Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs (71 page)

“Arrogant, arch”
: Interview, Alan Littlewood.

or even, just possibly,
whether
: The possibility that Jane did not see the Philadelphia projects before she wrote about them for
Forum
draws support from three sources: First, an editor’s note to a June 24, 1962, article about Jane in the
Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin Magazine
quotes her: “My initial skepticism that urban renewal was on the right track occurred as a result of comparing the city planning department’s sketches and verbal rationalizations of things-to-be for Philadelphia with the results.” Second, the excerpt of the letter to Grady Clay quoted at the end of the previous chapter (March 1959, LaurenceDiss, p. 195) is preceded by: “Then I began to see some of these things built.” Finally, in their summary of a 1962 panel discussion at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Frigand and Lapham summarize JJ’s comments as follows: “Bacon showed her sketches of their concepts and projects, and she wrote the articles praising their work. When she visited the completed projects later on she felt that she had been tricked—that what looked nice on paper was horrible in reality.”

“awful endless blocks”
: Jane Jacobs, “Philadelphia’s Redevelopment,”
Architectural Forum
(July 1955).

she joined Bacon
: Account distilled from some of Jane’s many tellings of the incident, including: Saunders; Dillon, p. 41; Wachtel, pp. 47–48; Alexander and Weadick, p. 15;
Matter
, p. 126; Frigand and Lapham; Books and Authors Luncheon, March 19, 1962.

visiting sister Betty
:
Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin Magazine
, editor’s note to article about Jane, June 24, 1962.

“found out what they had in mind”
: Books and Authors Luncheon.

“looked so seductive”
:
Matter
, p. 126.

slices of Americana
: See correspondence with John S. Zinsser Jr., Burns, 22:9.

science fiction
: Burns, 22:10.

“the terrific acceleration”
: Doug Haskell to colleagues, February 4, 1955, HaskellPap, 58:3.

“hard for an outsider”
: “Cleveland: City with a Deadline,”
Architectural Forum
(August 1955), unbylined.

“Parentheses” column
: William McQuade, “Get a Bike!,”
Architectural Forum
(April 1956).

“hitch-hiking with the fish”
: “Hitch-Hiking with the Fish,” typescript, with appended note dating it to 1954, Burns, 22:8.

sit on the rear rack
: Ned Jacobs, Jane’s Walk description, “Cycle Cambie Corridor-Vancouver,” May 2, 2010, online tour description, for Jane’s Walk 2010; Ned Jacobs to author, October 19, 2013.

$10,000
: Memo, Chadbourne Gilpatric, June 4, 1958, Rockefeller: “Her present salary on the staff of Forum is $13,750.” But that was two years after the events of April 1956 that, as we’ll see in chapter 10, dramatically elevated Jane’s profile. In Joe Hazen to R. D. Paine Jr., February 24, 1961, HaskellPap, 2:1, we learn that a
Forum
secretary averaged a little under $6,000 a year, a researcher about $8,300, a writer about $11,750.

Glennie Lenear
: Interviews, Jim Jacobs, Carol Bier, Jane Henderson, Burgin Jacobs.
D&L
included Lenear in the acknowledgments.

“no more romantic”
:
Matter
, p. 52.

“almost with disbelief”
: Flint, p. 65.

transformed their home from a slum
:
Matter
, p. 65; see also Lucie Preuss, Sunday
Milwaukee Journal
, July 8, 1962: “The back yard had been a dump and Bob had to reinforce the foundation…We did a lot of the work ourselves. We did it as we could afford it. That’s different from urban renewal, which is done all at once.”

William Kirk
: Interviews, Judy Kirk Fitzsimmons, Eugene Sklar, David Gurin; “Metro North: Death of a Slum,” WNBC-TV broadcast, February 25, 1967, viewed at Paley Center for Media, New York City; obituary,
New York Times
, October 24, 2001; Union Settlement Papers, ColumbiaRare.

great swaths of tenements
: For a taste, visit the Tenement Museum on New York’s Lower East Side.

As recently as 1939
: Gerald Meyer, “Italian Harlem: America’s Largest and Most Italian Little Italy,”
http://www.vitomarcantonio.com
.

No bank
: Lurie, “Community Action in East Harlem,” p. 247.

a fifth of East Harlem
: See
Projects
, part IV.

