Columbia University Libraries Digital Collections: The Real Estate Record

Real estate record and builders' guide: [v. 98, no. 2527: Articles]: August 19, 1916

Text version:

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