Eyes on the Street: The Life of Jane Jacobs (76 page)

“The question of, you might say”
:
Matter
, p.12.

“Life is an end in itself”
:
D&L
, p. 3.

“cheerful and respectful curiosity”
: November 1963 draft of book at the time titled “Cities and Work: The Economic Principles of City Growth,” Burns, 8:2.

“The most elementary point”
: December 1964 draft, Burns, 8:2

“I have to stop talking”
: JJ to John Elmendorf, August 24, 1962, Rockefeller. A copy went to Chadbourne Gilpatric.

“I am already so badly delayed”
: JJ to Noriaki Kurokawa, September 3, 1963, Burns.

“I’m still plugging away”
: JJ to Mrs. Butzner, postmarked June 7, 1964, Burns, 23:6.

“I’ll never forget it”
: JJ to Chadbourne Gilpatric, October 13, 1961, Rockefeller. Two weeks later, she wrote to Gilpatric again: “Yesterday, I ran into my first published review, quite a feeling. It was in the November
Atlantic
, and was a nice one.”

“ a total knit-together book”
: JJ to David Gurin, September 4, 1963, David Gurin papers.

“distressingly and maddeningly slow”
: JJ to Jason Epstein, March 3, 1966, Random House Papers, ColumbiaRare.

“marvelous”
: Barbara Epstein to JJ, September 9, 1966, Burns, 2:8.

“Cities First”
: See
EofC
, chapter 1. Her new project, “which I have been heartily enjoying, is an imaginary history of the first city in the world,” JJ to John and Pete, July 28, 1964, Decker Butzner papers.

small gems of reportage and memoir
: Jane’s letters home to her family from Europe are at Burns, 4:7. Some appear in
Matter
, pp. 87–96. For those that do, I supply the page number. For those that do not, I give the date of the letter and from where it was written.

“living room is all cleaned up”
: Copenhagen, January 21, 1967.

“I hope you get my letters”
: Amsterdam, January 30, 1967.

“dirty, garish, ugly”
:
Matter
, p. 87.

“You could play chess”
:
Matter
, p. 88.

“Snow covered, wild”
:
Matter
, p. 88.

“just enough to enhance”
:
Matter
, p. 89.

“dear, lovely letter”
:
Matter
, p. 90.

“one of those great and famous”
: London, February 7, 1967.

a foretaste
:
Matter
, p. 90.

“in full technicolor”
: London, February 7, 1967.

“tiresome beyond belief”
: Chester, February 8, 1967. Fashion note, by Jane Jacobs, from Chester, England: “Many girls in London had mini-skirts that came just about to here”; here she drew a primitive stick figure of a tall, skinny girl, her skirt miles above her knees, the little bumps on her stick legs obligingly identified as “knees.”

“took charge of the conversation”
:
Matter
, p. 93.

“complicated and wonderful”
:
Matter
, p. 93.

CHAPTER 17: GAS MASKS AT THE PENTAGON

“the building I live in”
:
Matter
, p. 200.

“Erosion of Cities”
:
D&L
, chapter 18.

garage on Greenwich Street
: Interview, Jim Jacobs.

“we went awry”
:
D&L
, p. 447.

Lower Manhattan Expressway
: See Flint, chapter 5; Anthony M. Tedeschi, “Father LaMountain: After Nine Years, It’s Still War on the LME,”
Villager
, April 3, 1969; Stern, pp. 259–61; Stephanie Gervis, “Artists, Politicians, People Join Fight for Little Italy,”
Village Voice
, August 30, 1962; Ballon and Jackson, pp. 213–15.

“consider [their] present space requirements”
: Stephen Freidus, “Dear Sir” form letter, October 12, 1961, Commissioner Goldstone Papers, New York City Municipal Archives.

“The methods that you have used”
: James Felt to Stephen Freidus, November 3, 1961, Commissioner Goldstone Papers, New York City Municipal Archives.

“I could get along”
: KentVillage, p. 48.

“I felt very resistant”
: KentVillage, p. 49.

vital middle period
: KentVillage, p. 47.

“making us sound”
: KentVillage, p. 50.

“Los Angelize New York”
: Stephanie Gervis, “Artists, Politicians, People Join Fight for Little Italy,”
Village Voice
, August 30, 1962.

“This isn’t about
The New Yorker
”
: Rochon, “Jane Jacobs at 81.”

