The Misunderstood History of Gentrification : People, Planning, Preservation, and Urban Renewal, 1915-2020 [1 ed.] 9781439920442, 9781439920435

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The Misunderstood History of Gentrification

In the series Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy, edited by David Stradling, Larry Bennett, and Davarian Baldwin. Founding editor, Zane L. Miller. Amy D. Finstein, Modern Mobility Aloft: Elevated Highways, Architecture, and Urban Change in Pre-Interstate America Mark Shiel, ed., Architectures of Revolt: The Cinematic City circa 1968 Maureen Donaghy, Democratizing Urban Development: Community Organizations for Housing across the United States and Brazil Maureen A. Flanagan, Constructing the Patriarchal City: Gender and the Built Environments of London, Dublin, Toronto, and Chicago, 1870s into the 1940s Harold L. Platt, Sinking Chicago: Climate Change and the Remaking of a Flood-Prone Environment Pamela Wilcox, Francis T. Cullen, and Ben Feldmeyer, Communities and Crime: An Enduring American Challenge J. Mark Souther, Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in “The Best Location in the Nation” Nathanael Lauster, The Death and Life of the Single-Family House: Lessons from Vancouver on Building a Livable City Aaron Cowan, A Nice Place to Visit: Tourism and Urban Revitalization in the Postwar Rustbelt Carolyn Gallaher, The Politics of Staying Put: Condo Conversion and Tenant Right-to-Buy in Washington, DC Evrick Brown and Timothy Shortell, eds., Walking in Cities: Quotidian Mobility as Urban Theory, Method, and Practice Michael T. Maly and Heather Dalmage, Vanishing Eden: White Construction of Memory, Meaning, and Identity in a Racially Changing City Harold L. Platt, Building the Urban Environment: Visions of the Organic City in the United States, Europe, and Latin America Kristin M. Szylvian, The Mutual Housing Experiment: New Deal Communities for the Urban Middle Class Kathryn Wilson, Ethnic Renewal in Philadelphia’s Chinatown: Space, Place, and Struggle Robert Gioielli, Environmental Activism and the Urban Crisis: Baltimore, St. Louis, Chicago Robert B. Fairbanks, The War on Slums in the Southwest: Public Housing and Slum Clearance in Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, 1936–1965 Carlton Wade Basmajian, Atlanta Unbound: Enabling Sprawl through Policy and Planning Scott Larson, “Building Like Moses with Jacobs in Mind”: Contemporary Planning in New York City Gary Rivlin, Fire on the Prairie: Harold Washington, Chicago Politics, and the Roots of the Obama Presidency William Issel, Church and State in the City: Catholics and Politics in Twentieth-Century San Francisco Jerome Hodos, Second Cities: Globalization and Local Politics in Manchester and Philadelphia Julia L. Foulkes, To the City: Urban Photographs of the New Deal William Issel, For Both Cross and Flag: Catholic Action, Anti-Catholicism, and National Security Politics in World War II San Francisco Lisa Hoffman, Patriotic Professionalism in Urban China: Fostering Talent John D. Fairfield, The Public and Its Possibilities: Triumphs and Tragedies in the American City Andrew Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities

Dennis E. Gale

The Misunderstood History of Gentrification People, Planning, Preservation, and Urban Renewal, 1915–2020

temple university press Philadelphia    •    Rome    •    Tokyo

Temple University Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 tupress.temple.edu Copyright © 2021 by Temple University—Of The Commonwealth System of Higher Education All rights reserved Published 2021 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Gale, Dennis E., author. Title: The misunderstood history of gentrification : people, planning, preservation, and urban renewal, 1915–2020 / Dennis E. Gale. Other titles: Urban life, landscape, and policy. Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2021. | Series: Urban life, landscape, and policy | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Offers evidence that the phenomenon of American gentrification has much earlier historical roots than many believe, and argues that a more thorough understanding of this history has implications for how we should think about impoverished communities, “obsolete” structures, and urban neighborhoods going forward.”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020013136 (print) | LCCN 2020013137 (ebook) | ISBN 9781439920428 (cloth) | ISBN 9781439920435 (paperback) | ISBN 9781439920442 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Gentrification—United States—History—20th century. | Urban renewal— United States—History—20th century. Classification: LCC HT175 .G353 2021 (print) | LCC HT175 (ebook) | DDC 307.3/41609730904—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013136 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013137 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992 Printed in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is lovingly dedicated to Diana S. Kash, my soulmate and fellow wordsmith, for her forbearance and understanding during the ceaseless hours of my research and writing.

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

1

I Embryonic Gentrification: Case Studies and Examples 1 The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945

23

2 The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945

60

3 The Beacon Hill Neighborhood of Boston, 1915–1945

85

4 Early Embryonic Gentrification: An Atlantic and Gulf Coast Phenomenon

109

II Urban Redevelopment/Renewal Contends with the Gentrification Paradigm, 1945–1980 5 Federal Policies to Reverse Urban Decline, 1949–1974

129

6 The Decade of the Neighborhood and the “Discovery” of Gentrification

163

viii / Contents

III Dilemmas in Definition and Dialectics 7 Embryonic Gentrification and Advanced Gentrification, 1980–2018

179

Conclusion

198

References

209

Index

227

Preface and Acknowledgments

M

illions of Americans are generally familiar with the much-­bally­ hooed urban crisis of the 1950s and 1960s. My generation of urbanists came of age, as it were, in the midst of this intensely troubling period. Progressing even as the civil rights movement was in full swing and the federal War on Poverty was at its zenith, the decline of American ­cities—physically, economically, and socially—posed a forbidding challenge to scholars, planners, and others. Consequently, when increasing signs of what would later be known as gentrification appeared during the 1960s and 1970s, a good deal of skepticism arose among some observers. It is difficult to convey to younger scholars today just how remarkable (and counter­ intuitive) was the appearance of thousands of mostly middle-class singles and couples who were renovating and occupying older city sections often labeled slums or ghettos. After all, for decades, millions of people had been abandoning cities as numerous areas succumbed to disinvestment, crime, and poverty. It was tempting, then, for some critics to dismiss gentrification as an aberration or an outlier. And even though the national incidence of gentrification today is still outpaced by suburbanization and urban disinvestment, its most aggressive manifestations are profoundly redefining cities such as Boston, New York, Washington, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles. Thus, in many cities gentrification has lost the astonishing, gee-whiz element we once associated with this transformative urban phenomenon and has morphed into a quotidian, albeit seemingly enduring, trend. And yet, despite the appearance of endless

