Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs (73 page)

DeWitt Clinton Houses
: See
Projects
, pp. 327–32.

“We realize”
: William Kirk to William Reid, December 30, 1958, Union Settlement Papers, Box 35, Folder 8, ColumbiaRare.

“We are convinced”
: See, especially, typescript presentation, February 3, 1959, Union Settlement Papers, Box 35, Folder 8, ColumbiaRare.

close to the original design
:
Projects
, p. 332.

“tall, angular, monotonous”
: Mildred Zucker to Will, February 6, 1959, Union Settlement Papers, Box 35, Folder 7, ColumbiaRare.

time and energy were drawn off
: See William Kirk to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 11, 1959, where he comments on Jane’s role in East Harlem over the preceding five years, RF 1.2, 200R, Box 390, Folder 3381, Rockefeller: She, along with her husband, “was indefatigable in attendance at all manner of large and small neighborhood meetings…In all of these her interest was unfailing and her discernment was sensitive, perceptive, and deeply imaginative.”

“I never had a closer friend”
: “We were as intimate as you can be without…” He pauses. “Without being intimate?”
Yes.

“rather unhappy phone call”
: Jason Epstein to JJ, June 22, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

“think no more about it”
: JJ to Jason Epstein, June 30, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

“I have every confidence”
: Jason Epstein to JJ, July 2, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

twenty-chapter outline
: Compare JJ to Jason Epstein, June 30, 1959, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare, to JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 17, 1959, Rockefeller.

under no circumstances
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 23, 1959, Rockefeller.

“I am not rehashing old material”
: Compare Jane’s words, and even their cadence, to those of another formally uneducated genius. In my book
The Man Who Knew Infinity
I tell of an Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, who appeals to the distinguished English mathematician G. H. Hardy this way: “I have not trodden through the conventional regular course which is followed in a University course, but I am striking out a new path for myself.” Jane: “I am not rehashing old material on cities and city planning. I am working with new concepts about the city and its behavior.”

“have to give her what she needs”
: Douglas Haskell to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 5, 1959, Rockefeller.

“a great and influential book”
: William H. Whyte to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 1, 1959, Rockefeller.

“I’m averaging a chapter a week”
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, October 29, 1959, Rockefeller.

“her big chance”
: William H. Whyte to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 1, 1959, Rockefeller.

“good, cold-blooded mood”
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, August 2, 1960, Rockefeller.

“working away quite happily”
: JJ to Jason Epstein, January 11, 1960, Random House Papers, Box 535, Columbia Rare.

“if the remainder of the book”
: Chadbourne Gilpatric to JJ, May 19, 1961, Rockefeller.

“sweetly meant inanities”
:
D&L
, p. 248.

“Under the seeming disorder”
:
D&L
, p. 65.

“I expected merely to describe”
: Foreword,
D&L
, p. xxi.

“elaborately learned superstition”
:
D&L
, p. 17.

“His aim was”
:
D&L
, p. 24.

“pretty ticked off”
: Kunstler, I, p. 5.

She did visit it
: JJ to Herbert Gans, November 24, 1958, Herbert Gans Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“on his hands and knees”
: Kunstler, II, p. 1.

“show you how they worked”
: Kunstler, I, p. 6.

“so feckless as a people”
:
D&L
, p. 11.

“It is fluidity of use”
:
D&L
, p. 238.

“Old ideas”
:
D&L
, p. 245.

“The overcrowded slums”
:
D&L
, p. 265.

“In cities, liveliness and variety”
: This and the next five quotes appear on these pages, respectively, of
D&L
: 129, 117, 123, 435, 483, and 312.

“Frequent borders”
:
D&L
, p. 346.

“a line of exchange”
:
D&L
, p. 349.

“Near where I live”
:
D&L
, p. 350.

“The floor of the building”
:
D&L
, p. 252.

“They are extremely touchy”
: JJ to Albert L. Ely III, March 29, 1962, Burns.