“the idea dismays me”
: Burns, 2:1.

panel devoted to “the city and the freeway”
: Transcript, “Our Nation’s Capital—The City and the Freeway,” May 23, 1965, Burns.

sewing machines, printing presses
: Or tanks of chemical solutions: My father ran a small manufacturing company, Egyptian Polishing and Plating Works, that occupied the second floor of a decaying 1890s-vintage brick loft building, on the other side of the Williamburg Bridge, adjacent to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. You’d go up a dark wooden staircase, at the landing unlock a heavy door, and enter a spacious bay whose worn, wood-planked floor glinted with tiny flecks of brass, nickel, and zinc, the scene showered by light pouring in through banks of high windows. The building no longer exists.

“Lofts”
: See Stern, pp. 263–77.

Margot Gayle
: Carol Gayle and John G. Waite, “Margot Gayle: Passionate Crusader for Cast-Iron Architecture,”
APT
[Association for Preservation Technology International]
Bulletin
(2013) 44, no. 4, pp. 5–6.

April 10, 1968
: Account drawn from
Matter
, pp. 15, 20, 72–78; Epstein, “Introduction,” in
D&L
, p. xvii; Wachtel, pp. 53–54; KentVillage, pp. 55–59; Leticia Kent, “Persecution of the City Performed by its Inmates,”
Village Voice
, April 18, 1968; Flint, pp. 172–75; Alexiou, pp. 129–34; “Jane Jacobs and Margot Gayle on Phone to Her Home in Toronto, 6/4/88,” typescript of notes, Burns, 5:3.

Susan Sontag
:
Matter
, p. 168.

“Flanking her”
: Bole, p. 20.

“arrested again”
: JJ to her mother,
Matter
, p. 72.

“the prosecutor made such a case”
: Wachtel, p. 54.

Several months later
: See, for example, JJ to Richard B. Barnett, November 1, 1968, Burns, 5:3, in which she thanks Barnett for his help with a fund used to pay her legal fees: “It certainly feels awfully good to be out from under that jail shadow!” For more details on the Jane Jacobs Legal Defense Fund, see Richard B. Barnett to Jason Epstein, November 21, 1968, Random House Papers, Folder 1365, ColumbiaRare. Jane had to pay about $70 for the damage to the stenotype machine.

“The Social Uses of Power”
: Panel transcripts appear in Janeway, ed., pp. 297–316.

“Is it for hunting”
:
Esquire
(July 1965), caption accompanying Diane Arbus photo of Jane and Ned Jacobs.

“some horrible insect”
:
Matter
, p. 11.

“
CAN YOU CONTRIBUTE
”
: The telegram, dated November 1, 1967, and Jane’s response, Burns.

Eight months later
: Interview, Jane Henderson.

CHAPTER 18: A CIRCLE OF THEIR OWN

They told no one
: The story of the Jacobses’ move to Canada is largely drawn from interviews with Jim, Ned, and Burgin Jacobs.

“think kindly of Toronto”
: Fulford,
Accidental City
, p. 20.

“he phoned me up”
: JJ in interview with Peter Gzowski, May 18, 1993, for program
Morningside
, Burns, MS1995_029_CS08_REF.

“A year from now”
: Robert Fulford, “Lives Lived: Robert Hyde Jacobs,”
Globe and Mail
, September 24, 1996. See also TV coverage on TV-UN, aired June 28, 2006, covering Jane Jacobs Day in New York City. Ned Jacobs, on hand for the event, quotes his father: “ ‘There’s a fine country up there. I think we should go.’ It was a decision none of us regretted.”

through a darker lens
: Dillon, p. 42: “Between her second and third books Jacobs ‘fell out of love with America.’ ”

maybe all of them
: For an example of this thinking, consider Alexander Ross, “Could Jane Jacobs Save Us Millions in Taxes?,” unknown publication, ca. 1969, Burns, 31:2. For him, the Jacobses moved to Toronto “for a variety of reasons,” chief among them being Bob’s professional opportunities in Toronto.

What do you do
: This and other tales of their earliest days in Toronto drawn from interview, Jim Jacobs.

cries of children playing
: Alexander Ross, “Could Jane Jacobs Save Us Millions in Taxes,” unknown publication, ca. 1969, Burns, 31:2; see also
Ethics
, p. 26.

a wobbly start
: Paul Wilson, “Urban Legend,”
Saturday Night
(March 2000); “Conversation,” among JJ and friends,
Ideas That Matter Quarterly
1, no. 1, n.d.

architect Eberhard Zeidler
: Interviews, Jim Jacobs and Eb Zeidler.

“The Future of the American Hospital”
:
Architectural and Engineering News
(November 1965).

“encyclopedic brain”
: Interview, Alan Littlewood.