x  / Preface and Acknowledgments

publications, podcasts, blogs, television programs, and films on aspects of gentrification, there remains an important missing link in our understanding of its full dimensions. The inspiration for this book came shortly after I completed my doctoral dissertation, “Restoration in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., 1915–1965” in 1982. Before that, as a faculty member in city planning at George Washington University, I had conducted some early research in Washington on what was then referred to as the back-to-the-city movement. Aging neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle, Capitol Hill, Adams Morgan, and Mount Pleasant were undergoing intensive renovation, and it was clear that some sections once viewed as liminal slums were attracting new residents and investment capital. But my dissertation research on the Georgetown neighborhood made clear that the phenomenon soon to be known widely in the United States as gentrification did not originate in the 1960s or 1970s, as was widely assumed. Rather, in Washington, at least, it first appeared in the 1910s and 1920s. Despite my efforts, however, I could find no comprehensive documentation of Georgetown’s transition in print. Early in my career, I authored several articles and two books on contemporary gentrification in the United States and Europe. But somehow, I never got around to publishing an account of my dissertation findings. As my academic career progressed, I assumed that someone else would write the definitive study of Georgetown’s resurgence from a declining neighborhood to the totally gentrified, elite enclave it became. As it turned out, nothing quite like that appeared. Thus, “better late than never” is perhaps a fitting rationale for the long-delayed book you now hold in your hands. My scholarly debts are many. But they begin with my two principal dissertation advisors at George Washington University, Frederick “Fritz” Gutheim and Howard Gillette Jr. Fritz patiently helped me navigate numerous historical thickets, using his mastery of the evolution of city planning in the nation’s capital. Howard, then a resident of Washington’s gentrifying Mount Pleasant neighborhood, was an urban historian of emerging national repute. Thankfully, he cured my myopic concentration on the intricate details of Georgetown’s gentrification by nudging me to relate my observations to the larger currents of history across Washington and other U.S. cities. Another George Washington University colleague and fellow urbanist, Jeffrey Henig, alerted me to certain oversights in an early draft of my dissertation, which opened an entirely new dimension for exploration. It was Fritz, however, who first made me aware that early twentieth-century U.S. gentrification was not unique to Washington. Indeed, Carolyn Ware’s Greenwich Village, 1920–1930 ([1935] 1994) and Walter Firey’s Land Use in Central Boston ([1947] 1968) documented comparable phenomena in New York City and Boston, respectively. Although I did not include extensive

Preface and Acknowledgments  /  xi

coverage of Ware’s or Firey’s research in my dissertation, I realized that the scholarly depictions of American gentrification extant in the 1970s and 1980s were missing a crucial prologue. This book, then, is my attempt to recontextualize American gentrification within the more expansive historical framework it has so desperately lacked. I am grateful for the generosity of five people who, approximately forty years ago, provided me with oral testimonies on aspects of Georgetown’s early revitalization: Grosvenor Chapman, John Gill, Everett Payne, Armistead Peter, and J. Bernard Wykoff. Their recollections helped clear the fog around several matters related to the revitalization of Georgetown. Absent their insights, these details would likely be lost to memory today. Librarians then at the Georgetown branch of the District of Columbia Public Library, the Martin Luther King Jr. Library, and the Columbia Historical Society (now the Historical Society of Washington, D.C.) turned up invaluable ephemeral items such as extant official studies and reports, news clipping files, and local journal articles. Several historical records pertaining to the city of Washington were provided to me at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, and the National Capital Planning Commission. And thanks to the Commerce Research Library, I was able to unearth long-­ forgotten records of Washington’s decennial censuses for the years 1910 to 1960. More recently, I benefited from research at the Boston Public Library and the Beacon Hill Civic Association, as well as the New York Public Library and Columbia University’s Butler Library. Finally, over the past ten years, I have plumbed the depths of Stanford University’s bountiful Green Library and the Art and Architecture Library. I am indebted to all these institutions. Yet there is no substitute for firsthand experience, and I have been fortunate to have lived in or near Boston (1964–1969), Philadelphia (1969– 1971), and Washington, D.C. (1971–1989). During those years I rented apartments, respectively, on Beacon Hill (1967–1968) and Society Hill (1971), in Georgetown (1971–1973), and on Capitol Hill (1973–1974). All four neighborhoods are discussed in this book, and my many excursions through their streets and alleys provided me with insights that can come only from direct observation. Similarly, my long-ago internships with the Boston Redevelopment Authority (1968), the Model Cities Administration of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (1969), and the Philadelphia Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights under Law (1969–1970) shed light on the inner workings of the federal Urban Renewal and Model Cities programs, which influenced my coverage of those topics in this book. Moreover, it was my privilege to have become a fellow traveler with several people who were among the first generation of scholars to conduct research on U.S. gentrification in the 1970s and 1980s. Among those in our

xii  / Preface and Acknowledgments

ranks were Daphne Spain, Shirley Bradway Laska, Greg Lipton, Howard Sumka, Roman Cybriwsky, Phillip Clay, Rob Hollister, Tim Pattison, Rolf Goetze, Neil Smith, Michael Schill, David Varady, and Richard Nathan. Their research efforts contributed numerous insights into the dynamics of gentrification and dispelled several misperceptions. Today, of course, a small army of scholars, journalists, and others worldwide have probed this phenomenon, ostensibly to the point of molecularity. But the more recent work of two scholars, in particular, has made explicit that gentrification’s U.S. origins date back earlier than the 1960s or 1970s. I acknowledge an intellectual debt to both Suleiman Osman (The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn) and Andrew S. Dolkart (The Row House Reborn), whose research on early gentrification in New York City inspired and energized my work on this book. I am grateful to Larry Bennett, professor emeritus at DePaul University and a coeditor of the Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy series at Temple University Press, for his untiring efforts to help me chisel out a refined manuscript from the rough version I first shared with him. Familiar with Larry’s extensive scholarship in urban studies, I was indeed fortunate to have the opportunity to work with him in the writing and rewriting of this book. My sincere thanks go to Aaron Javsicas, editor in chief of the press, for his continued encouragement. His faith in my ability to turn out a publishable manuscript, despite my initial difficulties, propelled me forward with renewed enthusiasm. Three anonymous readers selected by the press scoured my earlier drafts and shared their valued insights and suggestions. Whatever the liabilities of this book, it is in considerably better shape thanks to their scrutiny. Additionally, my longtime colleague and friend, David Varady, of the University of Cincinnati, read an earlier version of my manuscript and contributed several insights that helped me refine the narrative and eliminate some fuzzy thinking on my part. Cartographer Michael Siegel of Rutgers University ably rendered the neighborhood maps herein, adding immeasurably to the spatial legibility of the three case studies. Despite the collective contributions to this book from the aforementioned people, any sins of omission or commission are entirely my own responsibility. Finally, I offer a tip of the hat to my local Peet’s coffeehouse for plying me with tidal waves of caffeinated beverages and providing a remote “office” in which, over the years, I wrote and rewrote this book.

The Misunderstood History of Gentrification

Introduction

I

t was a Saturday afternoon in the spring of 1979, and I was stripping panels of evil-smelling asphalt siding from the exterior walls of our 1896 Queen Anne Victorian house. You have probably seen asphalt siding before. It was a popular material to cover aging wood frame houses and provide a bit of insulation. A composite of pressed fibers resembling cardboard, each rectangular panel was overlain with a coat of asphalt imprinted in a brick-like pattern. As the panels aged, however, they looked more like an ill-fitting patchwork coat. Asphalt siding had the advantage of being cheap. Plus, once it was installed, you never had to paint your house again. My removal method was simple enough: using a crowbar, I pulled out the nails holding the panels in place, peeled the panels away, and stacked them in piles. Then I scraped the dried paint shards from the original clapboard siding underneath. They fell to the ground like potato chips. This process was repeated over and over until all the asphalt panels were removed. (Later, in the evening darkness, I hereby confess, I hauled the panels a block away to an industrial dumpster to make an unlawful nighttime deposit.) Over the previous few weeks, I had spent untold hours perched high on a thirty-foot ladder ridding the house of its ugly garb. Today, however, I worked at ground level on our wraparound front porch, which lay just beneath the house’s second-floor turret. Wrenching another panel away, I suddenly made an odd discovery. The clapboard underneath was blackened. At first I feared it was some form of wood rot. So I removed two more panels. Then three. Then five. No, this was not rot. Instead, the clapboard was

