Art

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Olmsted’s Brooklyn Comes to Life

In spring, especially, the boundary between Prospect Park and the gloomy, earth-colored blocks of Park Slope is fluid. It is one of the most perfect intersections of 19th-century Romantic landscape architecture and late Victorian common-law urbanism. Viewed on a map, a monotony of gridded blocks makes the boundary between urbs and gardens look like a hard line, defined by the long razor of Prospect Park West. But a few images from a recent visit prove that it is, in fact, a more subtle transition.

Situated within the park, near Prospect Park West, the Litchfield Mansion (1855) predates both the park and the subdivision of urban building lots for Park Slope. A placard teaches that it was once the private home of a Brooklyn industrial magnate. Today it serves as administrative offices for the Parks Department.

The trees of Prospect Park were in full bloom when I visited. The Long Meadow, beyond the mansion, was busy with people, some playing games, others having picnics, a few reading beneath trees.

At the edge of the park, one can see that its influence does not merely end at its surveyed boundary. Instead, the density of trees and plant life, and the colors of nature, extend across Prospect Park West and echo through the cool, shady blocks of the old Victorian neighborhood.

Here is the park block of First Street, afternoon light filtering through the leaves:

And some wavering cornices on the same block:

In early spring, the old trees had already formed canopies more reminiscent of Oglethorpe’s Savannah or of New Orleans’ Garden District than of New York City:

Here are some facades on Third Street, between Eighth and Seventh Avenues:

Massive, hundred-year-old sycamores make parts of the Central Slope feel like a quiet, settled place in the woods — rather than a major city. The cool, enchanting gloom is hard to capture inside the four corners of a picture.

In some blocks, these ancient trees not only line the curbstones — but a second row also occupies a position closer to the building line:

Park Slope is a richly tactile place, with block curbstones, wrought iron gates, gnarly tree trunks, and (in some places) traditional slate sidewalks.

The topography — including the namesake slope — can be seen in the terraced rooflines of the area’s east-west blocks.

In parts of the Central Slope, the street trees are truly massive:

Back in the park at twilight, the buildings of Prospect Park West form a street wall that helps to define the green space.

Four-story buildings front the park on Prospect Park West.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective), zoning and historic preservation have, at the southern end of the park, frozen a relatively low density of development in place.

The continuous street walls that were built early, further north, become shorter as one approaches Bartel Pritchard Square, and as one moves southward along Prospect Park Southwest they begin to show gaps. The lower-rise buildings in these blocks may have merit, but they are not the unbroken cascades of perfect brownstones that served as the basis for the historic district, nor are they the highest and best use of prime park-front building lots. The persistence of gaps in the street wall here, and the sense it projects of incomplete urbanization, illustrates how a traditional urban process was interrupted by 20th-century regulation.

Prospect Park Southwest has not developed a continuous street wall. Image: Google.

Be that as it may, the transition between the western edge of Prospect Park and the Victorian urban fabric of Park Slope — especially in the North and Central Slope — is one of New York’s treasures of the built environment. It bears noting that this gem of urbanism is an artifact of the mix of private, common-law urban growth processes and municipal planning initiatives that drove the growth of American cities in the 19th century — a development context that has now, mostly, regrettably, been forgotten.

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Ibn Battuta and the Echoes of Another World

I’ve been reading an English translation of the Rihla, an account of Ibn Battuta’s 14th-century journeys through nearly all the known world. So far, it’s fascinating. Starting from his native city of Tangier, in Morocco, the young lawyer began traveling east on Hajj in 1326: first across the Maghrib, then meandering through Egypt and the Levant, and finally turning south into the Hejaz.

Along the way, Battuta offers a sort of Grand Tour of the Medieval Islamic world: bustling urban Tunis (at roughly the time of Ibn Al-Rami, whose treatise on urbanism Besim Hakim introduced to Western readers); the last days of the crumbling ancient Pharos (that Wonderous lighthouse) at Alexandria; the maritime Nile waterfront of Cairo; the Dome of the Rock and other notable sites at Jerusalem; the cosmopolitan markets and charitable largesse of Damascus; and the long Incense Route through the ancient oases towns of the Hejaz — including Hegra and Al Ula.

Mada’in Sâlih (Hegra), Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2022).
The oasis at Al Ula, Medina, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2022).

Battuta wound up, as a matter of course, at the Mosque of the Prophet at Medina; and next, at his destination, he provided a fascinating account of the city of Mecca, itself, and its people, and their ways. But unlike most pilgrims, in his time or today, Battuta did not promptly return home after completing his religious obligation. Instead, he kept traveling, first with a caravan across the desert, following an eastern Hajj route, the Darb Zubayda, developed and supplied with way stations and water infrastructure by an earlier Abbasid princess; then southeast through the reedy wetlands occupied by the fierce ancestors of today’s Marsh Arabs; northeast through genteel Basra; down the Shatt-al-Arab, where the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates finally come together and exchange the outflows of the Fertile Crescent with the salty tidewaters of the Gulf; around the cities of western Iran; and finally back west to a wrecked Baghdad, in the aftermath of a siege by the Mongols — where I have recently left him on the banks of the Tigris, contemplating the destruction by the Khans.