“There is something more”
: JJ to Ellen Perry, October 11, 1959; this account is based on phone interview and correspondence with Ellen Perry Berkeley and correspondence between her and JJ that she made available. Berkeley went on to become a senior editor at
Architectural Forum
after Jane left. She wrote to Jane in 1996, “I feel as far from those days in NYC as you probably do. But I’ll never be so far from those days to [forget] how very nice you were to me.”

“The subjects she asked me to follow”
: Ellen Perry Berkeley to author, June 11, 2012.

“People who are interested”
:
D&L
, p. 20.

“There is a quality even meaner”
:
D&L
, p. 21.

“This is the fourth draft”
: JJ to Jason Epstein, December 15 (1960), Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“in an oblique way”
:
D&L
, p. 559.

“What makes an evening primrose”
:
D&L
, p. 563.

“nothing accidental or irrational”
:
D&L
, p. 566.

“the triumph of the mathematical average”
:
D&L
, p. 569.

“I am somewhat allergic”
: Nathan Glazer to JJ, January 30, 1961, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“The task of science”
: From a scrap headed “The New Sociology,” in Burns, 19:12.

“the freshness and immutability”
: Laurence, “The Death and Life of Urban Design,” p. 165.

“I very strongly disagree”
: JJ to Nat [Glazer], February 2, 1961, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“the most exciting book on city planning”
: Epstein to JJ, November 22, 1960, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“Here is chapter 22”
: JJ to Glazer, January 24 [1961], Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

CHAPTER 13: MOTHER JACOBS OF HUDSON STREET

blistering review
: Lewis Mumford, “Home Remedies for Urban Cancer,” in Mumford,
The Urban Prospect.
Original title: “Mother Jacobs’ Home Remedies.”

“a bunch of mothers”
: Kunstler, II, p. 24.

“a room to work in”
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, July 17, 1959, Rockefeller.

Bethune Street
: Knox Burger to JJ, November 19, year uncertain, possibly 1998, Burns, 7:6; interview, Jim Jacobs.

Macy’s
: Jane to a Mr. O’Connell, January 25, 1997, Burns, 2:11.

“an outdoor home base”
:
D&L
, p. 106.

“Little tots are decorative”
:
D&L
, p. 104.

“Adolescents are always being criticized”
:
D&L
, p. 113.

A photograph of Jimmy and Ned
:
Matter
, p. 132.

block printing mixed with cursive
: Mary Jacobs to her grandmother, Mrs. Butzner, April 10, 1967, Burns, 23:6; see also Mary (by now Burgin) and her husband, Mel, to JJ, August 12, 2000, Burns, 7:7.

CHAPTER 14: THE PHYSICAL FALLACY

“How funny you are”
: Frank O’Hara, “Steps,” in Stephen Wolf, ed.,
I Speak of the City: Poems of New York
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

“I want to get”
: JJ to Nathan Glazer, January 24 [1961], Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“truly a great, important”
: Elias Wilentz to Jason Epstein, March 27, 1961, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

“thoughtful and thought-provoking”
: Chadbourne Gilpatric to JJ, March 27, 1961, RG 12, Series 200R, Box 390, Folder 338, Rockefeller.

magazines were lining up
: Chadbourne Gilpatric memo, June 7, 1961, of conversation with Jason Epstein, RG12, Box 170, Rockefeller.

prepublication copies
: September 18, 1961, memo, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

“Jane—TERRIFIC!”
: William H. Whyte to JJ, October 3, 1961, Random House Papers, Box 535, ColumbiaRare.

“Hers is a huge, a fascinating”
: Orville Prescott,
New York Times
, November 3, 1961.

“It is a considerable achievement”
: John Kouwenhoven,
New York Herald Tribune
, November 5, 1961.

“A new, passionately argued”
: “Deplanning the Planners,”
Time
, November 10, 1961, p. 57.

“unmistakably seminal”
: Edward T. Chase, “Cities Should be for People,”
Commonweal
, December 22, 1961.