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Copyright, 1911
BY
CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON

Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, 1911

THE SCIENTIFIC PRESS
ROBERT ORUMMOND AND COMPANY
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

To THE
department nf JCanbstapc ,A.rdpt*chir*
OF
ffariiarb ftttiKrsitjr
AND TO ITS
©tyatrman, 3lamea #ta0ia Pral?
Under tvhose direction are given the Harvard courses in Citt Planning
THIS THESIS
is
.Affttfionatthi jBebwateli

Breadth of interest, readiness of sympathy with others' efforts,
comradeship and the inspiration of enthusiasm and con
secration are factors that there, as ever
count for more than does mere
richness of material

"The art of laying-out either the nucleus of a new city
or the extension of an existing one to the best advantage of
its population, as regards economy, beauty and health, both
now and in time to come, is, for want of a better term,
called Town Planning."
Opening words from the Preface of the " Transactions," Town
Planning Conference, London, 1910.

The author would be glad if he' could make
acknowledgement for all the assistance and sugges
tions that have rendered this volume possible. The
full enumeration of their sources would almost, how
ever, make a book in itself. To some extent the reader,
in noting the authors quoted, will perceive where
thanks are especially due.
But a great deal is the result of observation, some
thirty towns and cities from the Atlantic Coast to the
mid-Pacific having requested the writer, in recent
years, to study and diagnose their special needs as
regards the city plan. A second special source of
inspiration has been Harvard University, for an invi
tation, accepted a year ago, to be the university's
guest for the prosecution of post-graduate research
work in city planning, gave an opportunity for more
thorough reading than the distractions of professional
life normally afford. The third source was a recent
European trip which differed from its predecessors in
that, immediately following the course of reading, it
made its special objective an international town plan
ning conference in London.
At that conference the general thesis of the volume
was offered. It was the kind reception accorded to it
there, by specialists, that encouraged its presentation
in extended form to that larger public with whom, in
the last analysis, rests the responsibility for actual
town planning.

CONTENTS

PAGE
Introduction  1
CHAPTER I.
Main Divisions of a Street System  6
Significance and Extent of the Sub-Division Movement —
The Widening Distance between Work and Home — Influence
of This on the Street Plan — The Modern Demand for Differ
ent Kinds of Streets — Major Streets for Traffic and Minor
Streets for Quiet Residence — The Location and Character of
Minor Streets. CHAPTER II.
The Standardizing of Streets  13
Standardization Not as Wise as it Seems — Typical Ex
amples — Standardizing of Plan, Width and Development —
Consideration of Excuses for the System — Its Cost and
Illogicalness. CHAPTER III.
' Street Width and Housing  28
Results of Standardizing Streets but not People — Statis
tical Evidence of the Cost — Wide Streets and Tenements —
Wide Streets and Rear Buildings — Other Objections — The
Duty of the City. CHAPTER IV.
Street Width and Land Values  39
Considering Owners not less than Tenants — Proper Adjust
ment to Function Tends to Make Values Stable, to Develop
New Tracts, to Increase Demand, to Decrease Maintenance
Cost — Street Widths and Land Restrictions.
CHAPTER V.
Main Traffic Streets  45
Relation to Transportation — Historical Development and
Modern Requirements — Need of Planning in a Large Way —
Locating Main Streets — The Curve and the Straight Line —
Need of Width — Apportionment of Space — Economic Aspects
— Avoiding Uniformity — The Business District — Alleys,
Waterfront and Building Height. vii

CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI. PAGE
How to Lessen the Cost of Wide Streets  70
The Necessity for Doing This — Excess Condemnation —
Establishment of a Building Line — Use of Arcades — Division
of Taxes — Taking Easements — The Zone System — Municipal
Ownership of Land. CHAPTER VII.
Provision of Central Control  84
Permanency of Control a Factor — The Law in Saxony —
England's Town-Planning Act — American Commissions —
American City Planners. CHAPTER VIII.
Platting of Minor Residence Streets in High Class Districts 96
Avenues Not Included Here — Each Minor Street a Problem
by Itself — Location of the Street as Determined by Advan
tageous Platting, by Topography, by Climatic Conditions, by
Aesthetic Opportunities — The Curving Street — Left Over
Spaces — Some Dangers. CHAPTER IX.
The Development of High Class Minor Streets  110
A Need of Freedom — What Traffic Requires — The Conven
tional Sidewalk Space and Margin — Taking Liberties with
Sidewalks — A Footpath for a Street — The Semi-Private
" Place " and the Residence Square.
Chapter x.
The Platting of Minor Streets for Humble Homes  131
Human Welfare as a First Consideration — Demand for a
Small Lot-Unit — Likenesses and Differences between Minor
Streets for Humble Homes and those for High Class Villas
— Increased Dependence on Main Thoroughfares — The Value
of a Garden — Combating the Tenement — The Factory in the
Suburb — The Mixture of Classes.
CHAPTER XI.
Public Reservations other than the Streets  154
What These Reservations Are — Intimacy of their Connec
tion with the Streets — Desirability of Coincident Planning—
Proportion of Total Area to be Put into Parks — The Street
and the Open Space — The Playground — Public Parks —
Parked Streets — Sites for Public Buildings — The Town Plan
ning Test.
Conclusion  178
Appendix  189
Index  :  195
viii

ILLUSTRATIONS

Plan of Brussels in 1572  Frontispiece PAGE
An unsympathetic plan of a domestic street  21
Taxing the present for an improbable future  25
The cost of rigidity of plan  25
Streets adjusted to contours. (Diagrams)  26
A German type of handsome street  33
Sacrificing comfort and beauty for width  35
Extra space for unused road leaves little space for much used
garden  37
Street typical of a medieval town  47
Highways leading into Boston. (Diagram)  51
An intersection of important streets. (Diagram)  55
Car tracks on a central reserved strip — tree-bordered and sodded 60
Niven's plan for a great highway for London  63
Two-level street on the waterfront  68
Zone plan of Cologne and its suburbs in 1901  81
Two-level street in a residence section  100
Fitting the plan to the contours. (Plan)  105
A quiet residence section near a big city  108
New type of minor street in high class section  110
Street with a turn, at the end  112
A grass border planted with shrubs  115
A contrast in walk location  116
How a private driveway breaks the level of the walk, when walk
is next to curb  116
A walk at higher level than the road  117
A sidewalk on one side only  118
Where there is little walking one sidewalk may be enough  119
The economy of an elevated sidewalk  120
Sidewalk informality. (Diagram)  121
How footpath entrances might be marked. (Three views)  124
Economy of the footpath if the ground slope abruptly. (Two
views)  125
ix

ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE
Entrance to Vandeventer Place, St. Louis  128
Allotment gardens in the middle of a block. (Diagram)  141
Warding off the tenement  143
The tenement at its best  144
Attractive and inexpensive streets of the Krupp Colonies near
Essen. (Two views)  148
Attractive and inexpensive streets of the Krupp Colonies near
Essen. (Two views)  149
Where a street would be expensive but a park would be cheap . . . 156
A development that was economical as well as beautiful  156
A hillside site widened into an outlook point  159
Locating the playground inside the block. (Diagram)  164
An arrangement for community tennis courts. (Diagram)  168
An inside park in high class residence property  169
Center parking planted with flowering trees  172

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT

OF

STREETS

INTRODUCTION
The benefits which are sought by a scientific re-
planning of cities and towns are, broadly, threefold.
They lie in a bettering of those circulatory problems
that have been created by indirect streets and con
gested traffic; in the improvement of social conditions
in many directions; and in increasing the visible
beauty and splendor of cities. Gains are anticipated
in economy and efficiency, in comfort, and in looks.
As to the planning of new towns, or the new parts of
existing towns, if this be done in a scientific way the
proverbial ounce of prevention may be reasonably ex
pected to be worth at least the pound, of cure.
In either of these cases, the advantages which ac
crue to the community as a whole accrue also to the
individuals who make up the community — whether
owners or tenants. In the present state of society,
land division projects which might do injury to land
owners and home builders are not worth considering,
even though they should be, conceivably, for the good
of a non-property owning class. To be practical, town
planning projects must be reasonable and considerate
of all proper interests. 1

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS •
Alike on the part of the public and on that of
individuals, and therefore healthfully, a demand has
grown up for town remodelling and for more thought
of the future in tract development. It has grown out
of a wish to forestall, or the need to correct, the con
dition which has been heretofore created by large and
rapid municipal growth. Typical conditions have been
those of streets filled with a traffic which they were
unable to carry with safety and speed; have been the
housing of the poor amid surroundings injurious to
moral, physical and civic health; have been the loss
of play space, for children and for adults; have been
the reduction of industrial and commercial efficiency,
the inconvenient location and the undignified crowd
ing of public buildings ; the excessive cost of corrective
as compared with preventive measures.
The replanning of cities and towns, or their careful
planning at the start, and the comprehensive platting
of their outlying sections are concerned with all such
conditions. For these plans have to do with the urban
framework, as this is made up of streets and avenues
and open spaces of one sort and another. They may
be said to treat of the skeleton of the city, of that
which gives to the city its constructional form; and
they are expected to be determined by the needs not
of districts only but of the community as a whole.
These plans have little to do with details, such as bill
boards, pavements, etc., but are intimately concerned,
as has been already suggested, with the conve
nience of the streets for traffic purposes, with the
proper location, and if possible the grouping, of public
buildings, with the development of neighborhood cen
ters which shall become a moral and social force, with
the location of parks and their accessibility to those
who most need them, with economical housing, and
2

INTRODUCTION
with the attractive development of residential and
suburban tracts.
It is with the latter phase that this book will at
tempt particularly to deal. The subject may seem
restricted, but it is to be observed that the city has no
financial investment so large as that represented in
its streets — usually twenty-five to forty per cent of
the whole land area — and that no items in its expenses
reach a larger total than those for the construction
and maintenance of streets. Still more important, the
streets' location and development touch closely the
life of every person who lives in town. In fact, "the
most important features of city planning, ' ' it has been
well said,* "are not the public buildings, not the
railroad approaches, not even the parks and play
grounds. They are the location of streets, the estab
lishment of block lines, the subdivision of property
into lots, the regulations of buildings, and the housing
of the people."
In discussing the platting of streets, it has seemed
necessary to plead for less standardization, for wider
main streets, and for the narrowing ojjthose^ which
have little traffic value. The latter point of the dis
cussion has had in the past so little popular con
sideration, that the author has thought best to focus
particular attention upon it. No claim is made to
originality in this thought, or that the arguments will
possess novelty to those who most have studied town
and city planning. But an attempt has been made,
while presenting the matter simply, to look at the prob
lem broadly and honestly. This has rendered it impos
sible to consider minor streets alone. In the outer
rim of cities the minor street is dependent for its life
upon transportation facilities, and these must be of-
*John Nolen in "Madison: A Model City."

THE WIDTH AND ARBANGEMENT OF STREETS
fered by main highways. Thus, in order to take the
broad view, much must be considered besides the prob
lem of a street by itself. One street, though every
perfection were given to it, would bear only such re
lation to the whole street system as would a patch on
an old fashioned and outgrown garment.
It might be said, indeed, that the average modern
city has in its street system a garment so restricting
it as to need entire replanning and recutting to make
it comfortably serviceable and really up-to-date.
Until this fact is recognized, all civic improvement
work can be hardly more than an attempt to adapt an
ancient and outworn city form to new and tremen
dously insistent municipal requirements. Most signifi
cant is such a reflection.
Without, then, magnifying or unduly emphasizing
the current widespread town planning movement, the
book is presented with the hope that it may be of value
in the course of normal and ordinary city develop
ment. Hence the purpose of the volume is not to give
the history of town planning, not to contrast the ro
mantic and classical schools of it, but simply to help
in a practical way regarding one important phase of
it — a phase which concerns every owner of real estate
and every citizen. And since the main arguments
represent not the faith and theory of one man only,
but the belief of the students of town and city planning
in all nations which to-day are considering the subject,
the book's message is given with abounding confidence.
Finally, though effort has been made to render
proffered criticism constructive, there is realization
that rules to govern generally town development are
most difficult to enunciate. In recent years the curse
of city building has been too much adherence to fixed
rules. In cities of different purposes — as industrial,
4

INTRODUCTION
commercial, capital, or residential — different groups
of considerations deserve most deference; in cities of
like purpose, which are not on plains, no one street
pattern should be generally applied. To impose on a
site, without regard jto its topography^any^^recon-
ceived system, is to be false to the true principle j)f
design. So the book is presented with no illusion as
to its providing a panacea for every anatomical ill
that towns are heir to. But perhaps — to stretch the
patent medicine simile a little further — it may have an
invigorating tonic value. There are some things as to
street platting which it were better for the city, better
for the tract developer, and better for the lot buyer or
tenant to have more clearly understood. The author
has endeavored to state these. With that purpose,
some of the first, and the second, third and fourth
chapters are devoted to pointing out defects in the
usual present practice of street design and the advan
tages of a closer adjustment to function. Thereafter
are the constructive suggestions.

CHAPTER I
MAIN DIVISIONS OF A STREET SYSTEM
The development of suburban acreage property,
by its division into lots and the cutting of streets, has
proceeded on an enormous scale in recent years. It
has been undertaken by individuals, corporations and
associations. If thousands have marketed property in
this, way, the purchasers of it are to be counted by the
tens and hundreds of thousands. Since the ultimate
object is the setting of a family home, the degree of
wisdom with which the work is done is a social and
economic question of the first importance.
As cities expand to include these outlying areas,
the layout given to the tracts becomes also a matter of
great civic concern. Its effect upon the community as
a whole — both in facilitating or hampering the further
extension of area, and in the transaction of business or
the pursuit of pleasure — tends to become paramount
even to its effect on the locality platted.
Further, it is to be observed that this development
of suburban tracts is due to the operation of eco
nomic and social forces of such character as to render
inevitable a continuance of the movement, in one form
or another. The cutting up of outlying acreage is not,
that is to say, a fad, nor simply a momentarily popular
financial craze, of which the bubble may be expected to
burst. It results not only from the growth of cities a
growth which must continually push their streets
6

MAIN DIVISIONS OF A STREET SYSTEM
further out and open new ones ; but it is the response
to a new social demand.
This demand began with the removal of the
necessity that all workmen live near their work. The
term is relative, of course; but even so considered,
"near" has been stretched by cheap, frequent, con
tinuous and rapid transportation until to-day com
paratively few are under that necessity. Those few
are the laborers who are most poorly paid — as the
push cart vendors and the sweat shop workers — or
those whose hours of labor are longest,* or whose
labor calls them to work at awkward and irregular
times. Others who live in town do so from choice or
from inertia.
The professional man nowadays is extremely likely
to have an office in the city and a home in the out
skirts ; merchant and banker and broker may sleep in
the country though their labor is in town ; in multi
tudes the more progressive clerks and salesmen oc
cupy the detached and semi-detached dwellings that
make up the outer residence zones of cities; in the
early hours of the working day and again at its closing
* Some significant statistics on this point were given by Prof. Henry
R. Seager, of Columbia University, New York, in a paper presented at
the Congestion Conference held in New York City, March, 1908. He
pointed out that the dispersion of the homes of employees from the place
where they are employed is in inverse proportion to the length of their
work-day. This he illustrated by a study of the printing industry,
representing an eight-hour trade, the leather industry, representing a
nine-hour trade, and the food industries, representing a ten-hour trade.
A study of the employees in a number of establishments in these trades,
all below Forty-second Street on Manhattan Island, indicated that the
proportion of employees living in Manhattan, in the short-houred printing
trade was 31%, in the longer -houred leather trade 42%, and in the still
longer-houred food industries 74%. The showing that in the printing
trade, with its comparatively good pay and short hours, more than two-
thirds of the workers did not have their homes on Manhattan Island at
all, is striking.

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
hours, rapid transit lines are crowded with lunch-box
and dinner-pail bearers — with the great army of the
employed, journeying to and from their work — riding,
because they live too far away to walk. This is the
triumph of the modern city. It has come with the
quickening and cheapening of urban mechanical trans
portation. It is the relief which has been developed
as a blessed offset to the increasing pressure of mod
ern industrial and commercial activity. At last it has
become possible for the citizen to get away from work,
ard in multitudes he gets away. To be sure, there still
are thousands of men who go to bed over their shops,
or who sleep within call of the factory whistle; but
other thousands, in a throng that grows with astonish
ing rapidity, considering how radical the domestic
upheaval involved, have now a daily change of scene
and air, and a^joightfall enter into apeace which
industry_and commerce may not molest.
There is in this a social readjustment of incalcu
lable value. But as yet it has expressed itself very
inadequately on the city plan. We have simply pro
longed our old time streets, in our haste projecting
upon the fair landscape, broken though it be by hill
and dale and water course, the humdrum street pat
tern of the town. And even that pattern should not in
all casesjhave been humdrum. Within the^onfines of
the original city, before the days of its expansion, the
topography has not been always flat and featureless ;
nor, in spite of platting, have all streets been traffic
highways. Nevertheless, streets have generally been classified
simply as busy and not busy. Or, at best, into three
classes — an intermediate class, that might be expected
to carry a moderate traffic, and proportioned accord
ingly, having been designated as "secondary
8

MAIN DIVISIONS OF A STREET SYSTEM
streets." Differences have thus been based, not on
the kind of service but on its quantity. Accord
ingly, standardization attempts have been unsatisfac
tory. It is difficult to standardize the degree of a
street's service, and in the fact we have seen one grade
of streets soon merging into another. Then we dis
cover that we have set up arbitrary standards, and
that, if there be nothing to fix and hold the character ;
of a street, it tends to change. The traffic changes with
it; the old standardization breaks down; the original
adjustment in structure and proportion becomes un-
satisfactory. Taking, now, the social point of view, and observ
ing the change which has recently come over city life,
we may note that in no one feature does a modern city
differ more radically from its prototype than in the
daily ebb and flow, inward and outward, of its tide of
travel. That circumstance makes upon the street plan
a demand for a strictly two-fold service — the one for
traffic and the one for quiet residence — with an ur
gency unknown before. It offers the opportunity, and
even the obligation, to create two distinct kinds of
streets that shall serve in the best possible way these
diverse needs.
Such a classification is plainly better than the
superficial consideration of streets as simply of first
and second, and possibly third, traffic value. It draws
a clearer line, for in recognizing two different kinds of
functions, it becomes possible to differentiate the
street development so markedly that one use cannot
merge into another. It may be noted, however, that
since most retail business is dependent upon the ex
istence of a stream of travel, those streets which serve
for the latter 's conveyance include so-called business
streets. On the other hand, it should be added that all
9

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
main highways are not business streets. A leading
traffic thoroughfare may give access to a freight house
or to a park as certainly as to a department store.
Streets of each group are, therefore, variously de
veloped. Yet all traffic streets have this much in com
mon : They exist p^rmarilyto^ carry traffic and may be
said to constitute the framework of the city. Their
planning, as a class, shcmTxTbe prior to that of the
mmor streets; they should be7~as~~ we ~sTiaTl see in
another chapter, direct, broad and of easy gradient,
desirably also in many cases long and radial. Their
function, as regards the travel they accommodate, is
to shorten time between foci — commonly between the
center of the city and its outer zones. They are de
signed to do this by facilitating rapidity of movement
and_shortening distance.
The streets that "offer to residents refuge from
these tidal traffic streams are the minor residential
thoroughfares. The phrase which describes them is
itself a definition. It excludes all main highways, all
avenues and boulevards, and for the purposes of this
discussion it shall be held to exclude all streets which
carry a through travel that so much as even equals the
traffic originating and terminating within the street
itself. If we accept this as our understanding of the
term we shall exclude also, from consideration here,
all streets that carry car lines or that are routes con
venient for general teaming, driving, or motoring.
It is clear that these will be streets that are not
inviting to traffic. This may be either because of the
special development which has been given to other
thoroughfares, or because they themselves are char
acterized by some permanent physical handicap, such
as indirection, heavy grades, or a break in continuity.
Their traffic function, as regards the street plan of the
10

MAIN DIVISIONS OF A STREET SYSTEM
city and its suburbs, is only to harbor the little eddies
left at the side by the mighty streams of travel which
flow through main thoroughfares. Because they servo
this purpose, they must be generally in close connec
tion with major streets and traffic highways. If we
fancy an ideal city plan in which various arterial
streets radiate from a common business center, we
shall expect to find the minor streets located between
the radii.
In considering these minor residential streets, two
peculiarities- at once become clear. First, as they are
not limited to any one residential section of the city,
they do not exclusively belong to any one class of
citizens. Necessarily, therefore, they, like the traffic
thoroughfares, vary in character. There is, for in
stance, the shack-lined alley off a third class business
street, and the private "Place" off a fashionable
avenue, and each may be classed under the title "minor
residence street." Second, and as a consequence of
the foregoing consideration, it is obvious that they are
very numerous and of much importance in the city's
life. As far as numbers go, it usually is possible to
class more streets under this term than under any
other. An imposing proportion of the total number
of the citzens dwells upon them, and the lives of these
people are intimately affected by the character of the
streets. The streets are minor, considered only in
themselves and their street relations; they are not
^Hnoras regar^fejthej^soj^
influence upon rents. Further, because their develop
ment ls~OT "should be determined so largely by purely
local factors, it should be possible to connect them
more nearly with rentals than other streets can be thus
connected. When one deals with minor residential
streets, one deals most closely with the homes of the
citizens. -q

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
That these streets are distinct from traffic thorough
fares, however, cannot be emphasized too strongly.
The avenues, the boulevards, the arterial highways
and main roads may as often be too narrow, under
present systems of planning, as these minor streets
are prone to be too broad. A street plan problem, when
reduced to its simplest terms, is duplex.
Simple distinctions of width, however, do not solve
the problem. Retail business, which it is so natural
to associate with traffic streets, abhors a vacuum. For
this reason, when a town is small it sometimes happens
that of two parallel streets, one made wide for busi
ness and the next one narrow for residence, business
takes the narrower — e.g., Market and Chestnut Streets -
in the early days of Philadelphia. This may be due
to excessiveness, partly in the width and partly in the
prices for property, on the wide street. For that
reason, the accurate location of these streets, that they
may be the most convenient for traffic ; and their devel
opment, in such manner that they may be the most
inviting to it, are matters of exceeding importance.

12

CHAPTER II
THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
It has appeared that there are at least two very
distinct kinds of streets, if we accept the simple func
tional classification ; and that those which should serve
one purpose are as likely to be too narrow as those
which should serve the other are likely to be too broad.
Setting the common excessive width of^strictly resi
dence streets over againliFTEe^l^ommon excessive nar-
rpjraess_qf__main traffic thoroughfares, it will be no
surprise to find, as we do, similar measurements for
immense numbers of streets — irrespective of the dif
ferent kinds of needs they have to meet. It becomes
evident that there has been effort to discover a mean,
and that except for the few streets that have some
special significance this selected mean has been stand
ardized. Standards, as we have seen, may be for three
grades of street and yet may adapt them to only a
single function.
While standardization of the width and arrange
ment of streets is a convenient, labor-saving method
of regulating the subdivision of real estate, it cannot
be held to show much foresight. If the action deserves
credit for implying recognition of a need of regula
tion, it destroys this claim to credit by imposing a
regulation that is arbitrary, unrelated to facts and
hence in many cases illogical. To require that the
gridiron street plan, which is possibly characteristic
13

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
-of the nucleus of the town, shall ' ' spread like an erup
tion over hill and valley, regardless of gradient, site
or of strategic lines of communication, oblivious of
monotony and blind to topographical opportunity,"*
may be to blast the chance of suburban appropriate
ness and beauty. Again, to impose on the new streets
themselves requirements which unfit them for the best
performance of their function can represent no advance
over leaving them unregulated, since under the latter
condition an intelligent person might now and then fit
them for their purpose. And to say that no streets
shall have less than a certain minimum width of road
way, setting that minimum at a figure appropriate
only for streets of a considerable traffic value; or to
say that every street shall be intersected by a cross
street at definitely named intervals, is to impose re
strictions of exactly these kinds.
Most persons know from personal experience how
much these things are done, but it may be well to illus
trate by a couple of concrete examples.
In the city of Washington, which we like to think
of as so admirably planned, there is a law setting fifty
feet as the minimum width for any strictly minor
street which may be opened in a block; while requir
ing that all new highways be not less than ninety feet
in width. The severity, however, of the latter rule is
mercifully ameliorated by the provision that if the
dedicating parties will establish a building restriction
line, in agreement with the required width, the street
may be recorded as having a width of sixty feet. Even
with this modification, however, it is interesting to
contrast the requirements made of suburban Washing
ton streets — of nearly all such streets, be it noted 
* An admirably descriptive phrase used by Arthur A. Shurtleff in
Landscape Architecture, January, 1911. 14

THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
with the dimensions of thoroughfares which are
famous for the amount of traffic they carry, the justi
fication of the demand being its forehanded provision
for possible future traffic. Sixty feet is as wide as
Cheapside, London, and approximates the available
width of Fifth Avenue, New York, before the recent
setting back of stoops. Ninety feet is much wider than
Piccadilly, Queen Victoria Street or Oxford Street, and
is wider than Regent Street Quadrant, in London. It
is only eight feet less than the Parisian boulevards or
the Avenue de 1 'Opera, and is wider than are the busi
est parts of Broadway, New York. It were trite to
term such provisions, made regardless of all local con
ditions, extravagant.
In England an act requires that no street longer
than 150 yards can be constructed without a cross
street — not even where houses are few and may be
expected to be always far apart. But in New York
City, with its enormous traffic, many of the blocks are
twice as long as that; in Montreal the average block
is 750 feet on two of its sides ; in Washington, streets
are frequently 800 feet apart. Yet the law requires
that if one is laying out a tract on which to house the
poor at the lowest possible rent in Liverpool, one must
increase the cost of the operation by building a street
at intervals of every 450 feet.*
These illustrations of standardization seem ex
treme, but that is only because worse examples are not
* The question is not wholly one of traffic accommodation. Streets
not only carry traffic, hut their location determines block plans, and
block plans determine lot lengths. The shallow lot, secured only by
frequency of parallel streets, is exceedingly desirable where the poor are
to be housed — as will appear further on. But a needless frequency of
cross streets, or the frequency of parallel streets that through standardi
zation are compelled to have a useless width, is thoroughly bad. That
is the point as regards the present discussion.
15

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
quoted. Liverpool and Washington are certainly not
the cities to be sought for particularly unintelligent
enactments on the subject of street platting. Indeed,
it is not the least significant fact in all this standardi
zation that there are to be found a great variety of
standards in different localities, even when economic,
social and topographical conditions seem very similar.
In other words, there is no pretence that a true stand
ard has been found. The dimensions selected seem to
have been determined upon in each place by accident,
more or less, and to have persisted largely through
inertia. We shall consider elsewhere the cost involved in
these attempts to find a street mean that can serve
diverse ends. It is sufficient here to note simply the
failure of the effort as respects even the two main di
visions of streets — a failure so complete that it would
be ridiculous if it did not exact sacrifices, social as well
as economic, which make it pathetic. A quotation from
J. S. Nettlef old's " Practical Housing " offers, in a
terse and concrete English example, a hint of the
nature of the sacrifice involved : ' ' Our present regu
lations," he says, " stipulate that every new street
must be of a certain minimum width, largely regard
less of what traffic is likely to go along it. The sides
of the streets must be curbed and channelled and the
footpaths paved with flagstones in a most expensive
manner. This entails a very heavy expenditure in
estate development, which, on the average, is about
equal to the value of the land that is going to be de
veloped. The result of this heavy expenditure is that
the landowner, in order to get a return on the capital
invested, crowds just as many houses per acre on to
his land as the by-laws will allow. That is, the model
by-laws allow fifty-six houses to the acre, whereas,
lb

THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
from the hygienic point of view, there should not be
more than twelve. At present, if a progressive land
owner expresses his willingness to restrict the number
of houses per acre to twelve, instead of fifty-six as
allowed by the by-laws — provided the local authority
will meet him in the cost of estate development by al
lowing him to make the roadways as wide as, and no
wider than, is required for the traffic that will pass
over them, although maintaining the present distances
between the houses — he is told at once that the by
laws are prohibitive."
It should be said, with regard to this, that a pro
vision of the recently enacted town-planning law par
tially corrects this condition. It now is possible, on
occasion, for English local authorities, in order "to
secure proper sanitary conditions, amenity and con
venience," to relax or modify requirements, breaking
away from the tradition that all streets should be of
like width and like strength. But this is such a new
enactment that as yet the conditions which render the
permission serviceable have been rarely complied
with. Consequently, Mr. Nettlef old's statement has
lost little of its force. In any case, it stands as a
serious rebuke to the argument for standardization.
So, also, does the town-planning act's suggestion that,
for purposes of separate treatment, roads may be rec
ognized as (a) main arterial roads, (b) secondary
roads, and (c) residential roads — that is, as traffic
roads, of greater or less degree, or as residential.
In the main, three excuses are advanced in behalf
of the standardization of streets, in the innumerable
cities and towns where it is practiced. One is the
method's convenience. It simplifies the initial prob
lems of land sub-division, the surveying and record
ing, and it renders street extension almost automatic.
17

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
The objection to this is that it means the purchase of
present ease at the cost of future trouble.
A second ' ' justification ' ' is, as we have said, that
the method represents an effort to be forehanded in
providing for future traffic. As to this, the situation
is as follows: We have found in dearly bought ex
perience that the streets in the cities of the past are
too small for the traffic of the great towns of to-day,
with their larger populations and vastly increased
transportation needs. We have determined that the
error shall not be repeated in the building of new
towns or in additions to the old. As no walls of ma
sonry now encompass our cities to cramp the streets,
we say to ourselves there is all outdoors to grow in.
Let us, therefore, plan on a big scale, making our
streets generously broad. Accordingly, we have
raised the percentage of area devoted to streets from
the ten per cent which was frequent in mediaeval
cities (in Havana, Cuba, the amount still is less than
ten per cent of the whole) to the twenty -five and even
forty per cent which is usual in the built up portions
of modern cities. It was necessary, no doubt, to raise
the proportion, and perhaps as much as we have raised
it on the average. The fault lies only in the uniform,
unthinking way in which the work has been done, in
forgetfulness that walls of time and walls of cost still
engirdle city- workers, and, like the old walls of
masonry, exact toll in higher "rents for all improvident
use of land.
We need to recognize that there are some streets
which never can be traffic highways, however broad
they be — as streets that climb steep hills or terminate
quickly, or skirt lines of bluffs.* We need, also, to
* An illustration, which is interesting because typical, may be cited
from Los Angeles, Cal. There a law specifies that no public street
18

THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
realize that, at worst, Broadways, Fleet Streets and
Cheapsides are not born full-grown overnight. In
ninety-nine cases out of the hundred it can be fore
seen absolutely that given residence thoroughfares
cannot become business streets within any reasonable
period. Is it not absurd to charge the community
through all the intervening years with the annual cost
of a hundred needlessly wide streets because one of
them might possibly, centuries hence, have a great deal
larger traffic than to-day? And as to the one case, of
which the future might not be accurately foreseen so
long ahead, the growing traffic, the trend of business
and of building, or the undertaldng of a public work
that is to revolutionize the community, would give the
warning in time for it. If we are going to be so
thoughtful in our city building, let us be thoughtful of
fact and not of theories.
Let us observe, among other things, that the pres
ent tendency to develop districts, homogeneous in
themselves but quite distinct from other districts,
tends powerfully to the fixture of not only real estate
values but of traffic values ; and then that a street plat
ting adapted to the district in which it is, will further
discourage marked changes in its character. Is there
any reason, indeed, why in the planning of cities the
areas that are to serve special purposes — as those of
shall be less than forty feet wide. Recently owners of a certain tract in
the hills, called Beverly Glen, offered to dedicate a sufficiently wide street
through the canyon in the middle of the tract. But this left house lots
on the hillsides which it was illegal to offer for sale until public high
ways had been set aside to reach them, on plats accepted by the Board
of Supervisors and made matter of record. Such, however, was the
character of the hillsides that it was out of the question to lay out pub-
lie highways which the Board could legally accept. As this is written,
there is pending the query, whether the unreasonable standardizing law
can be evaded by accepting "public trails"! — Condensed from a news
note in Municipal Journal and Engineer, Feb. 8, 1911.
19

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
commerce, manufacturing and residence — should not
be planned especially, even as we plan the different
rooms of the house? The area— be it kitchen or entry
in the house; business street or residence crescent in
the city — is selected for its particular purpose because
of appropriateness of character and location. In
either instance, having been chosen for a given pur
pose and designed to fit it, the area's resulting inad
equacy for other ends must tend to keep it in the use
for which it was planned.
It may be said, of course, that there is danger that
we will not plan with sufficient liberality. If the use
of a certain area outgrow the space allotted to it, ex
pansion may mean an absorption of area which was
intended for other utilization. But speaking generally,
this danger will at worst threaten only the margins
of a district which, in all the rest, and larger, portion
of its territory will be designed to meet in the best
way possible the needs peculiar to it. Nor will this
peril of the margins be truly menacing. In forehanded
planning for special uses we naturally would be lib
eral. The third excuse for giving to streets a width in
excess of the traffic needs is that such action is wise
because in residence districts, especially among hum
ble homes, the width is useful for something else than
mere traffic — as air and light and grass and flowers.
But this is a costly way to provide these amenities.
Would an architect justify the expense of putting ad
ditional staircases in a house because banister-rails
are nice for boys to slide on? If there be front gardens,
through requirement that houses be set back from the
lines of narrow streets, we shall gain not only light,
air, and vegetation, but social and personal advan
tages besides. Should there be felt the need for traffic
20

Unsympathetic Plan op a Domestic Street
This picture was taken and published, curiously enough, to advertise the
attractiveness of a certain residential development.

