, and the preparation of a compre- 
 hensive Plan for the development of New York City and its En- 
 virons deserves the highest commendation. 
 
 The enormous losses in human happiness and in money which 
 have resulted from lack of city plans which take into account the 
 conditions of modern life, need little proof. The lack of adequate 
 open spaces, of playgrounds and parks, the congestion of streets, 
 the misery of tenement life and its repercussions upon each new 
 generation, are an untold charge against our American life. 
 Our cities do not produce their full contribution to the sinews 
 of American life and national character. The moral and social 
 issues can only be solved by a new conception of city building. 
 
 The great growth of industry since New York was originally 
 planned presents a host of new problems. The cost of distri- 
 bution of necessities within the boundaries of the city increases 
 each year until today the congestion, the inadequate system of 
 terminals of transportation and commodity distribution gener- 
 ally tax New York with ten or fifteen per cent upon the cost 
 of living above more adequately served centers. 
 
 Many of our industries are seasonal. If we are to secure high 
 living standards and to gain in national productivity, these in- 
 dustries must be so interlocked as to give more continuous em- 
 ployment. The fact that New York has at all times the largest 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 proportion of unemployment of any of our cities is due partially 
 to this ill adjustment. 
 
 New York is the gateway of Europe into the United States, 
 and the dumping of great hordes of people into our slums is a 
 poor introduction to Americanization. 
 
 One part of such a plan must be a realization of each economic 
 group in the community as to its function to the whole great 
 community of which it is a part. With this in mind, residential 
 districts whose interests center largely around low cost of living 
 and educational and recreational facilities would see their 
 interests in better means of distribution and the development 
 of public utilities. The manufacturing districts must find not 
 only better aligned transportation but coordination to resi- 
 dential areas which can be developed upon human lines. 
 
 The survey can help arouse a consciousness of its needs on the 
 part of each community and group within the whole territory. 
 The cooperation of all groups must be enlisted if a workable 
 plan is to be evolved. This is vital in surmounting the legal 
 difficulties in the way of executing such a plan. 
 
 The vision of the region around New York as a well planned 
 location of millions of happy homes and a better working center 
 of millions of men and women grasps the imagination. A definite 
 plan for its accomplishment may be only an ideal. But a people 
 without ideals degenerates — one with practical ideals is already 
 upon the road to attain them. 
 
 Lillian D. Wald : 
 
 This seems to me a most important first step towards the most 
 important undertaking that I have heard of for many years. I 
 believe that if it is carried out in logical sequence it will add 
 greatly to the happiness of the people of New York. 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 It links a practical, workable plan with the vision of a city- 
 conceived in understanding of the needs of many people, their 
 homes and those matters most closely related to their daily life. 
 
 It rouses within me a hope that those who come after may profit 
 by this responsibility for them and our remorse for past omis- 
 sions. I am enthusiastic because I see the possibility of realizing 
 a hope that lies deep in the hearts of all lovers of mankind, and 
 particularly the lovers of little children — that it is possible to 
 have a city beautiful, and that ugliness is entirely unnecessary. 
 
 I have felt some of that chagrin of which Secretary Hoover 
 speaks -.when the stranger comes to America, often with great 
 ideals, he meets first the ugly, commercialized, unsocial — often 
 anti-social — section of the city into which he moves. I fully under- 
 stand that even a perfectly planned metropolitan area will not 
 bring about the millenium; but organized, cooperative plans that 
 bring people together, that comprehend the interrelationship of 
 home and work, recreation and education, will make impossible 
 the further growth of segregated, ugly quarters for racial groups 
 or economic classes. 
 
