Please note: this text may be incomplete. For more information about this OCR, view
About OCR text.
AND
NEW YORK, AUGUST 19, 1916
HOW THE CITY NOW CONTROLS DEVELOPMENT
OF REALTY HELD BY INVESTORS
THE city government of New York
has just put into effect by a virtually
unanimous vote of the Board of Estimate
the radical and much talked of Zoning
Law. All future buildings will be re¬
stricted as to their height, size and use
and the restrictions will be different in
different parts of the i27 square miles of
the city.
George McAneny, the father of the
law, said: "It is the greatest thing the
city has ever done not even excepting
the building of the great rapid transit
system." Mayor Mitchel said that ne
believed that it would prevent in the
future the enormous decline in property
values such as had occurred below 34th
street, Manhattan. He believed that
residence sections throughout the city
would be protected against the sporadic
store, factory or garage.
Height Limit.
In general, the law will limit the height
of buildings in proportion to the widths
of the streets on which they face all the
way from two and a half times the width
of the street in the financial district,
through two times the width of the street
in central Manhattan, with one and one-
half times in the balance of Manhattan
and in small portions of the other
boroughs, down to once the width of the
streetthroughout all the rest oi tne city.
A future Equitable building could only
be a third as high because it faces on
narrow streets but a tower in the center
of it, half as large again as the Wool-
worth tower, might rise to any height.
The Woolworth building, on the other
hand, if facing on a park, might be very
nearly duplicated. The shopping dis¬
trict on Fifth avenue will consist of
buildings not much higher than Tiffany's
but along 42nd street buildings may rise
about as high as the Hotel Manhattan
or Knickerbocker. Twelve and 14-story
apartments will continue to go up on the
main avenue and eight and nine-story
apartments on the side streets, but no
building of any kind can go any higher
except by setting back from the street.
Throughout mos"t of the city, however,
four or five stories will be the limit.
Towers may be built to any height, but
they cannot cover more than a quarter
of the lot. Mansards, dormers and ter¬
races are encouraged; anything that will
open up the streets and bring light down
into them by making the upper part of
the buildings set back from the street
above a reasonable height.
Control of Size.
The size of buildings will bo con¬
trolled by the fact that the law requires
just so much open space on each lot.
This again ranges all the way from the
wareho\ise districts along the commer¬
cial waterfront and along the freight
railways where a building may cover the
whole of its lot, through the B, C and
D districts, so called, in each of which
in succession a building has to provide
for larger and larser yards and courts,
down to the villa districts where ^ a
liouse can cover only 30 per cent, of its
lot and must be widely separated from
its neighbor on at least one side.
Throughout Manhattan and the densely
built-up portions of the other borougns,
yards and courts in office buildings, fac¬
tories, lofts, hotels, apartments, in fact
all buildings, would have to be as large
By GEORGE B. FORD
as those that have been required for the
last 14 years in tenement and apartment
houses. Everywhere the yards and
courts have to be increasingly larger at
the top as a building goes up in height,
so much so that these requirements tend
to limit the practicable economic height
of buildings even more effectively than
do those directly affecting height. This
is particularly true in the outlying bor¬
oughs. One important feature of the
law is the encouragement it gives to
playgrounds for material concessions are
allowed to anyone who will provide ade¬
quate recreational space in connection
with his buildings.
Right here it is desirable to sound a
note of warning. It would be most un¬
fortunate if the law were applied as it
stands to other cities, for it is full of un¬
duly liberal provisions in the way of
height and size that tend strongly to
defeat the object of the law but which
were necessitated by the exceptional eco¬
nomic conditions of New York.