Ibn Battuta, depicted by Léon Benett (1878).

The Table of Contents tells me that Battuta’s travels will yet take him back to the Hejaz; to Yemen; to “Rum” — that Greek-speaking remnant of the Roman Empire we’d call Byzantium, centered on Constantinople; to India and China; and later to Al-Andalus; and to the interior of Africa. And while he lived in some places for quite some time (on a second visit, he spent three years at Mecca), Battuta traveled for the better part of three decades. Anything to avoid going home to practice law, I suppose.

The Rihla also illustrates the different priorities around which a dominant society can be organized. Early in his travels, at least, Battuta found convents and religious orders in nearly every town and city, supporting countless scholars, and providing hospitality to traveling strangers. Most of these stopping-off points were supported by charitable trusts, having been established by merchants and aristocrats. Contrast this dense constellation of oases from the marketplace in the 1300s Islamic world with the hyper-Florentine values of the postmodern West, where deeply human, non-material pursuits like scholarship, travel, and spirituality must typically be self-financed. Definitions of the sacred and the profane do vary.

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The Living Music of New Orleans

I was impressed by the vitality of live music in this city. In the evenings, nearly every bar had music. Not surprisingly, jazz and blues predominated, but other genres could be heard as well. And practically everyone I heard was good. Here are some photos, mostly from Faubourg Marigny, but also from outside the French Market and inside the Hotel Monteleone in the Vieux Carré. I probably spent the longest time at Bamboula’s. That’s not saying much — three complete sets (and a couple of Sazeracs, the high price of entry).

Here’s a sample of the Midnight Ramblers at Bamboula’s — skip to about 1:11 for the classic “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?“

Blue Nile and Apple Barrel had some enchanting sounds spilling out onto the sidewalk, as well — which led me into each venue briefly.

Midnight Ramblers at Bamboula’s.

A later set, great music, didn’t catch their name.

Here’s an extended sample from the Hotel Monteleone’s Carousel Bar (with a bit of the carousel, below):

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A Haunted and Enchanted City

I spent part of last week in New Orleans — my first time in that city. The photos included in this post are mostly of architecture and a few street scenes around the Vieux Carré. I’ll post other batches, including of jazz clubs, houses in the Garden District, and the enchanting light that came over the streets during an impending and fierce storm (including a visit to the again-going Old Absinthe House) in a later post.

A group of young women, dressed as angels (with iridescent haloes), congregate in front of the St. Louis Cathedral to prepare for a Joan of Arc-Twelfth Night parade that also marks the start of the Mardi Gras season. Photo: Theo Mackey Pollack.

I hope to spend time in New Orleans, again. It is a fascinating city to explore, and to try to process, on so many levels: its architecture and urbanism, its layered social and cultural history, the surprising way in which its high culture, cheap alcohol, traditional Catholicism, hedonism, classicism, neon, jazz, old money, abject poverty, and all else seem to (mostly) gracefully coexist. It reminds me of no other place in America, yet it could not exist in any other country.

The streets of New Orleans (at least, those in the Vieux Carré) are reminiscent of a Mediterranean city, maybe one in Spain, with low rooflines and floral balconies and breezy palms, and everything organized on a grid around a central plaza (anchored, of course, by a fine old church). Other aspects seem not-quite-American: many people dress more carefully in New Orleans than most Americans do elsewhere (except, perhaps, Boston). Streetcars still operate. Alcohol is everywhere in public. As is live music. And, in stark contrast to the genericism that has now conquered much of the United States, the local culture here struck me as the most vital I’d encountered in the States. That is, people participate in it. (Following the image above, an entire parade, including floats and more costumery, sponsored by a local krewe, would arrive.) Yet, for all its distinctions, it is a distinctly American city, combining influences that have only ever converged in this corner of the Deep South.

There were moments when I felt like I had opened a time capsule and entered a world where the twentieth century hadn’t quite arrived. Instead, this potent preserve of Victoriana and Vaudeville was floating obliviously on the sea of 21st century America. I’m sure such an impression is engineered by the tourism bureau; and pressing beyond the confines of historic neighborhoods would yield plenty of evidence to the contrary. But with such a concentration of historic spaces, inside and out, and so many people still participating in centuries-old traditions, any line between fantasy and living memory, like other contrasts in this strangely familiar city, can seem ephemeral.

Hover over or tap the image below for slideshow.

Vieux Carré
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Edward Hopper’s New York

Enough writing. Time for some visuals. Let’s start with some photos from the Edward Hopper show that I saw at the Whitney Museum early this year. Some of the shots are at an angle; I think I had in mind that since these were familiar paintings, it might be interesting to see them from a slightly different perspective. Not sure how well that worked out. You can judge. Before going, I had posted a link to a review in The New Criterion. So it feels like I’m closing a loop with this entry.