X
>
>o

3
oo *l-JlH
W KJH
CO

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
forehandedness, the community could secure an ease
ment over this front garden space ; the desired amen
ities being meanwhile attributes of the home rather
than of the street, and better so ; while as to provision
for shade trees, if the street be narrow the trees are
better placed inside the walk-line than outside of it.
There is another kind of standardization than
simply that of width. Not only, in the eagerness for
methodically constructed cities, are there regulations
fixing the width at so excessive a figure as to invite
uniformity in all save exceptional cases,' but there are
enactments standardizing the development of streets.
Thus, in some cities of the United States it is decreed
that, irrespective of the width of streets, three-fifths
of the breadth shall always be put into roadway, and
one-fifth on each side into sidewalk. In European
cities, where the proportions of the street are likely
to be less generous than in the Western States of
America, the division is often into thirds.
An example of standardization that is suggestive
because it shows a little more than the usual thought,
even suggesting a wish to create an intelligent adapt
ability, is to found in the Borough of the Bronx, New
York. Here a general ordinance dealing with the
arrangement of streets requires that all streets 60 feet
wide shall have a 30-foot roadway ; all streets 80 feet
wide a 42-foot roadway ; streets 100 feet wide a 60-foot
roadway, etc. But this region is one of delightfully
varied topography, illustrating within its considerable
area almost every kind of suburban' development;
while the ordinance shows no regard for any charac
teristic of the street save that of width.
In the same city of New York we may find innu
merable illustrations of the difference in needs of dif
ferent kinds of streets, even when their width is the
29

THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
same. We shall find business sections and residence
sections with traffic requirements totally unlike. We
shall find the business section subdivided many times,
as into wholesale and retail districts, and these again
subdivided, as into the "leather district," the "finan
cial center," the "automobile row," etc. The resi
dence sections in their turn are subdivided into high
class and middle class and workingmen's districts.
The tenement region makes a vast third section.
Surely sidewalk and pavement requirements are not
the same on all the streets of like width in these vari
ous districts. For example, one may find on a street
in the wholesale district fifty great trucks and drays
to a singhBj^dejtriaii. Qnjfie tenement lmejl streets
of the congested East Side, cr_aJAong tall office .build
ings, of which a single one contains the population of
a good-sized village, there_mav be five hundred pedes:
trians to a single vehicle. Here the streams of people
on the sidewalks flow into the "roadway" and some
times choke it to such extent that one could hardly
drive there if he would. But up on the avenue, where
the roadway is uniform in width with that between the
tenements and the skyscrapers, the river of traffic is
mainly composed of motor cars and carriages, and
such a mighty torrent is it that the hunted pedestrian
can crqss_ it only as the children of Israel crossed the
Red Sea, a Moses in uniform holding back the water
on either side. In yet another part of the city, the
authorities found it advisable some months ago to close
some streets to Vehicular traffic between certain hours,"
Because inconsequent childhood had appropriated the
space for a needed playground.
Great as are these contrasts, the problem is reduced
in this statement to its simplest terms. No account
is taken of the difference between streets that have
23

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
and have not car-tracks, though in other respects they
be alike ; no account of grades, and length, of direction
with respect to the tidal flow of traffic, of terminals,
cross-streams, and other matters which affect the effi
ciency of streets. And even all these conditions would
not illustrate all the folly of a standardizing system.
There are other streets in the city, scores and hun
dreds, on which, though they are equal in width with
thoroughfares as crowded as those described, there
will be, perhaps, two vehicles and half-a-dozen pedes
trians in the hour. Here the pathos lies in the waste
involved. This waste, it may be well to observe, is not always
or necessarily in the excessive use of .land. When a
highway is too narrow, and this condition is as famil
iar as is too great breadth of street, there is congestion
that results in a waste of time and waste of energy
which are as clearly reducible to terms of money as is
waste of land.
Lastly, there is the standardization of direction.
It requires that adherence to a fixed plan, which is
careless of the cost of cutting and filling, which is
regardless of impossible grades, inconsiderate of his
toric interest, is blind to beauty. It would keep all
streets to the Plan, indifferent to the purpose they
have to serve. Even on a virgin plain this is not justi
fiable. Take the one matter of orientation. We shall
find it desirable that residence streets have such direc
tion that there will be no day of the year when the sun
may not reach some windows of the houses. But on
business streets this is far less important— shops,
indeed, preferring the shady side.
But let us return to the minor residence streets.
We have found the failure of street standardization to
meet street needs, and the consequent extravagance of
24

Taxing the Present for an Improbable Future
It is unlikely that this necessarily minor street of a new real estate
development, now stopped by a railroad and residence, will be ever
extended beyond its present length; or if extended become a high
way. But it is given a roadway wide enough to accommodate the
vehicular traffic of a metropolitan street.

By courtesy of the Citu Parks Ass'n., Philadelphia
The Cost of Rigidity of Plan
The extension of a Philadelphia street. In this case the destruction
was not necessary.
25

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS

that method of platting, to be largely due to the fact
that a city's streets and sections are not all alike m
their requirements. How could they be, since not alike

By courtesy of Metropolitan Improvements Commission \Bostori\
Streets Adjusted to Contours
The street development of Aspinwall Hill, Brookline, Mass., as shown in
*','¦', the lower diagrams, offers delightful contrast to that on the hill at
Wollaston, shown above.

in their conditions ! Some may claim that it would be
better for a town if it were not subdivided into dis
tricts of distinct character — at least in its residence
section. They may say, therefore, that a method of
26

THE STANDARDIZING OF STREETS
street platting which fails to take notice of a tendency
toward segregation, and which certainly does nothing
to fix or emphasize such separation, is a good thing,
However much the argument may appeal to a repub
lican, the real condition is so universal as to seem to
compel recognition. The separation of home sections
into districts of various character is as evident in
Chicago as it is in London. It is a result of the opera
tion of social laws — nay, of laws embracing more than
human society. It is the attraction of like for like.
Further, it is the application to cities of that law of
evolution described as the specializing or differentia
tion of function. Whether we like it or not, we cannot
in fairness fail to note its operation in cities, not only
now, but in the past — this is interestingly shown by
the names of ancient streets — or fail to realize that the
process must continue and can hardly grow less
marked. Jane Addams, than whom no social worker has
broader outlook, says in one of her books : ' ' The city
grows more complex^ more varied in. resources _and
more- Highly organized, and is, therefore, in greater
need of a more diffused and local anatomy. ' ' She says
this simply and incidentally, to prove another point,
as if everyone admitted it. Yet the statement puts
tersely the great lesson which we have yet to learn in
the platting of streets.

27

CHAPTER III
STREET WIDTH AND HOUSING
It early appeared that streets which are properly
of residential character, and of which traffic makes
only minor requirements, are not confined to any
single quarter of the city, and that the persons who
dwell upon them are not of one class alone. The occu
pants of the houses on any particular one of these
streets, or any particular unit of street, are likely
indeed to have approximately the same general posi
tion in life, but between two streets, or between two
well defined divisions of a street, there may be the
diameter of the whole social structure. It was asserted
also that the relation existing between the develop
ment accorded to these streets and the lives of the
people living upon them is exceptionally close and
intimate. If, then, the development of minor residence streets
be standardized, so that they all tend to uniformity,
and the lives of the residents are not, and cannot be,
reduced to a fixed social mean, there must result a
series of misfits, of which the outcome can be only
prodigality, social inconvenience, and a general mal
adjustment to real conditions. This will affect the
different classes of residents with different degrees of
relative seriousness, but none will escape its influence.
The easiest measure of the cost of such maladjustment
is offered by the effect upon rents, and that effect
28

STREET WIDTH AND HOUSING
carries suggestion of the numerous far-reaching ten
dencies which develop from it.
Alderman W. Thompson, chairman of the National
Housing Reform Council of England, in his valuable
compilation, "Housing Up to Date," states that under
modern conditions of subdivision the cost of roads,
sewers, etc., reaches in some cases as high as £9 per
room or £45 per cottage, and that it averages £9 per
cottage. This calculation is based on statistics cover
ing thousands of cottage dwellings, and since the word
' ' cottage ' ' means in this connection houses built in con
tinuous rows — that is, dwellings that occupy with their
grounds a minimum street frontage — it reveals the
effect on rents for even the cheapest homes. As to
the more costly villa type of dwellings, the same
authority notes that the English by-law requiring a
paved or macadamized road surface of about 40 feet,
has made the cost of thoroughfares, in newly devel
oped estates on the outskirts of towns, from £200 to
£500 per acre — "or more than the land itself."
John S. Nettlef old, in his ' ' Slum Reform and Town
Planning," calculates that the interest on the expen
diture for street work "comes to one shilling or more
per week on a house rented for six shillings, if the
number of houses is restricted to fifteen per acre."
One must read that statement twice to get its full sig
nificance, and must realize that the suggested restric
tion is not a low one. At Bournyille, the houses are
restricted to eleven to the acre, and at Hampstead
Garden Suburb "they average less than eight, with
twelve the maximum. Twelve to the acre has been
maxHTlhe standard in English housing exhibitions.
Yet at fifteen to the acre, one-sixth or more is added
to the weekly rent by the English by-law requirement
of forty-foot streets. 29

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
Raymond Unwin puts the unreasonableness of the
requirement in this striking way: "A mansion such
as Chatsworth or Blenheim will be adequately served
by a simple carriage drive from 13 to 20 feet wide.
The population of such a building will be larger than
that of a row or group of cottages, and the amount of
Avheel traffic to and from it many times as great; yet
for the cottage road asphalt or concrete paved foot
paths, granite curbs and channel, and granite macad
amized surface, the whole from 40 to 50 feet wide, and
costing, with the sewers, etc., from £5 to £8 a lineal
yard, are required by the local authority, under our
existing by-law. ' '
The burden of all this cost, to which is to be further
added the value of the land thus withdrawn from pro
ductive use, is borne by the occupants of the district,
whether they be tenants or owners.*
This was brought out with somewhat more detail
at the Seventh Congres International des Habitations
a bon Marche, when a report named the following as

* More recently, Mr. Unwin has worked out, by means of tables
giving the cost of estate development per house for various numbers of
houses per acre, an interesting calculation as to the profit in making
certain concessions with respect to roads. He imagines, for instance, a
tract of twenty acres, valued at £300 an acre, with ten houses to the
acre, and assumes the cost of fifty-foot roads to be £7, 10s per lineal
yard, the cost of thirty-six-foot roads to be £5, 10s per lineal yard,
and the cost of twenty-foot roads to be £3 per lineal yard. He finds
that if, instead of constructing the ordinary by-law roads, the houses
being so few, there were made one fifty-foot road around the twenty
acres, a thirty-six-foot residential road across the area, and then, instead
of another thirty-six foot road through the length of the plat, two small
drives of twenty feet each, the cost per house for land and roads would
be reduced from £71 to £62 6s, assuming the land-cost as remaining
fixed in either case. The concession, that is to say, makes the same
difference to the landlord as if he had been allowed to put one hundred
and forty more houses on the twenty acres !
30

STREET WIDTH AND HOUSING
the factors that determine rent, as far as the land
lord's side of the question is concerned:
1. Interest on Capital outlay,
(a) For site. '
(b) For roads, sewers, etc.
(c) For building.
2. Maintenance expenses,
(a) For repairs — "a fairly constant factor,
averaging about one-tenth of the gross
rent. ' '
(b) For management and sundries, "a fairly
constant , factor, averaging about one
twenty-fifth of the gross rent."
(c) For taxes and insurance.
Of these factors it will be observed that 1, (a) and
(b), and 2, (c), are dependent very largely on the street
platting; arid since 2, (a) and (&), are described as
"fairly constant," it may be said that much of the
variation in rents in any section is determined, from
the landlord's standpoint, by the cost of the building
and these three community-decreed factors. As a
tenant in choosing his house, theoretically chooses the
best he can afford, it can be argued that the rent fac
tors which are imposed by the community in its
official capacity, without his permission, really go far
toward fixing the scale of his living. And this is
clearly true even after admitting that the normal tax
rate has of itself, as economists now quite generally
claim, little effect on rents.* The importance of the
* It is quite conceivable that the method of taxation may affect
rents more directly than does the rate of taxation. Indeed, the ad
herents of the .single tax system, who, removing the tax from improve-
31

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
subject thus becomes plain. If the present familiar
method of standardization is unduly extravagant, it
should not be permitted to persist simply through
inertia and because it saves trouble in surveying and.
thinking. It is significant, as was noted, that the new act in
England recognizes the condition, by permitting Eng
lish local authorities, in order "to secure proper sani
tary conditions, amenity, and convenience," to relax or
modify former requirements, breaking away from the
tradition that all streets should be of like width and.
like strength. Furthermore, the act itself recognizes,
as we have seen, three distinct grades of roads — main.
arterial, secondary and residential.
Further interesting testimony is given by the Ger
mans, who, in the earlier days of deliberate town.
planning, were wont to construct very broad streets
when developing outlying areas. As long ago, how
ever, as 1892 the minister of finance said, in present
ing to the Prussian House of Representatives a bill.
relative to town planning : ' ' Everywhere equally wide
streets have been made, whether they are in a district
of heavy traffic, or whether they are in the less busy
parts of the town in which, naturally, workmen seek
a home. ... In preparing a rational town building
ments, would put it only on the land, assert that such a method must-
tend, by encouraging building, to reduce rents. With the whole tax
placed on the land, it does not pay to allow valuable land — which is to
say land immediately needed for use — to remain out of use. From a-
town planning standpoint, it is interesting to note, now, the further
claim that the city would consequently develop in a more orderly and.
consistent manner. Large areas of property, allowed to lie vaeant-
because of low taxes, will no longer separate its outer ring into scat
tered communities — a course that adds much to the cost of policing
lighting, sewering, and paving. Again, those who believe in an.
" unearned increment" tax on land, a system in operation in Germany
make a similar claim for their method. 32

STREET WID1H AND HOUSING
plan our task will be to avoid these faults and to take
as our aim that narrow as well as wide streets shall
be laid out, which will cost less to make."

A German Type of Handsome Street
High tenement block dwellings may be a direct result of wide roads;
and a handsome street that is lined with them is undeserving of
admiration from the standpoint of social welfare.

More recently, in the discussion of the few pages
from this volume which were read at the London Town
Planning Conference of 1910, Dr. Hegemann of Berlin
traced a relation of cause and effect between the wide
streets and the tenements with which those streets are
33

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
lined in the more remote portions of the German capi
tal; while Thomas Adams, of the town planning
department of the Local Government Board, of Eng
land, testified that after investigating conditions in
Germany and Sweden, he had to come to the conclusion
that the system of high tenement block dwellings was
as mucFtlie" result of wide roads, as wide roads had
"Been the result of the tenement system. The one, he
said, "was" complementary to the other. It Avas neces
sary that the owner extract from each yard of his
frontage enough rent to pay its share of the costly
street. At the same conference Dr. Eberstadt, in a formal
paper, told how English visitors are driven about the
German cities and shown imposingly broad streets
"with a display of asphalt that would empty half the
pits of Italy, and a show of granite sufficient to level
down the mountains of Sweden, lined all along with
huge five or six story tenement barracks." Some
English visitors, he added, were full of admiration for
this sort of thing; but he testified that the Germans,
who have had the opportunity to study it at close
range, ' ' now wish to do away with it, as far as may be
practicable", ancTto^miSeTEgir_ aim^ffieThiglish^me,
the cottage, the individual house."*
That in England and America broad streets, in
areas where the poor are congregated, are not — save
in New York — as commonly lined with tall tenement
barracks as in Germany, does not mean that the same
economic law is not in operation, or that it operates
less unfortunately. A social repugnance to the big
tenement, except as a last necessity, has led to the
* It is fair to say that the plans prepared in the recent (1909)
Greater Berlin city planning competition supplement very wide traffic
roads, • designed to reach far into the country, with narrow non-traffic
roads, intended for residence.
34

STREET WIDTH AND HOUSING
construction of small houses (often more crowded per
room, and less sanitary, than is the tenement block),
and then, to squeeze from the land the higher rent
necessitated by the cost of frontage on an expensive
street, has induced the construction of another house,
sometimes a small tenement, on the rear of the lot.
These houses, hidden by the structures in front, are
uncontrolled by ordinary police inspection and unaf
fected by public observation and criticism. They
become such breeding places of disease and vice that
at last, in city after city, it becomes necessary to forbid
their erection. In Washington, where they were per
haps no worse than in other cities, the official Report
of The President's Homes Commission described them
as ' ' discreditable to the city and injurious to the sani
tary interests of its inhabitants."
Of great weight, also, should be the reflection — to
which there will be other reference— that if there could
be cheaper minor streets for residence purposes, less
capital would be required in the development of
estates, less land tied up for want of the capital, and
more land thrown open for building.
Finally; there are other losses than those which are
so directly measurable in rents. Mr. Olmsted has
pointed out that "the tendency of the standardizing
plan to encourage the distribution of a certain amount
ofjthrough traffic upon nearjy_jejTOry_street in each dis
trict, is a distinct injury both to the residential streets,
where the abutters wish to escape from the disturb
ance of traffic, and to the commercialstreets, where
the abutters wish to have the maximum amount of
traffic pass their places of business. ' ' In other words,
the abutters are taxed for a system which is to their
disadvantage. It was early claimed that a wide street, furnishing
35

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
abundance of light and air, would be healthier to live
upon. But this does not follow if the added breadth
is devoted only to pavement. Such a street is provo
cative of much dust, which is never healthy; and in
e'niWcmglute^isiveTand occupation, either by covering
much of the land with buildings, or by high building,
it creates conditions that are by no means hygienic.

Sacrificing Comfort and Beauty for Width
This is a street in a residential suburb of New York. Its length is
limited to two or three blocks owing to natural conditions, and
there was no need to sacrifice beauty and comfort in order to make
it as wide as Broadway.
Briefly stated, if one's purpose in platting a wide
street is simply to secure open space, one would do
much better not to provide that space in its most dis
agreeable and unhealthy form — which is the street.
Again, an excessive width_ on minor residence
streets robs_the people of the ^galrd^nTliiey~rnight
otherwise have. For example, in B~elri^rofPaxk7 Lon
don, the first "Garden" suburb in England, the houses
on Gainsborough Road are placed about five feet back
36

STREET WIDTH AND HOUSING
from the lot line. Hedges are used in front of most
of the dwellings, and these naturally occupy so much
of the space as to render what is left nearly worthless
for garden purposes. In fact, generally it is paved.
But the street, which is only one block long and there
fore not a thoroughfare — through which indeed the
writer's carriage was perhaps the only one that passed
the day he visited it — is, as the law directed, forty

Extra Space for Unused Road Leaves Little Space for Much Used
Garden — an Example from Europe

feet wide. How much better it would be for the
occupants of these houses, people who may be sup
posed to have moved into Bedford Park in order to
get garden space, if it had been possible to reduce this
one block street to a width of 24 feet, giving to the
people on each side eight feet more of garden in front
of their homes !
That the connection between street widths and
good housing is of vital concern to the city surely
requires no argument. We may not think it part of
37

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the town's business to build decent dwellings for its
poorer citizens— though in Europe the clearance of
slum areas and the rehousing of the people thus dis
placed has been accepted as a very important, and also
very costly, part of municipal activity. But at least
we shall recognize that the city should do what can be
done, by the wise building ^of" streets, to encourage
good housing. In its purpose to jmake citizens, rather
than simply to add to the total of street area, it will
avoid, as far as it may, whatever fosters the "ware-^
housing" of men, women, and children in tenement
barracksj it will discriminate between shelter and
"home," seeing in the latter more than simply the
four walls of a dwelling; it will realize that a policy
which provokes unwholesome methods of living,
through cbmp~eTling a too intensive use of the land,
drains the municipal treasury in. otherjand more seri-
ous ways than simply for the cost of making and
maintaining needlessly broad streets. The main
tenance- oT health and morality among poor people
who have to live on lots of high priced frontage, is a
more expensive business than is the maintenance of
the street. And failure here is a more serious matter
to the community. As Dr. Charles W. Eliot said in a
recent address, "I am persuaded that the public ought
not to limit itself to economic considerations in laying
out parks and cities. The increase of human walfare,
including its happiness, should be the real considera
tion." But wisely to consider that may also be a true
economy.

CHAPTER IV
STREET WIDTH AND LAND VALUES
It is not always true that the tenant's gain is the
owner's loss. If the narrowing of minor residence
streets tends to reduce rents, it does not follow that it
tends to reduce property values. The latter are, for
the most part — as regards property of this character
— the capitalization of net income, expected if not
realized. A reduction in rents which results from
reduction in carrying charges may leave net income
unaffected. It is to be observed also that, in this discussion at
least, we need be no more concerned for the tenant
than for the lot owner. It is not for the city planner
to favor the former at the expense of the latter. In
fact, the ideal which is to be kept in mind as a desirable
goal is a condition in which each citizen would own his
own home, and the tenant become a relatively negli
gible quantity among a multitude of lot owners.
But if the proposed change in methods of street
designing does not affect property values adversely,*
it does not follow that they are not affected. It
probably would exert a marked influence upon real
estate in various ways.
In the first place, it would tend to create stability
in values. This effect would be seen alike on the main
* It is significant that under the English town-planning act, dam
ages arenot allowed for a restriction in the number of houses uer_acre.
39

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
thoroughfares and on the minor streets. The concen
tration of through travel upon certain streets would
raise the value of the frontage on those streets for
commercial purposes; while the assurance that inter
mediate streets would not be encroached upon for
business purposes would not only settle definitely the
business character of the chosen main highways, but
would have a beneficial effect upon property on the
intermediate streets. The reason for this is the cer
tainty which Avould be thus gained that they would be
free from the danger of invasion by elements incon
sistent, and out of harmony, with their present use.
The more certain, it has been well said, a man can feel
that the character of any given street is fixed, the more
he is willing to pay for the privilege of having a lo'ton"
that street if it is the kind of street he wants. He
justifies this willingness from an economic standpoint
by the argument that the property, for the use for
which he desires it, will not decline in value.
Another effect of a more rational method of street
platting would be the opening of additional tracts for
building purposes. This effect was touched upon in
the last chapter, where it was pointed out that the
requirement of less capital to develop an estate meant
the development of more estates. From the stand
point of real estate values this means the intensive
productive utilization of more land. It means that
fewer persons owning property on the outskirts of
cities need be "land poor." It would tend to produce
a greater equalization of values between adjoining
properties. Over against the possibly depressing effect upon
values, which would be anticipated from a greater
supply of available building lots, is to be put the
increase in demand. This will certainly come if rents
40

STREET WIDTH AND LAND VALUES
are lowered, and may be expected, in any case, to
follow an enhancement in the attractiveness of small
streets. It must be clear that streets which follow
more nearly the topography, which make use of every
natural advantage, which are narrow, grass bordered,
quiet ways rather than broad and dusty highways that
are hot in summer and cold in winter, would call men
from the city streets with an even greater appeal than
suburban tracts now call. In the announcement, issued
by the Russell Sage Foundation, of Forest Hills
Gardens — the Garden City it is building on Long
Island — the following sentence, significant from this
point of view, was prepared by the landscape archi
tect: "Probably one of the most notable characteris
tics of Forest Hills Gardens will be the cosy domestic
character of these local streets, where the monotony
of endless straight, wind-swept thoroughfares, which
are the New York conception of streets, will give place
to short, quiet, self-contained and garden-like neigh
borhoods, each having distinctive character. ' '
Though a good deal has been said about the cost of
making needlessly wide streets, a factor which has not
less influence upon rents and values is the cost of main
taining such thoroughfares once they are built. The
man who held property on a small street would make
a great saving in this respect. His saving would rep
resent not only the economy of having to provide for
the depreciation of a smaller area of street, but it
would be the result of a much less rapid rate of
deterioration. This is because there would be nothing
but local travel to wear out the street. The present
property holder on a typical suburban street is very
much in the position of a man required to cover his
front sidewalk with a brussels carpet which each
person who walks past his house does something to
41

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
wear out. As everything is done to invite people to
go through the street, and as nowadays a great many
play-loving persons are riding their little velocipedes
up and down — in other words automobiles — the carpet
wears out very fast. The man has not awakened yet
to theinjustice of the demand that he provide the
carpet where he does not want one, and then invite
people, who are only a nuisance to him, to use it.
Under the saner method of street platting, his carpet
would be in his front hall. It would not wear out so
fast, because no one would use it but his own house
hold, his nearest neighbors, and their visitors. He
would not grudge the wear given to it in that way,
and he would find that a cheaper grade of carpet,
costing less in the first place, would last as long as the
body brussels laid on the front walk. For these minor
residential streets, inviting no through travel, would
be as private entrance ways to the few houses gathered
upon them.
It may be said that those who own property on the
main traffic highways would be pretty hard hit by
construction and maintenance charges, if all through
travel were concentrated upon their streets. This is
true, but there are three answers to the objection : In
the first place, their property would at once gain
speculative value. It would have the commercial pos
sibilities which are to be denied to the minor streets,
and which pay such high returns. In the second place,
it would not be unfair, wherever it is demanded that
wide streets be put through a residential estate for the
convenience of communication between districts lying
on either side of it, to require that the general body
of tax-payers should pay the cost of street works in
excess of what might reasonably be held to make for
the convenience of the frontage and for the increase
42

STREET WIDTH AND LAND VALUE
of its speculative value. Third, it is probable that,
taking the city or even the neighborhood as a whole,
the deterioration of pavement would be much less than
under the present system. There would be a smaller
street area to take care of, and some pavements, such
as asphalt, deteriorate less rapidly if they carry a
fairly heavy and constant stream of travel. At any
rate, by concentrating the bulk of the traffic on a
relatively small number of selected streets, these could
be especially prepared for it, and given a width and
style of pavement calculated to handle the business
with the least delay and the smallest cost for operation
and maintenance. Then each purely local street could
be developed in the way that would best suit the needs,
the means, and the taste of the people it is designed to
serve. A final consideration with reference to real estate
values is, that only such a system of street designing
as here proposed can make just and reasonable — and
that is to say, can make possible — a radical limitation
in the number. of houses which may be constructed to
the acre. To impose a limit is of obvious social advan
tage. It secures to the householder sufficient light and
air and domestic independence — to say nothing of
other gains. It is also of economic advantage. While,
at first thought, qne_might think that an increase in
the number of houses on a given area of land would
decrease rents, the actual result in the long run is the
reverse of this,. Opportunity to overcrowd land raises
its price, and rents, of course, bear relation to the
capital invested. Consequently "land sweating" does
not lower house rents, when we measure rents by their
purchasing power.
If, then, it be desired to limit the number of houses
that may be constructed to an acre, the city must be
43

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
fair to the landowner. If, for instance, it is going to
say to him that he cannot construct on his tract more
than fifteen houses to the acre, it must say to him that
he will not have to pay, for the development and main
tenance of the streets in his tract, any such sum that
thirty houses to an acre would be necessary to give
him an adequate return on the investment. The one
act requires the other. Conversely, if the owner is to
be relieved of the cost of constructing wide streets, he
must agree to a restriction of the land's human occu
pancy — by limiting the height of his houses and their
number per acre — to an aggregate giving such traffic
as the street can care for. If, that is to say, adjust
ment of street width to street need is required, to make
reasonable the placing of a desirable restriction on
land development, such adjustment carries with it an
obligation on the part of the owner to consent to the
restriction. It is clear, under these conditions, that the city,
when it imposes a limit on the number of houses which
can be erected in a given area, does place an approxi
mate limit on the amount of traffic for which provision
need be made by the local streets of that area. The
necessity will no longer exist to require that there be
adherence to rigid specifications designed to take care
of a traffic which may increase with unchecked
rapidity. It does actually become possible at last to
adjust the street's development to the property's
development. But when no limit is set to the latter,
as in unrestricted areas, the standard for the street
work must be set by the dreams of the most optimistic
promoter. It will be correspondingly high, and cor
respondingly forgetful of the common good.