2 / Introduction

charred, unlike the other sections of the house I had worked on. A little probing with a screwdriver revealed that the burned area was only about an eighth of an inch deep. Underneath, the wood was in good condition. There must have been a brief fire, I surmised. Maybe the house had been struck by lightning. And someone—probably in the 1940s or 1950s, when asphalt siding was still popular—had wanted to conceal this damage. Just then, my neighbor, known to all as Mr. Medley, walked by. Retired from the navy, Wilfred Medley was the “mayor” of our block. His wife and he lived a few doors down the street. With many years of residence, Mr. Medley knew a great deal about our neighbors. Curious, I pointed to the burned area and asked him if he had any idea when the fire had occurred. He hesitated, walked through the chain link gate, and stared at the scorched siding. Then he looked at the ground, as though searching his memory. Finally, he looked up again and turned to me. “Yeah, I remember that. They, uh, they tried to burn him out,” he replied. Puzzled, I asked, “Who tried to burn who out?” I could see that my neighbor had no trouble recollecting this incident. No, his hesitation was due to something else. He looked off into the distance for what seemed a long time. Then he cleared his throat. “Ya see, they didn’t want a colored family movin’ in here. It was all white back then . . . this block was.” “You mean,” I said, “that white families tried to set the house on fire?” Medley simply nodded. “Some of ’em did, I guess,” he responded haltingly. “Now, this was a long time ago,” he added, as if to reassure me. “Well, who was living in this house when that happened?” I asked, pointing to the charred area. Medley smiled. “He was a vet like me. A retired army sergeant. And he bought that house and moved his family in. One evening, he smelled smoke. He could see flames through the window, and he ran out to his porch. He saw people runnin’ off into the dark. He was lucky ’cause the fire hadn’t burned too long. He got out his garden hose and put it out.” “Did they ever catch the arsonists?” I inquired, knowing his answer even before he gave it. “No . . . no,” he shook his head. “The police came by, but nothin’ ever came of it. Y’see, back then, things like that happened in D.C.” I was somewhat familiar with the history of racial change in Washington, especially in the period after World War II, and I was not surprised that the arsonists had escaped justice. But I had just learned that my own home bore the ugly scars of racial conflict. I felt ashamed and embarrassed—­ especially in the presence of Mr. Medley, who, like his long-ago neighbor, may have been the object of such aggression. My wife and I were one of only

Introduction / 3

two white families living on our block. Ironic, I thought to myself, that decades earlier, black folks like Mr. Medley and my home’s former occupant were the pioneers on our block. Back then, many minority families in American cities encountered block busting, redlining, racially restrictive covenants, and open violence as they pursued the American dream. Now, my wife and I were the newcomers. But in our case, our neighbors had welcomed us and seemed genuinely pleased at the improvements we were making to our house. No one had harmed us or our property. How could they? I asked myself. After all, directly across the street, our neighbor, Mrs. Green, posted herself daily in her second-floor window, providing eyes on the street. Very little escaped her attention. I did not know how to respond to Mr. Medley. Breaking the awkward silence, he continued. “Yeah, after that happened, he decided to put that siding on the house. He wanted to cover up the burn marks. I told him to put up asbestos siding ’cause it’s fireproof. But he said it was too expensive. He just wanted to cover up that fire damage. So he chose asphalt siding instead.” After thanking Mr. Medley, I went inside, my mind racing. Before my marriage, I had enjoyed renting apartments in Georgetown and on Capitol Hill, both historic neighborhoods. Over 1977 and 1978, I searched for a period house with character. Everywhere I looked, though, it seemed, people were renovating houses in older neighborhoods. Many people had beautifully restored their home to its former luster, with window shutters and flower boxes, brass door knockers, new gingerbread-style ornamentation, and refinished interior woodwork. Prices were rising quickly, and I soon learned that several hot neighborhoods were already beyond my means. Desperate, I began looking far afield from the most sought-after sections and in 1978 bought a house in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington. The campus of Catholic University and the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception were blocks away. Long an enclave of white Catholic families, Brookland had a population now composed predominantly of working-class and lower-middle-class blacks and whites. (Aside from Mr. Medley, Mrs. Green, and several other African American families, my immediate neighbors included a retired white blue-collar worker and a South Asian couple.) As far as I could tell, there were few, if any, home renovations going on in our neighborhood. Brookland was isolated from the trendy areas of the city such as Adams Morgan, Mount Pleasant, and Capitol Hill. I had purchased the three-bedroom, one-bath house for just under $50,000. And I took some satisfaction in the fact that I had not forced any renters out of their home. Soon after I moved in, my fiancée and I were married. My wife became my fellow handyman as we devoted evenings and weekends to scraping old

4 / Introduction

paint, patching plaster, and hanging wallpaper. (I pretended not to hear her when she accused me of conscripting her for cheap labor.) From the neighbors, we learned that 716 Hamlin Street NE, our address, had earlier been a group home or commune inhabited by a half-dozen hippies, who threw frequent parties. Their successors, a white professional couple from whom I purchased the property, were fond of Day-Glo colors in the kitchen, with orange and green trim around the windows. The patriarch, an electrical engineer with a Ph.D., had jerry-rigged a fuse box with a delirium of wires and cables in the cellar. Mr. Medley, a professional electrician, surveyed his handiwork and muttered to himself in disgust. Soon he was under contract to us to correct the engineer’s many mistakes. The unsettling discovery that day was redolent with irony. It brought home to me the realization that, although parts of Washington were undergoing reinvestment after decades of physical and economic decline, a darker period had preceded this trend. As African Americans and other minorities had moved into the city’s neighborhoods seeking decent housing, especially over the first half of the twentieth century, all too often they were met with animosity, if not outright violence. And our house offered one tiny example. How, I wondered, did my neighbors feel about that? And how many of my fellow gentry in Washington were even aware of the heavy burdens of discrimination and segregation occurring a generation ago against minorities? Over the four years during which my wife and I occupied our Victorian home, I would never again take for granted our right to live there. The ugly history of racism had mortgaged any feelings of entitlement we might have held. A moral debt came with our home, and we would never forget the warmth and hospitality our neighbors showed us, in spite of the cruelty and incivility that had preceded us in an earlier era.