As to the use of buildings, there are
only two general classes of restrictions;
first, the districts which are restricted
against business and industry of all
sorts, the so-called "residence" districts,
and second, the tracts which are re¬
stricted only against manufacturing and
public stables and garages, the so-called
"business" districts. In the former al¬
most any kind of building that people
live in is allowed; also churches, schools,
hospitals and various institutional build¬
ings. In the business districts any res¬
idence use is allowed and even a certain
small proportion of the unobjectionable
types of manufacturing. The use dis¬
tricts have been laid down street by
street and in fact block by block, de¬
pending on existing conditions and
tendencies. The result has been that
about two-fifths of Manhattan and about
two-thirds of the whole city has been
set aside for all time for strictly resi¬
dential use, while the main thorough¬
fares, the transit streets and all other
streets that are or might be appropri¬
ately used for stores or show rooms are
set aside as business streets. _ Many
streets which are now seriously invaded
by factories or garages are restricted
against them from now on because it
was felt that they were a distinct harm
to the street. Oh this ground all of the
central part of Manhattan above 23rd
street was made a business district de¬
spite the fact that there were already
hundreds of factories employing in all
upwards of 30,000 operatives within the
district. This law will not touch the ex¬
isting factory lofts, as it is in no sense
retroactive, but the "Saving New York"
movement, in which most of the mer¬
chants along Fifth Avenue combined to
oust the factories in the neighborhood,
has already succeeded in persuading al¬
most all of the manufacturers to inove
away. It was a remarkable and timely
vindication of the economic need of this
law.
It is interesting to see how the un¬
broken residence districts have been be¬
coming larger and larger at tne insis¬
tence of the property owners themselves
so that in some cases of their own voli¬
tion they must walk at least a mile to
the nearest store of any sort. These re¬
strictions do not interfere in any way
with existing or future private restric¬
tions placed on any property except that
if this law happens to be more drastic
than the latter in any particular, this
law would govern.
All of the balance of the city which is
not in one or the other of these two
kinds of districts is left unrestricted. It
includes all of the land appropriate for
industry along the navigable waterfront
and along the freight railways, as well
as most of the territory which is now
given over to manufacturing. It in¬
cludes also scattered throughout the city
a number of blocks which are already
invaded by public garages or which are
appropriate for that use. Certain otner
areas, especially around Jamaica Bay
and along the shores of Staten Island
are left entirely undetermined in their
use pending the working out of the
plans for the port and terminal facili¬
ties of New York.
Superintendents Administer Law.
The law will be administered by the
Superintendent of Buildings in each of
the five boroughs and in so far as it af¬
fects tenement houses the law will be ad¬
ministered by the Tenement House Com¬
missioner, while the following up of
buildings after they are completed will
be under the jurisdiction of the fire com¬
missioner. In any case, wherever there
is any question about the application of
the law in a specific case, the matter
can be taken to the newly constituted
Board of Appeals, which is the board ol
review for all matters that relate to
the construction or use of buildings. In
addition, the law has in it a number of
specific clauses giving the Board of Ap¬
peals discretion in allowing exceptions
to the law.
The law itself can be changed only by
the Board of Estimate and Apportion¬
ment which created it, and they can, af¬
ter due notice and hearing, make amend¬
ments at any time, but if in any case 20
per cent, of the property owners affect¬
ed by a change object, the Board of Es¬
timate can make the change only by a
unanimous vote. There is also a clause
which says that if on any street or dis¬
trict SO per cent, of the property owners
sign a petition for a change in the map
as affecting that district, then the Board
of Estimate must act on it in one way
or another within 90 days. It is realized
that the law and maps are not perfect
and they must be changed from time to
time. The provision for change is made
difficult as the whole law would be of
no value at all unless property owners
knew what to count on and conditions
were stable.
Idea Often Broached.
The idea of limiting the heights of
buildings has often been broached in
New York, but it did not come to a head
until early in 1913, when George Mc¬
Aneny, then President of the Borough
of Manhattan, asked the Board of Es¬
timate to appoint a commission to con¬
sider the problem of controlling the
height, size and arrangement of build-
in.£rs.
Such a commission of nineteen leading
citizens, with Edward M. Bassett as
Chairman and George B. Ford as Secre¬
tary, was appointed in March of that
year, and after nine months of study pre¬
sented a report in which they showed
conclusively that the problem was far
bigger than one of merely limiting the
maximum height of buildings as that