44

CHAPTER V
MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
The primary purpose of a street is to afford means
of communication, that is, of transit. People might,
conceivably, live in a trackless forest, but the moment
they began to pass from shelter to shelter, or to carry
food and firewood back and forth, that moment a path
would be commenced — a street would have begun.
As means of transit is an absolutely essential
product of the town's activity, so is it a factor indis
pensable to the community's progress. Largely, also,
upon the degree of transportation facility depends the
cost of living. The influence which a section of street
in front of a dwelling exerts upon the rental that must
be charged for that dwelling, is not, therefore, all
summed up in the proportions of the section of street
considered by itself. The relation of those propor
tions to the transportation facilities of the neighbor
hood are a vital factor in the determination of the
rental that can be paid. In the designing, therefore,
of a city's streets, no more important test is to be
applied than that of the adequacy of the proposed
arrangement for the transportation needs of the area.
It is in deference to the importance of this test that
we have so generally widened the public ways of our
cities and towns. We have seen urban transportation
growing enormously, both in volume and in the means
by which it is carried on. We have seen the narrow
streets of the towns of long ago choked with traffic.
Consequently, in building new cities and in adding to
45

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the old, we have created broad thoroughfares in
recognition of the fact that, whatever the cost, we
must make it possible for the traffic to move. As civic
engineers, we have witnessed a flood that filled old
channels to overflowing, and we have taken the primi
tive step in flood control of widening the channels.
Then, following further the example of the hydraulic
engineers, we have both straightened lines and from
the individual street have removed those projections
or irregularities which might retard the progress of
the current. All of this action, in so far as it refers
to traffic highways, has been wise and natural.
The traffic stream for which we must provide is not
simply, however, a matter of growing volume. It is
increasingly complex in composition. We must recall
that in the early days urban traffic was of limited ton
nage capacity and of slow movement. Traffic methods
then were relatively few. Almost the only movement
was on foot or on horseback. The social activity of
the towns was concentrated in a few open spaces, such
as the market place and the squares in front of the
churches, rather than diffused through the city streets.
Aside from a few main thoroughfares, there were, in
towns of that period, only narrow passage ways
between the houses. Inigo Triggs notes that in even
the largest mediaeval towns the principal streets were
not as a rule more than twenty-four feet broad, or
occasionally thirty feet; that lanes were not over
eighteen feet; and that alleys were generally six feet.
In small towns dimensions were even less than these;
and there was seldom any differentiation of surface
for the purpose of separating pedestrians from pack
animals. Yet those streets served fairly well the traffic
which made use of them.
To return to the hydraulic simile, the traffic prob-
46

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS

lem of those times could be likened to a very sluggish
water movement, such as can be accommodated easily
by broad ponds, a few narrow channels, and a network
of connecting slits. This, roughly, was the street plan

Original taken by G. Eeinecke, Hannover

POTTHOF

Street typical of a mediaeval town — when the street plan consisted of a
few broad spaces, united by "narrow channels and a network of
connecting slits. ' '

of the old cities. Conditions of modern traffic have
substituted for those conditions a raging torrent,
mighty in volume, swift in movement, irregular in
flow, and carrying the flotsam and jetsam of present
day commerce. It has been necessary to make a
47

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
division of streets into wheelways and footways, and
on very many of them to provide tracks for mechan
ical locomotion. The street is no longer a path. It
is filled with a life and motion that must attract even
the idler and loafer. The ordinary movement of
traffic upon it makes such a pageant that it is often
necessary to provide space for spectators also. And
with it all there is such danger to life and limb, and
such nerve racking tumult, that we must provide for
interludes, making it possible for spectators and actors
to go into quiet homes on quiet streets, where the din
of traffic will not disturb their sleep, and the frail and
the sick and the child may live in safety.
The whole problem of street adjustment has thus
become immensely enlarged and complicated. It is no
longer sufficient simply to widen streets and untangle
their old network ; nor, on the other hand, is it enough,
in the extension of cities, to plat simply a regular
system of traffic canals, long, straight, and monoto
nous, all alike in dimensions and character. We must
form main traffic channels that in location and arrange
ment shall be so nearly ideal that traffic will naturally
concentrate upon them, to the end that the streets
which we do not design for traffic highways shall not
be unduly used by traffic. From whatever point of
view we approach the matter, there appears the need
of two main divisions in the street system. As in
selling clothes, the manufacturer does not make only
one size of hat and coat and induce all men to wear it,
so in building streets, we should provide for the fat
traffic and for the lean traffic, and follow the example
of the clothier who keeps the fat man out of the lean
man's garments by designing, especially for his use,
clothes that are becoming and comfortable.
The question of street transportation is many
48

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
sided and complex. The rapid transit phase of it
alone presents problems that have filled many books.
The New York Committee on Congestion of Popula
tion has stated in a pamphlet that "rapid transit is
not chiefly a financial problem; it is a social problem.
It is a question not of dollars, but of human lives."
But in limiting our discussion to a consideration of
street widths as these are affected by transportation,
we can pass over some of the more technical questions
which press for solution with regard to the provision
of mechanical means of locomotion. Such questions
as the extension and financing of suburban lines, of
the relation of land values to transit facilities — how
"the trams help the suburbs and the suburbs help the
trams;" of interurban terminals, of the relative ad
vantage of bringing trunk railroads into single
terminal stations or of providing for their trains a cir
culatory movement ; of fare zones, rush hour traffic, of
workingmen's tickets; of the disproportionate growth
of travel as compared to the growth of population, and
the freight terminal problem — all these and kindred
•questions, though they be intimately bound up with
the extension of cities, need not here concern us. We
have problems enough in providing streets adequate
for the varying surface traffic which would make use
of them. The first thing to recognize is that the problem
with which we have to deal is a community problem.
Some years ago, when the Royal Commission on Lon
don Traffic brought in one of its reports,* it stated
that it found that the leading cause of the city's con
gestion was the absence of a central authority, charged
with the supervision of the traffic arrangements of
London as a whole. It noted that railways had been
?Volume VII, 1905. 49

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
built, new streets opened out, and tramways laid down
at local instance, to meet merely sectional require
ments, and without regard either to the needs of the
rest of the community or to the pressing claims of
posterity. This condition which is at fault in London
is general among cities. It obviously is so much better
and more reasonable that new streets which are
destined to be main lines of communication should be
planned, not by the owner of the land in accordance
with his conception of his own interests, but, having
.due regard for him, by the town, in accordance with
the interest and needs of the whole population, that
the matter requires no argument here. In German
cities, in Belgian, in some Swiss, in Sweden, and in
England, under the present town-planning law, such
action is now taken.
It is true, as Mr. Marsh* has indicated, that the use
to which land is to be put, and the intensiveness of its
development, are factors "to be determined, logically,
L before any radical plan for transit can be developed."
But radical plans need not here concern us. We shall
assume the advisability of providing space for surface
car tracks on all main highways. More highly devel
oped means of transit wduld not, probably, require
street provision.
It is well to observe certain principles that, for the
proper provision of transportation facilities, may
properly guide in platting the new areas, when once
we have taken the community point of view. These
tracts, if sufficiently large to permit anything like com
prehensive planning, are likely to be traversed by
some existing highways. It may be assumed that there
was and is good reason for such roads. Once in a
while their grades may be excessive, but generally it
* "An Introduction to City Planning," by Benjamin C. Marsh.
50

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
is probable that their alignment was sacrificed for
easy grades at the time when they were laid out. In
the United States, at least, that was likely to be a time-
when improved country roads were almost unknown,
and heavily ladened vehicles were obliged to avoid
excessive grades. These existing country roads, even
when rectangular in general arrangement, have prob-

By courtesy of the Metropolitan Improvements Commission, [Boston^
Highways Leading Into Boston
Note their naturally radial character and how they fork as they get
further from the center.
ably a radial relation to the city nucleus, and may
well be taken to form the basis of the extension of the
city street system. As existing and natural traffic
channels, we may expect streets developed from
country roads to remain important traffic thorough
fares. As a first step, then, we must widen and
straighten these principal channels, as hydraulic
engineers would do under the like conditions.
51

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
In street building, however, "straightening"
should not be understood always to mean rectilinear
and parallel margins. An occasional extra widening,
the break of a small open space at one side, a concavity
of street facade in abutting structures, which makes
space for cab stands, for kiosks, or for a group of
trees, may add greatly to the charm of the street,
while heightening rather than lessening its traffic
value. Again, that slight departure from absolutely
straight lines which makes negligible addition to street
length may add very much to street beauty. It is their
waving line that is responsible, in large measure, for
the charm of some old-world traffic thoroughfares,
such as The High in Oxford, the Grand Canal in
Venice and the Lung Arno in Florence.* Buildings
are seen at advantageous angles of perspective and
there is a varying play of light and shade. But the
curves must be long. The sinuosity which looks well
on paper is very likely to seem wigglety when on the
ground, and the only test is that the street shall please
as one passes along it. To do this, it must have no
studied effect, must give no hint of affectation. Hence
it were absurd to attempt to lay down a general rule.
Nor, indeed, should all arterial streets have wav
ing lines. There is a certain grandeur — the grandeur,
some one has said, which was imperial Rome 's — in the
straight line for a street. When the scale of construc
tion is very large, there is a masterful firmness in
rigidity of street line which is more satisfying than
flexibility could be.
So, by straightness, or very slight and gently made
deviations from straightness, the main highway will
* America is not entirely without examples of this, especially among
the older cities. Observe, for instance, the gently waving line of Main
Street, in Springfield, Mass. 52

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
be fitted to expedite its traffic to destination. But this
will not in itself suffice. As open country is trans
formed into a populated area, more is needed than the
widening and "straightening" of original channels to
care for the swelling streams of traffic. Accordingly
we must lay out additional highways, also of generally
radial character as respects the center, interspersing
them, as we foresee will be necessary, between the
existing roads.*
G. H. Knibbs, F.R.A.S., has noted that it is with a
radial street system that "the greatest area is reached
with the least length of street. ' ' He adds, ' ' The great
est distance to be traversed in passing from any one
point to another, as compared with the direct distance
between the points, is approximately a minimum when
the angles between the diverging streets are about
60° — that is, when the radial system is hexagonal."
As suggested, however, by the footnote, no fixed rule
has been followed in planning actual radial streets.
Even when the center of convergence is a point rather
than a considerable area, there is much diversity in
practice, the most formal plans being somewhat af
fected by existing conditions of site, etc. Thus, the
Arc de Triomphe in Paris has fourteen converging
avenues ; while the Place de la Bastille in Paris and the
Capitol in Washington have eleven. As Professor
Eberstadt has said, ' ' There is nothing absolute in town
building" — nor should there be.
If of radial character, our main highways will
* "In Berlin fourteen great roads connected by a circle radiate
from the seat of this military government and lend themselves to
effective and economical expansion of the city on all sides. In London
there are three principal civic centers: Trafalgar Square, the Bank,
and the Elephant and Castle. From the triangle thus bounded sixteen
radial routes diverge." — Robert S. Peabody, in "A Holiday Study of
Cities and Ports." 53

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
become further and further apart as one travels out
ward from the center. Doubtless we shall find it
advisable, therefore, to branch them occasionally. If
these branches should come at intervals of approxi
mately three-quarters of a mile, and the branching
point should be dignified by some striking architec
tural accent, the aspect of the streets would be vastly
improved. But the three-quarter mile interval is not
a fixed distance. Much must depend, even as far as
looks are concerned, on the street's grade, width, and
general treatment; and looks can be very seldom
indeed the sole determining factor. Yet it is worth
while in our platting not to forget that a comparatively
short street — or one containing a focal point clearly
visible throughout its length — is far preferable aes
thetically to a long one, and is much less wearisome
to the traveler.
Between the arms of the main framework, thus
constructed, it will be necessary to provide cross con
nections, which in their turn will become main channels
for the cross, or circumferential, traffic. This traffic
is not only of sufficient importance in itself to deserve
such recognition, but provision for it will relieve the
main radial thoroughfares. Otherwise these furnish
for cross traffic — especially for that which uses street
cars — a very roundabout course, into the center and
out again, that adds to their own natural congestion
and wastes energy and time. These circumferential
streets will tend, in their turn, to be broad and nearly
straight, between the radial or parallel highways.
Naturally we shall try to have them intersect those
highways at the branching points so that they may
serve the largest possible number of people.
At the place where the intersections occur, the
street area may be enlarged to create small plazas.
54

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
These plazas will be not only of traffic service, but will
lend themselves to the construction of the desirable
architectural accent.* At these points also should be
developed secondary centers, not only of business but
of administration. Finally, there will be some need for
diagonal streets, especially if the main framework be

jwyiw^L

An Intersection of Important Streets
Development proposed in Philadelphia. Note the grouping of the local
public buildings.
rectangular, in order to develop, through the induce
ment of short cuts, main traffic highways that will
effectively relieve minor streets of the burden of
through travel. Incidentally these short cuts will be
an economy in transportation.
The system of main highways, thus developed, if
made sufficiently elaborate,! will constitute the skele-
* Raymond Unwin 's ' ' Town Planning in Practice ' ' contains a very
mteresting discussion of various ways of treating street junction points
architecturally, so as to secure such accents and break the monotony of
streets. t Some comments on aesthetic considerations, which are given later,
in Chapter VII, are applicable to main traffic roads as well as to
residence streets.
55

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
ton of the extended street plan. We shall find it in
complete articulation with the street plan of the inner
city. Then, the main highways having been planned,
the interstices between the main lines of the frame
work can be filled in with those minor streets which
will not invite through travel. Indeed, for the further
discouragement of such travel these need not always
be straight, direct, or of easy gradient. They should,
rather, be quiet byways for residence, and given a cor
respondingly cosy and domestic character.
Of the main highways, many will probably carry
lines of rapid transit. The number of these must
increase with the growth of population and with the
outward extension of the city, so that it will be best
to make them of such width that it will be practicable
to put car tracks on any one of them, should the need
arise.* It never ought to be necessary to put car
tracks on a street so narrow that they absorb most of
the roadway. A prohibition, such as that now effective
in New York, which forbids the construction of a
single track surface railroad on any street having a
roadway less than thirty feet wide, or a double track
surface railroad where the roadway is less than forty
feet wide, would safeguard the minor streets.
As to just how wide the great thoroughfares should
be, it is as impossible to designate an exact standard
for them as it is unwise to standardize minor streets.
They will be used in various ways for various kinds
* It seems reasonable to expect that a persistent increase in the use
of electric surface roads in cities must result not only from growth of
passenger travel, which increases faster than population, but through
appreciation of their freight carrying value. That is to say, it is likely
that eventually there will be diverted to their rails — between certain
hours at least — much of that transportation which now, through break
age of bulk and laborious individual truckage, adds so disproportionately
to the cost of freight movement, while so increasing the congestion of
streets and the wear of pavements. 56

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
of transportation. But these thoughts at least may be
kept in mind :
1. That the primary purpose of such highways is
to make it possible for the travel upon them to move
safely and easily, swiftly and inexpensively.
2. That the whole history of transportation has
been marked by a gradual increase in the size of the
transporting unit, so that it behooves us to be generous
in the provision of space.
3. That as the travel upon such thoroughfares will
be human travel, for the most part the daily ebb and
flow of the tide between home and work, it will be well
to make these streets, as far as practicable, pleasant
ways of going.
With these considerations in mind, the statement
may be repeated that it probably is advisable to make
all main highways wide enough to carry a double-track
surface railroad, and it is desirable that they offer the
opportunity to put this on a distinct right-of-way. As
a city grows, the tendency is to utilize all streets of
this character for rapid transit, and to recognize this
in the platting is simply a commonsense look ahead.
Track gauges differ somewhat, but in order to provide
the right-of-way, it would be necessary as a rule to be
able to set apart a strip at least twenty feet wide. The
separate right-of-way, though it may not always be
granted, is desirable because it permits a quick move
ment of cars, and makes their operation possible at the
minimum of danger and discomfort to other traffic.
This acceleration of the street car movement is a mat
ter of economic concern to the community, because it
widens the zone of available residence for the city's
workers, and, in doing this, gives marketability to
increased areas of land for home sites.
On a street where general traffic is of a business
57

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
character, it is likely to be enough to separate the rail
road right-of-way from the street proper — whether the
railroad be in the center or at the side of the street — by
simply a curb. An additional foot of space would take
care of this. Where the traffic is largely made up of
pleasure driving, as on boulevard or parkway, or on
a high class residence street, it may be well to widen
the strip a total of five to twenty feet beyond the actual
car requirement, in order to permit the screening of
the track, by planting trees and shrubs, to permit the
deadening of the railroad's noise and the elimination
of its dust by wide turf borders, or the ornamentation
of the space with flower borders and the training of
vines. Further, if the street railroad be allowed such
separate right-of-way, which can be turf covered
between the rails, the cost of construction is consider
ably less than when the road is required to lay a
pavement. In many cases the saving would be enough
to pay for the additional width of street the arrange
ment requires. It may be noted, however, that the
community has something to gain, as well as the com
pany, in any safe reduction of construction cost which
may make possible a low fare for a long ride.
In addition to the space set aside for car tracks — a
space, that is to say, of twenty to forty feet — there
must be space for vehicles to stop at the curb without
interrupting the through travel. This means the use,
for the two sides of the street, of some sixteen feet.
Then the number of streams of through travel for
which there must be provision is a matter that cannot
be treated in any general way. Each case must be
considered by itself. Some streets, for instance, lead
simply into open country, becoming more and more
sparsely settled the further one goes from town;
others are highways connecting important and popti-
58

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
lous communities with the city, and carrying a cor
respondingly heavy traffic; others again lead to parks
or popular resorts. In any case, it must be foreseen
that the traffic will grow faster than the city grows,
and it will seem that to provide for two uninterrupted
lines of travel in each direction, one for slowly moving
and one for swiftly moving vehicles, would be gen
erally a minimum for such main streets as are under
consideration.* Because it seems reasonable to expect
the unit of vehicle to increase in size, and because for
rapid movement and heavier travel it is necessary to
provide ample clearance space between vehicles, we
may assume that four lines of travel would require
thirty-six to forty feet.
This is fairly liberal, for under present conditions
thirty-six feet allows a clearance space of about a
foot on either side of each vehicle, and it might per
haps be argued that the vehicles standing at the curb
do not require any clearance space of their own.
Moreover, the manufacturers of motor trucks, in reply
to inquiries, now assert with rather remarkable una-
* The author is aware that a report recently brought out, under the
auspices of the Society of Technical Superior Officers of German Cities,
expresses the opinion that very broad carriage ways do not appreciably
distribute the traffic, even when the traffic is heavy. In proof of this it
states that the traffic keeps its accustomed tracks, as shown by the wear
ing down of strips of roadway surface, while the pavement between these
tracks remains little used. With due deference to the source of this
report, it should be pointed out that the finding is not, as a matter of
fact, adverse to the value of broad carriage ways. The "little use"
of "the pavement between" — by which one vehicle gets past another,
on occasion — may make the whole difference between the efficiency and
congestion of a highway. But it is true, that if the increase of width
be not enough for another vehicle plus its clearance, the addition is not
worth much. For example, five feet might be added to the width of a
congested roadway without appreciably relieving the situation, since
this space is insufficient to allow a vehicle to get by, or to accommodate
an additional line of vehicles. 59

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
nimity that the limit of width has been reached. The
fact, however, that the historic tendency in nearly
every kind of transportation unit is against their
statement seems to justify the proposed extra pro
vision for the future. And it may be recalled that if
vehicles are backed to the curb, instead of standing-
parallel to it, they need thirteen and a half feet, or a

Car Tracks on a Central Reserved Strip — Tree-bordered and Sodded
View of a section of Beacon Street, Boston.
total of twenty-seven feet on the two sides, instead of
the sixteen allotted in the original estimate.
Finally, as business is likely to make use of these
streets — the stores that serve the residential neigh
borhoods should be encouraged to locate on them —
there must be allowance of sufficient sidewalk space.
This could hardly be less than twelve feet on a side,
whether or not it be all paved at first.
A main highway having a width of one hundred
feet would seem, these calculations being considered,
to be close to the minimum. It might provide :
60

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS

Four lines of through travel  36 to 40 ft
Space at two curbs for waiting vehicles ... 16 to 16 "
A double car track  20 to 20
Two sidewalks  28 to 24

i <

100 100 ft.
If the railroad strip were given the additional
width suggested, if the sidewalk space were widened —
twenty feet has been suggested for a business street,
and if trees are to be placed on a main highway, where
the buildings are likely to be erected at the front lot
fine, there should be enough sidewalk space to make it
possible for them to stand as much as twenty feet
from the building line — if there were provision of a
bridle path, if business and pleasure vehicles had
separate roadways, if there were a broad central
promenade, or other important ornamental features,
the width would be increased to two or possibly three
times these figures.
It is interesting in this connection to note that at
present Berlin requires that principal thoroughfares
shall not have a less width than 95 feet ; that the Royal
Commission on London Traffic makes 100 feet the
standard for first-class arterial streets, and 140 feet
for "main avenues" — the latter to carry four lines
of tracks; and that secondary German cities, such as
Leipzig, Frankfort, and Hanover put the figure for
main thoroughfares at 85 to 118 feet — none of them
provisions that can be said to be too liberal as respects
the future. On the other hand, Unter den Linden in
Berlin, with its tree-lined central promenade, is 193
feet wide ; the Ringstrasse in Vienna is 188y2 feet ; the
Avenue des Champs-Elyse'es in Paris varies from 230
to 260 feet; Arborway at Franklin Park, and portions
61

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
of Commonwealth Avenue, in Boston, are 200 feet,
Eastern and Ocean Parkways in Brooklyn are 210
feet, and 150 feet is by no means unusual among
Western cities of the United States.*
There are one or two other points to be emphasized,
with reference to these wide streets : If a width of at
least a hundred feet for main thoroughfares seems
extravagant, let it be remembered that when such
streets are widened, and thus are able to serve ade
quately their proper function as main traffic highways,
it will be possible to narrow all the streets which are
of distinctly local character. To give a few strate
gically placed principal streets ample width, so that
through travel will find in them sufficient accommoda
tion, is in actual fact not as extravagant as to give to
all streets, whether local or arterial, a uniform width
which is more than they need for the one use and not
as much as they ought to have for the other. To put
the matter concretely, we may say that in any par
ticular area to raise the width of twenty miles of street
from sixty feet to one hundred feet, and sometimes
more, reducing at the same time the width of forty
* A most interesting scheme for a great city highway is one drawn
Tip by D. Barclay Niven, Esq., F.R.I.B.A., for London; but, as Professor
Mawson remarks, applicable with local adaptation to any large city.
This contemplates a thoroughfare 330 feet in width. It is divided as
follows: A service road with sidewalk, forty feet; a four -track elec
tric railway, in open cut, one hundred and ten feet — this space including
the sloping sides of the cut; a "boulevard" drive, seventy feet; a
promenade or plaisance, tree bordered, seventy feet, and then the second
service road and walk, forty feet. This of course is very expensive and
very grand in scale; but if we imagine it applied to a radial road, and
consider the extent of additional building area which it would make
available by its traffic efficiency, the expense may not seem unwise. A
reproduction is appended of the interesting diagram, illustrating such a
street with the location of public buildings at an intersection, which
Professor Mawson gives in his monumental work on "Civic Art," pub
lished in 1911.
62

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS

U-40'--- >k-  no'  >j«--70' ---->k- — to'— -s+s-^y-H
k-  - -  330'    -H
•D. Barclay Niven's Plan for a Great Highway for London

63

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
other miles of street from sixty feet to an average of
less than thirty feet, would really mean an appropria
tion of less land for streets. Furthermore, there is
incalculable economy in getting the main traffic streets-
wide enough at the start. In June, 1907, the Associa
tion of Municipal Corporations of England submitted
figures which showed that two-thirds of the great
English towns had expended on the widening of main
highways during the preceding ten years an average
of nearly a million pounds a year. Had those streets
been given sufficient width at the beginning, when
values were low, almost all of this drain would have
been saved.
But not only is there financial economy in building
well located main thoroughfares on an ample scale;
there result also a great increase in street efficiency,.
the more economical development of real estate as well
as of streets, a street system of much more variety
and interest than one in which all streets are alike;
and, finally, a system that, by means of these great-
highways, establishes frequent fire breaks and makes
it possible for strong currents of fresh air to percolate
through the city.
A clanger that the platting of main highways on
such a general plan as here outlined may lead to
uniformity in street system, at least as respects their
main framework, is less real than apparent. It has
been said that topography and existing country high
ways must largely determine the lay out of these
streets. The first, for the avoidance of very steep
grades, is likely in most cases to require some long
sweeping curves; while country highways are seldom
perfectly straight for extended distances — for the
taking out of small kinks, which is the thing that was
meant in suggesting their "straightening," would not
64

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
remove definite changes of direction. Moreover, the
proportion of towns built on a level plain, and which,
therefore, might be thought in danger of adherence to
an unbroken stereotyped pattern, is small. Even
among them, one portion will often be bounded by a
body of water, or by other natural feature, of irregular
outline; a meandering stream will cause variety, or
the location and irregularity of park lands will break
the uniformity. Finally, the minor streets, under the
suggestion here broadly outlined, will always lend the
charm of the unexpected. Mere likeness of direction
in streets does not much impress one on the ground.
Variation in width counts for more.
But if the worst did happen, and there was, con
ceivably, a likeness among principal traffic streets in
the extension plans of various towns, few persons
would ever think of comparing designs. Indeed, the
vague consciousness of likeness in respect to those
streets would prove, as far as it goes, something of a
public convenience. It is to be recognized, too, that
he who adequately approaches the problem of city
planning will look for nothing more eagerly than for
evidences of the city's natural individuality. This is
an intangible something, more expressed perhaps by
irregularities than it is by any other feature, which is
the secret of each city's own peculiar charm. To any
evidences of this which he may find, the city planner
will pay great deference. He will let them temper his
whole re-casting and subtly affect his every scheme.
As Cornelius Gurlitt has said, "The artistically
creative city planner should seek out all peculiarities
of the site and emphasize them according to their
individuality; thereby, whenever possible, reconciling
every contradiction between his planning and the
aspects of nature. He should take into question the
65

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
irregularities of the surface, the existing streets and
ways in their natural configuration, the property lines
and the single natural features — even if nothing but
several old trees. Notwithstanding this, he should
impart all practical advantages to traffic, to circum
stances of habitation, and to the administration of
individual properties."
In suggesting rules, one is necessarily definite; in
carrying them out, there will be a thousand exceptions.
Thomas H. Mawson has well said: "Even to design
a house or garden ideally, it is necessary to grasp the
configuration of the site as a whole, and to catch the
atmosphere and traditions of the domain and district
with innate artistic perception, or even the rarer re
sponse of poetic grace. It is much easier to build and
garden well — to impart a grand or stylish air to the
mansion and to make the garden superior and luxuri
ant than to build a fine city." A book of this kind
cannot, therefore, dictate ; it only suggests, in a broad
and general way.
At the close of a chapter on main highways, there
should be, perhaps, a special word with regard to the
business district. For here is a district where all the
streets are traffic ways. But even here some are more
so than others ; and the general principle of particular
width for those which carry particularly heavy traffic,
of the value of radials or diagonals to furnish cut-offs,
of the avoidance of jogs and irregularities of platting,
applies as it did for the town as a whole, except now
with more universality and in a concentrated form.
It should be noted, however, that in the business
district an alley system is of peculiar value. An alley
gives an additional opportunity for fighting fire, that
may be worth much in a section which is closely built
66

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
up ; and at doors that open on to alleys, goods can be
loaded and unloaded systematically without interrup
tion by, or interruption to, the traffic of the street.
Because of these facts, business lots which run through
to alleys have a higher valuation than those which do
not possess such facilities. The alley is also, its front
age costing only a fraction of that on the street, a
convenient place for stables, boiler rooms, etc. Un
doubtedly, a business district is much more efficient
with alleys than without them.
If the town be on a navigable body of water, a two-
level construction of the marginal street — nearly
always a main thoroughfare — is of great usefulness.
This can be secured by running a bank or retaining
wall longitudinally through the middle of the street.
The half at the summit of the bank or wall thus
becomes a sort of terrace, or elevated street. The
natural incline of the shore is likely to facilitate such
an arrangement, "which has the advantage of making
possible the devotion of the lower level to commercial
purposes and of the upper to the ordinary purposes
of traffic. Stairs and inclines connect the two levels
at frequent intervals; and the street's possession of a
higher surface simplifies greatly the matter of bridge
approaches. Waterfront commerce, with the slow processes of
loading and unloading and its quite common need of
surface railroad tracks, may be a sad impediment to
normal street traffic when the two are not separated.
Conversely, the street traffic is likely to be hardly less
of a hindrance to waterfront commerce if both try to
use the same space. It is because of this that a two-
level street on the waterfront tends to increase of
efficiency. It also, means enhancement of attractive
ness. The buildings on the upper stage, looking over
67

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the lower level, are given long views that miss only the
sordid and slovenly details of commerce; while the
outside walk of the street's upper half offers a vantage '

Two-level Street on the Waterfront
An example from Diisseldorf of a useful street construction.
point of never failing fascination for watching the
busy scenes below and the play of wind and light upon
the water. Finally, the view of the city, from the
68

MAIN TRAFFIC STREETS
water, is made by this construction much more
orderly, impressive, and dignified.
Nothing has been said as to the height of buildings
on main thoroughfares. This is because the width of
the street should be the factor determining the maxi
mum limit of height to which buildings can be con
structed. If we get the street widths, we get — or
should get — the building height limit automatically.
The usual European regulation is that no building
shall exceed such height that any part of it shall cross
a line drawn from the middle of the street to the top
of the building at an angle of so many degrees. The
angle varies in different cities ; but is most often forty-
five degrees.
Just what the number of degrees should be, or
whether this is the best method of establishing the
connection between the width of the street and the
height of the buildings on it, is not the point here.
The important matter is simply that the width of the
street ought to determine the height of the building.
In most American cities this would mean a reduction
from present practice. As, however, in the business
sections of cities the tall building is __an_econqmic ^neces
sity, or tends to become one, the future city plan, under
favoring conditions, might properly include some
squares or plazas specifically designed to afford
proper sites for such buildings. It has been suggested
also that towers, if so separated from one another as
to admit light and air in ample quantity, would not be
objectionable, though they did exceed the street width.
We may note, however, that from the standpoint of
artistic design, a proportion between the street's
width and the construction along its edge is essential.
There as elsewhere is operative the eternal law of
relation between solids and voids.