 There is bound to develop among those entrusted with the 
 plans, and the public through them, the conviction that no city 
 is really dignified unless there is within it a consciousness that 
 children can be brought up safely only if the homes are fit for 
 children to be brought up in. And I see the experts in various 
 phases of city life coming together for this great plan, weighing 
 and appraising the elements that enter into the home and the 
 shopi 
 
 As I sense the aspirations of anxious parents, I can say with 
 them that we long for decent homes, for wholesome recreation, 
 for proximity to employment, and for transportation facilities 
 that do not make the coming and going from work to home a 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 most unpleasant experience. We also aspire to schools and play- 
 grounds placed with a conception of the distance that children 
 can safely travel. And we hope for prohibition of the ugly com- 
 mercialized houses which are only too flatteringly called "homes." 
 A great plan that has the advantage of the counsel of experts in 
 every field — not working as specialists but working together for 
 the city made up of homes — will establish standards, and the 
 necessary provisions and prohibitions will naturally follow. 
 
 Imagination soars to the ultimate possibilities of not only a 
 physically planned city, but development of other measures that 
 are akin to it. I see, for instance (perhaps because the problem 
 of unemployment touches us now, and we have not forgotten that 
 it has been called a "recurring cycle"), that a great city plan could 
 be made available for giving employment for public works during 
 periods of industrial idleness as a part of the thought-out plan, 
 and not promoted in times of excitement and without long and 
 adequate study. 
 
 I see also in the plan, lastly but by no means of least con- 
 sequence, recognition of the need of beauty; a need that exists, 
 whether consciously or unconsciously, in the souls of people, even 
 the least. Looking up Henry Street, the Woolworth Building can 
 be seen in the distance. One of our children not long since, 
 gazing westward, saw the beautiful building in the sunset light 
 and, all unconsciously comparing that shining vision with the 
 ugly, overcrowded, unclean, garbage-decorated houses about her, 
 and obviously awed by the sight, exclaimed "Does God live 
 there?" 
 
 We have beauty in the city — perhaps more than we deserve, 
 because so much of it has either been accidental or due to the con- 
 ception of an individual; but on the whole, beauty has not touched 
 our homes, our industrial streets or our factories; not, I believe, 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 through any prejudice against beauty, even for these functions 
 and purposes of the city, but because the city, Hke Topsy, grew 
 up, and a planless city inevitably becomes a city of specialization, 
 not a coordinated social structure. 
 
 John J. Carty : 
 
 For more than thirty years, I have been concerned as an en- 
 gineer in a responsible way with the making of economic surveys 
 and development studies forecasting the telephonic development 
 for New York City and other cities of the United States, and in 
 the making of fundamental plans based upon these forecasts. 
 These studies and plans require special inquiries into the future 
 growth, character and distribution of population and business, 
 and, notwithstanding all of the sources of error to which such 
 studies and plans are obviously subject, they have proved to be 
 of immense practical value. 
 
 A definite, though broad, fundamental plan for our city and 
 its environs will make possible the growth of an harmonious 
 system of urban and country communities, embodying an organic 
 idea making for unity and utility and beauty. Thus may be 
 avoided the colossal blunders and incalculable financial losses 
 due to an incongruous assemblage of discordant elements which 
 would result from following a random policy with no adequate 
 and authoritative plan to guide. Such a plan eliminates at once 
 the costly errors of inconsistency and, if it is kept constantly 
 under review as it should be, it can be intelligently modified as 
 time goes on, so as to meet with a minimum of difficulty those 
 unforeseen contingencies which must always be expected in every 
 project looking far into the future, and involving so many com- 
 plex and uncertain factors. 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 From my interest in the making of telephone plans for the 
 future, it has come about that I have had an excellent op- 
 portunity of observing the preliminary work of the Committee, 
 and of becoming acquainted with their ideals and methods of 
 approach. I have also considered with much care the report of 
 the Committee which has just been read, relating to the Plan 
 of New York and Its Environs, and as the result of this I am 
 well persuaded that the project as outlined is a sound one. It 
 is proposed on a broad, comprehensive and open-minded basis, 
 and I feel sure that it sets forth an objective which it is practi- 
 cable to attain, provided that the great work of planning is placed 
 in the right hands. But on this score I have no misgivings, for 
 nowhere else outside of New York and its Environs could we so 
 readily command the best thought of engineers, artists, and 
 architects, public servants, social workers, economists and far- 
 seeing men of affairs. 
 
