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BUILDERS
AND
NEW YORK, JANUARY 11, 1913
THE TRANSIT SITUATION IN GREATER NEW YORK
Local Influences, Not Operative in the Same Degree in Other Cities, Will Induce
a Suburban Movement of Exceptional Proportions Here in the Next Ten Years.
By WILLIAM HERBERT.
IN the first article of this series there
were pointed out some of the rea¬
sons which are making for more rapid
suburban development in and around all
the large cities of the United States and
Great Britain. In the present article
the conditions which are making for rap¬
id suburban development in the neigh¬
borhood of New York will be discussed
in some detail. More than any of the
large cities of the world. New Yor'
needs to transfer part of its population
to the cheaper land by which it is sur¬
rounded; and the greatness of the need
has given zest to an enormous, sustained
and costly effort to break through the
physical obstacles which have prevented
the expansion hitherto, and consequently
to give the population of the city access
to the unoccupied areas on its margi.n.
Flat Life Unnatural.
The people of New York have become
so much accustomed to living in tene¬
ments and flats that they have almost
forgotten that such a method of life is
contrary to the ordinary habits and most
deeply-rooted instincts of their forebear*
It seems natural for people of Latin de¬
scent, as the French or Italians, to live
in multiple dwellings; but E.nglish-speak-
ing peoples have always preferred the
detached house, and they do so still. All
over England and the United States the
popular type of residence for the urban
inhabitant is the individual house.
Only the poor and a certain class of the
well-to-do who want to live in a central
location prefer the tenement and apart¬
ment house. New York is. of course, so
much a cosmopolitan city that many of
its residents accept a life in tenements
or apartments without any sense of its
undesirable aspects; but there can be no
doubt that the larger part of the New
York families who are paying a rent of
$40 a month and over to the owner of a
flat would, in case they were able, be
living in a suburban or semi-suburban
house. It is necessity, or what they con¬
ceive to be necessity, rather than choice
which determines their manner of life.
Causes of Congestion.
The physical conditions which have
caused the congestion of the population
of New York are too obvious to require
.M VRTI.K
P.orLEV.\Rn, L.\RCIIMO.\T
GARDENS.
The present series of articles is the
first systematic attempt to collect and
discuss the trade experience of the
several producing and selling branches
of the business of suburban developing
in and adjacent to Greater New York.
Only through a comprehensive study of
that experience Is it possible to ascer¬
tain what are the prevailing tastes and
financial requirements of suburban
home buyers. Information for use in
these articles, which will be gener¬
ously illustrated with photographs and
diagrams, has been obtained from
nearly one hundred of the more active
suburban companies operating in the
local market. The current article is
the second in the series, which con¬
tains ten more articles by William
Herbert, author of "Houses for Town
and Country," and two by A. F. Brinck¬
erhoff, landscape architect.
more than a mention. Tlie original city
of New York was located on an island,
separated on three sides from space to
expand by broad bodies of water. These
waters were not impassable, and large
numbers of New Yorkers have always
crossed the East and Hudson Rivers ev¬
ery da}'. Nevertheless, the easiest out¬
let was toward the north, and until re¬
cently the land to the north claimed the
larger proportion of the increase in popu¬
lation. But the inevitable result was that
the New Yorker had to travel further on
the average in getting to and from his
business than the inhabitant of any other
big city. Because of the pressure of pop¬
ulation on space residential land values
waxed very high, so high that in Man¬
hattan the private house became a rare
type of improvement. Manhattan be¬
came a city of apartment houses and
tenements, and even in the outer bor¬
oughs a large and increasing proportion
of the population were forced to live in
multiple dwellings.
Results of Consolidation.
From the very start unusually costly
and energetic attempts were made to
meet this strain upon the city's means of
transit. The surface cars and the fer¬
ries ceased to be anywhere near satis¬
factory in the seventies, and before 1885
the elevated road and the first Brooklyn
Bridge had been built. A few years later
the need for a subway with an express
service and more bridges had already ap¬
peared, and agitation for their construc¬
tion was begun. For many years, how¬
ever, this agitation was fruitless. The
various plans put forward failed chiefly
because the engineering, financial and
other obstacles were so considerable that
they could not be immediately overcome.
The consolidation of the old City of
New York with the counties of Kings.
Queens and Richmond was the result
chiefly of a widely prevailing opinion
that administrative unitv was a condition
of the ultimate con.struction of an efli-
cient transit system covering the whole
metropolitan area. The first fruits of
consolidation was the building of three
new bridges, although no arrangements
were made to lay out a comprehensive
transit system, of which these bridges