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Community and Microcosm in NoVa

An LT reader and fellow urban writer based in the DC area, Bryce Tolpen, has launched a new Substack called Political Devotions. One of his first podcasts, “Stories & objects”, explores a global community that has coalesced around Columbia Pike in Arlington, Virginia; and how an arts space in a strip mall, StudioPause, came to serve as a neighborhood focal-point in the post-2020 American anomie that may never quite end. Such an interesting piece — check it out, along with the rest of Bryce’s writing and podcasts. He is a great storyteller, and writes with a perspective that incorporates a thoughtful and eclectic range of influences.

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A Time to Build

Traditional city rooflines on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. Photo: Theo Mackey Pollack

The Wall Street Journal reports today that the United States needs 5.5 million new housing units. That’s a serious backlog. As a nation, we are not building homes quickly enough to keep up with population growth. This is the story behind the soaring prices we hear about in the news. Digging a bit deeper, it could also be a key factor in falling birthrates and adults who continue to live in their parents’ home. So, how do we get serious about building the homes people need? Shouldn’t the market be driving toward an equilibrium?

The market is hot (again), but the shortage is chronic. Part of the problem is undoubtedly zoning, especially in the regions with the greatest demand. In New Jersey, the Mount Laurel doctrine has been a valuable tool since the 1970s, when it established the basic legal principle that zoning is a state action that may not be used to exclude entire classes of state residents from particular communities; to do so is inconsistent with the 1947 New Jersey Constitution. (I simplify, but not too much.) The New Jersey Fair Housing Act, which the state legislature enacted in 1985 to follow the Mount Laurel cases, has helped produce a significant number of regulated affordable units, over the years. Yet Mount Laurel, though based on an exemplary principle, has invited constant political resistance. Its implementation has been obnoxiously complicated. Worse, it does little tangible good for New Jersey residents who don’t fall into the income band for affordable housing — or even many who do, because the demand always outstrips the availability of units.

Yet today, more than four decades after Mount Laurel crystallized the concept of exclusionary zoning, the impacts of a chronic housing shortage reach much further up New Jersey’s socioeconomic hierarchy than they did in 1974, when the first case was argued before the New Jersey Supreme Court. That is, there remains a severe shortage of decent, affordable housing units for poor and working-class people. But there is also a dearth of homes for sale (or rent) at higher price points, in many communities — a bottleneck similar to ones that have formed, to greater or lesser degrees, in other high-cost metropolitan regions throughout the world. Not surprisingly, out-migration continues apace. Yet immigration keeps the overall population going up. Those who stay pay more for less.

So how can this unmet housing need be met? And should housing policy necessarily be bureaucratized, or could it be pursued more effectively by unlocking the private production of more market-built, non-income-regulated units? One concept that the Mount Laurel formulas acknowledge is filtering. That is, older units (often well built!) will become more affordable, through market forces, when newer units are produced quickly enough to soak up a lot of the high-end demand. This is how, for example, poor and working-class people inherited the incredible (if neglected) Art Deco apartments of the Grand Concourse (for a time — they are getting expensive again!).

I believe the next frontier will be a process of artfully (at best) customizing and improving zoning laws. Done wisely, this will foster the construction of market-rate homes that complement our existing neighborhoods while improving land values and strengthening public finances.

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Unwin’s Town Planning in Audio

The Overhead Wire, an excellent San Francisco-based urbanism consulting firm/blog/podcast led by Jeff Wood, has just produced a new audiobook of Raymond Unwin’s 1909 traditional urbanism classic, Town Planning in Practice. The reader is Mark Tester, whose English voice is a perfect fit for Unwin’s Edwardian prose. Something for your commute, perhaps? Nice work!

My 2017 New Urbs article about Unwin’s classic planning book can be found in TAC’s archive, here. Meanwhile, a PDF of the entire original Town Planning in Practice, including all illustrations, is available here.

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Building the West Bronx

A surviving Victorian in the West Bronx. Photo: Theo Mackey Pollack

I have a new piece in City Journal about how the West Bronx evolved from a series of suburban neighborhoods of Victorian houses (built in the late 19th century when the City of New York first incorporated the wards north of Manhattan), into an urban environment of (often beautiful) apartment buildings. The transition mainly took place between the turn of the 20th century, when subway service began, and the onset of the Great Depression, when construction and migration both came to a near standstill. It remains a model of how cities can grow incrementally, by allowing the construction of apartment buildings when demand for housing rises.

As it looked in 2012. Credit: Google Maps

This piece is something of a spinoff from the original research that I did several years back, and reported on this blog, about the last few Queen Anne-style Victorian houses along Woodycrest Avenue in the neighborhood known as High Bridge. Sadly, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission declined a proposal to preserve these last few detached gingerbread houses on the NYC street grid (that is, the one begins in Manhattan and continues north to the Westchester County line), and many have now fallen to the wrecking ball.

Several people have expressed interest in this topic. In addition to the ones on Woodycrest Avenue, I tried to document the handful of other remaining houses like these that are on the Commissioner’s Plan-Risse Plan streets of the West Bronx. I documented the research several years back, and most of it can be found here: https://www.legaltowns.com/category/the-bronx/