Gentrification In the years ahead, these and other personal experiences would frame several of my research projects on urban decline, reinvestment, and revitalization. I would learn a great deal about the small-scale physical, economic, and social transformations—of which my wife and I were now an infinitesimal part—taking place in several American cities. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, some researchers referred to it in phrases such as “neighborhood revitalization” and “neighborhood resettlement” (Clay 1979a; Gale 1984). Soon, though, it became widely known in North America by a neologism coined more than a decade earlier by British sociologist Ruth Glass (1964): gentrification. Glass observed the renovation of older housing by young, white, middle-class do-it-yourselfers in at least seven working-class sections of inner London. At the time, outmigration from London to the

Introduction / 5

suburbs was a common mobility pattern for middle-class households. As one scholar pointed out, however, housing rehabilitation had already been under way in isolated small areas of London for at least a decade preceding Glass’s observations (Moran 2007). Glass’s expression, “gentrification,” denoted not the random or occasional improvement of older city properties but, rather, a more or less systematic and continual process leading ultimately to the nearly complete conversion of a neighborhood’s physical, economic, and social character. In short, gentrification was not merely ameliorative; it was transformative. More than a half century has passed since Glass shared her observations of London’s regeneration, and it is remarkable how prescient were her insights. As for the United States, why was the specification of the process Glass labeled gentrification significant in the late 1970s and 1980s? For much of the early and mid-twentieth century, the expected and prevailing pattern of change in the inner core of older cities was for buildings and spaces to deteriorate as they aged. Even before World War II, one of the nation’s most respected economists, Homer Hoyt, described a process that would later become known as filter or filtering theory (1939, 81–82, 95). This presumption argued that as housing becomes older, it usually filters downward in physical and economic terms when compared to other dwellings in the local housing supply. As it does so, it deteriorates physically, and its value diminishes relative to other, newer homes. Its features—electrical and mechanical systems and kitchens and bathrooms, for example—become obsolescent (Hoyt 1939, 111). People with low and moderate incomes tend to inhabit such properties, either as renters or owners. Meanwhile, the theory continues, most households will filter upward in terms of socioeconomic status as they progress through the human life cycle. As they do so, they typically inhabit increasingly “better” homes and neighborhoods. Hoyt’s views were resolute on the feasibility of reversing downward filtering in cities. Simply renovating scattered individual houses in the midst of large slums, he opined, was futile. The middle-income home-seeker will bypass even new inner-city properties and move to the suburbs “where his children can associate with other children in his own economic and social class, and not with the children of slum dwellers” (Hoyt 1966, 210). “Blighted areas in the midst of cities,” Hoyt added, were “jungles of crime” and “training grounds for criminals” (211). He prescribed demolishing “houses in the worst areas” and replacing them with entirely new neighborhoods. Once a neighborhood’s houses reached an age of approximately a half century, he noted, and a majority were in poor condition, complete clearance and rebuilding was in order (600–601). Filter theory continued to influence scholarly and professional understanding about older urban neighborhoods in the midcentury decades

6 / Introduction

(Lowry 1960; Ratcliff 1949). Housing economists William Grigsby and Louis Rosenberg, for example, offered an explanation of how differential patterns of housing quality evolve in a given community, from upper-income estates, to middle-income subdivisions, to lower-income “slums” or “ghettos” (1975, 196–197). And while a dwelling’s age, per se, was not considered absolutely determinative of its ultimate fate, Grigsby and Rosenberg considered it a reliable indicator. Apparently, the U.S. Bureau of the Census agreed, for it began collecting housing data (including the estimated age of each dwelling unit) for the first time in the 1940 decennial census (Barnhart 1953, 5). Implicit in filter theory was the assumption that housing, like automobiles or vacuum cleaners, depreciates in value as it ages and as newer, more modern housing becomes available (Galster 1987, 235). At the core of filter theory was what I term the obsolescence thesis—the expectation that as a housing unit ages, its architecture becomes unfashionable, and its physical and mechanical elements become dated (Hoyt 1939, 111, 121). Filter theory was particularly associated with the mass production techniques arising during the American industrial revolution of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Prior to this, housing units were typically built one at a time by craftsmen for individual clients. Or, in many cases, families built their own home. The factory system, with innovations such as assembly line production, made possible the creation of large numbers of consumer goods at lower prices than was possible through earlier cottage-industry methods. Many of the elements of a house or apartment—radiators, furnaces, or stoves, for example—could be manufactured in large quantities and shipped to building sites for installation. The invention of wire nails and balloon frame technology replaced the slower, more arduous, mortise-and-tenon form of construction. Plaster and lathe inner wall surfaces gave way to mass-produced Sheetrock, or drywall. Advances such as these contributed to substantially increasing U.S. housing stocks. Unfortunately, they sometimes resulted in shoddy workmanship and less resilient housing quality. With time, such units deteriorated more rapidly, hastening neighborhood decline. Additionally, as housing supplies mushroomed relative to demand, older dwellings were more readily devalued, further eroding neighborhood conditions. Furthermore, as middle-class outmigration to the metropolitan suburbs increased, owners of property in the urban areas left behind often deferred maintenance and subdivided single-family homes into apartments or rooms. Overcrowding and accelerated wear and tear were common outcomes (Gruen 2010, 91–92). On top of these factors, older residential neighborhoods built prior to the advent of municipal zoning and building codes were not infrequently cursed by inconsistent land uses such as factories, warehouses, and

Introduction / 7

unkempt vacant lots. As noise, smoke, truck traffic, and other hazards compromised neighborhood residential character, families fled to more tranquil areas if they could afford to do so. Thus, by the mid-twentieth century, a variety of influences added to the physical and economic decline of inner cities, resulting in widespread vacancies, owner-abandonment, and even arson. In the argot of mid-twentieth-century economists, homes in such areas suffered from diminishing marginal utility. Put another way, the devaluation of housing led many people to believe that today’s silk-purse housing would eventually become tomorrow’s sow’s ear. Because the phenomenon I term embryonic gentrification defied these presumed norms—in effect turning a sow’s ear into a silk purse through reinvestment and rehabilitation—it was dismissed by many observers as an aberration. Filter theory, together with its corollary, the obsolescence thesis, whether known by those terms or not, pervaded the thinking of real estate agents, bankers, investors, developers, and others whose opinions largely determined housing and neighborhood outcomes. (As discussed further on, rent gap theory, a more recent development, provides a satisfactory resolution to the oversights of filter theory.) Further altering the nature of American housing markets during the industrial age was the pace of suburbanization. The construction of commuter rail and streetcar systems between the 1870s and 1920s opened up vast areas outside city boundaries, where land and housing prices were affordable to millions of consumers (K. Jackson 1985; Warner 1978). Later, the mass production of automobiles from the 1920s onward accelerated this pattern. New homes with spacious yards, modern kitchens and baths, and garages, as well as up-to-date plumbing and electrical service, convinced millions of home-seekers to forsake city living. Thousands of urban neighborhoods were devalorized, leading to owner neglect and physical and economic deterioration. The post–World War II economic recovery accelerated suburbanization, and yesterday’s pristine neighborhood became tomorrow’s city slum. Responding to an epidemic of white flight, experts argued that these migrants were being pushed out of cities by fears of decreasing property values, racial and socioeconomic change, rising crime, decaying infrastructure, and declining public schools. At the same time, they were being pulled by the suburban attractions of larger, more modern homes; safer streets; better schools; escalating real estate values; and in some cases lower property tax burdens than were available in cities (Kleinberg 1995, 123). These trends reinforced the premises on which filter theory was grounded. In London, as in many U.S. cities, gentrification in the 1960s and 1970s was noteworthy (if not remarkable) precisely because it ran counter to