 I feel sure that this project, so sanely and so magnificently 
 conceived, will receive the support and active cooperation of all 
 such as these, and that it will enable New York worthily to 
 fulfill its destiny as the foremost city in all the world. 
 
 Elihu Root : 
 
 I have come here not to tell you what is going to be done, but 
 simply to express my warm sympathy with the Plan and my 
 great appreciation of the labors and the interest and the devotion 
 of the gentlemen who have undertaken this work. 
 
 For fifty-seven years now I have lived on the gridiron like St. 
 Lawrence, on that gridiron laid down upon this island by the 
 commissioners of 1811, who arbitrarily laid out our rectangular 
 streets up and down and across the island without any reference 
 to the topography of the land, and I have seen the city grow from 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 less than a million to its present enormous proportions. It isn't 
 as pleasant a place to live in as it was. With the growth of the 
 city has come great crowding, most uncomfortable crowding. 
 The conditions under which young men and women get to and 
 from their work in the morning and evening are most disagree- 
 able, hardly decent, and in the business parts of the city it is dif- 
 ficult to get light and air and even steerage way through the 
 streets. It isn't only there; it is in parts of the city where the 
 greater portion of the population live that the conditions are 
 most distressing. I have been in the habit of saying that I do 
 not think one can obtain a virile and dominant race where the 
 children have paving stones between themselves and the earth. 
 
 This project is in some degree to ameliorate those conditions 
 for the future. Not only is life in business overcrowded and ham- 
 pered, but the conditions of distribution make living exceedingly 
 expensive. New York is no place to live for any one with small 
 means. Most extravagant incomes are necessary to enable any 
 one to live here now as well as a person of very small means 
 can live in one of our smaller towns. 
 
 We haven't quite succeeded in building a city. Something is 
 wrong about it. The gridiron hasn't worked satisfactorily. It 
 is worth while to try to find out what the trouble is. In the first 
 place, the difference between a very large collection of human 
 beings in a small territory and a small collection of them, between 
 a big city and a small town, is not so much a difference in degree 
 as it is a difference in kind. When you pass from your small town 
 to your big town, you get problems, difficulties, injurious con- 
 ditions, entirely different in kind from those that exist in the 
 small town, and they ought to be dealt with intelligently. 
 
 A city is a growth. It is not the result of political decree or 
 control. You may draw all the lines you please between counties 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 and states, a city is a growth responding to forces not at all 
 political, quite disregarding political lines. It is a growth like 
 that of a crystal responding to forces inherent in the atoms that 
 make it up. 
 
 And the force from which that growth comes is the force of 
 individual enterprise, based on the desire for movement, the de- 
 sire for a living, for wealth, for comfort, for society, all these 
 desires existing in the hearts and acting on the minds of a vast 
 number of units. That is the great force of life; that is the great 
 force of modern civilization, and that is the thing that govern- 
 ment can't imitate. That is why the government could not run 
 the railroads. That is why the government can't run the ship- 
 ping. Because no Congress and no President can imitate or 
 create a substitute for the net result of the infinite number of 
 forces in individual human beings. 
 