CHAPTER VI
HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
If it be necessary to the good city plan that there
be a considerable number of very broad streets, it is
encumbent upon us to secure the desired thorough
fares at the least practicable cost to the community.
It is true that most streets, in American cities at any
rate, are dedicated; but there is always the danger
that the dedicated street will not be as wide as the
anticipated growth of traffic would require, that the
landowner will not voluntarily give to it the exact
location demanded by the comprehensive plan, and
finally that some streets, or parts of streets, may not
be dedicated at all.
Out of the consideration of these facts, two needs
become apparent, viz. : An economical method of pro
curing broad streets when they are not a gift; and a
central authority with official machinery enabling it
to represent efficiently the interests of the community
as a whole in dealing with street dedications. With
reference to the latter need, it is obvious that the
public and the proprietary interests are not always
identical, and that, when the proprietor gives and the
public receives, the former's personal and pecuniary
point of view is likely to have a disproportionate in
fluence, if there be no ready means of asserting the
public's rights.
In this chapter we will consider the measures which
70

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
have been tried or proposed for reducing the cost of
securing wide streets. Then we can take up the second
need — that of central control — in the chapter that
follows. Within the confines of built up portions of the
town, the question of procuring a wide street becomes
most often a question of street widening. The eco
nomic problem is thus quite unlike that presented in
outlying areas where the desire is to plat streets
broadly at the start. The problem in the built up part
of the city is the more difficult ; each single case is more
apparently urgent, and involves larger values than
does the problem in outlying regions.
The familiar European and South American
method of grappling with it is by the measure known
as "excess condemnation." Under this procedure, the
municipality condemns~not only the property needed
to obtain the desired width of street, but enough in
excess of that amount to give to it the ownership of
the building plats abutting on the widened street. It
may build upon these, or, after making the street
improvement, it may sell them at the enhanced value
which the improvement has given to them. If it sells,
it secures to itself the profit which its own work has
created, and frequently this profit is sufficient to pay
the entire cost of the improvement. If it builds it has
secured, perhaps, good sites for public structures, or
it may be able to supplement a mere slum clearance by
good housing measures. Under either condition, it is
in a position to impose radical restrictions on the
character of the construction at the street edge. There
is assurance that the great public work which it has
prosecuted will not be demeaned by unworthy build
ings or by stretches of property held vacant for
speculative purposes. 71

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
American cities have been slow to adopt the
methods of excess condemnation, because of the risk
which it was popularly felt would be run by permitting
a city to "engage in the real estate business." But
cities are in that business all the time ; the risk in this
phase of it is really very slight ; and with the gradual
improvement of American municipal government and
a more general appreciation of the many advantages
of the procedure, there has developed a strongly de
fined trend toward its adoption.
The first American act recognizing the principle
was passed in 1904, in Ohio; the next year a similar
bill was added to the code of the public local laws of
Maryland; in 1906 Virginia passed the most general
of all the acts, permitting the acquisition of property
adjoining not merely parks but streets; and in 1907
the legislature of Pennsylvania enacted a law which
authorized the acquisition of property within two
hundred feet of any park, parkway, or public play
ground.* All these acts give the power to resell sub
ject to restrictions that will insure suitable develop
ment along the proposed improvement, their osten
sible object being "to preserve the view, appearance,
light, air and usefulness thereof." In 1907, the Con
necticut legislature went further still, giving to a
Commission on the City Plan, the creation of which
in Hartford it then authorized, the right to resell
"with or without reservations" property not needed
for an improvement.
It would seem from these facts that many Ameri
can cities are, and more are soon to be, in a position
to avail themselves of a method of street widening
* Andrew Wright Crawford in Charities and the Commons, Feb.
1, 1908. It is by this provision that the diagonal parkway from City
Hall to Fairmount Park, in Philadelphia, is being constructed.
72

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
which has had satisfactory test, and been the means
of accomplishing extraordinary improvements in the
congested quarters of cities of other nations. But the
plan has two limitations: Its dependence for practi
cability on its advantage in providing a quick over
turn, promptly reimbursing the municipality for
monies expended, unfits it for use in outlying regions
where the resale of the abutting property at suddenly
enhanced prices might prove a very long process. Sec
ond, it requires for execution, even under conditions
that are exceedingly favorable, a large outlay or credit.
Before taking up the problem presented by residential
and suburban regions, it will be well, therefore, to
note another method of street widening in business
sections which has had successful trial both in Europe
and America — as in Hamburg, Germany; and in
Philadelphia. It was desired some years ago to widen Chestnut, i
Walnut, and Arch Streets, in Philadelphia — the three
streets of the city that were most congested by busi
ness traffic. To have made the improvement by the
"excess condemnation" method would not only have
required an outlay or credit of almost fabulous pro
portions, but, during the years which the work must
have required, it would have paralyzed the business
of the city. Accordingly, there was passed an ordi
nance — in 1884 for Chestnut Street, and in 1894 for
Walnut Street, the dates being important as showing
that it has now had opportunity to stand the test of
time and of many actions — authorizing the Depart
ment of Surveys "to revise the city plan" so as to
widen the street in question to a certain specified
width — as, for example, seventy-two feet for Arch
Street. The second section of these ordinances reads :
"After the confirmation and establishment of said
73

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
lines, it shall not be lawful for any owner or builder
to erect any new building, or to rebuild or alter the
front, or add to the height of any building now erected,
without making it recede so as to conform to the line
established." The most valuable business property
affected by these ordinances was that on Chestnut
Street between Eighth and Sixteenth, within which
distance about one hundred and sixty properties have
up to this time been changed, and in the process set
back. In actions brought for damages, the city con
tended that no damage was occasioned when a prop
erty still had a depth of a hundred feet or more, after
the widening had taken place, with frontage not only
on a widened street but also on a rear street or alley.*
As a result, the widening of streets of enormous prop
erty values has now been practically secured, by this
means, at almost no cost to the municipality.
A modification of this method, to fit it for use in
regions of smaller property values, has been proposed
by Charles A. Ferry, of New Haven. He suggests that
when new lines are run for a street, in order that it
* Francis Fisher Kane, an attorney of Philadelphia, describes the
ease of the new Wanamaker store as one of the most interesting and
significant which came up. This property, he writes, "has 250 feet on
Chestnut Street and Market Street, and 489 feet on Thirteenth Street
and Juniper Street, and is the only Chestnut Street property covering
an entire block and having four fronts. Mr. Wanamaker 's witnesses
claimed that the loss of the strip of ground, 5x250 feet, occasioned
a damage amounting to $93,950, which they worked out at the rate of
$75.00 a square foot. The city's witnesses testified that no property in
the city bore out their theory more clearly than this, and that the market
value of such a property with four fronts, 484 feet deep on a 60 foot
wide street, was equal in value to a property 489 feet deep on a street
50 feet wide. Notwithstanding witnesses who testified to the contrary,
Mr. Gibbons, of the city solicitor's office, won the case, and the jury
took the city's view and made no award." It should be added how
ever, that not all the cases have been equally successful, as some owners
were allowed nominal damages.
74

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
may be widened, there be a separate award for dam
ages for land and for buildings on the land. The city
would then pay for the land and become the owner of
it, while allowing the property owner to retain for a
time the possession of his building if this projected
over the line, on the payment of an annual rental that
would be a certain per cent upon the land damage
awarded. If the building were of small value, it might
be worth while to move it back or to rebuild the front,
at the city's expense; if alterations were made, or a
new structure erected, the city would require that it
conform to the new line. Thus in time the street would
be widened at a nominal cost.
To both of these plans there is the objection that
many years are likely to elapse before the improve
ment is complete, and that in the meantime the street
presents a ragged appearance. This appearance is not
different, however, from that which the street so
familiarly has during the less desirable process of
narrowing it, when buildings that had stood back are
being brought to the front of the lot line. Moreover,
the plans offer such economic advantages as to make
possible great public improvements which, however
necessary, could hardly be compassed by other means ;
and it is well to remind ourselves that in the long life
of a big city — and these plans are applicable only in
growing communities- — the local discomforts of a
dozen years or so are a relatively insignificant matter
if they lead to permanent betterment.
But still another method of street widening is avail
able, where there is continuous construction at the
street's edge. It has less to recommend it, for it offers
no addition of light and air, making concession only to
traffic. This consists in carrying the sidewalks be
neath the second floor of the buildings by means of
75

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
arcades, as on the Rue de Rivoli, in Paris. Then the
roadway can be widened to what was the whole width
of the original street, while the only property absorbed
is that which is on the street level, of just the width
desired. With reference to platting new streets, or even to
widening old streets, where values are less high, the
buildings detached, and more or less property is
vacant, there are yet other ways of reducing costs.
For one thing, it seems not unfair, as suggested in a
previous chapter, to meet some of the expense from
the general tax, instead of putting it all on the front
age. The purpose of the improvement is primarily to
serve the community as a whole. In these regions it
is not the traffic originating on the street which needs
the additional space. Indeed, to some extent the abut
ting property holders actually suffer annoyance
through the increased traffic which added accommoda
tions invite. That they should pay, however, for a
little more street width than they would have had to
do, had not that particular street been chosen as a
traffic highway, is probably just, for the improvement
bestows on the property a speculative value through
the possibility that business will follow the enlarged
tide of travel. But that a share of the added cost
should be borne by the whole community, and perhaps
also by posterity — by means of a bond issue — is also
fair. It may be remarked, however, that this plan,
while lessening the burden for abutting property, does
not reduce the gross cost.
There has already been suggestion, in preceding
chapters, of another way by which cost can be reduced
in sections not closely built. This is by securing an
easement over those front gardens which, in the kind
of area now under consideration, will be an almost
76

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
universal accompaniment of such construction as there
may be. Perhaps the method cannot be described
more clearly than by giving a concrete example of it.
Sixteenth Street in Washington has an apparent width
of eighty feet. It is really platted, however, twice that
width, from building line to building line, and if the
time should ever come when business invaded the
street and the traffic grew to large proportions, the
street could be given its true breadth — seemingly
"widened," that is to say, to one hundred and sixty
feet — without condemning any property. Meantime,
as a fine residence street without heavy traffic, and
with no commercial business, Sixteenth Street is lined
with houses which have before them lawns and gar
dens forty feet or more in depth. On either side of
the street, the householders are at liberty to fence
these gardens, and use them almost as if they were
owned in fee simple, save only that no store, shop or
other structure can be built upon the front forty feet
of them. On the other hand, the residents are pro
tected from the danger that some grasping individual
will thrust a building out to the present sidewalk line,
interrupting the view and breaking the continuity of
gardens — a protection that is no slight compensation.
And that it may be seen that the law imposes no undue
hardship, let it be observed that if an owner desires
to put in a store before the city is ready to widen the
street, or his neighbors to give up their front gardens,
he can do so, provided he does not advance beyond the
general building line. The course he usually follows
is to extend the sidewalk paving in front of his prop
erty quite to the building line, sometimes using the
space for outdoor stands, or show cases, to attract
trade ; and perhaps erecting light awnings over it.
Under a like regulation the alleys of Washington
77

THH WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
are being transformed into minor streets. The law
reads, in part, "That no dwelling house hereafter
erected or placed in any alley shall in any case be
located less than twenty feet back, clear of the center
line of such alley." And a law of Pennsylvania pro
vides, as does the law in other countries, that cities
may lay out streets in anticipation of future needs and
yet postpone entering upon the land for construction
or for opening it to the public. Until the city does so
enter on the land, the owner has the free use of it.
"He receives payment only when the opening takes
place; but if in the interim he shall have erected any
structure within the limits of the proposed street, he
will receive no compensation therefor when the street
is opened. . . . The procedure is to establish a build
ing line, set back a certain distance from the street
line, paying damages only when the power to prevent
the erection of a new building is actually exercised. ' '*
That such measures mean a great cheapening in the
cost of street widening operations must be perfectly
evident. Very often, when a street is mainly lined by
residences, most of the abutters would welcome the
establishment of a building line that would protect
them from inconsiderate neighbors. This is shown by
the readiness with which people pay high prices for
residence property in neighborhoods where land com
panies have imposed such a restriction. At least, it
is conceivable that abutters would frequently be wil
ling to waive claims for damages. Mr. Olmsted has
said,f in discussing this matter: "When the actual
physical widening of the street takes place, through
absorbing the restricted zones on each side of it, the
* Frederick Law Olmsted in The Survey, Feb. 4, 1911.
t Frederick Law Olmsted in his Report to the Pittsburgh Civic Com
mission, 1911, on "Main Thoroughfares and the Down Town District."
78

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS
damages for land taking will be comparatively small,
because at that time most of the abutters will want
nothing so much as that very widening, if only to bring
the sidewalks in contact with the fronts of their build
ings. But regardless of its clear financial advantages
to the city, in reducing its total payments for street
widening and especially in distributing the burden of
that cost over a long period without running up a large
bonded indebtedness and interest charges, the funda
mental argument for this method of procedure is that
it avoids the absolute dead loss to the whole commu
nity resulting from the destruction of valuable build
ings. ' '
There is another way still of curbing the cost of
securing wide streets. This is by establishing building
zones. For it is the primary function of these to set
bounds to the degree of intensiveness with which the
land can be developed. Speculative inflation of real^-
estate values, due to "sweating the land," or to the
possibility of doing this, is therefore eliminated.
When land for street use has to be purchased, the
removal of this factor may prove of considerable
moment. Nor does the beneficent influence of the zone
system, as respects the acquirement of wide thorough
fares, stop there. As already pointed out, the setting
of a definite limit to the use of land in any particular
part of the city, makes it possible to calculate pretty
closely just how wide the streets need to be. Even with
main highways it ceases to be necessary to add so very
much merely for good measure.
Since the zone system, which has been so greatly
developed in Germany and so little in the United
States, has thus an economic value to cities in facili
tating the development of a rational street system, it
will be well to note briefly two of its other advantages.
79

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
As to the one, Mr. Marsh, in his "Introduction to City-
Planning," goes so far as to say of it: "The most
important part of city planning, as far as the future
health of the city is concerned, is the districting of the
city into zones or districts, in which buildings may be
a certain number of stories or feet in height and cover
a specified proportion of the site, that is, the determin
ing of the cubage or volume of the buildings." The
official Congestion Committee of New York included
this suggestion among its recommendations of 1911;
and one better understands the statement on reading,
in one of the leaflets issued by the preceding voluntary
Committee on Congestion of Population in New York,
the assertions : ' ' The high cost of land is the first and
inevitable cause of congestion. To pay a net return
of eight per cent on land worth $2 per square foot,
with a density of 250 per acre, each family of five must
pay, for the use of the land alone, $121.96. . . . Un
skilled wage-earners cannot be properly housed on
land worth over $1 per square foot." As to the other
advantage, it is necessary only to suggest with what
economy and efficiency a section of the city could be
developed for manufacture, with reference to trans
portation by rail and water as well as by streets, if it
were known that it was to be always devoted to that
purpose only.
The regulations under which the cities of Germany
have developed the zone system are simple; but they
are not uniform, and would be very long to quote. The
city cuts its area into sections, irregular in size and
outline, conditions of site and of previous development
largely determining these matters. The Graded Build
ing Code of Munich, for example, has authorized nine
grades of buildings ; while the regulations of Diissel-
dorf recognize nine classes, or sections, and then
80

00

o1-3O
M
2 KO
O IB H
O

o K
i-3H K

Plan op Cologne and its Suburbs in 1901
Illustration of the German ?one system. In Zone I, the heart of the town, buildings may have
four stories and be 66% feet high; in Zone II, they must not exceed three stories and a height
of 52% feet, this comprising the suburbs of more urban character; in Zone III, which con
tains the more rural suburbs, the limit is two stories and a height of 38 feet; and in Zone
IV it is two stories and a height of 52% feet, this district being reserved for "open," or
villa, building.

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
subdivide some of these three or four times. The
city itself is still further subdivided, sections of each
class being located in different parts of the city. In
Frankfort, there is the simple arrangement of the
Inner City and the Outer City, the latter having an,
Inner Zone and an Outer Zone, each of these being
then divided into Residence Section, Mixed Section,
and Factory Section.
In the United States, distinct building zones as
regards the regulations for fire-proofing are usually
recognized. There has been also interesting legal
recognition of the principle in the creation — as in Los
Angeles — of an Industrial District and a Residence
District, with the prohibition of factory construction
in the latter, while the determination of zones for
buildings of different heights and areas has stood the
test of constitutionality in Boston and in Baltimore.*
A recommendation that the plan be applied to New
York is made by the New York City Commission on
Congestion of Population, as we have noted above.f
Finally, voluntary restriction on the part of persons
who are developing large tracts of land is as well
known as it is significant. An advertisement, for ex-
* In Boston two districts have been established, and the division of
the city in accordance therewith has been upheld by the Supreme Court
of the State and of the United States.
t Report of 1911. Though details of the recommendation are hardly
pertinent to the subject of the present chapter, it may be worth while
to note, briefly, that the committee 's proposal is that no building of
any sort in Manhattan below 181st Street shall exceed a cubage of 174
times the area of the lot, and in the rest of New York a cubage of 120
times the lot area; and that no factory or loft building shall have a
cubage exceeding 132 times the area of the lot. No tenement below
181st Street, it is proposed, shall exceed four stories in height unless it
be fireproof; outside of that district it shall not exceed four stories any
way, and for outlying regions the suggestion is a three-story limit.
Nowhere shall the tenement be higher than the widest street on which it
faces.
82

HOW TO LESSEN THE COST OF WIDE STREETS

ample, observed on a street car, reads: "New high-
class restricted residence park on. . . . No flats, no
factories, no saloons."
Most German municipalities own vast areas of
building land. A dominant purpose is to prevent
injurious inflation of prices; but clearly that owner
ship, for which American cities seem not yet ready on
any large scale, is a very direct way of cheapening the
cost of street building, and of providing an authorita
tive central control of street platting.
The latter point is yet to be considered. Here we
have only to note, in summary of this chapter, that the
early laying out of main traffic streets on an ample
scale, with all its negative and positive advantages,
does not involve, if carefully done, an expense that is
prohibitive. This means not less to the property
holder than to the city at large. Aside from its nar
rower economic aspects, the fact makes possible the
rational planning of streets.

83

CHAPTER VII
PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
Coming now to the matter of central control, which
has been named as an essential desideratum in the
platting of main highways, there are several methods
by which it can be exercised. These may be effective
without the necessity that the cities themselves shall
be owners of the land to be divided — as to such large
extent they now are in Germany: It is fortunate that
is so, since American cities are not prepared to buy
large tracts of suburban property.
Starting with the assumption that for the good of
the community the platting must be jone f rom_a_com-
munity standpoint, rather than from that of the
individual, there are two theories as to the best method
of~securing such a viewpoint. One is that the work
can best be done by a local commission, usually made
up in part of responsible officials ; the other is that it
is likely to be done most wisely by outsiders, who are
free from local prejudice, preconception, and interest,
and who are able to see the problem with fresh eyes.
Experience has revealed, however, that it is not so
hard to get a fairly good city plan put upon paper
as it is to secure faithful adherence to the plan through
the long course of years which must elapse before it
can be transferred from paper to fact. This desirable
adherence, one must hasten to add, is to the true spirit
of the plan rather than to its letter. There will almost
84

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
surely be need of modifications in it now and then.
The best planner cannot foresee every contingency.
He does not pretend to infallibility. The virtue of
city planning lies not in its certainty of meeting all
future needs, but in the assurance that it will wisely
meet a good many of them. Even with a plan, there
will have to be adjustment and readjustment, remodel
ing and moulding to fit it for new conditions. To make
sure that this shall be done with far-seeing vision and
with the interests of the whole community at heart is
what complicates the problem. It usually, for instance,
would not be safe to leave the control of street platting
wholly in the hands of a body of which the complete
membership was constantly changing.
In reviewing various schemes devised to meet these
conditions, one gets the impression that cities, both in
Europe and America, are still at the experimental
stag's as regards the control of street platting. Very
likely they are; very probably the perfect machinery
for the planning and building of cities has not yet been
worked out.* But because it would have to be nicely
adjusted to local administrative procedure, and be
cause this procedure is various, it is altogether
unlikely that any one scheme will ever be devised
which could be suitable for every case. Hence there
is need here only to touch on the plans, that their
tendency and general principle may be observed.
* The National Conference on City Planning, in America, has given
serious consideration to this and kindred topics, and at the Third Annual
Conference (Philadelphia, May, 1911) the Committee on Legal and
Administrative Methods, Andrew Wright Crawford, Chairman, presented
drafts of several acts that might be uniformly adopted by the several
States to the great simplification of intelligent city planning procedure.
The report which introduced and explained the principles of these acts is
given in the Appendix. 85

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
T. C. Horsfall,* in a long chapter on the Gene
Building Law of Saxony, gives at length the sectii
referring to town planning. These require spe<
attention to the following, among other, points. Tl
may be quoted here as seeming to offer, on
authority of German students of the subject, a si
mary of the desirable scope and temper of town pi
ning operations as centrally controlled:
" (a) The position of the blocks of building, as v
as of the lines of streets and the building-lines, m
be adapted to the configuration of the land, and m
be such that an adequate supply of sunshine in
rooms occupied is secured.
"(b) The dimensions of the various blocks of bui
ing must be such as to allow of the proper utilizat:
of the ground for building.
" (c) The width of streets and footpaths is decic
by the requirements of local traffic, and must be si
ably graduated in accordance with the nature of '
streets as main streets, by-streets, or streets used o]
for dwellings. In the case of streets of detached
semi-detached buildings, where there is no pro]
through traffic, the part of the road used for vehic
need not exceed a width of twenty-six feet. In the Ci
of streets for which through traffic may be exped
eventually, especially tram-lines, and a widening
the street must be anticipated, there must be fr<
gardens of suitable depth on both sides. Privi
roads, which give access to the backs of buildings 1
several blocks, must not have a less width than ni:
teen and a half feet. . . .
"(d) Gradients in the streets must be distribul
as evenly as possible; heavy gradients, deep cuttir
*"The Improvement of the Dwellings and Surroundings of
People: The Example of Germany," by T. C. Horsfall.
86

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
and embankments, as well as inordinately long
straight lines of streets, must be avoided as much as
possible. "(e) In determining the directions of streets care
must be taken to provide short and convenient connec
tions between streets and with the chief centres of
traffic. " (/) Open spaces and public shrubberies must be-
so arranged in respect of size, position and number, as
to be useful in relation both to convenience of traffic
and to general welfare. Sites for churches and school-
buildings, as well as public playgrounds and recreation
grounds, must be provided in sufficient number.
" (g) In deciding what shall be the kind of building.
allowed, and as to whether factories and workshops
shall be allowed, the existing character of the district,
or part of a district, and its needs must be taken into>
account. "The building plan, or building-line plan, when it.
has been once decided on, is authoritative in relation
to all buildings in the district to which it applies. But.
the owner of land which the plan shows to be intended
for use for public traffic, may use it till he has to
surrender it to the community, for purposes other
than building, and may enclose it with a suitable
fence. . . .
"A plat of land, not yet built on, which is shown by
the plan to be intended for use as a street or square,
cannot be used for building purposes, except that
eaves, balconies and other projections of buildings.
may be allowed to overhang it. The erection of tem
porary buildings is, however, permissible, but the
owner must remove them, and any fences which he
may have put up after the fixing of the building plan,
87

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
at his own expense, so soon as the land is needed for
use as a street or public square. ' '
In addition to these and other regulations the
Saxon act has given to the Building Police,* upon
whom is placed the responsibility for the making and
carrying out of town plans, the valuable and radical
right to expropriate lands and redistribute them. Sec
tion 54 reads,
"If the proper use, for building purposes, of land
which is within the scope of a building plan is pre
vented, or made very difficult, by the position, form,
or size of the plats of land or parts of the plats of
land, then for the purpose of obtaining convenient
sites for buildings, a repartition of the area can be
made, even against the will of the owners, by an
alteration of the boundaries of the plats, or by redis
tribution, in case the new arrangement is in the public
interest, and a request to that effect is made to the
Building-Police Authority either (a) by the Town
Council, or (b) by more than half of the interested
owners of land who together own more than half the
land in question. "
Section 58, in further elaboration, reads :
"The plats of ground belonging to all the owners
concerned are to be thrown together, and the public
roads which the new building plan makes unnecessary,
are to be included. From this mass the land shown
by the building plan to be intended for the future
public roads must first be separated, and the building
land which remains must then be distributed in such
a way that each owner of a plat or plats of land shall
have a share of the total value corresponding to the
share which he had in the whole amount of land before
* Originally the Building Police were charged only with securing
stability of construction and protection against fire.
88

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
redistribution. The community must have land for
public roads assigned to it to replace the roads which
were absorbed. In fixing the values on which the
redistribution plan is based, and which are to be fixed
with the help of experts, all material and legal con
ditions must be taken duly into account. For each of
the plats of land suitable for building purposes one or
more plats of land, as far as possible in the same place,
must be given. Plats of land with buildings on them,
as a rule, subject to rectification of their boundaries,
are to be restored to the persons who have hitherto
owned them. . . . Unavoidable differences of value
between the earlier plats and those received to replace
them can be settled in money. ' '
The official circular which was sent out with the
English town-planning act described that act's purpose
as "to ensure, by means of schemes which may be
prepared either by local authorities or landowners,
that, in future, land in the vicinity of towns shall be
developed in such a way as to secure proper sanitary
conditions, amenity and convenience." The circular
added that "hitherto the conflicting interests of dif
ferent owners, and the absence of any power in the
local authority to guide and- control development
according to the circumstances and requirements of
particular cases, has resulted to a considerable extent
in the development of estates, whether large or small,
with a sole regard to the immediate interests of the
particular estate and without regard to the amenity
and convenience of neighboring lands." There was/
no wish, authorities explained, to harass individuals,
hamper enterprise, or to go against the interest of any
individual owner except in so far as the greater inter-!
ests of the community made this necessary.
Under this English act, the (national) Local
89'

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
Government Board is the arbiter. It may authorize
the council of any borough or district to prepare a
town-planning scheme "with reference to any land
within or in the neighborhood of this area, if the
authority satisfy the Board that there is a prima facie
case for making such a scheme; or may authorize a
local authority (i.e., a council) to adopt, with or with
out any modifications, any such scheme proposed by
all or any of the owners." The scheme prepared, or
adopted, by councils must be approved by the Local
Government Board before it can take effect, and the
approval can only follow Parliamentary hearings, or
the opportunity therefor and for objection. The
scheme subsequently may be varied or revoked by the
Local Government Board, if sufficient cause be shown ;
and should local authorities fail to prepare schemes,
or to adopt schemes that ought to be adopted, they
can be ordered to act, or the Board itself can effect
ively adopt a scheme. The significant thing is that
the plan is made locally, perhaps even by the land
owners, and that it then must be passed upon by a
central and official body representing the interests of
the community.
Further, the act follows the German precedent in
permitting a town-planning scheme to limit the
number of buildings which may be erected per acre,
and to designate the character and possible height of
those buildings. It further provides, in so doing, that
these limitations shall not entitle the owner of the
property to compensation where the Local Govern
ment Board, having regard to the nature and location
of the land affected, consider such limitation to be
reasonable for the purpose of securing the amenity of
the section which is included in the scheme.
In the United States, it is customary to require
90

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
landowners to file maps of their subdivisions, and to
secure the approval of their plans by the city council
or some other designated body — as the Board of Street
Commissioners (Boston), the Board of Public Im
provements (St. Louis),* the Topographical Survey
Commission (Baltimore). The obtaining of this
approval, however, is too often little more than a
matter of form — especially when it is left to a council
so concerned about other matters as to give only per
functory attention to land development projects. A
further weakness of the arrangement is the city's
difficulty in exercising control beyond the city limits.
Various ways of overcoming this weakness have
been tried. Wisconsin adopted a law in 1909, extend
ing the council's authority in this matter to lands
lying within one and a half miles of the city limits_.
Michigaii_giyes _to__its cities control for two miles
beyond their limits. In the cities of some States an
extension of municipal authority over what is called
the metropolitan area — practically a consolidation of
separate outlying communities with the main city for
the comprehensive planning of public works — has been
effective. The commonest method in the United States,
however, is to push the city limits out so far as to
embrace a surrounding belt of partly agricultural land.
Various cities then adopt what is called "the city
map, ' ' requiring that new streets be platted in accord
ance therewith.
Theoretically, this is an admirable procedure; but
it involves large expense for police and fire protection,
lighting, etc., and practical difficulty has been found
in enforcing adherence to the map. Landowners are
too likely to lay out private streets and sell lots to
* Legislation transferred this authority in St. Louis in the spring
of 1911. 91

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
unsuspecting purchasers who discover, too late, that
the street cannot be publicly accepted because of non
conformity with the map. To obviate such a condition,
some municipalities prohibit the laying of water mains
or sewers on non-conforming streets, and Philadelphia
authorities have refused to give lines and grades to
builders on such streets. But the constitutionality of
these acts is somewhat in doubt, at this time.
Hartford, Conn., has a Commission on the City
Plan, authorized by State law. It is composed of the
Mayor, the President of the Board of* Street Commis
sioners, the President of the Board of Park Commis
sioners, the City Engineer, a member of the Board of
Aldermen, a member of the Common Council — the two-
latter appointed by their respective boards — and two
citizens, neither of whom shall hold any other munici
pal office, and who are appointed by the Mayor. The
Commission serves without pay, but it is empowered
to employ experts, as it has done, and its expenses
are paid. Through the Commission, the city may take
property by condemnation ; and may resell, as we have
stated, that which is not needed for an improvement.
The law requires that "all questions concerning the
location of any public building, esplanade, boulevard,
parkway, street, highway, square, or park shall be
referred to the Commission by the Common Council,
"for consideration and report before final action is
taken on such location." Various other matters
"may" be referred to it.
The New York Committee on Congestion, in the
carefully prepared report which it brought in just as
this chapter was being written (March, 1911) recom
mended, among other things,
' ' The preparation by the city, through the Board of
92

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
Estimate and Apportionment, of a plan for the entire
city, which shall include the following items :
"(1) The restriction of factories to certain dis
tricts. "(2) The provision of transit lines and means of
carrying freight upon the basis of such a districting
of the city.
" (3) The determination of the main lines of streets-
and secondary streets as suggested by Mr. Nelson P.
Lewis, Chief Engineer of the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment. " (4) Provision of sewers and methods of sewerage
disposal and substructures for pipes.
"(5) Provision of adequate sites for parks and
playgrounds and recreation centers and municipal
buildings of various sorts.
"(6) Acquisition of adequate land by the city for
all public purposes. ' '
This is an interesting statement, not only for its
proposal that a city plan be prepared by an existing
official body, but for its enumeration of what such a
plan might properly include.
In December, 1909, the Mayor of Chicago appointed
a Chicago Plan Commission. With its very large
membership, however, its function was to be advisory.
Buffalo, Seattle, Los Angeles, Newark, N. J., St. Louis
and Salem, Mass., are among the representative other
cities which have created city plan commissions,
made up of local residents. These commissions are
designed to act for the most part in an advisory
capacity, but generally their membership wisely in
cludes, ex-officio, some members of the city govern
ment. In these cities, and in other cities of the United
93

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
States which have not gone so far as to dream of
official and permanent plan commissions, the usual
course has been to call in, from outside, one or more
city planners to study the community's needs and to
give advice. These city planners are men, trained
sometimes in one profession and sometimes in another,
who have specialized on the physical development of
cities and towns. They have schooled themselves to
see quickly, and to think in big terms, and they are
men of imagination with strong practical sympathies.
Taking up each problem conscientiously and with
fresh interest, they undoubtedly perform for the cities
that retain them a service of incalculable value. They
offer, in conveniently concentrated form, the central
viewpoint ; they take, beyond the cavil of petty politics
or local interests, the community standpoint; they
bring to the particular problem of the particular town
a broad, fresh outlook and a knowledge of the experi
ence of other communities. The impetus which they
thus give to the city's wise development and bolder
public spirit is greater than can be measured ; but the
reports they make and the pictures they draw have
not been as yet, in any large and literal sense, city
plans. The true city plan must be worked out very slowly,
on the ground, through a course of many years. It is
almost sure to be bettered, at one stage or another,
however it is first made, by the suggestion and criti
cism of outside experts ; and it is certain to need, to
insure its gradual unfolding in visible reality, a strong,
permanent, central control — partly represented by law
and partly by the authority of officials. That the mak
ing of this city plan, and the subsequent control of it,
is no matter to be lightly delegated to any group of
untrained individuals, or conveniently existing official
94

PROVISION OF CENTRAL CONTROL
body that has other serious duties to perform, is one
of the principles which this book would especially
emphasize.