8 / Introduction

expected norms. Occurring in an era when American and British cities were increasingly thought to be in decline, the presumptive trajectory for many older neighborhoods was gradual physical and economic erosion and the succession of middle-class residents by poor and working-class households. However, gentrification inverted this process, resulting not only in physical and economic renewal but in what I term upward socioeconomic transition, or the succession of poor and working-class people by those of middle- and even upper-class status. Since the 1970s, the gentrification trend has accelerated to varying degrees in dozens of cities and towns across the American landscape. Larger urban centers such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Columbus, Atlanta, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon, for example, all contain examples. So, also, do smaller cities such as Charleston, Savannah, Miami Beach, Hoboken, Jersey City, and Portland, Maine. Most significant to public officials, gentrification injected desperately needed private capital into city areas where disinvestment had become the norm. And with capital came new tax revenues for city treasuries and employment opportunities for city residents. Despite these attractions, however, gentrification bore certain negatives. As neighborhood population profiles transitioned from poor and working-class to middle-class status— not infrequently driving out racial and ethnic minorities—local media coverage raised questions about gentrification’s benefits and costs. And as affordable housing stocks were whittled away by rising demand from more affluent newcomers, community organizations and city administrations struggled to find replacement dwellings. Some researchers have contrasted gentrification with incumbent upgrading, which involves home improvements by owners who have lived in the neighborhood for a period of years, rather than by newcomers (Goetze 1979, 103–104; Palen and London 1984a, 8–9; Varady 1986). However, a number of issues militated against the acceleration of such a trend. First, incumbent owners in declining neighborhoods often proved reluctant to renovate their home, fearing they would sacrifice their investment if property values remained stagnant or declined. Similarly, landlords were hesitant to improve their rental properties because demand among potential tenants might not be sufficient to justify the higher rents they would have to charge to amortize their renovation expenses. Second, even among incumbent owners who were willing to renovate a property, access to capital was often constrained by the reluctance of banks to lend their depositors’ savings in areas perceived to be in economic and social decline (e.g., redlining). Third, for incumbent owners in gentrifying neighborhoods, there might be no need to renovate a property for subsequent sale, if demand among

Introduction / 9

gentry was sufficiently high. This is especially true in areas in which newcomers are rapidly bidding prices upward. As a result of these circumstances and the difficulty of distinguishing empirically between gentrification and incumbent upgrading, there appears to be little evidence that the latter has developed as a significant trend in the United States.

Historical Gaps and Back Stories Like other researchers in the late 1970s, I assumed at that time that the phenomenon we were just beginning to call gentrification was unprecedented in the American context. With more research, however, I was surprised to learn that in a few American cities, gentrification’s roots dated back at least to the World War I era. The manifestations of gentrification I witnessed firsthand in Boston and Philadelphia in the late 1960s and in Washington in the 1970s, then, represented not the birth of this phenomenon in America but, rather, its continuance and expansion in an ongoing but poorly understand process. Today the scholarly literature on U.S. gentrification contains countless books, articles, and research papers. Similarly, copious online postings and podcasts, as well as radio and television coverage, have made gentrification a household word. A simple Google keyword search of the term “gentrification” on March 27, 2018, produced more than 5.5 million hits. Even in the more rarefied atmosphere of university research circles, Google Scholar yielded 20,300 keyword hits on November 2, 2018, for publications on gentrification posted between 2014 and 2018. Yet little attention has apparently been devoted to the phenomenon’s origins. Indeed, there is a critical backstory here that has gone largely undocumented. This book is my effort to create a more complete understanding of one of the most influential urban dynamics of the past hundred years. My research indicates that the first appearances of what later became known as gentrification in the United States occurred about a century ago in a handful of eastern and southern coastal cities. I contend that these early examples inspired new conceptions of city living that ran counter to the prevailing images of slums, blighted areas, and the poor and working-class people (often racial or ethnic minorities) who inhabited them. In that regard, this phenomenon put in motion—albeit glacially at first—a paradigm that eventually became a counterforce to urban decline narratives. Moreover, in the post–World War II era, the gentrification paradigm, at first rejected by federal officials in favor of slum eradication through the Urban Redevelopment, Public Housing, and Interstate Highway programs, was later embraced as an alternative strategy for reversing urban decline. To a considerable degree, then, the federal Urban Redevelopment (subsequently renamed Urban Renewal) paradigm was eventually supplanted by policies

10 / Introduction

emphasizing reuse and rehabilitation of existing buildings. The former represented an attempt to distort conventional market dynamics, while the latter served to harness them through the somewhat more organic process of subsidized and market-based housing rehabilitation. And once the federal door to widespread rehabilitation was opened, the gentrification paradigm thrived. Recognition of this important interplay has largely escaped scholarly scrutiny. By no means, however, do I contend that the failure of federal officials to recognize the potential of the gentrification paradigm was, ipso facto, the sole explanation for the demise of Urban Redevelopment. As copious research has shown, other factors contributed to the program’s eventual reformulation in 1954 and termination in the mid-1970s. Among these were the high public and private expenses of acquiring and demolishing slums and replacing them with new infrastructure and buildings; the byzantine politics unleashed as local officials contended with complex red tape and growing citizen resistance to the federal bulldozer; the disproportionate impact of the program on poor and working-class people and racial and ethnic minorities; resistance from the burgeoning historic preservation movement; and the distaste held by many Republicans for urban-related programs, which funneled federal funding to Democratic urban strongholds (Anderson 1964). Nevertheless, as I discuss later, it was the gentrification paradigm that became a critical element of Redevelopment’s policy successors. By the time the United States ended its involvement in the Vietnam War, gentrification had been under way in a small number of cities for more than a half century. But over the last quarter of the twentieth century, its pace increased in those places and it appeared in many additional cities. Media attention had risen significantly and empirical research was proliferating. Unfortunately, popular perceptions of gentrification in America today are roughly comparable to a novel missing its first two chapters. The roots from which grew the modern-day trend have remained largely unrecognized and unexplored. To cite one example, two respected urban scholars have contended that a first wave of American gentrification occurred in the 1970s (Hackworth and Smith 2001). Theirs is a widely held misconception, but in fact this process dates back a half century prior to the 1970s. Further on in this book, I attempt to fill in the blanks, so to speak, by resurrecting some of the stories of the people and events that framed the genesis of U.S. gentrification.

Embryonic and Advanced Gentrification Not only has gentrification’s history been misunderstood; definitions of the phenomenon have shifted in popular and scholarly use since the late 1970s.

Introduction / 11

Today, scholars, journalists, and laypersons frequently apply the expression to virtually any form of reinvestment—renovation or new construction— leading to social and/or economic change. Put simply, gentrification has become a synonym for urban development of almost any kind primarily benefiting middle- and upper-class people. As the term’s meaning has become increasingly fuzzy, not only have scholars and activists lost sight of gentrification’s historical origins, but we have undercut the term’s utility for understanding processes of urban growth, change, and decline. For these reasons, I have chosen to organize this study according to two periods—what I refer to as “embryonic gentrification” and “advanced gentrification.” Embryonic gentrification refers to gentrification occurring in the period from the phenomenon’s U.S. origins a century ago to approximately the 1980s. And even though embryonic gentrification continued to appear thereafter, the term “gentrification” acquired expanded meanings as activists, media observers, and researchers have applied it to a more elaborate collection of urban circumstances. I refer to these more extensive usages as “advanced gentrification.”

