Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs (70 page)

Read Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs Online

Authors: Robert Kanigel

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Women, #History, #United States, #20th Century, #Political Science, #Public Policy, #City Planning & Urban Development

BOOK: Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs
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Sutton Hotel
: Harvey, p. 36.
a hose clamp
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.
“known her sister”
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.
The small wedding
:
Matter
, pp. 42–43.
announces the marriage
: Burns, 38:4.
“conventionally not good-looking”
: Telephone interview, Katia Jacobs.
“easy intimacy”
: Robert Fulford, “Lives Lived”: Robert Hyde Jacobs,”
Globe and Mail
, September 24, 1996.
weakness for alliteration
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.
design, descriptive geometry
: Columbia University School of Architecture, program description, 1930s.
urine-release gizmo
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.
“We run the risk”
: Robert Hyde Jacobs Jr., p. 107.
“playing second fiddle”
: See also Sid Adilman, “Robert H. Jacobs, 79, Hospital Architect,”
Toronto Star
, September 19, 1996”: “He preferred to be in the background, especially where his wife’s writings and fame were concerned. ‘I know that my wife is more eminent than I am,’ he told a friend this summer. ‘I’m proud of that and I am so proud of her.’ ”
“Without warning”
: Pete Hamill,
A Drinking Life: A Memoir
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1994), p. 50.
“They were so fast”
: Harvey, p. 37.
no one at the OWI
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.
another party
: This account drawn from
Matter
, p. 45.
Jane became a freelancer
: In Jane’s Application for Federal Employment, September 8, 1949, Attachment C, StL, she recounts her freelance period.
“damp, dimly lighted”
: Eric A. Feldt,
The Coast Watchers
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1959), p. 7. Originally published by Oxford University Press, 1946.
“Christmas cookies”
:
Matter
, p. 38.
“chicken-wire crab traps”
: Jane Jacobs, “Island the Boats Pass By,”
Harper’s Bazaar
(July 1947): 79.
$88 a week
: Application for Federal Employment, September 8, 1949, Attachment A, StL.
Amerika
: Account drawn from visual review of Russian-language issues from period Jane worked at the magazine; select translations from the Russian by Anne-Marie Corley; correspondence and other documents, CollPark, mostly RG 9 P 316, Boxes 3 and 4; Application for Federal Employment, September 8, 1949, Attachment A, StL; Elise Crane, “The Full-Format American Dream:
Amerika
as a Key Tool of Cold War Public Diplomacy,”
American Diplomacy
(January 2010); Creighton Peet, “Russian ‘Amerika,’ a Magazine About U.S. for Soviet Citizens,”
College Art Journal
(Autumn, 1951): 17–21; Andrew L. Yarrow, “Selling a Vision of American to the World: Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda,”
Journal of Cold War Studies
(fall 2009): 3–45.
“a particularly fine job”
: Joseph O. Hanson Jr. to Marion Sanders, March 12, 1948, RG 59, P 316 Box 3, CollPark.
“translation problems”
: Marion K. Sanders to George A. Morgan, December 3, 1948, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“juke box”
: Peet, p. 19.
“hell-for-leather New Yorker”
: Telephone interview, John Jacobs.
“life history” of a single article
: Marion K. Sanders to Melville J. Ruggles, June 27, 1947, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“Reader comments”
: Memo, “Reader Reaction—Regarding the Problem of Credibility,” March 11, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 2, CollPark.
“create the precise impression”
: Application for Federal Employment, September 8, 1949, Attachment A, p. 2, StL.
“Why don’t you come”
: Telephone interview, John Jacobs.
three-quarters of her time
: Application for Federal Employment, September 8, 1949, Attachment A, p. 6, StL.
those the FBI interviewed
: Account drawn from 258-page file on Jane Butzner Jacobs obtained through Freedom of Information Act request, June 2014. Subsequent specific citations normally given by file no., field office, and date.
“sugar daddy”
: FBI file no. 123–252, New York, September 8, 1948. The “Mr. Roberts” cited in the report, according to Jim Jacobs, is Robert Hemphill. See also FBI File no. 123–245, Cincinnati, September 13, 1948, for reference to Hemphill.
half naked
: FBI File no. 123–252, New York, September 8, 1948.
“he had no reason”
: FBI File no. 123–252, New York, September 8, 1948.
a three-page reply
: JJ to Carroll St. Claire, July 22, 1949, with attached “Answers to Interrogatory for Jane Butzner Jacobs,” Burns, 5:4.
“lying little magazine”
: V. Kusakov, “American ‘Horizons,’ ”
Izvestia
, September 16, 1949, with appended “Analysis of Criticism,” by R. S. Collins, in memorandum, American Embassy, September 27, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.