 Those are the forces that build up a city. The individual 
 human beings, in response to whose urge cities grow, never 
 think about the conditions that are to be created by the bringing 
 together of a great mass of other people like themselves. If we 
 build a house, we build it in what we think is a convenient and 
 a comfortable, pleasant place to have a home. A thousand others, 
 ten thousand, a hundred thousand, all have the same idea, but 
 nobody thinks about the water supply; nobody thinks about the 
 sewerage; nobody thinks what it is going to cost to deliver coal 
 there; nobody thinks how far it is going to be from market; no- 
 body thinks about the multitude of difficulties that are created 
 by a great aggregation of human beings within a small territory. 
 As a result, the growth of the city is without any intelligent 
 thought whatever regarding the great difficulties that a city has 
 to meet. 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 There is one other quite important influence added to this 
 incessant reaching out for homes, and following the homes with 
 stores, with schools, with hospitals, all without any thought 
 about the fundamental needs of a city; and that is the real estate 
 operator in pursuit of his honorable business. He gets hold of 
 tracts of land here and there which he can map and cut up into 
 blocks and building lots and advertise and sell. He is the man 
 who very largely determines the growth of a city. He isn't think- 
 ing about the difficulties the city will meet. He is thinking about 
 the people he can induce to come and buy the lots and build 
 houses on them. 
 
 Now, growth can be directed, just as trees can be trained and 
 pruned and made to grow this way or that; if they are wanted 
 for particular purposes they can be adapted to those purposes. 
 This project is to get an intelligent idea of how the growth of 
 this city in the future may be directed, with common and general 
 judgment about the way in which it is desirable that it should 
 grow, so that it will meet as fully as possible the difficulties that 
 are inseparable from mass human life. I think the project is 
 practicable. I think that the existence of plans known to every- 
 body will give just enough direction to the movement of the 
 multitude of separate impulses to lead the growth along the 
 right lines. 
 
 One of the distressing things about this town is that archi- 
 tects have the greatest difficulty in securing immortality through 
 their works. An architect designs a noble building, it is erected, 
 and in a few years somebody comes along and pulls it down to 
 build something else. It is discovered that it was in the wrong 
 place; it wasn't located with reference to any intelligent idea 
 about how the city ought to grow and was going to grow. My 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 heart has often ached to see buildings destroyed which I thought 
 were going to carry down to future generations the names of 
 friends of mine who had designed and erected them. 
 
 Now we see the difficulties from the lack of plan in the develop- 
 ment of the city in the past hundred years. What these gentle- 
 men are doing now isn't going to make much difference to most 
 of us, but it is going, so far as we help it, to pay our debt to the 
 future; it is going, so far as we help it, to give to the future genera- 
 tions who occupy this great city some good things that they will 
 inherit from us. It isn't only the city, it isn't only the state, it 
 is this great country, for this city is an agency of the whole coun- 
 try. The city exists because it has a great country behind it. 
 It doesn't exist for itself. It lives because it discharges a dis- 
 tinct function for all the people of America. Today it isn't 
 discharging that function creditably. This project when car- 
 ried out, I think, will enable it to render the service that is ex- 
 pected from it, and in return for which incalculable wealth is 
 poured into it, and to deserve the dignity and the honor befit- 
 ting the great Republic for which it is the metropolis. 
 
 If this project is supported and developed and made public, if 
 it strikes the imagination of the people and receives the support 
 of the public authorities and of public opinion, we may believe 
 that our children and our children's children will see a great 
 metropolis in which there may be homes where children can see 
 the sun and breathe the air and grow up in strength and beauty, 
 instead of the tenement house life that disgraces our civilization. 
 The people living in the city give up all the beauties of nature, all 
 the wonders of the fields and the forests and the mountain and 
 the sea; but they may see a city where men find life worth living 
 among nobly planned and adequately spaced and harmoniously 
 related streets and open spaces and architectural monuments. 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 Did it ever occur to you that in the City of New York we never 
 approach anything that is beautiful and noble? We are always 
 going by such things. There are many great and noble build- 
 ings, noble works of art, but we are always passing by them. 
 You have to turn your head to see them. In the one city of 
 America that had a plan, in the city for which Washington secured 
 the advantage of that sense of design in which the French are 
 so superior, in the person of L'Enfant, wherever you go you have 
 before your eyes something noble and beautiful. Here the fine 
 things are by-products, they are sideshows. 
 