Embryonic Gentrification Several common elements were associated with embryonic gentrification during the period from approximately 1915 to the 1980s. First, as pointed out above, for the most part it involved the rehabilitation of aged buildings (mostly housing) in older urban neighborhoods (Golden 1981, 429; Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 420; Tonkiss 2005, 81–84). Most of the construction work was initiated by middle-income people (Feffer 2007, 302). During the genesis of the gentrification process, the construction of new homes in these enclaves was comparatively rare. This was due to the availability of existing housing suitable for renovation, the attractions some found in period housing styles, and the generally lower costs and skill levels associated with renovation versus new construction. However, as gentrification advanced in a given neighborhood and the supply of properties suitable for rehabilitation declined, continued demand for housing would eventually justify the higher costs and greater risks of new infill construction. A second element of embryonic gentrification in this period involves the geographic locations of the earliest manifestations of the phenomenon. As I later explain, American gentrification first appeared in a few of the nation’s oldest cities located on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. These places harbored most of the nation’s oldest building stocks, with many structures dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As such, they showed greater signs of obsolescence and wear and tear than cities settled at a later date. Age itself helps explain why the earliest examples of embryonic gentrification

12 / Introduction

appeared in these places. It also helps us understand why the trend spread only later to younger American cities in the South, Midwest, and West. Third, in its earliest stages, embryonic gentrification was most closely associated not with professional builders and large-scale projects but, rather, with nonprofessional homeowner-occupants. These people did much of the renovation work themselves, as time and resources permitted. Professional tradespeople such as plumbers and electricians might be hired to deal with challenges requiring technical expertise. This is not to insist that small-scale commercial home improvement companies were absent from such neighborhoods. With time, if demand for properties in the neighborhood rose significantly, those with purely financial interests in gentrification would indeed appear. Still, the essence of embryonic gentrification appears to have been the do-it-yourself aspect of homeowner-occupants. Jane Jacobs characterized her perceptions of the gentrification process in terms similar to this, adding that in its early stages, relations between long-term and recently arrived residents were relatively nonconflictual (1996). Fourth, embryonic gentrification constituted a localized trend, rather than a random and disconnected pattern of activities. Although in the earliest stages the pace of renovation may have proceeded sluggishly, as investor confidence rose, the pace often gained enough momentum to constitute a widely perceived local movement with dozens, if not hundreds, of participants. Therefore, scattered and intermittent rehabilitation and routine home improvement and maintenance activities did not, by themselves, constitute embryonic gentrification. A fifth characteristic often associated with embryonic gentrification involved incumbent residents (i.e., those whose residency in the neighborhood generally predates the arrival of gentry households). In the early stages of gentrification, the dislocation of these households as a result of evictions, sharp rent increases, lease terminations, or steep property tax hikes might be partially ameliorated by the availability of alternative affordable housing stocks in or near the gentrifying neighborhood. But as demand rose and the renovation process progressed, the citywide supply of affordable dwelling units dwindled and prices escalated. Landlords, some facing rising property tax assessments, often raised their asking rents, disadvantaging low- and moderate-income tenants. At this stage, incumbent households faced a greater probability of being displaced. However, the challenges of determining the magnitude of localized gentrification-induced displacement have proven to be all but intractable. As a result of a variety of factors, including the generally high rates of mobility among rental tenants (Cox 2018), parsing the influence of gentrification-related dislocation requires deep immersion in the turbulent waters of assumption (Malach 2018, 116–117). ­Researchers thus become caught up in the eternal apples-and-oranges co­-

Introduction / 13

nundrum so often beclouding social science analysis. And yet there is little doubt that as embryonic gentrification progresses through a given city section, the supply of affordable housing will eventually be reduced (Marcuse 1986). This issue is explored in greater depth later in the book. As embryonic gentrification progressed, certain associated trends often appeared (Malach 2018, 113). In the early stages, real estate speculators, detecting a trend, might flip properties, buying at lower prices and then quickly selling them at a significant markup, with few, if any, improvements. As the number of improved properties in a neighborhood rose, though, realtors and building tradesmen entered the market, rehabilitating properties for sale or rental. At this point, renovation could extend to retail properties, as owners of restaurants, brewpubs, cafes, and clothing stores, for example, took advantage of the neighborhood’s rising affluence. With time, some corporate interests such as banks and insurance companies, now more confident in the emerging, predominantly middle-class makeup of the neighborhood, were willing to undertake the first tentative steps to renovate larger, often vacant, properties such as mills, warehouses, factories, or surplus schools for residential or commercial uses. Conversion of apartment buildings to condominium ownership often occurred. Or these firms might develop new infill apartment, condominium, or live/work studios involving dozens, if not hundreds, of dwelling units. These dynamics are typical of embryonic gentrification in its later stages.

Advanced Gentrification Embryonic gentrification persists into the twenty-first century and continues to emerge in a number of U.S. cities. But at least since the 1980s and 1990s, the term “gentrification” has undergone a metamorphosis. Originally associated primarily with inner-city housing rehabilitation trends, the Gword is now applied to almost any form of urban development. Scholars and the mass media have associated it with the creation of new museums, galleries, aquariums, sports facilities, performing arts centers, and music halls. Other examples include convention centers, enclosed downtown shopping malls, street rail systems, waterfront parks, hotels, gaming casinos, and festival marketplaces (Teaford 1990, 275–279). Even new coffee houses, dog parks, community gardens, and bike paths are considered by some critics to cater to middle-income newcomers and therefore to represent gentrification. Virtually any attractions designed to increase municipal revenues and business development by drawing suburbanites and tourists to the city might be so identified. Even luxury condominiums and office towers have become captive to the all-encompassing nomenclature of gentrification. Small wonder, then, that one influential source referred to this “definitional

14 / Introduction

overload” as “political, politicized, and politically loaded” (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008, 155). What had happened? Many who misapplied the term seized on one part of gentrification’s identity—upward socioeconomic transition, or the gradual replacement of a neighborhood’s incumbent residents by newcomers, usually of a higher social class and not infrequently of a different racial or ethnic identity. This form of residential succession often became the definitional fulcrum on which the meaning of gentrification was balanced. While these are critically important empirical matters, the myopic emphases on upward socioeconomic transition and displacement have peeled away important layers of connotation. As a result, the original properties associated with what I term “embryonic gentrification” have seemingly faded into the mists of memory. These include the reversal of neighborhood disinvestment and physical deterioration, the enhancement of city revenues, the environmentally commendable reuse (rather than the wasteful destruction) of older structures (including historic resources), and the reduction in incidents of serious crime. Thus, the concept of gentrification now connotes virtually any form of urban development that fails to directly benefit poor and ­working-class people and minorities. To typologize these modern usages of the G-word from earlier meanings, I refer to them collectively as “advanced gentrification.” In doing so, by no means do I intend to minimize the deleterious properties of this transformational urban phenomenon. These include the loss of neighborhood institutions such as religious congregations, community organizations, and mom-and-pop stores offering local patrons informal lines of credit; the erosion of long-standing political coalitions providing public benefits to incumbent residents; the disintegration of extended-family and friendship networks offering free or low-cost care services for children, the disabled, and seniors; and the disappearance of blue-collar bars, inexpensive eateries, and service stations providing part-time and seasonal work for low-income residents, as well as loci for social interaction (Tissot 2015, 203– 206, 209–210). These and other impacts may be associated with all forms of gentrification. Nevertheless, my concern is the slippery slope of reductionism that has developed, thereby consigning a complex and multifaceted physical, social, and economic phenomenon of inarguably positive, as well as negative, impacts to a binary construct grounded in “simplistic frameworks of good and evil” (Goldstein 2017, 14). The more inclusive gentrification’s definition has become, the less precise its meaning. Or to paraphrase W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan’s The Gondoliers, when everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody (“The Gondoliers” 2020). If nearly all forms of urban development are gentrification, then what is there about gentrification that is truly distinctive? How

Introduction / 15

is discourse about urbanization furthered if our lexicon is increasingly muddled? As if to remind us of this conundrum, a recently published anthology identifies at least nine subcategories of gentrification (Lees 2018). Despite my concerns, I hasten to add that advanced gentrification does, indeed, bear certain markers that distinguish it from its embryonic origins. These include a greater reliance on corporate and institutional capital and professionalized project management; the blurring of lines of authority and responsibility between public and private sector actors; and a stronger emphasis on larger-scale new construction, even in the earliest stages of the reinvestment process, rather than the less-risky property-by-property rehabilitation process characteristic of embryonic gentrification. Later, I expand on the several connotations associated with advanced gentrification.