95

CHAPTER VIII
PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS IN HIGH
CLASS DISTRICTS
Returning now to the platting of streets, we may
take up again the special problems offered by those
of residence neighborhoods — that is to say, having
indicated the importance and general character of the
main traffic thoroughfares, we are at liberty to resume
consideration of minor residence streets. "The
streets," said a writer,* when describing the plans for
Hellerau, the garden city near Dresden, "conform to
the lie of the hills in delicate curves, and present to
the architects who will be building here the best oppor
tunity for making charming city pictures. Near the
workshops stretches out the quarter occupied by small
dwellings, in which the houses belonging to single
families are united in groups and rows." In another
section, he added, "extensive quarters for country
houses are provided."
In a general way this statement puts briefly the
ideal of a street layout which might be in the residence
portion of any city. It suggests, also, the natural sub
division of the subject into at least two main discus
sions — one having to do with high class regions, where
plats vary in size, but are relatively large ; and one
having to do with workingmen's districts where the
* Bernard Kampffmeyer, chairman of the German Garden City
Association, in Garden Cities (England), Dec, 1908.
96

PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
lot unit is small. Of course between these two extremes
there must be, in every city, provision for the great
middle class — if that phrase may be used — through
which, by steps too gradual for separate observation,
the one extreme graduates into the other. But that
scarcely demands separate .consideration. Just be
cause the progression is so gradual, there is no line
that distinctly sets it off, and according as the middle
class assumes, in greater or less degree, a likeness to
the one extreme or to the other, street and lot arrange
ment can be appropriately adjusted — since traffic
needs are become a minor factor.
The arrangement of the subject as thus proposed
is likely, however, to provoke this query : If prettiness
and loveliness are to be the attributes of the higher
class of residence streets in cities that are wisely
planned, is there to be no provision for the stately
avenue? All the people who live in costly houses set
in spacious grounds will not wish to live on streets
that curve, however "delicately," or that rise. and fall
in conformity with the natural hills and dales. And if
this be true of the residents of houses set in gardens
it will be true still more of those who are content to do
without a garden.
To that query, then, let there be immediate re
sponse : The desire to dwell on a stately avenue is just
as legitimate, and is just as worthy of consideration
in the street platting, as is a preference for quieter
streets. But the great avenue must have length to
match its breadth, and it must be direct, else it will
lack in dignity. It is most naturally developed, there
fore, and with greatest frequency, from those main
arterial thoroughfares, of which there has been dis
cussion, or from the boulevards and parkways of
which we have yet to speak. It tends to be an artery
97

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
of travel, and this remains true even though heavy
traffic be debarred from using it. For travel in the
city makes use of diverse vehicles, and it is not an
essential duty of a main channel to accommodate every
kind. With the stately avenue, therefore, though it
has its important place in the city plan, this chapter
need not concern itself. Nor will it fall within the
scope of a discussion of those minor streets that are
lined with humble homes.
To take up, then, some general rules for platting
the minor residence streets in high-class neighbor
hoods, we may note that "when the main roads have
been laid down and the main traffic requirements have
been provided for, the spaces left between these
through roads can be developed more from the point
of view of making the best of the sites for the build
ings, and less from the point of view of public
convenience."* That is to say, the factors most con
sidered now can be the convenience and pleasure of
the persons who live on the streets, so far as there is-
no violation of reasonable sanitary, building, and fire
precautions. At the same time, in making any sug
gestions, we have to realize that site planning, as
distinguished from city planning, cannot be success
fully carried out in a very wholesale manner. City
planning, by which the main traffic arteries are platted,
can be only done comprehensively; but once that is
accomplished, there is required a degree of thought,
for the problem presented by the individual minor
street and residence site, which can hardly be given
in sufficient detail when vast urban areas are con
sidered in the mass. If this be true of the single city,
it must apply with double force to a discussion in
general terms of the problems of all cities. Yet we
* Raymond Unwin in ' ' Town Planning in Practice. ' '
98

PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
may note certain principles which it is profitable to
keep in mind.
The necessity for economy in street construction is
one of these. In preceding chapters there has been
effort to indicate the far-reaching social importance
of this consideration. Here we have to observe that
the economy is not a matter only of street width, or of
style of pavement, or of other features of street
improvement. It may be also a matter of street loca
tion. The primary thought in this connection will be
regarding the lot subdivision — so to place the streets
that they may cut the tract into the largest possible
number of the kind, or kinds, of lots most saleable in
the sort of development which is contemplated. In a
high-class residence section, especially in one pictur
esquely developed, there will be demand for plats of
various sizes. The attractiveness of the plat, its sus
ceptibility to pleasing development, and its relation
to its surroundings are factors that determine the
area most marketable. There is no special advantage,
therefore, in a section of this kind, in establishing a
lot unit, for larger plats are not likely to be exact
multiples of it nor smaller plats precise divisions of
it. Thus we shall do very well, from the financial point
of view, in letting plat-lines determine street-lines,
instead of making the lot the product of an exact
arrangement of streets.
In developing the houselots, even in a section where
there are gardens, a certain symmetry of shape will,
however, be found desirable. To secure this, the minor-
streets will have to be platted with reference to the
nearest main traffic ways. This seems an unnecessary
comment, and yet there are many examples of useful
diagonal highways superimposed on a rigid gridiron
of minor streets, so creating awkward corners and
99

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
unsaleable lots. As Raymond Unwin says:* "That
the minor roads in the northwest corner of a town
should be parallel with the minor roads in the south
east corner, though it may look pretty on the plan, is
a matter having in reality no value whatever ; but that
the minor roads should have a definite relationship to
the secondary or main roads of the framework to
which they are adjacent is essential, as much for con-

\VvAN

Two-level Street in a Residence Section
The beginning of a longitudinal bank that is to separate the two levels
of a. wide street on a hillside. Picture from a new section of Aix-
la-Chapelle.
venience and economy as for securing a satisfactory
artistic treatment of the street."
The fact is, briefly, the street planner should
approach the problem of the minor street with no
predilection in favor of any geometrical system. With
a perfectly open mind, he should simply seek the street
layout that is most appropriate to the contours, that
* Paper read at the Town Planning Conference, London, 1910.
100

PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
will most advantageously subdivide the property, and
that will give the best connections and best shaped lots
on the main highways. He should not approach this
problem predisposed to adopt a gridiron, checker
board, or diagonal system.
There are other matters which make the street's
location an economic factor. For instance, there is the
question of drainage. Generally, a street which fol
lows the line of natural drainage presents, other things
being equal, marked advantages from this point of
view. Again, to follow the topography, where this can
be done without too great sacrifices in other directions,
means a large saving in fills and cuts. Or, in carrying
a road along the side of a hill, it often is well so to"
locate it that there is more of cutting on the one side
than there is of filling on the other. This is because
the street sewer will probably have to be placed low
enough to drain the houses on the low side, and because
the houselots on the low side are considered so unde
sirable that either they must be filled up or high foun
dation walls must be constructed. As houses on
terraced sites are well regarded, there need be less
anxiety regarding the lots on the high side of the street
than regarding those on the low side. Hence, the
change of a street 's center line by a very few feet may
make a great difference in costs and sales.
Occasionally it is worth while, as the Germans in
particular have shown, to confine the house building
to the upper side of the street alone. This is on steep
hillsides, where construction on the lower side would
involve large cost and, as return for the expenditure,
would shut out a view and transform into a common
place thoroughfare a street that had tremendous
natural possibilities for beauty. Narrower and more
frequent streets on such a site will sometimes be the
101

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
method of development at once most economical and
effective. Then there is the two-level street, if the side of the
hill be very precipitous. Here a longitudinal bank or
retaining wall is introduced in the middle, dividing the
street into two levels, as was proposed for the water
front street, so bringing each side of it nearer to the
natural surface of the abutting property. Such a
street must of course be wider than a single thorough
fare of the same capacity. But the saving of values
in the frontage more than compensates for the cost of
extra width.
The question of street grades is of more than
'traffic significance. Though there be wish to follow
contours on streets that carry little traffic, though the
automobile has robbed the grade of much of its terror,
and though the hill site is attractive because of the
view and climatic conditions it offers, care must be
taken that grades are not too steep for long distances.
For one thing, it is not so easy to sell houselots which
can be approached only by climbing a very steep hill.
For another thing, a street with extremely heavy grade
needs more expensive pavement and sewer construc
tion than does one which is not subject to torrential
floods, and consequent washouts, after summer
showers. In placing these streets some thought should be
given, also, to wind and sun. The home, and its
pleasantest and healthiest - orientation, is a more
important matter on a minor residence street than is
the getting of a traveler to a certain point by the
shortest route. As to the sun, if there be choice, one
should take care not to run a residence street due east
and west ; or, if so running it, he should try to give the
lots a wide frontage, so that important rooms of the
102

PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
house might have a southern exposure. If the street's
location be swerved enough to avoid an exact east and
west direction, the sun will reach the north side for a
little while, and thus, if the house be detached, will
shine at some hour of the day into every window.*
As to the wind, care should be taken when practicable
not to extend a street for a long distance in exactly the
direction of the prevailing winds. A street that serves
as a funnel is pleasant neither to live nor travel upon.
Diisseldorf, for example, is exposed to strong west
winds over the Rhine, and Herr Geusen, Oberbaurat,
has said that lately in making changes and clearings
it became evident that curious street curves in the old
town were deliberately planned to reduce the un
pleasantness of the wind storms.
Finally, to preserve or enhance the beauty of the
street — a very justifiable purpose, where the object is
the building of homes — a slight change here, or a curve
there, may save a group of beautiful trees, or a single
noble specimen which represents the growth of scores
of years. It may preserve a picturesque boulder,
which might otherwise have had to be blasted away,
or an historic shrine which might otherwise have been
sold for junk; or it may suddenly reveal a view that
delights or thrills.
It is clear, then, that ever so slight changes of
direction may make great differences, in costs of con
struction, in saleability of lots, and in comfort and
pleasure of life on these streets where the accommo
dation of traffic and the pursuit of business are not
important considerations. It is clear also how very
essential it is, for good results, that the plans be not
made on paper, but on the ground; and that fixed
rules, requiring a single solution for every problem, be
* See footnote on page 135. 103

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
avoided. It should be considered, too, that there is
little advantage in planning, for districts that have
villa development, the geometrical arrangement which
looks well in a drawing. The lines disappear, or at
least are lost to the eye, amid the natural surround
ings. In pleasure over detail, one forgets the general
' ' plan-picture. ' ' In the great and much broken spaces,
indeed, one finds the ' ' picture ' ' difficult to decipher.
Nelson P. Lewis, who, as Chief Engineer of the
Board of Estimate and Apportionment of New York,
has had much practical experience in these matters,
has written — as if in summary of these considerations :
"The interest of the average citizen is not in the map;
it is in the street system itself, and it might be pref
erable to allow these various subdivisions to develop
along lines of least resistance, without exercising too
much control over them. In fact, if the treatment
of these different sections varies, a more pleasing
result may be attained. Here, where the topography
suggests it, a serpentine system of streets may be laid
out; there, a generous depth of lots, with space for
gardens and ornamental planting, may be provided."
If some one objects that with so disordered, or at
least unsystematic, an arrangement of minor streets,
the stranger is likely to lose his way, he may be reas
sured by the reflection that a short walk in any direc
tion would bring the wanderer to a main thoroughfare.
And Cornelius Gurlitt goes so far as to remark that
"the finding of one's way in a city quarter is made
easier by a diversity in streets and open spaces, two
similar open spaces in one city reminding one of those
practical jokes that were characteristic of garden
designs in the eighteenth century." There is some
thing to be said for that.
Besides hampering picturesque platting, the
104

Fitting the Plan to the Contours
This subdivision, made by John Nolen, for Round Top hill, Madison,
Wis., illustrates several of the principles advocated in these pages.
Note the relation of the residential subdivision to the main highway,
the contour roads, the use of footpaths to furnish short cuts, instead
of additional streets ; the reservation of an outlook point, the varia
tion in the sire of lots, the ornamental park spaces at important
street intersections, and the location of the school next to the park.
It is inreresting also to observe that the streets gradually narrow
as traffic may be expected to diminish.
105

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
straight line loses now even such measure of prestige
as directness and shortness give to it where traffic con
siderations are paramount. Among the homes, the
street that curves may often be highly valued. The
time has happily passed when there was need to plead
for its attractiveness and beauty in such environment.
We shall come in time to realize that wherever there
must be a bend, not less on main avenue than on minor
street, that turn should be a curve and not an angle.
We build our streets for the traffic that makes use of
them; we see the car tracks sweep around the angle
in a curve and the tracks of the wagons describe lines
of grace, but because it is a little easier to survey lots
in straight lines and angles than in curves, we too
often destroy the beauty of a street and the adaptation
of its course to the traffic which is upon it, in order
to put in the" surveyor's hard straight lines and angles.
We even go so far as to make rectangular street cross
ings on hillsides, where the steepness of a slope may
make an angle dangerous as well as sharp.
Further, as Dr. Stiibben has pointed out, a street
ought not to be conducted in a straight line over a
summit. The practice imposes the tax of excessive
grades. Moreover, convex changes in grade are dis
pleasing to the eye. The reason is that, beyond the
summit, buildings, street furnishings, vehicles and
people seem to sink. Passing over a high point, Dr.
Stiibben suggests, should be accomplished "by a bend
ing of the street in plan and profile, the course of
which the eye cannot follow beyond the ridge; or by
means of breaking off the street at the summit. The
interruption may be a vertical or a horizontal one ; a
vertical one in the form of a monument, a plantation,
a fountain or the like which the eye cannot see beyond ;
a horizontal in the form of a crossing or dispersing
106

PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
place beyond which the direction of the street
changes. ' '
But because a curving street has been discovered to
be generally pleasant, we should not make that circum
stance an excuse for creating it without a further and
practical reason. The deliberately manufactured orna
ment that serves no functional purpose does not
please. In the curving of our streets, we must take
care that Ave are beautifying construction and not
making an attempt to construct beauty. As we all
know, that is a primary lesson in art and good taste.
The curving street, or any irregularity of platting,
is likely to leave at intersections some small spaces,
gores or segments,' that are not suitable for building
purposes. These can be put to best use as additions
to street area, or as small park spaces, for the beauti
fying of the neighborhood. In a high-class district,
where attractiveness of environment is popularly
demanded, these opportunities will not be overlooked,
and may even be purposely created. Their natural
ness, as a development of the street plan, and the
intimacy with which they enter into it, are not, indeed,
the least of the merits of informal and picturesque
street platting in residential neighborhoods.
Of course, one would not deliberately set out to
create the charm of the unexpected, such as seen in the
narrow streets, the curving facades, even the unex
pected turns — "the atmosphere, the quaintness, the
sudden respite from the wearying strenuous life" —
with which an old world city sometimes so delights
explorers. But we shall find that if we go lovingly,
freely and joyously about our task of designing streets
in which men are to build their homes away from the
thralldom of business, and where children are to play,
we shall somehow create that very charm, that very
107

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
atmosphere. More than half a century ago, A. J.
Downing, stumbling on an example of this sort of
street platting — happily, it is much commoner now
than then — wrote of it : " The whole of this neighbor
hood of Brookline is a kind of landscape garden, and
there is nothing in America of the sort so inexpres
sibly charming as the lanes which lead from one cot
tage, or villa, to another. . . . These lanes are clothed
with a profusion of trees and wild shrubbery, often
almost to the carriage tracks, and curve and wind
about."

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A Quiet Residence Section Near a Big City
A lane in Brookline, Mass.
Familiar examples have convinced us now. And as
there is danger that the curving street, which must be
so strongly advocated in writing of the development
of residence tracts, may be overdone, so there is
danger that the picturesque will be attempted on a
matter-of-fact site, the lovely and informal on an
unlovely tract, too small to give to the designer the
108
PLATTING OF MINOR RESIDENCE STREETS
necessary scope. There is need of spaciousness, of
proportion, of verdure, quiet and natural appropriate
ness. Any flat and vacant field will not serve for the
sort of street beauty that may properly be given to
rolling land. In the past, we have erred too much the
other way — ruining the naturally picturesque, at great
cost leveling hills and filling valleys, that we might
transfer to a beautiful tract the plainness of the plain.
There is need of a protest against doing that, and at
the same time need of a warning, lest we should go to
the opposite extreme. Only by taking the home motif,
and adjusting our development to the conditions of the
site, may we hope to avoid both errors.

109

CHAPTER IX
THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
To secure economy, picturesqueness and real con
venience, in the streets of neighborhoods that are

A new type of minor residence street in a high-class section. This is a
public street (in Rochester, N. Y.) but it is short, indirect, and so
located that it will never be a thoroughfare. Note its inexpensive
construction, that one sidewalk serves, that it makes no inharmonious
break in the garden-like setting of the homes, and wastes no ground
in needless street space.
strictly residential, and to satisfy the widely divergent
tastes of those who dwell there — so far as those tastes
110

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
may be safely humored — more is needed than simply
a laxity of requirement as to the street's exact location
and alignment. There must be considerable freedom
as to their development. Only in this way can each be
fitted adequately to its needs ; only thus can standardi
zation be prevented from casting its costly and dead
ening blight upon them. With that cost, exacted of
tenant and owner, this chapter is not concerned. Nor,
since the goal is nice adjustment of means to end, can
there be indication of the most desirable street widths
with much more assurance and certainty than that
with which it was possible to suggest ideal location.
Yet some notes may help a little.
It may be remembered that Mr. Unwin was quoted
as remarking that many a minor residence street has
a smaller amount of wheel traffic than that which is
comfortably accommodated on the thirteen to twenty-
foot carriage drives that serve such mansions as
Chatsworth and Blenheim. J. Ernest Jarratt, an
official of Southport, England, has seconded this judg
ment when saying, in a study of Southport 's possi
bilities, "Purely residential streets, which can scarcely
conceivably become arterial thoroughfares, might
partake more of the nature of dignified carriage
drives. ' ' And an American engineer, John W. Alvord,
has reiterated it again, in so serious a document as a
report on "The Street Paving Problem of Chicago,"
which he rendered to the paving committee of the
Chicago Commercial Club.* He put the suggestion
in this way: "In the ideally paved city, the unfre
quented residence streets," carrying a traffic ranging
"from nothing to five tons per day," would have "not
more than eighteen to twenty-four feet between
curbs. ' '
* 1904. Ill

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
It should be noted, with reference to these figures,
that on a street twenty-four feet wide an ordinary
vehicle can turn without serious inconvenience, and
that there is space for carriages to stop on both sides
of the road without blocking progress. Thus that

By courtesy of Roland Park Co., Baltimore
Street with Turn at the End
width should be sufficient even for streets which have a
good deal of travel. Indeed, Mr. Alvord 's report sug
gests that often it would be worth while to reduce the
roadway to the minimum width, arranging in the
112

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
center of each block the wider space in which vehicles
could turn. Incidentally, such a variation in alignment
would introduce a pleasant variety, where straight
lines are not particularly desirable ; and it would facili
tate an interesting placing of houses, that would be
as attractive in the vista of street and lawn opened
to those who dwelt in them as the exterior architec
tural opportunity would be alluring to the designer.
In Hampstead Garden Suburb, the company having
secured a special act of Parliament permitting the
construction of roads only twenty feet' wide (providing
they dhinot exceed 500_feetjn lejngth and that the
distance betwelmThe housesjmjthe two sides was not
less than fifty feet)_ such a street is given a turning
place at the end. This might be done more often ; and
there may be reflection that in these days of the auto
mobile there is no hardship, and hardly a perceptible
waste of time, in going to the corner, or around
the block to turn. As far as the traffic is concerned,
therefore, it appears that on strictly minor residence
streets a roadway need almost never be more than
twenty-four feet in width, and can most often be con
siderably less. If it be thus narrow and have a sub
stantial, smooth pavement it generally will not be
necessary to put any space into gutter. The distance
between curbs is narrowed, to be sure, but the whole
of it is available roadway.
On those occasions where consideration of future
possibilities must make advisable a provision of wider
road-space than the light present travel needs, and
where there still is wish to keep down the cost of
development, it sometimes may be possible to utilize
a little space on each side as a grass gutter. This will
be more attractive than stone, brick, or concrete. But
to be successful, the street must not have much slope,
113

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
and the traffic must be of a kind that will be too con
siderate to trespass on the grass edge. Given these
conditions, a slight depression in the grass plat, which
for this purpose is made wider than the normal gutter,
will very well, and very pleasingly, carry the storm
water to the sewer inlet.
Since street width is usually more than roadway
and gutter width, we have yet to ask ourselves regard
ing sidewalks and their margins. As narrow streets
were superseded by broad highways, the contracted
walk that had been crowded between curb and wall,
gave way to a wide sidewalk space. In American
cities at least, this was early paved to a breadth of
ten or twelve feet, or more. Now this in its turn is
giving way, in high-class residence districts, to grass-
bordered and comparatively narrow granolithic or
cement walks. The change may be considered indica
tive of an accepted judgment based on the economy
and superior attractiveness of the narrow walk with
margins. The paved part of the walk thus constructed is
usually, and most acceptably on minor streets, five or
six feet in width. The margins vary greatly. If the
street be fifty feet or sixty feet wide they are perhaps
most pleasantly of a breadth that brings the total
distance from curb to lot line up to one-half the width
of the roadway, with the walk placed a foot from the
property line. The proportions of sides and center
space thus become 1:2:1. On a fifty-foot street, we
thus have a twenty-five foot roadway, and six-foot
margins for grass between the paved walk and the
curb; on a sixty-foot street, we have, or could have,
a thirty-foot roadway and nine-foot margins. Less
roadway and more margin would of course look better.
When a minor residence street is more than sixty feet.
114

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
wide, it ought to receive special treatment, either by
center parking or by such emphasis of the side park
ing as to change the proportions. If, however, the
street is narrow — say, forty feet or less between the
property lines — and carries a roadway and double
sidewalks, it is best not to anticipate an aesthetic
contribution by the margin. A roadway of eighteen

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A Grass Border Planted with Shrubs
A street in Rochester, N. Y. The whole street is beautified in this way.
Uniform care of the planting is provided by the co-operative action
of the residents.
feet and the five-foot paved walks, (both close to
minimum proportions), would leave the margins too
narrow for trees or for good care. In such cases the
trees would best be placed on the property line.
115
THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
The margin between paved walk and curb may
have a development as varied as its width. It may

HP \\^Mtt iliia

A Contrast in Walk Location
On this street (in Toronto, Canada) the houses on either side stand back
about an equal distance from the curb. On the one side the grass
margin is between walk and curb; on the other between walk and
houselots. As a result the street is very unsymmetrical, but the
striking contrast is valuable for illustration purposes.

How a Private Driveway Breaks the Level of the Walk, When
Walk is Next to Curb

be earth, gravel, or turf — the latter most pleasing
when given care. Very often in the margin trees are
116

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
planted ; but it were best not to attempt them with any
uniformity when margins are less than six feet wide.
The grass borders are sometimes further planted with
flowers and shrubs, and in Germany vines are not
infrequently looped from tree to tree. Thus the

A Walk at Higher Level than the Road

margin may be of considerable width, and may serve
as an ornamental feature. In fact, its value in this
respect is often deemed such as to justify a generous
broadening of the minor street.*
* Occasionally one finds such a walk laid next to the curb, with the
margin of grass transposed so as to come between the walk and lot.
This is so poor an arrangement, however, that it is quite rare. There is
an aesthetic loss which is obvious to any one who compares the two
kinds of development; but aside from that consideration, the location
of a narrow walk directly next to the curb leaves the pedestrian with
no protecting barrier from spattering mud and dust, and when — as so
often in American cities — the front gardens are unfenced, the arrange-
117

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
For all the pleasantness of these arrangements,
however, we may well ask ourselves, considering how
greatly private property is to contribute to the beauty
of the street, considering the advantage of economy in
the public work, and the diversity of country to be
developed, whether there is any reason why there
should invariably be two sidewalks. We may even ask
whether, when the roadway is adequately drained and

A Sidewalk on One Side Only
The residents as well served, the street more attractive and less expensive.

so paved as to be not less dry than a walk, there may
not be spaces where a separate walk might be dis
pensed with altogether.
It is significant that in the high-class villa colony
ment seems to subtract from public property in order to add to private.
Other objections are that fire hydrants, lamp posts, hitching posts, tele
graph poles, etc., which normally would be in the margin, now obstruct
the walk — seriously if it be narrow; and that private driveways, unable
to rise abruptly from the level of the gutter to that of the sidewalk,
have to be carried across the walk, partly at least, in a depression.
118

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
of Griinewald, Berlin, and in some of the fashionable
suburbs of Dresden and other cities, there are many
streets that have no paved sidewalks. In the new
Garden cities and Garden suburbs, such as Hamp-
stead, they are very frequently omitted. In one of the
attractive streets of a high-priced residence section of
Toronto the author has observed that certain streets
have a sidewalk on only one side, though there are
houses on both sides ; and there is a pleasant and con-

Where There is Little Walking One Sidewalk may be Enough
An unusual development for a long street.

siderable portion of Northampton, Mass. — to cite one
of the smaller American cities — in which the streets
are developed in this way. In many city squares and
small parks, traversed by a much heavier pedestrian
travel than one would find on a minor residence street,
the walks are not nearly so well drained or substan
tially constructed as is a macadam or gravel roadway.
Have we not unconsciously standardized the form
of the street as well as its width ; have we not followed
119

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS

By courtesy of Roland Park Co., Baltimore
The value of an elevated sidewalk in reducing the cost of street construc
tion and in making available lots which are high above the street
level.

120

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
blindly the example of the business streets and leadin
avenues when requiring two paved and equal sid<
walks ? If the roadway space which must be reserve
for the occasional, but infrequent, vehicle will serv
the purposes of sidewalks, we may not only, by its us
for pedestrians, save some street width — thereb

Sidewalk Informality
Note how the walk changes from one side to the other of the roadwa
and varies in distance from it. (Section from the plat of Treehoh
Park, a high-class residence district, Chappaqua, N. Y., Char]
Downing Lay, landscape architect.)
adding something to front gardens — and save son
cost for construction, and a constant care, but we shs
gain thereby a more attractive roadway, with garde
borders and well nourished trees.
121

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
Where we do have walks, we have learned, or are
learning, that we need not always be as careful with
regard to grades as in the platting of the roadways.
On irregular ground, for instance, if the street be a cut,
we may reduce our cross-section by letting the walk
take a higher level than the roadway, and so seemingly
bring the houselots nearer to street grade. In this
economical procedure, we find that on a minor street
we are actually adding to the street's pleasing infor
mality. Thus, it may be said that there is a slowly
growing tendency to depart from the theory that walks
-and roadway always go together — a theory easy to
explain if we consider the sidewalk 's historical origin :
how at first it was simply a space laid off from the
road so that, with the increase of traffic through nar
row streets, the pedestrian might be safe.
But we need to break away from custom more than
we have. In so doing, we would discover, no doubt,
many an occasion when a street might be dispensed
with altogether and a footpath made instead. Let us
imagine, for example, that in platting a certain hill
side for high-class residential development we found it
advisable to have two parallel streets, A and B, along
the face of the hill at different levels. The bulk of the
travel is on the line of these streets, but as the houses
are detached and the region stands apart from main
traffic channels, the volume of travel is at best very
little. The usual method of platting would require
cross streets connecting A and B at intervals of pos
sibly four hundred and fifty feet — the Liverpool stand
ard! These connections would be steep. We should
have both an unsatisfactory and costly provision for
exceedingly little traffic, for we may even fancy that
the long gardens on the upper side of A run back to
meet the long gardens on the lower side of B, so that
122

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
no houses front on the cross streets. If we put our
connecting cross streets twice as far apart, pedestrians
would complain, more or less justly, of the length of
the trip from A to B.
Suppose, then, that every other cross street in this
particular development be narrowed to a footpath.
Would not the arrangement serve the convenience of
the people exactly as well! For consider: If a person
on street A desires to reach a house on street B and
would be taken out of his way if sent the distance of
an extra block before finding a connection, it is clear
that the house he wants on B is in the corresponding
block of that street. The chances, therefore, are very
many that he plans to walk there. If so, the footpath
is all he needs. But if he is driving, the additional
block will surely not fatigue him, or take enough extra
time, gasoline, horseflesh, or electricity to justify the
building of a street.
The condition imagined is a very simple one. In
developing real areas the opportunity would arise in
many ways. And how delightful a feature of city and
town development these footpaths between the gar
dens of a residence district might become! One gets
,a hint of them in the way some streets are carried
across the promenades in Frankfort-on-Main, and in
the cross cuts that may be found in Cambridge, Mass.
Even the paths that cross Boston Common, in the
midst of a business section where there is great
vehicular traffic, give in exaggerated form a suggestion
of the convenience of the footpath.
Sometimes there might be an ornamental open
gateway to mark the entrance to the public path; but
most often, doubtless, it would be distinguished simply
by the stone, iron, or concrete posts that are the
familiar barrier to vehicles. The style of these might
123

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS

be standardized, and they might bear the city's arms
to indicate that the way is .public. The paths would
give a restful, rural charm to a neighborhood, along
with their complete convenience, their economy and
their practicability. With reference to the latter

How Footpath Entrances Might be Marked
quality, their usefulness would be especially marked
in rough country, when — if there were only pedes
trians to consider — steps might often be made use of,
to a heightening of picturesqueness, a shortening of
distance, and the avoidance of disagreeably steep
inclines. 124

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS

Economy op the Footpath if the Ground Slope Abruptly
Two views from Krupp Colonies near Essen. From the terrace in the
upper picture steps descend to the level of the street.

125

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
If we imagine houses fronting on a street that had
been narrowed to a footpath, as they well might when
the distance is not so great as to make such platting
inadvisable, there should be a service road at the rear.
This, of course, would be narrow and inexpensively
developed, so that the footpath in front, plus half of
the service road that would be back of the tier of lots
on each side of the footpath, would still represent a
substantial saving — though only the economic aspects
of the question be considered. The service roads would
be needed in case of fire, sickness, building operations,
or for the delivery of heavy articles — as household
goods and coal. They would also serve to carry some
of the public utilities, for which footpaths might not
allow sufficient space. But the service roads, at worst,
would not be conspicuous.
By these means, then, might we not create, very
simply and practically, a rus in urbe of a most service
able kind — even a Garden city for the well-to-do and
middle class whom, when all is said and done, the city
still contains in generous number ? Among villas with
considerable grounds on sites of picturesque and
irregular topography, the people surely would thus be
served as well, at lower cost, and the region rendered
more parklike and attractive.*
* Municipal Journal and Engineer, January 19, 1910, gave the fol
lowing account of a town in Southern California having somewhat such
a street plan : ' ' Perhaps the most striking difference between this and
ordinary residence villages is the construction of certain streets without
any roadways whatever, the space which would ordinarily be so occupied
containing merely a wide sidewalk, between which and the houses extend
wide lawns. This relieves the houses . of the dust and noise of wheel
traffic and affords the children a perfectly safe playground. Such
vehicles as are necessary for delivering household provisions use twenty-
foot alleys which alternate with the roadless streets, passing in the rear
of the houses and connecting with a commercial street which parallels
the waterfront. The roadless street is forty feet wide from building
126

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
Injthedevelopment of residential neighborhoods^
we usually need, in short, Jtoget^ away Jromjhe stereo
typed aricl Tormaf. Our main traffic lines have freed
us f rom THie" "rules, restrictions and system which traffic
imposes ; and the regulation determining the space
which must be left open between the fronts of the op
posite houses has given us liberty to leave as much of
this space in private, and as little in public, ownership
as may be most convenient. Thus we can have a side
walk or omit a sidewalk, just as is best fitted to the
•conditions of the particular street; we can have a
footway instead of a street if we prefer, or a road
without a footway if that be better. If we have a walk,
there may or may not be its like on the other side of
the roadway, it may or may not follow the grade of
the road ; the margins that border it may be narrow or
broad, they may be planted with grass and adorned
with flowers and shrubs or left in earth, or covered
with gravel; and the street itself may vary from the
location and direction which an exactness of measured
platting would suggest. Our purpose is not a regular
scheme, but comfort, peace and beauty, and the sense
of the freedom of home.
Lest this seem to countenance a laissez faire pro
cedure, let there again be reminder that there is
assumed a central authority chargedwith the task of
deciding these~matters~ fronTlnTTtin^hp^nntoLcom-
munity welfare. It is not proposed that every tract
developer shall do as he pleases. The creation of a
town planning procedure should commend itself to
large owners of real estate, if for no other reason than
line to building line, and the sidewalk, which passes through the middle
of it, is twelve feet wide. . . . The plan has been adopted for about
thirty blocks, extending for a distance of almost two miles along the
oceanfront. ' ' 127

to
00

Entrance to Vandeventer Place, St. Louis
The gates at the sides are for pedestrians and the center entrance is the driveway. Inside the gateway the drive
divides, the fountain being at the end of a broad strip of center parking with narrow carriage drives on either
side. Note the cxclusiveness and privacy of the arrangement.

K

HK

>>agO*l 011-3HH
CO

THE DEVELOPMENT CF HIGH CLASS MINOR STREETS
that through this method alone may they hope for free
dom from the bondage of uniform rules in tract
development. Before leaving the residence district, there must be
recognition of the occasional demand for that retired
and quiet formalism and stateliness which neither
picturesqueness nor a flamboyant avenue could satisfy.
To meet this need which is worthy and genuine, even
though it be limited, two types of development have
been designed. Each purposes to give to groups of
¦costly houses a dignified and imposing setting.
One is to be found in the creation of semi-private
"places," usually about a block in length, and often
having their entrances marked by imposing gate
ways — Vandeventer Place, St. Louis, is a well-known
example. They resemble short sections of avenue in
the great space between the houses on either side and
they may even outdo it in the elaborateness of the
street adornment. On the other hand, they are unlike
avenues in the peace and seclusion of their aloofness
and their consequently narrow roadways. A street of
this kind may, indeed, offer connection between im
portant parallel traffic routes that cross its ends at
right angles, but it is not itself in the direct line of
travel and often is closed to general traffic. With all
its spaciousness and pretension, its traffic significance
is that of a "minor residence street."
The second form of development is that of the quiet
tree-planted square, or other open space, around which
the houses stand in orderly rows— retired from
streams of travel and impressively set off. Great land
lords have placed on the map of London many
examples of this arrangement ; Penn adopted it in his
plan for Philadelphia, and there are many scattered
examples. 129

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
Either development requires a level site, and, in
proportion to the whole population of the city, the
number of persons who will seek homes on plats thus
developed is comparatively small. For the schemes re
quire the withdrawal from market of an amount of
land which is relatively large, as regards the total
development; and this means that the marketed por
tions have to be sold at prices so high as to cover,
between them, the cost of the land withheld. In
addition to this cost, there is usually a heavy expendi
ture for landscape work, sometimes for architectural
construction, and annually for upkeep. And not only
are the home plats located in either one of these ways
expensive, but the effectiveness of the plans requires
that the sales be made under unusually stringent re
strictions. The result is that the residential place or
square, exceedingly attractive as is its contribution to
the diversification of city street systems, cannot be
considered as a general or normal type. Indeed, one
of its claims to charm is its unusualness. As soon as
it is overdone — as the semi-private place has been
sadly overdone in real estate promotion around Los
Angeles, for instance — it becomes wearisome and dis
pleasing.