CHAPTER 8:
Trushchoby

“an ugly flat, steel box”
: V. Kusakov, “American ‘Horizons,’ ”
Izvestia
, September 16, 1949, with appended “Analysis of Criticism,” by R. S. Collins, in memorandum, American Embassy, September 27, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“ ‘slums’ means one thing to Americans”
: R. S. Collins, in memorandum, American Embassy, September 27, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“flattering”
: M. Gordon Knox to Marion Sanders, September 30, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“made us cringe”
: To Gordon Knox from unidentified
Amerika
staffer, perhaps John Jacobs, October 12, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“by cubic meter”
: M. Gordon Knox to Marion Sanders, September 30, 1949, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“courageous, careful”
: Gordon Knox to John Jacobs, February 11, 1950, no. 53., RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark. Knox’s comment actually appears as part of a letter under the signature of Ralph Collins who, on p. 2, writes, “Gordon drafted the present letter up to this point.”
“ ‘trushchoby’ on every page”
: Gordon Knox to Marion Sanders, March 13, 1960, no. 56, RG 59, P 316, Box 3, CollPark.
“Planned Rebuilding”
: I am indebted to Anne-Marie Corley for her translation of this article and the illustration captions accompanying it.
settling down
: About Bessie’s move to Fredericksburg (probably in early 1948) and that she let out rooms for students at Mary Washington College is drawn from “Results of Investigation,” June 7, 1948, Richmond, VA, Jane Butzner Jacobs, FBI. Other details drawn from interviews with numerous family members.
three-story house
: 555 Hudson Street has, of course, emerged as legendary. This account is built up from interviews with family members and other visitors to the house; the Canada Dry detail owes to
Matter
, pp. 64–65; Jane’s recollection of the big rats is from
Matter
, p. 213.
assess Jane’s case
: Conrad E. Snow to James E. Hatcher, September 19, 1951, FBI.
“a degree of immorality”
: December 10, 1951, Ba. 123–1256, FBI.
eight-thousand-word missive
:
Matter
, pp. 169–79.
“no option but to agree”
: John Butzner to JJ, January 4, 1998, Burns, 20.
“a safe conclusion”
: M. Gordon Knox to Marion Sanders, April 4, 1950, RG 59, P 315, Box 3, CollPark.
soul searching over its mission
: For example, Tobe Brunner to Marion Sanders and John Jacobs, January 30, 1952, RG 59, P 316, Box 1, CollPark.
“prior to decision on loyalty”
: Hiram Bingham to J. Edgar Hoover, June 20, 1952, 123–393, FBI.
drawn to two magazines
:
Matter
, p. 4.
“They asked me”
: JJ to Roberta Brandes Gratz, March 20, 1979, Gratz papers.
taught her to read blueprints
:
Matter
, p. 4. See also Lucile Preuss, quoting JJ,
Sunday Milwaukee Journal
, July 8, 1962: “I’d work days. Nights, after the children were in bed, my husband gave me lessons in reading plans so I’d know enough to do the stories.”
“its planted entrance court”
: “Big Double Hospital,”
Architectural Forum
(June 1952): 138–45. (In this same issue,
Forum
welcomed Lever House, a modernist icon: “From across Park Avenue, Lever House is a horizontal streak of stainless steel and green glass suspended on rows of tall columns, whose metal skins have a cool wavering sheen.”)
“speeds things up”
: “Self-Selection,”
Architectural Forum
(November 1953): 156–68. When the story came out,
American Druggist
sent someone out to interview her, Burns, 4:1.
“wondrous complexity”
: Robert Fulford, “Lives Lived: Robert Hyde Jacobs,”
Globe and Mail
, September 24, 1996.
“Every way you turn”
: Memo, Douglas Haskell to Perry Prentice, August 25, 1953, HaskellPap, 38:11.
“I heartily dislike”
: Memo, JJ to Douglas Haskell, October 4, 1955, HaskellPap, 14:6.
“a spectacularly bad example”
: Memo, JJ to Douglas Haskell, April 27, 1954, HaskellPap, 6:4.
hadn’t
been doing a good job
: Jane says as much in JJ to Grady Clay, March 1959, LaurenceDiss, p. 195.

CHAPTER 9: DISENCHANTMENT

Edmund Bacon
: See, for example, Klemek, “Bacon’s Rebellion”; Izzy Kornblatt, “Planning Philadelphia,” review of Gregory L. Heller,
Ed Bacon: Planning, Politics, and the Building of Modern Philadelphia
,
Swarthmore Phoenix
, January 20, 2014; Amateau, “Jane Jacobs, Urban Legend”; Inga Saffron, “An Appreciation: Flaws and All, Edmund N. Bacon Molded a Modern Philadelphia,”
Philadelphia Inquirer
, October 16, 2005; James Reichley, “Philadelphia Does It: The Battle for Penn Center,”
Harper’s
(February 1957), in HaskellPap, 36:10.

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