Purpose of the Book The primary purpose of my study is not to contend with the numerous issues that have arisen among gentrification scholars, such as production versus consumption theories or the existence of third-wave gentrification. Production theory emphasizes the primacy of the rent gap (i.e., the difference between a property’s current value and its “highest and best use” value) in understanding the root causes of gentrification (N. Smith 1979, 1996). Consumption theory, on the other hand, accounts for the appearance of gen­ trification as the result of shifting demand factors (such as rising rates of educational attainment or household income) that contribute to the revalorization of formerly declining inner-city properties (Hamnett 2003b). Thirdwave theories differentiate successive historical phases of urbanization and purport to identify shifts in the pace and/or character of gentrification (Hackworth and Smith 2001; Hetzler, Medina, and Overfelt 2006). It is also not my purpose to grapple with the issue of the extent to which gentrification induces household displacement versus other factors that impinge on housing supplies and costs. Matters such as these have undergone extensive scholarly scrutiny since the late 1970s (Freeman 2009; Marcuse 1986). Instead, my central goal is to correct misunderstandings about gentrification’s historical origins in the United States. I show that this phenomenon first appeared in a few urban neighborhoods about a century ago (albeit then referred to under terms such as “remodeling,” “rejuvenation,” or “rebuilding”), rather than in the 1960s or 1970s. This recontextualization obligates us to examine gentrification from a fresh perspective. For example, there is the poorly understood interrelationship between gentrification as a form of neighborhood revitalization and the federal Urban Redevelopment and Urban Renewal programs. This leads to my second purpose: to

16 / Introduction

articulate how federal officials initially rejected building rehabilitation strategies, including the gentrification paradigm, in favor of a clearance-andredevelopment strategy, and only later reversed course, shifting to an emphasis on neighborhood conservation and renovation, with redevelopment as a limited and localized option. Although not originally a creature of national public policy, gentrification would become its captive by the late 1970s and 1980s. Recontextualization opens the door to my third purpose: examining popular misperceptions about the necessary preconditions spawning gentrification in the United States. In doing so, I argue that the roles played by matters such as deindustrialization, the globalizing economy, and the postwar baby boom have been misinterpreted in the gentrification literature. Issues of causality and catalysis are explored. Finally, my fourth purpose is to point out that popular interpretations of gentrification have undergone a semantic transmutation over the past forty-odd years. Consequently, the term has largely been rendered ineffective in scholarly and popular discourse, now consigned as it is to a kind of definitional promiscuity.

Organization of the Book The Misunderstood History of Gentrification is organized in three parts. Part I covers the period from approximately 1915 to 1945, addressing the emergence of embryonic gentrification in three case study cities—Washington, D.C.; New York; and Boston. (Brief mention is made of parallel trends in Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans.) Each case study documents key demographic elements, geographical patterns, and neighborhood mobilization activities associated with the earliest stages of the gentrification paradigm during the interwar years. It also contrasts each community in terms of the relative influence of social elites and bohemians in propelling its transition forward. The critical role played by the fledgling city planning movement in protecting and restoring neighborhood built form is briefly explored. The fundamental purpose of Part I is to present what I hope will be received as solid empirical evidence supporting my contention that gentrification’s American origins date back to the early twentieth century, not to the 1960s and 1970s. Part II encompasses the period extending from the end of World War II to about 1980. With only a few exceptions, my research uncovered no published studies on U.S. embryonic gentrification prior to the mid-1970s. But thereafter, scholars, reporters, and writers would propel a tsunami of case studies demonstrating the incidence and extent of embryonic gentrification in a number of American cities. It was in this interval that the nation

Introduction / 17

discovered this phenomenon and, at first, adopted a more or less uniform nomenclature by which it became widely known. I discuss how embryonic gentrification migrated in Washington, New York, and Boston from its origin neighborhood to other areas of those cities. By this time, however, embryonic gentrification was appearing in a few other cities, as well, and I briefly make reference to those examples. An irony of the postwar decades was the fact that, even as embryonic gentrification was commencing what might be termed its second generation  of activity, federal officials were launching what would become a ­multibillion-dollar campaign to reverse urban decline. Composed of several programs, but most prominently Urban Redevelopment (later renamed Urban Renewal), this effort constituted a fundamentally divergent approach to revitalizing American cities. In fact, it could be said to have been in direct opposition to the then-emerging trend of embryonic gentrification, at least conceptually, if not politically. Part II continues, therefore, by tracing the interrelationships between Redevelopment/Renewal and gentrification, including the federal program’s faulty conceptual underpinnings. Part II shows how the rise of a national historic preservation movement contributed both to the demise of the Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm and to the success of the more politically palatable gentrification paradigm. Part II concludes with an accounting of the “decade of the neighborhood,” a period centered in the 1970s during which federal officials enacted a smorgasbord of programs, most of which were intended to fill the gap left by the termination of Redevelopment/Renewal. Nearly all of these initiatives, I contend, had goals that were either commensurate with, or not inconsistent with, the promotion of urban gentrification. Part III probes in depth the similarities and differences between embryonic and advanced gentrification. It begins by comparing the Urban Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm to the embryonic gentrification paradigm, arguing that the former generally proved more controversial than the latter. Among the explanations for this were several economic variables that clearly advantaged gentrification. Additionally, gentrification was associated with several noneconomic characteristics that further distinguished it from Urban Redevelopment/Renewal. These matters contributed to the eventual demise of the Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm and the acceleration of its successor, the gentrification paradigm. Yet, as Part III points out, once Redevelopment/Renewal was eliminated, the resistance movement associated with it was not as easily transferred to the gentrification paradigm. Often lacking transparent parameters of agency, the newly adopted form of reversing urban decline led to complications in the gentrification dialectic. Among these was an enigma: whether

18 / Introduction

middle-class households disadvantaged poor and working-class families by decamping to the suburbs or whether they did so by remaining as city residents and living in close proximity to those families. Part III concludes the book with several summations. It emphasizes that gentrification must be understood as an urban phenomenon with historical roots in the very early twentieth century, rather than the 1960s or 1970s. This understanding, in turn, raises questions about how we interpret a trend that in some cities has proven to be transformational. Among other matters, history, architecture, and place offer core concepts for understanding gentrification’s origins in the American context. Moreover, I contend, we need to dispense with misperceptions about the extent to which forces such as deindustrialization, globalization, and the postwar baby boom were causal, as opposed to catalytic, factors in gentrification’s growth. Part III continues by tracing the interrelationships between the federal government’s Urban Redevelopment/Renewal programs and the essentially private market process of embryonic gentrification. It points out that those programs were founded on the basis of faulty conceptual understandings about urban real estate markets, which the gentrification paradigm ultimately refuted. In the end, to a considerable extent, at least, the gentrification paradigm supplanted the Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm. Nonetheless, this transition resulted in a kind of semantic transmutation in which an essentially privatized process of gentrification complicated both criticism and opposition. Often proceeding with only hazy lines of public agency, gentrification undermined the sharply etched polarity between ­Redevelopment/Renewal authorities and their opponents. And as gentrification was incorporated into the more or less laissez-faire dynamics of privatization and devolution, enabled in part by newer federal policies, its opponents were disadvantaged in their efforts to organize resistance.