130

CHAPTER X
THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
If economy, light, and air are important considera
tions in platting the streets where the wealthy are to
live, they must be factors of special influence when we
come to the planning of streets on which those live who
are not able to supplement by private purchase what.
the city fails to give. There is now injected, also, a
new economic factor, with great urgency. This arises
from the anomaly well expressed by J. S. Nettlefold*
when he wrote: "In the vast majority of cases, poor
people live on dear land and rich people live on cheap
land. ' '
The condition may be absurd, as he declared it to
be; but it is quite explicable, 'since land in cities
receives its main value from the human use to which
it is, or is believed likely to be, put. The land that is
to accommodate a great many human beings to the
acre can hardly fail to be expensive. In fact, when we
would set bounds to its cost, do we not put a limit to
the number of persons who can live upon it? To do
this, indeed, is one of the objects of the zone system.
Yet as the poor can at best occupy but little land
apiece, we cannot make it really cheap. The most we
can do is to see that the poor man receives the maxi
mum of comfort and happiness from such land as may
be his, through lease or purchase.
* ' ' Practical Housing. ' ' 131

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
In saying this, it may seem that considerations of
human welfare are regarded above those of property.
It is quite right in planning cities that they should be
earnestly heeded. Indeed, in the platting of the quar
ters where the poor are to live, these considerations
have such importance to the whole community that
regard for the public health, convenience, and com
fort — that is to say, for the best practicable livable-
ness — may properly be required by the street planning
authority. It happens, however, that the course which
is socially reasonable in the housing of the poor, is also
economic. The difference between the problems offered in
platting streets in high-class residence sections and
those which must be met in platting them for humble
homes is fundamental. In the first instance, the
enlargement of private ownership and the curtailment
of public is desirable, for it is realized that self inter
est, if coupled with ample means, will afford attractive
and intelligent development. In the second, the reduc
tion of the need of private ownership to a minimum,
in order that the necessities of private economy may
not involve too great a civic loss, and the maximum
provision by the community, so far as it can afford
to do so, of those advantages which normally come
from private ownership, is the desideratum. Instead
of small public provision and large lots, we now seek,
theoretically, large public provision and small lots.
That the most advantageous use of the considerable
public land will not prove to be in the building of
streets alone, does not invalidate this claim.
In theory there is thus a reversal of policy. But
the theory that in its poorer quarters the city should
supply those playgrounds, gardens, and neighborhood
amenities which, in a region of wealthier citizens,
132

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
might be left to private provision, is qualified by the
clause, "so far as it can afford to do so." Taxation
of various form puts the cost of such benefits upon
the neighborhood that enjoys them. Thus under the
economic conditional the theory often in practice
breaks down. Just as, in considering the platting of
streets in neighborhoods for the well-to-do, it was
observed that sometimes streets are given excessive
width, in order that their attractiveness may be en
hanced — the community assuming some of the task
which theoretically might there be left to individual
property owners; so, among the humble homes, the
need for municipal economy sometimes results in a
minimum acquirement of public property, where in
theory the maximum would be desirable. It should be
noted, also, that a factor of considerable practical
moment is that of political influence. Bich citizens
may secure the doing of some things by the city which
it would not otherwise do and which there is no real
need of its doing. On the contrary, poor citizens,
because unfamiliar with modes of political pressure,
may fail to secure at public cost some of the "improve
ments" they ought to have. Nevertheless, the theory,
if we recognize the possibility, and probability, of
numerous exceptions, is a useful guide.
How genuine the need is of an appropriately pro
portioned small lot, and how serious may be the con
sequence of failure to provide it, can be gathered from
the fact that the tenement house evils of New York
are attributed largely to the use of the standard
25 x 100 foot lot. Social workers have dubbed it the
curse of the city. Not that there would have been no
tenements had the lots been less deep. Tenements are
inevitable on Manhattan— even for the very well-to-
do—but shallower lots would have robbed the New
133

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
York tenement of some of its worst features. We find
this illustrated again, in the case of Washington,
where the President's Homes Commission, and C. F.
Weller in "Neglected Neighbors," have pointed out
that one of the greatest advantages to be gained by
the transformation of blind alleys into secondary
streets is that the size of the blocks would be cut down.
The two examples are significant. The one illustrates
the responsibility of the long lot for the dumbbell
tenement, under conditions of excessive congestion;
in the other, the evil which developed, under less
serious pressure, was the construction of rear houses.
The point of the illustrations is that the adjustment
of the lot to the need is not a matter of satisfying
simply a whim. When one deals with those who must
count the cost of every pleasure and comfort, he finds
that what is generally to their convenience is likely to
be pretty close to the bedrock of their necessity.
Granted the requirement of a small lot-unit, as
distinguished from the serviceability of large lots of
irregular size and shape in the higher class districts,.
we shall naturally find street-platting determined' by
lot-platting to much greater extent, under ideal con
ditions, than in the higher class districts. We shall
find also that, where the opportunity is given for
choice, the tract developed for humble homes is likely
to be approximately level. This is not, of course, that
the laborer is unappreciative of natural beauty.
Economy is the impelling force. It is much cheaper to
build streets, and houses too, on a nearly level tract
than on irregular contours. Moreover, transportation
lines will sooner penetrate such districts.
But with this said, it will be found that various
principles which were expected to be useful guides in
the development of high-class districts may yet be
134

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
helpful. The economy that may be secured by a slight
change in the street line is much more desirable now,
if it does not mean added cost in some other direc
tion — as in the lot. The lessened traffiG needs which
permit a narrowing of roadways is even more marked,
since now the private and pleasure vehicles are elimi
nated. The possibility of sidewalk saving — either by
its omission altogether, or by the building of one walk
instead of two — becomes here so plain as to be less
often overlooked. If the country be undulating, the
reduction of expense by causing streets to follow the
contour within reasonable limits, instead of adopting
the railroad grades that engineers esteem, is also an
economy that both sections alike may wisely seek as
regards their minor streets. Finally, the orientation
that gives the maximum of sunlight is changed from
a merely desirable to a needful consideration.*
Differences in platting and development, as con
trasted with high-class sections, rather than likenesses,
are what now concern us. We have seen that the lot-
unit is small when homes are humble, and that, as a
result, the community must furnish some of those
things which private property can give where lots are
* M. A. Augustin Rey, one of the official architects of Paris, has
made an elaborate series of astronomical studies to determine the most
desirable directions for residence streets as regards sunlight. Taking
December 21st, the shortest day of the year, and making observations
for Paris, London, and Berlin, as representing Europe; and for New
York, Philadelphia, Washington, Boston, and Chicago, as representing
America; and basing his calculations on two-story, four-story and six-
story buildings, he concludes: "Streets running north and south are-
eminently healthy; streets at an angle of 30 degrees to a line drawn
north and south are healthy; streets inclined at an angle of 45 degrees
to the line drawn north and south are moderately healthy; streets run
ning east and west are notoriously not healthy. ' ' It hardly need be added
that street direction becomes less important, from this point of view, as
space between the houses increases. 135

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
large. For example, Professor Dewsnup, in discus
sing "The Housing Problem in England," has said:
"The haphazard huddling together of streets and
houses must be prevented. Whatever the detailed
nature of such a plan may be, it must provide for a
thoroughly ventilated street system and an adequate
supply of open spaces." With open spaces other than
those of the broad street, this chapter will not deal.
But what the broad street can give to the minor street
it must consider.
The statement has already been made that the
latter is likely always, under good town planning, to
be near a main highway. When reference is to the
minor street of humble homes, it is almost essential
that it be near one. Several matters emphasize this
need. One is the value of the highway in ventilating
the system of narrow streets. Another is the con
sideration that the workman who is poorly paid, or
has long hours, can live only where it is possible for
him to get to and from his work quickly and cheaply.
This makes proximity to a traffic artery an economic
necessity, except in those cases where the establish
ment of the factory in the suburbs has made the
employee comparatively independent of transporta
tion into and out of town. A third advantage of
proximity to a main traffic way is social.
The life of a busy street is an unfailing source of
entertainment. Not only will the cheaper theatres and
picture shows be gathered on the main highway of
travel; but the street itself, with its restless crowds,
its bright windows, its exciting episodes and com
mercial opportunities, offers without charge an
attraction so well suited to those whom purchasable
pleasures have not surfeited that there are few vacant
rooms on such a street. For residence, its advantages
136

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
seem to such persons, even after deductions for noise,
danger to children, and usually inferior living accom
modations, to outweigh oftentimes the claims of the
quiet street. To the class of persons under considera
tion, the busy street indeed typifies the lure of the
town. To put their homes out of convenient reach of
it were to demand an unreasonable sacrifice. In this
connection, it may be said of the poor in every city, as
it is said of all classes of Parisians, that the street is
to them another room. For at least half the year,
even in northern latitudes, the occupants of humble
homes spend the hours of recreation out-of-doors. As
it was put not long ago in a report on housing con
ditions in Chicago, ' ' The streets and alleys are to the )
people of a well-to-do district only a convenience for f
transit. In an overcrowded district there is little else
more important to the happiness and welfare of the ,
people." Aside from the pleasure which the broad street may
bring to socially hungry lives, craving distraction from
the narrow round of oppressive duty, there can be
little doubt that the contact which it offers with the
outer world, with the joyous larger life of the com
munity, is an admirable antidote for pettiness and
sulky introspective brooding. It is because streets are
so largely depended upon to furnish light, air, play-
space for children, entertainment and diversion, that
they have been so often made broader than the traffic
required, in spite of the economic sacrifice involved.
For these reasons well-meaning persons have
acquiesced and even rejoiced in an action which costs
tenants dearly.
But tenement quarters on a wide street are not a
correct social or civic ideal. We must try to provide
137

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the individual home on a more livable street.* In so
doing, however, we must recognize the good qualities
of the street which is necessarily broad, and seek to
secure these advantages for humble homes by putting
the homes near the highway. It is not, in any large
measure, possible, nor happily is it necessary, that
they be upon it. Further, we can obviate multiplica
tion of excessively broad streets by furnishing some of
their advantages in other ways.
To considerable extent, this will be by means of the
parks, playgrounds and other public open spaces.
Another chapter will speak of them. But to consider
able extent also these advantages are furnished by the
courts and little gardens which narrower streets per
mit or create. The father's dooryard is a much safer
playground for small children than is the busy high
way ; in the tending of flowers and vegetables there is
wholesomer diversion and exercise than in patrolling
the garish street; the doorstep is a better place for
visiting than is the corner; and in the garden there
are even opportunities of a financial nature which are
surprising. If the life of the highway be not too
distant, and in platting streets for workers it must
never be far away, the home on the minor street can be
made very inviting, when given a little garden.
It is to be remembered that the individual home —
of which the garden is a true part — is the civic as well
as the social ideal. "It should be recognized at the
* Interesting, as a striking evidence of appreciation of this fact, is
a resolution adopted as long ago as 1898 by the Town Council of Du's-
seldorf. In effect, it provides that on streets upon which the owners
agree to erect only detached or semi-detached dwellings, having not
more than one story above the ground floor, the contribution to the
public sewers will be reduced by one-half; the street will be narrowed;
and toward the cost of making the street the builders will have to pay
only the cost of macadamizing. 138

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
outset," says Lawrence Veiller,* in a comment which
applies to other nations as well as to America, "that
the normal method of housing the working population
in our American cities is in small houses, each house
occupied by a separate family, often with a small bit
of land, with privacy for all and with a sense of
individuality and opportunity for real domestic life.
Under no other method can we expect American
institutions to be maintained." Charles Booth, in his
"Life and Labour in London," summarizes as follows
the reports of his London investigators with reference
to gardens: "Houses with good gardens at back,
seldom empty and hard to get;" "houses blessed with
gardens — a wonderful influence;" "houses with
porches creeper-covered, eagerly tenanted." And
John Burns, speaking of the English town-planning
act, has said, "I trust that the chief benefits of this
act will be fewer houses per acre, more space and gar
dens about the dwellings, more attractive frontages."
Yet, in spite of the value of these testimonies, we
find James Contest declaring that workmen who live
in towns care little for gardens, preferring the relaxa
tions and life of the city ; and the theory of city plan
ning favoring a sniall lot-unit for humble homes. The
truth is, in catering to people who can spare little
money for luxuries and none for things they do not
want, it is easy for garden enthusiasm to lead the
street platter too far. The sixth of an acre lots at
Bournville are too large as a standard. Ebenezer
Howard, suggesting lots only twenty feet wide, ran
them back one hundred, and thirty-two feet, which
would make sixteen to the acre. But, in fact, to stand
ardize gardens is not much more reasonable — though
* ' ' Housing Reform. ' '
t ' ' Modern Housing in Town and Country. ' '
139

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
more excusable — than it would be to standardize
houses. Many a well intentioned philanthropist,
convinced of the social, hygienic and financial value
of the garden, and aware that there are employees
who are able to work joyously and successfully a con
siderable garden area, after platting a tract for
humble homes with narrow streets and long gardens,
has found he made a mistake. In such cases the gar
den space connected with some of the houses is sure
to be worse than wasted; and the occupants of those
houses are compelled to do without some things they
want, in order to have what the philanthropic tract
developer thought they ought to want.
There is need of discriminating between the diverse
home requirements of different groups of workers.
Store clerks, bookkeepers, stenographers, etc., are
likely to find in the excuse for exercise that a garden
offers just the physical antidote which the exactions
of their calling demand. But they do not usually live
on the humblest streets. On the other hand, men who
do, after hard physical exertion all day, return at night
too weary of body to work in a garden. Hence, since
it can be seldom foreseen that every worker on a given
street will perform a certain kind of labor, arises the
folly of asserting that every householder shall or shall
not have a considerable garden. Let us substitute
"may" for shall.
Allotment gardens, now so popular in England and
Germany, offer a way out of the predicament. By
preserving for allotments a strip in the middle of
certain blocks, behind the houses, it is possible to make
the backyards of those blocks as small as the usual
city-bred worker could desire or find to his advantage.
Then the man who wishes more garden than the back
yard offers can have it, by means of an allotment
140

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
garden. And it will be as near his house as if it had
not been set off from his backyard. He can have as
much as he can pay for, or profitably work, and no one
is compelled to pay for space he does not want. This
form of development has been adopted in various
places— Harborne, England, is a good illustration ; and
it is very much to be preferred to that earlier form
which put all the allotment gardens by themselves, at.
a place which consequently was more or less remote
from the workmen's homes.

Bebington

Road

Allotment Gardens in the Middle of a Block
A section from the plat of Port Sunlight, England.

When the private back garden is reduced as sug
gested, it is especially desirable to establish not only
a front building line, but also a back one. Certainly
this will be true wherever shallow lots have not allot
ment gardens, or other reserved public space, behind
them. The importance has been dwelt upon of a small lot-
unit for the humble home. The problem, as stated at
the beginning of the chapter, is to make a minimum of
space yield a maximum of comfort and pleasure. As
long as we deal with one-family houses that stand in
141

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
small gardens, even though the houses be built in
short continuous rows, or groups, and contemplate the
possibility that some occupants may add to their quota
of garden space by renting allotments, the problem is
pleasant and easy. But as land area per capita de
creases, the cottage merges into the tenement.
In making shallow lots and narrow streets we do
something to put off the evil day and even to dis
courage tenement building; nor is this, happily, quite
all that can be done. As the time for the tenement is
seen to draw near, it can be yet further warded off by
grouping cottages. There are two ways of doing this :
several small houses may be combined, so forming a
large architectural unit. This has the incidental but
considerable aesthetic advantage of avoiding the
repetition of rnany small units, and makes it possible
to render the construction along the side of a street of
humble homes commensurate in scale with the propor
tions of the street — as it hardly can be when the unit
is a small, perhaps single-story, detached cottage. The
other way is to take a hint from college quadrangles
and cathedral closes. In this case some of the reserved
land in the rear may be absorbed and the houses built
in continuous rows around three sides of a small court,
.or yard, of which the fourth side is the street. By this
means a small front garden space will serve all the
families in all the houses that look out upon it ; it will
give at least a semi-privacy, a place for visiting and a
pleasant outlook, and may be made to add to the pic
turesqueness of the street.
When the tenement can no longer be prevented, the
-city must step in and say that it can be erected on no
truly minor street — as no high building should be;*
* A Baltimore committee has recommended that no tenement be
permitted on a street less than forty feet in breadth.
142

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES

that it shall not exceed in height the width of the
widest street on which it stands; that it shall cover
no more than 70 per cent of the lot area — every room
opening upon the street, or upon a yard of depth suf
ficient to insure adequate ventilation, or upon a- court
of which the length and especially the minimum width,
increasing with the building's height, shall be such as
to give good ventilation. In most cities, probably, the
proportion of lot which may be built upon can be put

Warding Off the Tenement
One-family houses built in continuous rows around three sides of a court,
or common yard.
even lower than 70 per cent. There will be other
restrictions, of course, but of less direct concern to the
present subject. Our best hope must still be that the
shallow lot, the lessened cost of developing tracts for
humble homes, owing to narrow and inexpensive
streets, and the improved transportation facilities,
which a well thought out system of main highways can
afford, will make tenements unnecessary, save in
occasional instances, and therefore unprofitable.
143

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
If there must be tenements, we can further amelio
rate conditions by supplementing negative restrictions.
Taking a hint from the cottage plan for fighting tene
ments, we can build them also around three sides of a
court, then giving to the court the touch of beauty and
the simple practical service of a sandpile for the
children and of benches for the parents and the old
folks. Where the . tenement does not originate through

The Tenement at its Best
Ornamental planting in the large courtyard of a German tenement. In
some courts a portion is enclosed to serve as a children 's playground.

the need of obtaining a high return from the land,
because of the capital represented by the land's exces
sive value or because of the height of what may be
called the property's carrying charges, it will in most
cases owe its existence to the wish, or need, of a great
many people to crowd into a small space. The most
familiar cause for this is the concentration of factories
in sections having but limited residence territory in
144

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
their neighborhood. It follows, therefore, that the
removal of factories to outlying regions may be one of
the most effective agencies for counteracting the
tenement. From the town planning standpoint, removal is
commended also by its withdrawal of objectional
smoke and noise, and by the possibility of increasing
factory efficiency. The latter feature must be devel
oped, for though it is desirable to relieve congested
living conditions, the manufacturer may not be ex
pected to move his plant into the suburbs simply
because he is sorry for the crowded poor. To make it
worth his while, then, to locate in the suburbs, there is
offered a double stimulus : the promotion of industry
and the lessening of housing congestion.
In order that industrial efficiency may be promoted
when factories are located in the outskirts of a town,
there must be provided superior transportation facili
ties by rail and vehicle, and if possible by water ; the
land must be cut into blocks of conveniently large size
for buildings, and the manufacturer must be assured
that the efficiency of his labor, its. steadiness and con
tentment, will be increased through a greater health-
fulness of environment, an improved home influence
and the enlarged opportunities for outdoor exercise.
Happily, these are matters which town planning can
largely control. It can, also, count on the precious aid
which will be lent to it by longer hours of brighter day
light, and by the lower ground values and ground rents
that permit a horizontal extension of plants. At Letch-
worth Garden City, England, for example, manufac
turers are able to secure on ninety-nine year lease, at
$75 annually, an amount of land that in some manufac
turing districts of London would cost, it is said,
$15,000 a year. The urban advantages of proximity
145

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
to market and to a large supply of labor are thus
partially offset, while good planning can, as suggested,
still further weaken them. In German cities the
elaborate development of distinct Factory Districts is
recognized as a very important part of city planning.
Finally, in securing a removal of factories to the
outskirts, town .planning has the opportunity — as
already indicated — of putting them where they will do
least injury to the community. That is to say, in the
arbitrary creation of a factory district, there must be
consideration not only of transportation opportunities
— a feature which it is comparatively easy to control —
and of general healthfulness of locality; but also of
the proposed position in its relation to the existing
city. The factories should not be put where the pre
vailing wind will carry their smoke into the city, where
their location checks the natural growth of high-class
residence districts, or where the heavy teaming inci
dent to their operation is compelled to make use of
expensively developed avenues. Finally, in large
towns more than one industrial district should be
planned, lest — even Avith suburban location — residen
tial congestion result. The subject is touched upon
without elaboration, as a related, though not an
essential, part of this book's discussion.
It is significant, then, in considering the opportu
nity for improved housing facilities which the removal
of factories affords, that the present town planning
movement has been preceded, as well as accompanied,
by not a little thoughtful platting of limited areas,
done in a comprehensive way by the manufacturers
themselves, when they have established their plants on
the outskirts of cities. Of their own initiative, they
have sought by such platting to gain for their em
ployees, as well as for themselves, the advantages
146

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
which town planning ought to give. For example,
Leclaire, 111., the town built by the N. 0. Nelson Manu
facturing Co., is characterized by "winding cinder
roads, bordered with spreading shade trees." In
Echota, the town of the Niagara Development Co. at
Niagara Falls, the modest homes are set twenty feet
back from the streetQine, there are shade trees on
either side of the streets, and the roadways are
macadamized to a width of jmly twerrtyrjye feet. The
Cornell Co., at Coldspring, N. Y., has platted land into
lots about 50x80 feet, has put trees between the
houses as well as along the street, and hedges make
the front boundaries of the gardens. At Gwinn, built
for a nrining town of the Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., in
Michigan, main streets are eighty feet wide, containing
two sixteen-foot roadways divided by a strip of plant
ing. The three main streets are radials from the rail
road station; minor streets are narrower, and each
cottage has its garden. In the tract which the
Plymouth Cordage Co. has developed, at Plymouth,
Mass., the park and athletic grounds adjoin the fac
tory — and so one might go on, mentioning Wilmerding,
Hopedale, and scores of other places, and securing
useful hints or interesting examples from each.
In Europe, the most famous developments of this
kind are the Krupp villages, near Essen,. Ger. Their
suggestions are often of great value. luMhe Chocolat
Menier village, near Paris, house waW'are built flush
with the street; but each pair of houses is so placed
as to be opposite gardens. The gardens are long nar
row strips, averaging 300 square meters, and are
furnished with twelve fruit trees and are well culti
vated. In England, Port Sunlight and Bournville,
built respectively for the employees of the Lever soap
and Cadbury chocolate works, may be said to have
147

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS

Attractive and Inexpensive Streets of the Krupp Workingmen's
Colonies, near Essen, Germany

148

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES'

Attractive and Inexpensive Streets of the Krupp Workingmen's
Colonies, near Essen, Germany

149

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
blazed the way for the Garden cities and Garden
suburbs. But examples drawn from such developments must
be examined closely before adoption, for very often —
notably at Port Sunlight — altruism has gone further
than strict business acumen would justify. Many
times, too, the manufacturer, gaining through indirect
benefits results that are denied to the simple land-,
owner, who does not employ the labor thereby
rendered more efficient, can afford to plan more gener
ously and to provide more amenities than could he.
Often, also, the employing company retains ownership
of the houses, while the town planner should seek to
encourage individual home ownership. His, in fact, is
the difficult^task of planning a tract development that
will pay a fair return on the capital, while yet keeping
the rental and sale value of the dwellings within the
workman's reach.
Yet all such experiments have this significance :
They show the existence of a demand, both on the part
of capital and labor, for the planning of attractive
residence districts for factory employees on the out
skirts of cities. No doubt, also, many a useful hint
may be drawn from them -as to practical planning
measures. One is reminded, at least, of Buskin's com
ment: "Neither sound art, policy, nor religion can
exist in England until — neglecting, if that must be,
your own pleasure gardens and pleasure chambers —
you resolve that the streets which are the habitation
of the poor, and the fields which are the playgrounds
of their children, shall be again restored to the rule of
the spirits, whosoever they are in earth and. heaven,
that ordain, and reward with constant and conscious
felicity, all that is decent and orderly, beautiful and
pure." 150

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
There remains the necessity of saying a word with
regard to the mixing of classes — a subject previously
touched upon, but seeming in this chapter to need
recognition anew. There is much, no doubt, to be said
for such mixture as a sociological ideal ; but that does
not mean that houses of all kinds must be indiscrimi
nately thrown together on the same street. Street
boundaries do not limit the citizens' interests. Both
poor and rich are probably happier in their own
environment, among their own kind, where each can
live his own life in his own Avay, without covetousness
or odious comparison. The saving clause is that with
good town planning these separate districts will not
be vast unbroken areas. Their territory, will be small
and the great highways which cut it up will bring the
life of the least important street into close contact with
that pulsing through the highway. Residents on the
latter will be in the same parish, the same political
division, lodge or union with those on the minor street.
So will be gained the healthy open-minded type of
society that is desired.*
Perhaps the chapter cannot be better closed than
with these words, both of further suggestion and sum
mary, from Charles Booth: "I wish I could rouse in
* William H. Baldwin, writing as a. member of the President 's
Homes Commission, said in a sub-committee report : "In German cities
provision is made for homes of working people in narrow streets running
through, and connected with, those portions in which the residences of
people of larger means are found, instead of having each kind in a.
district by itself. Such a plan would have a peculiar advantage in this
democratic country where the difference should be not in character but
simply in the standard of living, and would be for the convenience both
of employers and employed. Such a system we practically have now in
the alley dwellings, in which the contact with the best residences of the
city is so close; so that by the conversion of these alleys into minor
streets, permitting decent living and encouraging self-respect in those
residing upon them, we could establish a healthy social circulation in
the body politic." 151

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the minds of speculative builders a sense of the money
value that lies in individuality, with its power of
attracting the eye, rooting the affections, and arousing
pride in house and home. Then would they seek to use,
in place of sedulously destroying, every natural
feature of beauty, and take thought of others. A
slightly greater width of garden on the sunny side,
whether front or back, may make all the difference;
a single tree left standing can glorify a whole street.
Fresh painting and papering within, is not the highest
ideal ; its charm passes ; the other gathers force as the
years go by."
It is with that spirit that the platting of tracts for
humble homes must be undertaken. There must be the
freedom from restraint that was craved in the plan
ning of the high-class minor streets. With minimum
traffic needs, we must be free by establishing a building
line to gain front gardens on space that might have
been thrown into dusty street, — at Homewood, Long
Island, the City and Suburban Homes Co., of New
York, requires a set back for its houses of fifteen feet ;*
we must be at liberty irregularly to widen the street
so as to bring, if we can, a few fine old trees into public
property; we must be able on occasion to set a back
building line, if that be needed — as is done at Hetzen-
dorf, a suburb of Vienna, at Rixdorf, Germany, etc.;
and by making long blocks, where tendencies seem to
make advisable such action, and then retaining rel-
* It may be interesting to note in this connection that the Harborne
Tenants Limited, hampered, in developing a tract in Birmingham, Eng.,
"by the by-law which required fifty-foot streets, applied to the City
Council for relief on the plea that it would build only ten houses to
the acre, and would set them fifteen feet back from the street. Relief
was granted, and in reply to a criticism that ordinary builders would
want the same privilege, members of the Council were quoted as saying
that they might have it if making a like agreement.
152

THE PLATTING OF MINOR STREETS FOR HUMBLE HOMES
atively shallow lots through the creation of allotment
gardens or play space behind them we must be able,
when the need arises, to absorb some of the land that
has been thus reserved in order to build houses around
three sides of a court which is open to the street. Not
symmetry and exactness, but the best practical hous
ing of the poor, the brightening of their lives, and the
fostering of the home-spirit should be the aim.
If we succeed in this, substituting these gifts for
dark courts and dreary streets, where there is not
sufficient light and air for the health of body or spirit,
we may expect that more grandiose town planning
projects will grow easily out of the new born civic
spirit.