 I hope for our city in the future that the immense increment 
 to human happiness, which comes from the cultivation of tastes, 
 may be gratified and nourished by laying before the people, 
 always, objects that are noble and beautiful, that will ennoble 
 and beautify character, so that the people of this great city will 
 contribute to the character of America not weakness, but strength 
 and vigor. 
 
 Charles Dana Gibson presented the following resolution : 
 
 Resolved^ that in the opinion of this conference of men and 
 women interested in the welfare of New York and its vicinity, 
 the need of a comprehensive regional Plan of New York and its 
 Environs is manifest. 
 
 That this conference approve the action of the Committee 
 in undertaking a series of Studies — legal; physical; industrial 
 and economic; social — looking toward the formulation of such 
 a Plan. 
 
 That it is the belief of this conference that only by united and 
 continued efi^ort and by the fullest cooperation on the part of 
 all concerned can such a Plan be prepared and carried into eflFect. 
 
PLAN OF NEW YORK 
 
 Mrs. August Belmont: 
 
 I should like to have the privilege of seconding that Resolution. 
 This whole project is one that will appeal very, very deeply to all 
 the women citizens of New York. I feel reasonably sure that the 
 Directors will want the women to help with this City Plan; every 
 movement in America today seems to desire the assistance of 
 women. 
 
 Mr. de Forest very modestly minimized the beauty of the pro- 
 ject and laid strong emphasis on what the plan would mean to the 
 promotion of health and the improvement of order in the general 
 surroundings of the city. After all, what could be more beautiful 
 than health ? Order too has a beauty of its own ; therefore, I think 
 the conception of the 'city beautified and beautiful' is the idea 
 that will particularly appeal to the women. 
 
 During the last few years we have heard a great many appeals 
 in New York, if anyone has a 'cause' they bring it here. New 
 York is always open-handed and ready to help in any and every 
 good project. We have witnessed the most marvellous generosity 
 on the part of New Yorkers, generosity that would make one 
 proud of the great heart of our city entirely aside from its other 
 qualities, but in all these causes for which appeals have been 
 made, not any has contained more inspiration than this one. In 
 fact, this is the only one that has seemed essentially for New 
 York. Most appeals are based upon some tragedy — war, with 
 its terrible power for destruction; disaster, and the relief of suf- 
 fering; but it is quite wonderful that this project has for its pur- 
 pose and its goal — beauty. New York is a city with many 
 natural beauties; it has great advantages, but it also has the dis- 
 advantages of its greatness. We have so many main streets that 
 we lack a Main Street. We have so many interests that we lack 
 a community interest, a common cause; in other words, we lack 
 
AND ITS ENVIRONS 
 
 community spirit. I think this idea of the City Plan is the greatest 
 common cause for which all New Yorkers can unite; but we must 
 remember that no matter what the enthusiasm and the ability 
 may be of the men who are going to direct it, the project is abso- 
 lutely impossible of success unless we all get together and stand 
 behind it. This is the only way the idea can absolutely be made 
 real. 
 
 New York has grown so rapidly; the city represents little vil- 
 lages here, and big interests there. I would like to see us all gather 
 round this plan and bring a new and genuine community feeling 
 to bear upon its development. It is a great vision, and we should 
 be deeply grateful to those who conceived it. Personally, I feel 
 that when little children are taught their prayers, and say "God 
 bless father; God bless mother," they should add "God bless 
 the men and women who have vision," for in their hands lies the 
 future of the race. 
 
 Mr. de Forest : 
 
 The resolution is unanimously carried and on the behalf of the 
 Sage Foundation I want to thank all those who have come here 
 this evening in response to this invitation. It is a great encour- 
 agement to have this degree of interest displayed. What we want 
 and what is necessary if there is to be accomplishment here is the 
 cooperation of all of you, suggestions from all of you who have 
 any constructive suggestions to make, and cooperation not only 
 from those who are in this audience but from all others who may 
 learn of this project. 
 
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