Phil Will
: Obituary,
Chicago Tribune
, October 24, 1979; R. Randall Vosbeck
, A Legacy of Leadership: The Presidents of the American Institute of Architects
(Washington, D.C.: American Institute of Architects, 2008), pp. 98–100. In 1961, Rev. William Kirk conducted the marriage of Will’s daughter Elizabeth.

approach Doug Haskell
: Kirk to Haskell, November 19, 1954, HaskellPap. See also William Kirk to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 11, 1959, RF 1.2, 200 R, Box 390, Folder 3381, Rockefeller.

wrote Haskell again
: Kirk to Haskell, March 17, 1955, HaskellPap.

hauling out maps
: Books and Authors Luncheon, from which much about Jane and her experience with Bill Kirk is distilled, and probably the most vivid and complete of the several accounts Jane offered over the years. See also Alexander and Weadick, p. 15.

Kirk’s turf
: See Gerald Meyer, “Italian Harlem: America’s Largest and Most Italian Little Italy,”
http://www.vitomarcantonio.com
; Lurie, “Community Action in East Harlem”;
The WPA Guide
, pp. 265–70; New York City Housing Authority photos from the period, La Guardia and Wagner Archives.

“can’t imagine how he took the time”
: Books and Authors Luncheon.

“We would stop every little while”
: Books and Authors Luncheon.

see what he was getting at
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 1, 1958, Rockefeller.

“a big basket of dry leaves”
: Books and Authors Luncheon.

“when the bird’s eye blows”
: Edwin J. Slipek Jr., “An Urban Planning Expert Shares Her View of Richmond,”
Style Weekly
(Richmond, VA), January 1, 1980.

“delighted to live in the city”
: Kunstler, II, 14.

Jane liked Kirk
: “He wasn’t just a one-trick pony of East Harlem,” says Jim Jacobs.

“He was showing me”
: Lucile Preuss, Sunday
Milwaukee Journal
, July 8, 1962.

study in the works
: “Fact Sheet, East Harlem Small Business Survey & Planning Committee,” January 16, 1956, Union Settlement Papers, RB 35/7, ColumbiaRare. See also “Shops a Problem in East Harlem,”
New York Times
, May 8, 1955.

“mitigate the consequences”
: Krieger and Saunders, p. xviii.

delighted to attend
: Haskell to Sert, January 21, 1956, HaskellPap, 20:5.

“a conflict had come up”
: Haskell to Sert, March 19, 1956, HaskellPap, 20:5.

she wouldn’t do it
: Account drawn primarily from Kunstler, II, p. 13; Alexander and Weadick, p. 15.

“depending on you”
: Alexander and Weadick, p. 15.

CHAPTER 10: TEN MINUTES AT HARVARD

Harvard conference
: See Krieger and Saunders.

“developed as a new science”
: Krieger and Saunders, p. 3.

“First my knees trembled”
: Alexander and Weadick, p. 16.

She began with East Harlem
: The text of Jane’s talk, from which the quotes over the next few pages are drawn, can be found in
Architectural Forum
(June 1956), as “The Missing Link in City Redevelopment”; in
Matter
, pp. 39–40; excerpted also in
Progressive Architecture
(August 1956): 102–03; and Krieger and Saunders, pp. 9–11.

Stuyvesant Town
: See
Projects
, part II; Jane’s references to it in her Harvard lecture and later in
D&L
; interview, Carol Bier.

from their perch
:
Projects
, p. 73.

“tracery of iron”
:
Projects
, p. 85.

“a living neighborhood”
:
Projects
, p. 95.

“posperous belt of stores”
:
Matter
, p. 39.

“a big hit”
: Kunstler, II, p. 13.

“the foggy atmosphere”
: Lewis Mumford,
The Urban Prospect
, p. 185.

“passionate plea”
: Fumihiko Maki, “Fragmentation and Friction as Urban Threats: The Post-1956 City,” in Krieger and Saunders, p. 88.

“wonderful”
: Victor Gruen to Douglas Haskell, April 16, 1956, HaskellPap.

“stewing around in me”
: Jane Jacobs to Catherine Bauer, April 29, 1958, in LaurenceDiss, p. 348.

“The last ten years”
: Jane Jacobs, “By 1976 What City Pattern?,”
Architectural Forum
(September 1956): 103.

“sensible-sounding postwar catchwords”
: Jane Jacobs, “New York’s Office Boom,”
Architectural Forum
(March 1957): 106.

“The big rediscovery”
: Jane Jacobs, “Row Houses for Cities,”
Architectural Forum
(May 1957): 149.

“not by abstract logic”
: Jane Jacobs, “Metropolitan Government,”
Architectural Forum
(August 1957): 125.

a brotherly memo
: Holly Whyte to Doug Haskell, January 17, 1957, HaskellPap, 78:6.

“I kept hearing”
:
Matter
, p. 16.