153

CHAPTER XI
PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
The statement was made in the last chapter that a
system of platting which gave large public holdings
and small private lots was desirable, with certain
limitations, for sections occupied by the less wealthy
members of the community. It was added that the
large public holdings need not be wholly in the form
of streets. If we limit our definition of streets to
traffic ways — the original and proper meaning of the
term — we shall find that other public reservations
include not only playgrounds, small and various open
spaces, large parks, and the grounds for public build
ings ; but also parkways, and certain thoroughfares of
exceptional width. These latter will be those to which
extra width is given, not to meet the demands of
ordinary street traffic, but that they may serve as
strips of park-like value.
Perhaps a word of explanation is needed for haying
withheld consideration of such streets until the present
chapter — striking features as they are of the city plan.
It is found in the fact that a chief value of these
thoroughfares is their hygienic and social contribution
to the city's life. They have the advantage, indeed,
over any equivalent area of park that their aesthetic
attraction may be at the very doors of the largest pos
sible number of people; that for the well-to-do they
may bring the charm of the park into the line of daily
travel, and that for the poor, who have neither money
154

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
nor time to visit a distant park, they make several of
its benefits immediately available. Thus in signifi
cance such thoroughfares are more nearly akin to the
park than to the street.
The mere enumeration of the various kinds of
public reservations which may be found in cities, aside
from streets in a restricted sense, is enough to reveal
how large and complex a problem is injected into town
platting by their means. That the width and arrange
ment of streets must be frequently influenced by their
presence is evident, and that these reservations cannot
be ideally located after street lines have been fixed —
not, at least, without much wasteful undoing — is ob
vious on reflection. It is, then, because the street, the
playground, the park of whatever kind, and preferably
also the public building site, are factors to be coinci-
dently considered in all town planning which is done
in a large way, that some measure of consideration
must be given to them in a volume ostensibly devoted
to streets alone.
Nelson P. Lewis goes so far as to say,* "Instead
of adapting the park system to the street system, the
former should to a considerable extent control the lat
ter. In other words, one of the first subjects which
should receive serious consideration in the prelimi
nary study of a city plan is that of available park .
sites. ' ' Probably, however, without giving precedence
to park system or to street system, it were better to
say that the two are interdependent. They are best
planned coincidently, as products of a study of the
town, or town extension, site.
In making this study, one is likely to find, for
example, "waste" areas that are "the despair of the
* Paper read at the second National Conference on City Planning,
Rochester, N. Y., May, 1910. 155

Where a Street Would be Expensive But a Park Would be Cheap

A Development That Was Economical as Well as Beautiful
156

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
engineer and the sorrow of the real estate dealer."
The early reservation of such areas for park purposes
is almost sure to have the negative value of saving an
enormous amount of money in the later development
of the city. Even if they have been considerably en
croached upon, economy may still demand the giving
up of ill-advised and costly attempts to make them into
conventional streets and building sites. Imagine these
areas as precipitous hillsides, deep ravines, the banks
of a little winding river or the shore of a shallow lake,
and experience shows that the choice is usually be
tween a park or a slum, between a section~ordistinct-
ive_beauty and value or a region of degjadatioiL
Fortunately, where topography is irregular, those
portions which are least adapted for business or resi
dence are best adapted^ for parks. They"are~"the
features which are naturally picturesque ; and because
they are not well fitted for building, they can be
cheaply had. Thus, too, there is the probability that if
they be not taken for parks they will be dotted with
shacks and rubbish heaps, bearing the marks of the
scorn that is felt for them. It has been well said:*
"The little rivers will become pestilence bearers and
open sewers. The fragments of ponds remaining un
filled will be nuisances to all their surrounding neigh
borhoods. The steep and rocky hillsides will present
everlasting problems of street construction. The
drainage of the lowlands will be ever troublesome. A
logical, instead of whimsical or accidental, develop
ment would make a city most attractive in those parts
where otherwise it would be most shockingly ugly,
ragged and ill-arranged."
It is true, of course, that some cities are built or
* Henry A. Barker in the special City Planning number of Charities
and The Commons, Feb. 1, 1908. 157

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT CF STREETS
extended over plains, where one acre is pretty much
like any other and all are well adapted for streets and
building lots. But even there it is economically desir
able that the planning of the park features proceed
coincidently with the planning of the streets. In such
a region parks and playgrounds and elaborately
parked streets, to say nothing of public building sites,
are at least as necessary to the community as if the
site were not so uniform. As soon as it is platted and
transportation lines are contemplated, values jump.
If the reservations have not been secured at farm
value, the community — even though the town plan
prescribe the maximum number of houses per acre —
has to pay a heavy penalty for delay. And though it
be willing to pay high prices, it may not then be able
to locate its parks, playgrounds, allotments and other
reservations in an ideal way. A park may have to be
placed where it has no adequate approach, so that
streets that lead to it have to be widened and whole
neighborhoods changed ; a site which has been cut into
lots and partially built upon may have to be con
demned for a playground ; or a schoolhouse put where
no sufficient schoolyard can be added.
Further, it is because streets and other reserva
tions are not independent of one another, but have
reciprocal relations, that they must be planned to
gether. The park system is a portion of the frame
work of the city as truly as is the street system ; streets
bound, determining shape and size, small open spaces ;
and, conversely, the location of parks may be a deter
mining factor in considering the width and direction
of streets. The size of houselots may depend on the
proximity of public reservations; parks, if bordered
by curving streets, would be often more attractive than
if squared off by straight ones; hillside streets may
158

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
widen, happily, into outlook points — treated formally
or informally. Boulevards and parkways have a traf
fic value; while the small gores and other left-over
spaces of an irregular street system have park signifi
cance. In no town planning scheme can the streets and
other reservations be separately considered with the
best effect.
A question, which will very naturally at once sug
gest itself, is this: What proportion of the total area

A Hillside Street Widened Into an Outlook Point
A view at Aix-la-Chappelle.
should be put into parks, playgrounds, and public
reservations other than the streets? Statisticians
have tried to answer, but with as little success as if
one asked how many trees should be planted on a
fifty-acre tract subdivided into blocks. So much
depends on the kind of trees available, the use that
the land is to be put to, and other considerations. But
F. L. Olmsted and Arnold W. Brunner, collaborating
in a city study,* quoted a widely accepted ideal when
* ' ' City Plan for Rochester. ' '
159

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
they said that every family should be "within easy
walking distance of the park which is to supply its
needs." Jn quoting this, and explaining that easy
walking distance meant a quarter-mile limit, they cal
culated that such provision "would involve setting
apart from five to ten per cent of the total city area. ' '
They added the comment : ' ' From twenty-five to forty
or fifty per cent is set apart for streets, without hesi
tation." And so good an authority on real estate as-
William E. Harmon, of New York, has written, in
referring to a bill requiring that in the State of Wash
ington small parks and playgrounds shall be included
in all future land sub-divisions — a very significant bill,
by the way — that, while it is "highly important, from
the point of view of true economics, that no undue
burden be placed upon practical work in the field of
realty development, or home building, on a large scale,
for in the end this burden must be borne by the buyer,
yet, if the areas of land segregated are properly dis
tributed, so that the adjacent lots have either a front
or rear exposure upon the open space, the added value
to such lots will compensate for the land given up to
public use.* Again he says:f "Could we have seen
ahead, as we can now look back, we would immediately
have begun the segregation of lands for park purposes
in all our subdivisions, and would not only have served
the community better, but would have received a
return in dollars and cents sufficient to amply repay
for every foot of ground so utilized. ' '
The effect of park proximity upon real estate
values has been studied in various communities by
* See The Survey, Feb. 26, 1 910, for demonstration of this.
t In paper read at the convention of the American Civic Association,
Nov., 1909.
160

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
various authorities.* It hardly is pertinent to this
discussion beyond the point of showing that in this
respect the town planner can be generous without
extravagance, especially if the planning of the streets
and these other reservations is done simultaneously.
Nor need there be repeated here the familiar argu
ments in favor of playgrounds, athletic fields and
parks of all kinds. We may assume that they are good
things for a community to havef — so good that, in
spite of their cost, they increase, rather than other
wise, the saleability of house-lots, provided they are
intelligently located and developed. The one matter
which concerns the present inquiry is their connection
with the streets and consequently with the houselots.
We may take first the small open space. This is of
many varieties and serves divers ends. Historically
it was the market square, a space chiseled out of the
intricate network of narrow streets and made big
enough to hold many booths. When the market was
not in session, it still proved its community usefulness.
New cities were built, and old cities rebuilt, under
modern conditions, but the open space was retained
* A convenient reference is to an investigation made by an officially
appointed committee of citizens of Madison, Wis. The Report, dated
Marsh 11, 1909, has been published in pamphlet form by directors of
the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association.
t "I have spoken of the utilization of public reservations, as if they
were to be expected to yield only health and enjoyment and improved
powers of perception; but I should deal with the subject very imper
fectly if I did not point out that the right utilization of public reserva
tions is a strong agency for promoting public morality and a high
standard of family life. . . . The appropriate pleasures of forest
reservations or country parks are all cheering, refining, and cleansing;
they are soothing and uplifting; they separate city men and women
from the squalor, tumult, and transitoriness of the human ant-hill, and
bring them face to face with things calm, lovely, grand, and enduring."
— Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus, Harvard University.
161

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
irrespective of market use. It was now made very
open and very spacious; it gained an air of magnifi
cence that old squares did not have, it conveniently
sorted traffic — when the volume Avas not too heavy, and
it afforded an opportunity to study the architecture of
abutting buildings. But it was discovered, after a
while, that somehow the charm and picturesqueness
of the old square had not clung to the new. Then we
found that the secret of the former's peculiar attrac
tion was the sense it gave of enclosure. The mediaeval
square was nearly all wall, the streets stealing into it
around a corner. It lay at the side of the main street,
rather than across it;* and so at times had a quiet,
semi-private air. The more modern square was nearly
all street, and was designed to be busy. In the old way
of planning, one stumbled upon the open space as a
surprise. In the later way, its presence was known
afar off; for a great distance it was the dominating
feature of the converging streets. Thus is the open
space one of the most conspicuous of the rocks upon
which have split, in irreconcilable difference, the two
schools of town planning — the formal, as represented
especially by the French; and the romantic, as rep
resented especially by the Germans.
But there is room, and need, for both kinds of open
spaces. In good town planning of to-day we may
expect to find them both. Whether they are paved
plazas in the business district or gardens in the resi
dence sections, makes little difference here, since only
their location and outline plan concerns this discussion.
As to the latter, Mr. Mawson enunciates the following
interesting general rule in his "Civic Art": "Under
ordinary circumstances the length of a rectangular
* Note, for example, the open spaces of old Brussels, as shown in
the frontispiece.
162

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
open space should be double its width, and the longer
diameter of an oval one twice the length of the
shorter." But this, as he hastens to say, is a broad
generalization, to be treated more as a groundwork,
for adaptation, than as a rule to be pedantically
followed. Aside from the "squares" — to give them the
familiar generic name, though it has little geometrical
accuracy — there are the small left-over spaces of the
irregular street system, of much potentiality for the
beauty or the ugliness they may add to the public way.
Usually of no value for building purposes, their reser
vation happily involves no sacrifice commensurate
with the possibilities they bring. Then there is the
small space created for the deliberate purpose of
enhancing the value of abutting lots. It may be the
fenced garden which London makes familiar; it may
be an outlook point to widen vistas or to increase the
number of the lots from which a view may be had.
There are, also, to be sure, abundant examples of a
city block, taken out of the market and stricken from
the tax lists in order that it may form a green oasis
in the midst of city streets; and there is many an
example of good building land having precious street
frontage which has been transformed into a play
ground. But it may be doubted whether such develop
ments are more than a confession of inadequate early
planning — costly efforts to provide what a wiser street
platting could have given more efficiently, more natur
ally and more cheaply. Sometimes, as has been
indicated, the square will pay for itself in the value it
adds to abutting property ; but even so there is a sense
of waste in that its net addition to value is negligible
in amount. As to the playground, it is almost always
163

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
Tjetter without more street frontage than will suffice
for an adequate entrance.
The location of playgrounds inside the block was
suggested in the preceding chapter. By a reduction in
the length of gardens that is not sufficient to reduce
their practical usefulness, it is possible to save out
enough land to make a very good little neighborhood

Mary Vale Road
Locating the Playground Inside the Block
.A section of the street platting at Bournville, Eng. Note that the
special entrance to the playground is from Bournville Lane.

park or playground. That is to say, if there be added
into one, central, common mass the unimportant sub
tractions made from all the backyards, there will be
gained a middle area of sufficient extent to be, in a
region where it is necessary for the community to
furnish the recreative facilities, of real value to the
people who live on the lots which enclose it.
Some other aspects of such action further commend
164

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
it. In such a section, an area of this kind is almost
ideally located for a playground for small children.
Not only are the children kept off the street, but in j
their play they are beyond the gaze of passing stran
gers and idlers. They are perfectly safe, and are
within constant sight and call of the mothers who, in
the humble homes, are more likely during the day to be
at the back of the house than in the front rooms. The
space is not large enough to be used as an athletic field
by men and older boys, and hence is not likely to
become a nuisance. And when the little children are
through with it, how good a place it may offer through
the long summer evenings for tired workers to sit out- j
of-doors in neighborly communion!*
The placing of the playground here makes possible,
also, the platting of longer blocks without the lengthen
ing of houselots — as we saw was the case in thus
locating allotment gardens. The advantage of the
longer block is that in a large tract it means the build
ing of fewer streets — i.e., a saving in the costs of
development and of public maintenance, where the
* In this connection, it may be well to quote the following from the
Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commission (Cass Gilbert
and F. L. Olmsted, 1910) : "Consider for a moment the waste of land
in deep lots for city dwellings, taking a comparatively open standard
of urban development such as has prevailed in New Haven in the past.
A given tract of land half a mile square, provided with streets occupy
ing a third of the total area, will subdivide in 619 lots of the [New
Haven] standard size of 50 x 150 feet. In such a district, when the lots
are all occupied, there will be no playgrounds for the children except
the streets and the backyards; there will be no parks or squares or
other open ground whatever. If, on the same tract with the same area
in streets, the same number of houses should be erected on lots of
50 x 125 feet in size, there would be left over 17.7 acres for purposes
of public recreation. This would be more than enough, if well arranged,
to assure for all time that every boy and young man, who will ever live
in that district, shall have opportunity and inducement near his own
home to play baseball and all the other vigorous outdoor games that
165

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
traffic makes no demand for more generous provision
and where any such saving means much to the house
holders. At the same time, the arrangement retains
the possibility of the tract's subdivision into smaller
blocks at a later time, should conditions justify such
action. Finally, back land costs practically nothing,
while land with street frontage would have a value that
very probably would make sufficient playgrounds in
such regions prohibitively expensive.
Of course there will not be need of a playground
inside of every block built up with humble homes.
Some may have allotment gardens, some may have
small parks, or places for the entertainment of adults
— as bowling greens, quoit grounds, etc. It will be
necessary consequently to provide a footpath entrance,
so that persons who do not live in the block may be
able to reach the pleasure ground. But this need take
only five feet of frontage, and perhaps one of the house-
lots can be sold subject to the granting of such a con
cession. To the example of this kind of platting offered
by Harborne, England, to which reference has been
made, there may be added that of Forest Hills Gardens
in the United States.
Athletic grounds for young men are a real need in
all industrial communities. They should be accessible
from the shop and from the home, and ought to be
make for a sound body, a clean mind and a healthy nervous system; to
provide space that could be set apart for a swimming pool to be put in
operation whenever the neighborhood or the city might feel disposed to
pay for constructing it and supplying the water; to provide that the
little children could have a shallow pool of their own, with a clean sandy
beach and bottom where they could wade and play with toy boats and
make sand pies and forts as well as if they were to be taken to the
ocean beach itself; and to assure that for all time the dwellers in that
district would have only to walk two or three blocks or so to find a pleas
ant open spot, with shady paths and benches for summer use. No sane
man can doubt the advantage of such a method of subdivision."
166

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
treated as an essential feature in the planning of
industrial sections on the outskirts of cities. When
practicable, it is better to give them factory surround
ings than home surroundings.
As to the public parks and gardens, there must be
recognition of the truth that no public provision takes
the place of the home-garden. But the large parks can
give some things which not half a dozen home-gardens
of the city are able to give, such as long, soothing
views; the tranquility of meadows; the peace of
woods, — nerve antidotes of tremendous value in the
stress and strain of urban life. Or they may preserve
bits of scenery, which may be rightfully considered the
' proper heritage of all who choose a given city as a
residence. Even at best, there are many homes whose
occupants would have no gardens of any kind if there
were no parks. Then, again, there may be in them a
wealth of bloom, or an exotic collection of such rarity,
value and interest as few private gardens could afford.
If we expect operatives who have tedious work for
long hours to be satisfied to live out of the congested
portion of the city, we must grant them compensation
for the loss of the attractions of the crowded street by
providing the recreation, amusement and education
that parks can give. In other words, the dedication of
lands for park purposes in any residence section of
the city does not fail to make nearby lands more
marketable.* * It may be observed that if a community is sufficiently supplied
with parks for other purposes, a pleasant outlook can sometimes be
reserved for it without the requirement of actual public ownership. For
example, a certain shore of the Aussen Alster at Hamburg was originally
wooded. The city required the owners to cut down the trees, so that the
view might be enjoyed from the Harvestehuder Weg. The cleared land
was thereupon laid out in gardens, and a law prohibited the erection of
houses that could spoil the view. 167

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
To the advantages of the broadly parked street, for
the poor as well as for the rich, there was reference at
the beginning of the chapter. A convenient illustra
tion is to be found at Frankfort-on-Main. In the Ger
man manner, the city proposed to erect some new
tenements. It was decided to place them near the
Guenthersburg Alle'e, which with its center parking is
240 feet wide, in order that it might be easy for the
occupants of the houses to reach "places where they
could enjoy abundant light and fresh air, and either
exercise or rest."

m .^^M  rev/v

n

i

An Arrangement for Community Tennis Courts Proposed by
Raymond Unwin

There are various ways of developing these very
wide streets. The well known Unter den Linden, in
Berlin, has a central promenade forty-two feet wide,
tree bordered on either side. The Stiibel Allee, Dres
den, has a garden through the center, and on either
side of that a promenade with a double row of trees.
Outside each promenade is the car track, the traffic
road and then the sidewalk. This Allee 's total width
is 1381/2 feet. Other streets, as Bhein Strasse and
Willielm Strasse in Wiesbaden, for example, have a
bridle path as well as a broad promenade for pedes
trians. On the Champs Elysees, Paris, where the tide
168

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS

SP'liWff

'**»"

'-s -->?

169

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
of travel is so mighty that pedestrians would find it
difficult to reach the center of the thoroughfare, the
promenades — here very broad graveled ways which
are planted with trees — are at the sides.
It is clear that such streets as these should lead to
something. They should have an objective worthy of
their splendor, termini in keeping with their character,
and such as will furnish or attract the kind of travel
that can appreciate them. In the remodeling of Con
tinental cities, however, the demolition of encircling
walls has offered so good an opportunity for building
girdle streets, to which great width can be given at
little cost, that the benefits of such streets, plus the
chance to get them cheaply, have been thought to
justify their creation without adequate termini. But
as a town planning theory, for use in the building of
new towns or the platting of town extensions, a con
struction of radial, rather than of circumferential,
parks *and parkways is, generally speaking, to be pre
ferred. H. V. Lanchester, of London, has put the
argument for the former briefly and well in saying:
"Wnere special circumstances have not determined
the plan, it is clear that a series of parks placed
radially is the more reasonable method. For one
thing, they do not define the city area and exercise a
restrictive influence on the space within them. For
another, they lead from the more densely populated
areas out into the open country, thus encouraging a
general exodus towards it. . . . This is a much more
economical method than the ringstrasse, as the land
would extend into the open unimproved country where
land could be obtained at agricultural values."
If it be granted that thoroughfares of this kind
ought to have worthy objective, what, indeed, could
be more appropriate than a park? When streets
170

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
like these join park to park, or park to business dis
trict, they go far to coalesce park units into a park
system, and so to knit the city's pleasure grounds and
beauty spots, as they should be knitted, into the street
plan — a lovely figure woven into the streets as warp
and woof to form the perfect pattern of the town.
There is another group of parked streets, to which
reference must be made. Less ample in scale and less
elaborately developed than the parkways, they yet
serve a more aesthetic end than do the main traffic
thoroughfares which are, or are likely to become,
routes for rapid transit. These are streets which
carry a double roadway divided by comparatively
uarrow center parking, besides carrying grass margins
between the sidewalks and the curb. In Germany such
streets, though costly, are sometimes put through the
poorer quarters as well as through the richer. As a
result, tall tenements line them where the people are
not well-to-do. The more normal and appropriate
building along their margins is that of the costly
individual homes with which in America they are
associated. The development given to the center parking is
varied. The looped vines and gay flowerbeds of Ger
many may be set over against the cement bordered
grass plats which nearer home are sometimes suggest
ive of monster graves through the center of the street.
But if the street rises, and this tapis vert is not too
often and conspicuously broken by crossings, this
arrangement has much to commend it. More often,
low growing shrubs and bushes — as roses — are planted
in the turf. If these are arranged in appropriately
placed groups, rather than scattered promiscuously,
they may do much to make a lovely street. Finally,
trees are used in various ways — low conifers, grouped
171

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
to give the effect of shrub planting that will be green
the year round; flowering trees, used with shrubs or
in an orderly row; old trees, kept as single specimens
for their beauty, and occasionally conventional shade
trees.

Center Parking Planted with Flowering Trees
Oxford Street in Rochester, N. Y., with magnolias in bloom.

On such streets each roadway can be quite nar
row — say, 18 feet; for on each the travel is in a single
direction, and there is only the need that the moving
vehicle shall be able to pass one waiting at the curb.
The center parking should not be less wide than is a
roadway. Allowing for walks and side parking, eighty
172

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
feet, then, between lot frontages, may be considered
close to the minimum for these narrower parked
streets that are not main traffic highways.
A third group of parklike streets is represented by
those which, without commercial purpose, skirt a
waterfront. Now and then passenger steamers may
touch at the shore; but the essential purpose of the
street is to furnish an attractive promenade rather
than to serve the needs of navigation. The Thames
Embankment, London, and the Bhein Anlagen of Cob-
lentz, Bonn, etc., are types of this kind of street. No
general rule can be laid down for their width, though
it is desirable that there be space for seats. Their
significance as regards this volume is, (1) the example
which they offer of that use of natural opportunities
in the street planning which, at the minimum of cost,
gives the maximum of service; (2) their exemplifica
tion of the park-usefulness of certain streets.
As aesthetic considerations are of special value on
streets of parklike character, their purpose being
rather to add to the beauty and stateliness of the town
than to accommodate traffic — which, indeed, is some
times restricted upon them — it may be well to empha
size again the need of proportioning length to breadth,
and of avoiding loss of perspective and monotony of
aspect by arranging breaks or accents to rest the eye.
It was suggested in the chapter on Main Traffic Streets
that these might well come at intervals of approxi
mately three-quarters of a mile. Sometimes half a
mile will be better, the conspicuousness of the break,
the width of the street and its gradient being of course
factors of much influence.*
* Thomas H. Mawson has collected in his ' ' Civic Art ' ' some inter
esting illustrations of the provision of such breaks. He says : "In the
design for Lord Street, Southport, the Campanile, and in Dunfermline,.
173

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
A slight change of direction is often the most avail
able means of securing the break in parkways and
boulevards, where the shortening of distance and
directness of connection are not primary needs and
where it may not be easy to secure an architectural or
sculptural accent. For such change the curve is
usually to be preferred, and it ought to be a curve of
long radius, the point of transition from straight line
to curved having definite mark. Another device is the
broadening into an open space, as suggested in Chap
ter V. Where curves are used a serpentine line is to
be avoided, if stateliness of effect is desired. But
sometimes the purpose is picturesqueness rather than
stateliness, and in such cases a parkway can be serpen
tine. The tree planting then should be informal, for
obviously a regular spacing of the trees on a serpen
tine road would defeat its object. Nor should ser
pentine roads be broad ones.
We come now to sites for public buildings. The
reservation of these at the time when streets are
platted and parks located, is a more forehanded
measure than American towns seem generally ready
for — though it is an accepted part of some European
city planning. No doubt the average "practical"
the four towers flanking either side of the road through Pittencrieff
Park, were intended to supply the necessary break, whilst on the grand
boulevard, which was proposed for the connection of Dunfermline with
the new naval base at Rosyth Bay, the end was to be marked by pylon
like towers. Owing to its somewhat steep gradient, which would fore
shorten the perspective, a greater proportion of length to width than is
usual could here be allowed. In laying out new cities, as well as in
remodelling old ones, eases must often occur where it is advisable to
construct boulevards for a distance considerably in excess of due pro
portions, and where none of the aids to proportion proposed at South-
port or Dunfermline are possible; innumerable devices have been
resorted to to meet this difficulty. The first and most usur.l is the ronda
or circus, of which the Place de l'Etoile, Place de la Nation, and Place
d 'Italic in Paris are notable examples."
174

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OTHER THAN THE STREETS
person is inclined to dismiss such a project as too
great a venture into the speculative field to warrant
municipal action. But really it is pretty safe specula
tion. Under a town planning scheme, a tract of
agricultural land is laid out into streets, with certain
areas reserved for parks and playgrounds of one kind
or another. The population that is to occupy the tract
is foreseen — its limits fairly well set by the character
of the platting, and perhaps indeed set absolutely by
a law limiting the number of houses per acre. That in
a growing city the population will by degrees come up
to, or come very close to, the established limit, there is
no reason to doubt. It may be assumed, then, as a
known quantity in determining what provision to
make. The school authorities know just how many chil
dren must be provided for in any given population;
exactly the size of the building that must be erected to
accommodate those children properly, and precisely
the schoolyard area which a building of that sort ought
to have. In other words, given the platting of the
tract, the school area that should be provided can be
definitely foreseen ; and this being so, why is it not the
part of wisdom to reserve that area in the places most
desirable for such use before values have advanced!
As with regard to the schools, so with reference to
fire-houses, police stations, branch libraries, etc.
If it be objected that a long time may elapse before
the influx of population will make public structures
necessary, the reply is that no buildings need be
erected until they are required. The only investment
is in the land, and by securing that at the time when !
streets are platted the investment is made on a safe
basis and does not represent a large sum. Further,
experience suggests that the ultimate saving in not
175

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
having to buy lots at high values after the population
has come, and then having to enlarge the lots at still
higher prices when the population has grown, will
much more than balance the interest on the invest
ment — even assuming that the land stood idle in the
meantime. The action precisely corresponds to the reservation
of lands for parks ; it is even more conservative than
building sewers and laying water mains which in size
(anticipate future demands. It has the further advan
tage that it makes possible not only the most efficient
setting of the public buildings, but also the most
economical, and the most effective architecturally.
The school, for instance, may adjoin the playground,*
and so without detriment have its own yard reduced
in size. The library may face a park, that will insure
a setting for its building and quiet for its readers.
The fire-house may be placed at a forking of streets,
to the saving of precious minutes. It may be possible,.
using a small open space as nucleus, or a grand avenue
as their setting, to group the public buildings and so>
to establish a local civic center.
There has been a mistaken tendency, which now is
passing rapidly, to associate a city's parks and park
ways with the more well-to-do portion of the com
munity. If in this discussion it has seemed that the
needs of the people of smaller means, and the service
which the town planner may render to them and to the
sections in which they live, has had especial emphasis,
an excuse may be found in the numerical predomi
nance of the wage-earners in modern cities. It has
been estimated! that, taking one city and town with
* See illustration on page 105.
t Prof. Eberstadt, in an address delivered at Wiesbaden to visiting.
representatives of the National- Housing Reform Council of England.
176

PUBLIC RESERVATIONS OIHER THAN THE STREETS
another, ninety-two per cent of city residents are rep
resented by workmen and their families and only eight
per cent by the professional and wealthier class. Just
where the line is drawn — the point upon which the
accuracy and significance of the figures wholly depend
— is not stated ; but at least they indicate that the town
of to-day, unlike the ancient city, is a community in
which a great majority of the people are economically
below the standard, once represented in overwhelming
numbers, of old time burghers, merchants and crafts
men. Town planning finds its only motive and justifi
cation in the betterment of social conditions —
conditions of living and working; and the final test
of its merit must be the degree to which it does this for
the masses of city dwellers.

177

CONCLUSION
In drawing this volume to its conclusion, a hun
dred lines of thought invite consideration. It is as if,
in turning one's back on a fascinating city, of which
there has been time for only a glimpse, one stood at
the station upon an elevated plaza from which led
many streets of alluring vista. Some of the roads are
broad and straight, some are narrow and devious ; but
all seem enticingly to beckon, making one loth to leave
until their mysteries have been explored. One cannot
feel that full justice has been done the city until one
knows those streets. Yet time is up, the bell rings and
the whistle blows.
Perhaps the dominating thought must be the big
ness of the subject, its interest, its importance, its grip
on the urgent things of life. Consideration of the
width and arrangement of streets, far from being a
by-path of investigation, proves a broad highway. All
the currents of life, all the grades of society, are
intimately affected by the problems it includes. The
joy and pain of urban existence, the comfort or hard
ship of it, its efficiency or failure are influenced by the
wisdom or the thoughtlessness with which streets are
platted. The street, thus studied, gains a new dignity and
value. No more can it be despised. We shall not dare
to speak in reproach of those whose existence is closely
bound to it — as "the children of the street," the
"women of the street" — for we find that the fortunes
178

CONCLUSION
of us all are affected by it. It is more than a passage
way, though even as a passage-way it is the channel
of the common life. It makes the boundary of our
homes, it gives us our outlook upon the world. In
fact, the streets make the cities what they are, and the
cities make the world. When we study how best to
plan the streets — not the main highways only, nor only
the great show avenues, but the minor streets as well —
we have no mean subject. "I fancy," said a student
of city progress in a. recent address,* "that the civic
renaissance which must surely come, which indeed has
already appeared in its sporadic beginnings, will never
get very far until Ave have awakened to a realization
of the dignity of the street — the common street, where
the city's children play, through which the milk wagon
drives, where the young men are educated, along which
the currents of the city's life flow unceasingly."
The street, then, is to be thought of, not as a line
in a drawing, not as a mark on a map ; but as a living
thing. This quality of it, which adds so vastly to the
interest of the problem, adds also to its difficulty. For
it requires that our plans must not be too rigid. Con
ditions change, people migrate ; the lot unit which well
suits a neighborhood to-day may be too large, or too
small, for the uses which are to characterize that
neighborhood two generations hence. This flexibility
of plan must be secured mainly through the minor
streets. Great highways cannot readily be changed. Their
location must be determined by fundamental con
siderations that can only change slowly, if they change
at all. These highways cut the city area into large
main blocks; and it is in the subdivision of these by
the minor streets that there must lie the flexibility of
* Dr. Delos F. Wilcox, before the City Club of Philadelphia, 1910.
179

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
the plan. As was stated in an early chapter, the city
planner is not infallible. Though he be an admirable
diagnostician, new conditions will create new needs.
His main lines can be strong, confident and firm; but
between them there must be the possibility of trans
formation. There could hardly be graver fault than
to adopt a city plan with a sense of finality, fancying
that there never will be need of fitting and moulding
it to meet changing conditions.
Yet town planning does unmistakably tend toward
stability. If, for instance, an industrial section grows
up, in response to the exceptionally satisfactory pro
vision of transportation and other facilities, that
section will not readily move. This will be, in part,
because when new facilities are to be added, the temp
tation and pressure to add them to the same district,
where existing plants can at once make use of them,
will be almost irresistible. The permanency of the
factory district will fix the location of the employees'
housing section, and the location of houses does much
to determine the location of stores. Cities grow — but
not, in the often quoted phrase, as Topsy grew. The
city is the most artificial of creations. Every street is
deliberately staked out ; its direction, its width, and its
subdivisions determined consciously in advance. City
growth is directed growth; and the more firmly it is
in our power to direct that growth, by comprehensive
scheme and central control, the less vacillation there
will be in its development.
And stability, no doubt, is a good thing. There is
always economic waste in the abandonment of the old
for the new. Moreover, a constantly shifting popula
tion is not as easily governed, or as well fitted to
govern itself, as one which has such permanency of
habitation that civic affection and civic pride has a
180

CONCLUSION
chance to take root. A platting of streets, so wise and
well thought out that there will be little temptation
to change it as the years go by, will do more than per
haps most of us realize to bring about good municipal
government and contented urban populations.
Considered, then, as an art, the purpose of town
planning is, briefly, to "do for the city what the archi
tecture does for the home." The architect accepts as
fundamental the home's human service, and the use of
different parts of it for different purposes. He does
not put the nursery on the north side where the
children will have no sunlight; he does not put the
kitchen at the front and the drawing-room next beyond.
He does not build in such a way that no change will
ever be possible. Continuous healthfulness, conven
ience, comfort, and beauty are all desired and are all
sought by a single rule — that of order and common-
sense and with the possibility of moderate changes
when, to gain the desired end, such changes become
necessary. Taking another point of view, a business man, pro
posing to create a new, or to improve the efficiency of
an old, commercial or industrial plant — which is the
business aspect of city life — sets about it with a plan.
He adjusts parts to functions. He does not put his
warehouses at the end of the tract away from railroad
sidings, as we sometimes do in the hit-or-miss building
of cities ; he does not scatter interdependent units, as
we almost always do when building cities. By order,
system, and forethought he seeks to save energy and
time. It is so in wise city planning.
Again, the architect in building the home considers
(1) the owner, (2) the tenant, and (3) the community.
The town planner may well put his project to the like
threefold test. He must ask himself, how, first, does
181

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
it affect landowners, those owners — municipal, cor
porate, or individual — of large tracts on the outskirts
of towns, whose subdivisions determine the manner
of the city's extension and the future welfare of its
people? If it be not just to them, and even advan
tageous to them, progress cannot be anticipated save
by a revolutionary social upheaval. Second, how does
it affect the individual home owners — "ultimate con
sumers" in the field of city planning — to whom the
lots in the large tracts are sold? It must be just to
them and to their advantage, or the subject does not
deserve consideration. Third, how does it affect the
community ?
It is impracticable to go over all the arguments.
In the preceding pages the question has been looked
at from many points of view. It has seemed that a
well thought out, reasonable system of street platting,
undertaken with foresight, must necessarily be to the
advantage of all tract owners. No one who owned a
tract would think of cutting it up until he had in mind
a plan for the whole. If that is the course of common-
sense with reference to a comparatively limited estate,
it must be the proper procedure with reference to the
town — a vastly larger and more important estate. The
inter-relation between lot and tract, and^tract and
town, is similar.
A point, however, to be noted here, is that a large
owner of real estate might be fully persuaded of the
advantage of town planning methods, but unless the
community had town planning powers — the authority,
the central control, and the ability to grant the privi
leges that can be granted where there are such powers
— he might be entirely helpless, as regards the service
which he might render to the community or to himself
by putting his good ideas with reference to street
182

CONCLUSION
platting into effect. If, through ownership of a com
plete tract, he were able to do anything, it would be
only in a limited way, and with the danger that his
neighbor by an inharmonious development might ruin
all he had done.
To the large owner of real estate, therefore, town
planning does mean hope. And it is advantageous to
him in another way. Instead of leaving him dependent
upon his own scant knowledge of the subject, or at the
mercy of any conveniently obtainable surveyor or
landscape engineer, it makes available for solving his
special problems the best experience and thought that
the community can engage. This will study, for
instance, the most advantageous size and shape pos
sible to be given to the lots into which his tract will
be cut ; if he has waste lands that he can hardly hope
to sell for building purposes, at any rate not without
very costly development, it may order the community
to buy those lands for park purposes. And it would
have the authority to enforce its recommendations. It
would insure him against sudden depreciation of
values through spite, ignorance or indifference by
owners of adjacent lands, or by the community itself.
Even in setting limits to the intensiveness with which
an owner could use his land, it does not necessarily,
as Ave have seen, lessen his net profits. The purpose
of city planning, as Lawson Purdy, President of the
New York City Department of Taxes and Assess
ments, has well said, is so to plat the public property
that the land which is privately owned may be put to
the best usefulness.
With regard to the individual home owner, he is
the one for whom, in the last analysis, streets are
platted. Unless they make for his convenience and
his comfort, unless they give him a good home and
183

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
facilitate the transaction of his business, they have
failed in their purpose. It is important to keep this
in mind. Though we should give to him, in our social
enthusiasm, churches, parliaments, schools, libraries,
baths and workhouses — as altruism has generously
done — and though we should group some of these in a
very effective center, if we forget the facilitation of a
wholesome family life and personal efficiency, we shall
fail to serve him in the best way. As for town plan
ning 's special consideration of childhood, the hope of
every country is in its children.
Good street platting will not do everything for the
individual or the family, but it can help much. The
book has tried to emphasize this relation. Even when
•considering the subject's financial rather than social
aspect, it has dwelt more, it will be observed, on the
economy of town planning for the individual, than on
its saving for the community.
Yet the third question, the effect of the plan upon
the community at large, is very pertinent. There are
two points of view. The readiest judgment is that, as
the community is simply the sum of the individuals
who compose it, whatever makes for their betterment
makes for the good of the whole. In the largest sense,
this is true. Yet there are some things in which the
community must take co-operative action, and for
which individual welfare and the individual viewpoint
are not enough. For instance, it is by no means as
certain as some one assumed who said, "when Mr.
Smith," as typifying the individual, "possesses in
peace his own solid little home, he will attend to the
town hall. ' ' He may be so snug in his little home, it
may so cramp his naturally narrow vision, that he will
decline to be interested in a town hall. Lawrence
Veiller, secretary of the National Housing Association
184

CONCLUSION
in America,* has said, that "the small property owner,
with limited resources, ... is the greatest obstacle
to progress. Burdened as he is, limited in his intel
ligence, his own standard of living low, his knowledge
of sanitary science practically nil, it is not strange
that he should not place the welfare of the community
above that of self-interest and should not divorce, in
his consideration of public questions, their effect on
his OAvn pocket from their value to his neighbors and
to posterity." The small property owner's conserva
tism, fortunate when in moderation, becomes, when
carried to the length of narrowness and selfishness, the
bulwark of that false public economy which is respon
sible for so many of the shortcomings of towns and
cities. Now, a first principle of town planning is con
sideration for the rights of others. It finds its base in
community spirit; it does give the large view; it
simplifies co-operation for the common good. This is
its great and precious community contribution.
Secondarily, it means also, as has been hinted,
economy for the community. J. S. Nettlefold, writing
in 1908, declared that a careful compilation seemed to
establish it as a fact that in the preceding ten years
"not less than £30,000,000, which town planning would
have saved, had been expended" for street widening,
slum clearances, the provision of open spaces, and such
improvements by English towns. He stated that in
his own (the Birmingham) committee, 2,105 unsani
tary houses had been dealt with during the last five
years, a period during which, he thought, Birmingham
had done rather less proportionately than other cities.
Finally, it may be remarked that a well organized
*. Article in Annals of the American Academy of Political and
Social Science. 185

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
society tends to express itself in an organized, dig
nified and individualistic way. The city with a well
developed civic consciousness Avill ultimately have a
formal and dignified civic center, representative of its
official entity. Without town planning, it may be
doubted whether a community is well organized; with
it, there is no question as to that, and if the premises
are correct we may expect a civic center to develop
as an entirely natural part of the plan. It will not
be forced, or exotic in character or expression ; on the
contrary, it will gain its charm and interest through
being marked by the individuality of the city — the
most precious quality the city has.
With the civic center, however, this volume, having
to do with the width and arrangement of streets, is not
closely concerned. It is enough to point out that of
real city planning the civic center is a by-product, not
the whole thing — as its spectacular appeal has some
times led people to believe. It is a flower, significant,
as are various others, of the health of the plant of
civic spirit — of its maturity into beauty. And until
beauty is the product, we shall know — as we know in
all work — that perfection is still before us. In plan
ning towns, we have to realize that no social order is
ideal, no engineering faultless, no efficiency complete
until expressed in beauty. So, by the like test, the
sti^te^ofMln^city^will^^ until,
with their adjustment to purpose, beauty"has
apjoeared.

APPENDIX

CERTAIN PRINCIPLES OF A UNIFORM CITY
PLANNING CODE
Extracts prom the Preliminary Report op the Committee on
Legal and Administrative Methods op the National Con
ference on City Planning. Presented to the Conference.
at Philadelphia, 1911.
By ANDREW WRIGHT CRAWFORD, Chairman,
Assistant City Solicitor of Philadelphia.
The Executive Committee of the National Conference on City
Planning has suggested, to its Committee on Legal and Administra
tive Methods, the preparation of a uniform City Planning Code.
Sweden, England and America offer precedents for such a code, but
these precedents are decidedly limited. The English Town Planning
Act, passed in 1909, under the leadership of John Burns, M.P., is
the English precedent, but the constitution of our States and of
the United States prevent it from being of much assistance to us,
although its general objects and principles might be incorporated in
an enactment specially framed to meet our needs.
The uniformity of an American code is suggested by the Uniform
Negotiable Instruments Law, passed by forty States, and the Acts
on Sales and certain other topics now being considered by the Leg
islatures of the several States, to avoid the medley of decisions
arising from different interpretations of the common law.
Any code of city planning, with our present knowledge of the
subject, can be but tentatively drawn. This was recognized by the
Executive Committee in its suggestion that a preliminary draft only
of a city planning code should be submitted, with the expectation
that it will be recommitted to the succeeding committee on Legal
and Administrative Methods for such changes, alterations and
additions as may appear desirable as the result of the deliberations
of this congress. As your researches reach more and more under
the surface, into the relationship of the different elements that enter
into city planning, and as the natural laws that control such rela
tionships are more and more clearly discovered and enunciated, the
provisions of the statutory law that should be enacted accordingly
will be more and more clearly denned.
The subject is difficult because of the varying laws already in
existence throughout the Union. That the laws in each State are
entitled to consideration is obvious from any practical point of
189

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
view. Each State is the sole judge of the functions which are to
he delegated to its cities. As the city is but an arm of the State,
and therefore a mere agent, it can generally exercise , no power or
authority which is not specifically or hy necessary implication con
ferred upon it. When there are forty-six different legislatures with
varying knowledge of the needs of cities or of their relative import
ance, of the questions social as Well as governmental that they
present, it is but to be expected that the charter powers of munici
palities throughout the United States will differ even in important
respects from the charter powers of other cities of the same class.

scope of proposed code
Before the preparation of even preliminary drafts of acts, it
was necessary to determine the conclusion that the Committee should
come to in regard to the scope of the code. An act that wipes out
existing authorities and substitutes a different body will meet the
political opposition of all existing authorities and will have much
less chance of passage. Should a City Planning Code upset existing
authorities or should it be so worded that, with necessary changes,
it can readily be made to fit into existing municipal governmental
schemes? Should an entirely new body be given authority to plat
the streets of a municipality, or should a new board be given
authority to supervise the platting of city streets by the body
already in existence to make it homogeneous with the schemes of
other departments? Should a new scheme in toto be devised, taking
advantage of all that has been learned and of every suggestion that
can be made by different cities, or should a city planning depart
ment to act from the broad point of view of wise policy in city
planning be devised which shall interfere with existing machinery
as little as possible? This Conference is a practical body brought
together to get practical results. The best way to get these results
is to secure their adoption in principle, without too great concern
over details. It has therefore seemed to your Committee the wiser
policy, at this stage of the development of city planning, to pro
vide for a new body to be superimposed upon existing authorities,
who themselves shall be represented in that body, rather than to
attempt to create a complete substitute. For this the Connecticut
Act that created the Hartford City Plan Commission offers valuable
suggestions. As it appears likely that certain of the provisions of a City
Planning Code will be attacked, your Committee deems it advisable
to present not one act but several acts which, as time goes by, may
be brought together. If an attempt were made now to combine all
the provisions that appear desirable in one act, it may well be that
one set of its provisions would be held unconstitutional, and that,
therefore, the entire code might be held unconstitutional, although
other provisions were well within the power of the law-making
bodies. The question in such cases is whether the unconstitutionality
190

APPENDIX
of the set of provisions so affect the whole act that its remaining
provisions cannot be held valid apart from them. For instance, the
power of excess condemnation and the power of preliminary plat
ting in undeveloped sections, so as to prevent the erection of build
ings within the limits of the streets platted, are each of them subject
to objections regarded a generation ago as fatal. Why then make
the constitutionality of one dependent more or less upon the con
stitutionality of the other? Why not let each stand or fall on its
own merits? Your Committee deems it only reasonable that each
provision should be construed by itself, confident though they are
that each will be generally upheld. As time goes on, the advantage
of codifying these various acts into one uniform city planning act
will become more and more obvious.

excess condemnation
City planning necessarily has to do with transportation in the
broadest sense. Transportation covers not only vehicular methods
of transportation from one point to another by means of steam
railroads or street transit systems on the surface, above, or below
ground, but the method of transportation by the streets themselves.
The space occupied by streets includes from about twenty-two per
-cent to fifty per cent of the area of the developed portions of cities.
Your Committee presents herewith the legal aspect of street recon
struction and of street platting.
Street reconstruction chiefly concerns the opening of new streets
and the widening of old ones in the central or developed portions of
cities, and street platting chiefly has to do with the location of
streets in undeveloped areas. While in individual cases recon
struction may possibly be done altogether at the expense of the
taxpayers, general reconstruction, such as we have been familiar
with for years abroad and such as will continue necessarily through
all time in every city, can only be undertaken effectively if the city
may condemn more land than it wants in order to resell with proper
restrictions. It is practically essential that the power of excess
¦condemnation shall sooner or later be upheld, if American cities are
to be rebuilt as European cities are being rebuilt.
Excess condemnation was considered by the Conference on City
Planning at each of its former sessions and a brief reference here
will, therefore, suffice. We would refer to constitutional changes
proposed in Massachusetts and New York expressly authorizing such
acts of excess condemnation. Whether this is an advisable method
is at least questionable. While the constitutional change may be
effective in the States concerned, it will not avoid a difficulty pos
sibly presented by the constitution of the United States. The con
stitutions of the States providing for excess condemnation will have
to be upheld as not unconstitutional under the constitution of the
United States. For my own part, I am inclined to think it likely
that a decision by a State court upholding excess condemnation
191

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
within reasonable limits would in turn be upheld by the Supreme
Court of the United States. Up to the present time there has been
no case before the Supreme Court of the nation in which a decision
of a State court holding that a condemnation is for a public use
has been reversed. If, instead of a decision of a court of competent
jurisdiction, a constitutional declaration passed by the people at the
polls is presented to the Supreme Court of the United States, I
fear an entirely different attitude will be found upon the part of
that distinguished tribunal. STREET PLATTING
The other main problem with regard to the street system con
cerns chiefly the platting of streets in undeveloped areas. Here it
is a pleasure to a loyal son of Pennsylvania to be able to say that
his mother State points the way; for, in Pennsylvania, we have an
act which provides that the engineering authorities may plat streets
and that when the streets are so platted no building shall be erected
within the limits thereof or, if erected within such limits, no damages
shall be paid the owner when the street is formally opened. By
"opening" is meant the acquisition of the public right of way. It
has been decided in other States that such acts are unconstitutional
because they deprive the owner of an important use of his property
during the period between platting and opening, without compen
sation. This act has been upheld in Pennsylvania and it is at least
questionable whether it would not now be upheld generally through
out the country as a reasonable exercise of the police power. We-
believe, however, that it is altogether unnecessary to rely upon the
police power, because all rights of owners can readily be provided
for through compensation by an act slightly varying from that of
Pennsylvania. The main outline of such an act, as drafted by the Committee, is
as follows, the latter parts varying from the Pennsylvania act : The
act provides that the proper authority shall have the power to plat
streets in undeveloped areas, that thereafter no building shall be
erected by the owner within the limits of such streets, or, if erected,
that no damages shall be paid the owner when the formal right of
way is acquired through proceedings of eminent domain. The plat
ting of the streets does not give nor attempt to give title to the right .
of way, but it does deprive the owner of the use of the ground
within the right of way for building purposes. The act therefore-
authorizes and directs that the owner shall be compensated for the
deprivation of the use of his property to this extent : when the street
is formally opened, he is to receive full compensation, not only for
the easement then acquired by the city, but, in addition, for this
deprivation between the date of platting and the date of opening.
He will, therefore, secure compensation for every element of his;
ownership. Should the street be platted and thereafter the location
of the proposed street be changed, the act provides that the owner
192

APPENDIX
shall then have the right to secure compensation for the deprivation
of the use of his property within the platted right of way during
the time between the original platting and the subsequent removal
from the plan. By this method he will secure compensation for the
right of which he has been deprived for that length of time. It
will be observed that the owner has no immediate right of action
because of the platting of the street. It is unnecessary in our view
of the law that he should have any immediate right to such com
pensation. Justice Sharswood of the Supreme Court of Pennsyl
vania stated that when property is taken by the right of eminent
domain "the obligation of compensation is not immediate. It is
required only that provision should be made for compensation in the
future." Hammett v. Phil, 65 Pa. 146 (1870).
If this statement by one of the greatest judges of Pennsylvania
should not be regarded as law by other States, it will then be neces
sary in such States to provide for immediate compensation to the
owner for the loss of the use of his property to this extent. But
we are satisfied that generally this will not be found necessary,
except where the State constitution expressly provides for compen
sation before any taking at all, and in such a State it is respectfully
submitted that the constitution should be changed.
Those of you who are familiar with the practical working of
the law of condemnation will not fail to observe that this act would
create a new element of damages in such proceedings. The fact of
creating this additional element will be beneficial, although it may
slightly increase the money that goes out of the city treasury. If
the Board of Surveyors knows that should it plat a street and there
after find it advisable to change its location, then the property owner
will be entitled to damages for his inability to build upon the platted
area meanwhile, the Board will consider its action carefully before
it originally plats the street. This is an advantage because the
careful study will far more than compensate for the slight additional
payment to the owner.
Closely akin to this matter is the power to widen streets grad
ually by providing that, as houses fronting thereon are altered they
must be set back to a new building line. For instance, the widening
of Chestnut Street from 50 to 60 feet has been proceeding since
1883, and you may see four buildings between Thirteenth and Broad
Streets on the old line. The city has now reached the point where
it can order these buildings, that remain, back to the new line, with
out overburdening the public funds. An act to give this power
generally has been prepared.
PLATTING OF PUBLIC RESERVATIONS
The next Act of Assembly which the Committee has prepared is
that concerning the platting of areas in undeveloped sections of the
city, which areas are intended for parks, playgrounds or public
buildings of various kinds. It is just as important to systematic
193

THE WIDTH AND ARRANGEMENT OF STREETS
and wise city planning that reservations should be platted as sites
for future parks, playgrounds, school-houses, fire-houses, libraries,
etc., as it is that the streets should be located in advance. But the
ground should be reserved generally, instead of specifically, so that
future developments may determine the precise use to be made of
the particular area. The act provides for the platting of the areas
intended for such purposes and also provides that no building shall
be erected on such areas, by the individual owner, and if erected
that no damages shall be given for them. The same provision is
inserted providing for compensation to the owner for the loss of
¦the use of his property for building purposes between the elate of
the platting and the date of actual condemnation, and, likewise,.
there is the same provision for compensation to the owner should
the platted location be changed.
THE DISTRICTING OF CITIES
The Act of Assembly prepared by the Committee on this point
follows the Boston precedent. It concerns the restriction of build
ings in outlying areas to heights that shall not be greater than the
width of the street upon which they front.

194

INDEX

Adams, Thomas, quoted, 34
Addams, Jane, quoted, 27
Aesthetic considerations, 1, 14,
20, 41, 58, 65-66, 69, 89-90,
97, 103, 104, 106, 107-109, 113,
117, 142, 150, 152, 163, 167,
171-172, 173-174, ISO
Air, 20, 43, 64, 75, 136, 137, 144,
153, 168
Aix-la-Chappelle, 159
Alleys, 46, 66-67, 74, 77-78. 134,
137, 151 note
Allotment gardens, 140-141, 106
Alvord, John AV., quoted. 111, 112
American Civic Association, 160
note
Ancient cities, 18, 27, 101, 177
Arcades, 70-77
Arch Street, Phila., 73
Architecture, 54, 55, 96, 113, 1.30,
142-143, 163, 176. 1S1
Association of Municipal Corpo
rations (Eng.), quoted, 64
Athletic grounds, 106-167
Avenues, 23, 97-9S, 129, 154-155,
168, 171
Avenue de l'Opera, 15

Birmingham, 152, 185
Block, 15, 122-123, 152; sec also
Lot
Bonn, 173
Booth, Charles, quoted, 139, 151-
152
Boston, 51, 60, 62, 82, 91, 123, 135
note
Boulevards, 92, 97. 159, 174
Bournville, 29. 139, 147, 164
Bridle path, 61, 168
Broadway. 15. 19
Brookline, Mass., 26. 108
Brooklyn, 62
Bronx, borough of, 22
Brunner, Arnold W., quoted, 159-
160
Brussels, Frontispiece, 162 note
Buffalo, X. Y., 93
Building height, 69, 80, 82, 90,
143, 195
Building line, 14, 74, 75, 70-78, 80,
' 87. 141, 152 , | if i,
Building restrictions, 71, 72, 82,
90, 143-144; sec also Build
ing Height and Building Line
Buildings, public, 2. 55, 71, 92, 93,
155, 158. 174-176, 194-195
Burns, John, quoted, 139

B

Baldwin, William H., quoted, 151
note
Baltimore, 82, 91, 120, 143 note
Barker, Henry A., quoted, 157
Bedford Park, 36-37
Belgian cities, 50
Berlin, 34 note, 53 note, 61, 119,
135 note, 168
Billboards, 2

195

Cadbury Bros., Ltd., 147
Cambridge, Mass., 123
Champs-Elyse~es, 61, 16S
Cheapside, 15, 19
Chestnut Street, Phila., 73-74
Chicago, 27, 93, 111, 135 note, 137
Circumferential streets and
parks, see Girdle
City and Suburban Homes Co.,.
. 152
I

INDEX

'City plan commissions, see Com
missions
City planners (American), 94,
180
City planning, see Town planning
Civic center, 176, 186; see also
Buildings, public
¦Civic improvement, 4
Clearance of slums, 38, 71, 185
Cleveland-Cliffs Iron Co., 147
Coblentz, 173
Coldspring, N. Y., 147
Cologne, 81
Commissions on City Plan, 72, 92,
93
Compensation, sec Damages
Condemnation, see Excess
Connecticut, legislation in, 72
Contour, failure to follow, 8, 24,
25-26, 109
limitations in following, 102,
106
respect for, 51, 64-65, 96, 101,
102, 105, 127, 135
Congestion, 24, 144-145
official committee on, in New
, York, 80, 82, 92-93
voluntary committee on, in New
York, quoted, 49, 80
Cornell Co., 147
Cornes, James, quoted, 139
Courtyards, 138, 143, 144, 153
Crawford, Andrew Wright,
quoted, 72, 85 note, Appendix
Curving streets, 52, 103, 106-109,
158, 174 D
Damages, 39 note, 74, 75, 78-79,
90, 193-194
Dedication of streets, 70
Dewsnup, Prof., quoted, 136
Districts, 19, 23, 26-27, 80; see
also Industrial Sections and
Zones
Downing, A. J., quoted, 108
Drainage, 101
Dresden, 119, 168
Dunfermline, 173 note
Dusseldorf, 68, 80

Eliot, Dr. Charles W., quoted, 38,
161 note
Essen, Ger., 125, 147-149
Excess condemnation, 71-73, 92,
191-193
Expropriation, 88 F
Factories, 87, 93, 136, 144-145;
see also Industrial Sections
Ferry, Charles A., quoted, 74
Fifth Avenue, 15
Firebreaks, 61
Fleet Street, 19
Flexibility of plan, 85, 94, 179-
180, 181
Florence. 52
Footpaths, 122-127, 166; see also
Sidewalks
Forest Hills Gardens, 41, 166
Frankfort, 61, 82, 123, 168
G
Gardens, 36-37, 104, 121, 132, 138-
140, 147, 152, 167
allotment, 140-141, 166
back, 138-140, 141
easement over, 22
front, 20, 37, 79, 86
Garden cities, 41, 119, 150
Garden suburbs, 29, 36, 119, 150
German cities, 33-34, 50, 61, 79,
80-82, S3, 86-89, 146, 151 note,
171 ; see also cities by name
Gilbert, Cass, quoted, 165 note
Girdle streets, 170
Gradients, 86, 102, 106, 122
Gurlitt, Cornelius, quoted, 64, 104
Gutters, 113
Gwinn, Mich., 147 H

Easements, 76, 87
Eberstadt, Dr., quoted, 34, 53, 176
!Echota, N. Y., 147

Hamburg, 73, 167 note
Hampstead Garden Suburb, 29
113, 119
Hanover, 61
Harborne, 141, 152 note
Harmon. William E., quoted, 160
Hartford, Conn., 72, 92
Havana, 18
Health, 36, 38
Hegemann, Dr., quoted, 33
Hellerau, 96
Hetzendorf, 152
Highways, see Main highways
Hillside streets, 101, 102, 106, 122
1961

INDEX

Horsfall, T. C, quoted, 86-89
Homewood, L. I., 152
Houses per acre, restriction of,
29, 30, 43-44, 90, 152
Howard, Ebenezer, 139

Individuality of cities, 65, 1S6
Industrial sections, SO, 82, 93, 146,
167, 180

Jarratt, J. Ernest, quoted, 111
K
Kampffmeyer, Bernard, quoted,
96
Kane, Francis Fisher, quoted, 74
note
Knibbs, G. H., quoted, 53
Krupp Colonies, 125, 147-149

Liu.,. ,.„-f^,.-dt «~.vJ <*

,;li

T '""' ¦' "/'*-' ' "~-~" -¦¦--" ¦••¦ ¦
Lanchester,' H. A'., quoted, 170
Landowners, 87, 88-89, 90, 91, 150
consideration for, 1, 39, 43-44,
50, 89, 182-183
cities as, 83, 84 ;
see also Values
Landscape work, 130
Leclaire, 111., 147
Legislation, 14, 15, 72, 73-74, 77-
79, 85, 86-93, Appendix
Leipzig, 61
Letchworth Garden City, 145
Lever Bros., Ltd., 147
Lewis, Nelson P., 93. 104. 155
Light, 20, 43, 75, 137, 144, 153,
16S; sec also Sunshine
Liverpool, 15, 16
Local Government Board (Eng
land), 90
London, 15, 27, 36, 49, 53 note,
62 note, 129, 135 note, 145,
173
Los Angeles, 18 note, 82, 93, 130
Lot, area that may be built upon,
80, 144
importance of shallow, 15, 133-
134, 142, 144, 153
planning, 98-99
saleability, 98-99, 101, 102, 103
.size of, 15, 74, 86, 96, 99, 132,
139, 145, 147, 158, 179, 183

r >- «-f /-¦ ¦- >te^ , 7g , \ y , -/ /
Madison, Wis., 3 note, 105, 161
Main highways. 9-10, 12, 18, 42,
48, 50-83, 136-138, 179
connection of, with minor
streets, 3, 4, 98, 136, 151
widths of, 14, 15, 46, 52, 79, 147
Manufacturing, see Industrial
Margins, 114-117, 127, 171-172
Market Place, 161
Marsh. Benjamin C, quoted, 50,
80
Maryland, legislation in, 72
Mawson, Thomas H., quoted, 62
note, 66, 162-163, 173 note
Medieval cities, 18, 27, 46-47,
161-162
Menier, Chocolat, village, 147
Michigan, legislation in, 91
Minor streets, 10-11, 28. 35, 41-
43, 44, 48, 56, 78, 98, 179
connection of, with main high
ways, 3, 4, 11, 56, 98, 99-100,
104, 136, 138, 151
widths of, 14, 19, 46, 86, 111-
113, 147
Montreal, 15
Munich, SO .

7»«h

National Conference on City
Planning, in America, 85
note, Appendix
Nelson, N. O., Manufacturing Co.,
147
Nettlefold, J. S., quoted, 16, 29,
131, 1S5
Newark, N. J., 93
New Haven, Conn., 74. 165 note
New York, 7 note, 15, 22-23, 34,
56, 82, 92-93, 133, 135 note
Niagara Development Co., 147
Niagara Falls. N. Y., 147
Niveu. D. Barclay, quoted, 02
note, 63
Noise, 35, 5S, 137, 145
escape from, 8, 9, 41. 127
Nolen, John, quoted, 3, 105
Northampton, Mass., 119
' O
Ohio, legislation in, 72
Olmsted, F. L., quoted, 35, 78,
159-160, 165 note

197

INDEX

Open spaces, 87, 104, 107, 129-130,
136, 138, 158, 159-160, 161-
163, 174, 185 ; see also Plaza
and Squares
Orientation, 24, 102-103, 135
Outlook Points, 159, 163
Oxford, 52
Oxford St., 15

Paris, 15, 53, 61, 76, 135 note, 137,
174 note
Parkings, 114-117, 127, 171-172
Parks, 92, 93, 138, 147, 155-161,
166, 167, 170-171, 176, 194-
195 ; see aho Athletic
grounds, Open Spaces and
Playgrounds
Parkways, 72, 92, 97, 154, 159,
168, 170-171, 174. 176
Pavement. 2. 23, 36, 43, 102, 111,
113, 13S note
Peabody, Robert S., quoted, 53
note
Pennsylvania, legislation in, 72,
78
Philadelphia, 25, 55, 72 note, 73-
74, 85 note, 92, 129, 135 note
Piccadilly, 15
Pittsburgh, 78 note
Place, semi-private, 128-130
Playgrounds, 23, 87, 93. 132, 137,
13S, 142, 144, 155, 158, 161,
163-107, 194-195
Plaza, 46, 55, 69, 102 ; see also
Squares
Plymouth Cordage Co., 147
Plymouth, Mass.. 147
Political influence, 133
Port Sunlight, 141, 147, 150
Presidents Homes Commission,
quoted, 35. 134, 151 note
Promenades, 61, 168, 170. 173
Purdy, Lawson, quoted, 1S3
Queen Arictoria St., 15
Quiet, 8, 9, 41, 127 R
Radial streets and parks, 51, 53-
54, 62, 170
Rapid transit, see Transportation
Real Estate, see A^alues and
Landowners

Rear houses, 35, 134 ; see also
Building, restriction of, and
Houses
Rear tenements, 35 ; see also
Building, restriction of
Rents, as affected by minor
streets, 11, 28-32, 39,^5
factory rents, 145
Rey, A. Augustin, quoted, 135
note
Ringstrasse, 170
Rixdorf, 152
Roadway, 22, 23. 56, 58-61
Rochester, N. Y., 110, 115, 159,
172
Rome, 52
Royal Commission on London
Traffic, quoted, 49, 61
Rue de Rivoli, 76
Ruskin, quoted, 150

S

Sage Foundation, 41
Salem, Mass.. 93
School sites, 87, 105, 158, 175
Seager, Prof. Henry R., quoted,
7 note
Seattle, Wash., 93
Service roads, 126
Sewerage, 29, 92, 93, 101, 102, 138
uote, 176
Shurtleff, Arthur A., quoted, 14
Sidewalks, 22, 23, 60, 61, 79, 114-
122, 127, 135 t ors^a MZ^u^-^f
Sixteenth St., Washington, 77
Slum, clearance of, 38, 71, 185 ;
see also Tenements
Smoke, 145, 146
Southport, 40, 173 note
Speculative values in land, 43, 76,
79
Springfield, Mass., 52 note
Squares, 46, 69, 88, 92, 119, 129-
130, 101-163
St. Louis, 91, 93, 128-129
Standardization, 8, 13-27
Streets. 22, 154-155, 178-179
cost of, 3, 29, 38, 41-43. 99, 101-
103, 135
curving, 52, 103, 106-109, 158,
174
dedication of, 70
girdle, 170
grades in, 86. 102, 106
hillside, 67, 101, 102, 106, 158

198

INDEX

Streets, importance of, 3, 17S-179
length of, 54, 87
parked, usefulness of, 154-155,
16S, 171-173
percentage of city area in, 3,
18, 160
radial, 51, 53-54, 62, 170
~fa widening, 71, 73-79, 185, 194
width excuses, 20
see also Minor Streets and
Main Highways
Street railroads, 49, 56-5S ; see
also Transportation
Stiibben, Dr., quoted, 106
Subdivision, 17, 91, 160
extent of movement, 6
reason for. 6, 7
Suburban control, 91, 193-194
Sunshine, 24, 86, 102-103, 135;
see also Light
Swedish cities, 34, 50
Swiss cities, 50

Taxation, 31, 76, 133
Tenements, 34, 81 note, 133, 134,
142-145, 168, 171
Thames Embankment, 173
Thompson, W., quoted, 29
Toronto, 116, 119
Town planning, benefits of, 1, 2,
177, 1S1-185
demand for, 2
features of. 3, 94
French, 162
German, 32, 162
versus site planning, 9S
Town planning act, English, 17,
32, 39 note, 50, 89-90, 139
Town Planning Conference, 33-34
Traffic, 1, 2, 18-19, 22, 35, 44, 46,
53-64, 135. 162
Tram, see Street Railroads
Transportation, IS, 45, 50, 54, 55,
56, SO, 93, 134, 136, 145, ISO

Transportation, influence of, 7,
49, 144, 158; see also Street
Railroads
Trees, 22, 61, 66, 103, 108, 115,
117, 121, 147, 152, 168, 170,
171-172, 174
Triggs, Inigo, quoted, 46
Two-level streets, 67-68, 100, 102
U
Cuter den Linden, 61, 168
Cnwin, Raymond, quoted, 30, 55
note, 98, 100, 111, 168

A'alues, real estate, 1, 19, 39-44,
89, 131, 160-161
speculative, 43, 76, 79
traffic, 19
A'egetation, 20, 117, 127
A'eiller, Lawrence, quoted, 139,
1S4-1S5
ATenice, 52
Arentilation, see Air, Light, Wind,
etc.
A'ienna. 61
Virginia, Legislation in, 72
W
Walnut Street, Phila.. 73
Washington, D. C, 14. 15, 16,35,
53, 77-78, 134, 135 note
Washington, State, legislation in,
160
Waterfront, 07-68, 173
Weller, C. F., quoted. 134 (**
Widening of streets, see Streets
Wiesbaden, 108
AA'ilcox, Dr. Delos F., quoted, 179
Wind, 102, 103
Wisconsin, legislation in, 91
AArollaston, Mass., 20

Zones, building, 79-82, 131

199

THE IMPROVEMENT

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CHARLES MULFORD ROBINSON

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