A Few Words about Words I employ the terms “rehabilitation” and “renovation” interchangeably to denote the repair and improvement of existing structures (especially housing). In my usage of “Urban Redevelopment” or “Redevelopment” and “Urban Renewal” or “Renewal,” I refer specifically to matters associated with the federal government programs under those labels existing between 1949 and 1974. Uncapitalized, those terms have taken on a generic quality in popular usage as a synonym for urban development or real estate development, whether encompassed by federal programs or not. Unless that usage appears in a quotation, it is not adopted in this book. In referring to Urban Redevelopment, I mean the process by which residents, businesses, and other organizations were removed from officially designated project areas

Introduction / 19

and buildings were demolished and cleared, later to be supplanted by new buildings, spaces, and inhabitants. Unless otherwise noted, my use of the term Urban Renewal encompasses both the policies of demolition and rebuilding and the added alternative of reusing existing structures through their rehabilitation and improvement. This includes the preservation and restoration of historic resources. Of course, the often-implicit corollary of both Urban Redevelopment and Urban Renewal was the demographic imperative: the assumption that removing all or most poor and working-class residents was a necessary precondition to successfully revitalizing a formerly declining (i.e., blighted or slum) neighborhood. In reference to residents whose neighborhood tenure generally predates those of gentrifiers, I employ the noun “incumbents.” Underlying this usage is the presumption that for the most part, incumbents are poor and working-class households, often, though not always, racial or ethnic minorities. Some may be homeless and/or suffer from substance abuse, disabilities, or mental illness, while others may include penurious seniors living on a fixed income. I employ the terms “gentry” or “gentrifiers” interchangeably, referring to those mostly middle-income in-movers to an older neighborhood who occupy a home or start a business, imposing new class, racial, ethnic, and/or socioeconomic tastes and standards. These inmovers invariably include so-called creative-class workers (Florida 2005), artists (Zukin 1982), and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people (Doan 2018). Although my research is centered on gentrification in the United States, cities in Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, for example, have experienced varying degrees of gentrification. Readers wishing to examine comparable trends in other nations would do well to consult authoritative sources such as Gentrification (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008), Gentrification in a Global Context: The New Urban Colonialism (Atkinson and Bridge 2005), Planetary Gentrification (Lees, Hyun, and Lopez-Morales 2016), Unequal City (Hamnett 2003b), Urban Regeneration in Europe (Couch, Fraser, and Perry 2003), and Whose Urban Renaissance? An International Comparison of Urban Regeneration Strategies (Porter and Shaw 2009).

I

Embryonic Gentrification Case Studies and Examples

1 The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945

O

ne of the earliest incidences of U.S. embryonic gentrification occurred in the Georgetown neighborhood (Figure 1.1) of Washington, D.C. (Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 420). Settled by Scottish immigrants approximately forty years before the nation’s capital city was located adjacent to it, Georgetown was a freestanding colonial port town situated on the Potomac River. It had a small harbor giving sailing vessels access to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Its streets were laid out in grid fashion along terrain that gradually slopes upward from the waterfront to the community’s northern heights. When the United States, by then a sovereign nation, chose to establish the new national capital city at the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, a plan was drawn by the Frenchman Pierre Charles L’Enfant, who was assisted by the surveyor Benjamin Banneker. L’Enfant envisioned a great city inspired by European Baroque city planning conventions. Washington would be laid out with grand diagonal boulevards overlaying a grid street system (Gutheim 1977, 24–36). Georgetown was incorporated into the plan at its western edge. At key intersections in the new capital, parks, statuary, memorials, and fountains were to be situated on circles, squares, or ovals. A “President’s House” and a “Congress House” were included as well. A huge National Mall would stretch across the lower section of the city, destined someday to accommodate important public buildings such as museums and galleries, as well as  water features, memorials, monuments, and sculpture. Although the

24 / Chapter 1

Figure 1.1  The Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. (Map by Michael Siegel.)

L’Enfant plan was later modified by the surveyor Andrew Ellicott, many of its elements remained. As the new capital city expanded, Georgetown took on greater importance. Its inns and homes provided the most civilized setting then available for visiting colonial dignitaries. Among them were George and Martha Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, John Marshall, and Henry Clay. Authors such as Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, and Louisa May Alcott found lodgings there. And Francis Scott Key, later the composer of the national anthem, lived for a time in Georgetown. Over the nineteenth century the capital city grew amoeba-like in all directions. But its growth into Georgetown was checked by the stream valley known as Rock Creek, which delineated the old port town’s eastern perimeter. On its southern edge, Georgetown was further buffered by the Potomac River and on the west by the young Georgetown University campus. Only along its northern edge did the little port town’s built form blend somewhat anonymously into the spreading fabric of Washington. Thus, morphological elements served as Georgetown’s bulwark against invasive development, growth, and change and contributed to its identity and distinctiveness. From Georgetown’s founding in 1751 to the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of frame and brick homes were built, mostly in the Federal,

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  25

Figure 1.2  The M Street NW commercial corridor in Georgetown illustrates some of the architectural variety appearing in the neighborhood. Among the most sought-after dwelling types was the Federal style, as displayed in the Thomas Sim Lee Corner (center), dating from 1794 to 1810.

Georgian, and Greek Revival styles. In the decades after the Civil War, rows of townhouses in the Queen Anne, Italianate, and French Mansard styles sprung up along its streets. Shops and hotels lined the intersecting main commercial streets known today as M Street NW (Figure 1.2) and Wisconsin Avenue NW. On the community’s upper elevations wealthy families erected mansions on large estates, but elsewhere most buildings were limited to two- and three-story brick townhouses or single-family detached dwellings. Despite its physical distinctiveness, Georgetown lost its capacity for self-governance over the last three decades of the nineteenth century and came under full control of the District of Columbia government (K. Smith 1989, 10).

Georgetown’s Decline Although Georgetown prospered over most of its early existence, its fortunes began to change as the twentieth century approached. By 1910 the little community was showing worrisome signs of decline (Zeitz 1979, 34). Its one-time elegance now seemed anachronistic, more suited to the postbellum era than to the approaching Roaring Twenties. Though Washington

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bustled with fashionable new housing and rising numbers of federal government employees, many of the buildings in Georgetown were aged, roofs and cellars leaked, and plumbing and wiring systems (where they existed) were primitive. One former resident, the son of a machinist, lived there during World War I. “Georgetown,” he said, “was a poor, working-class neighborhood. I was very conscious of the difficulties of working people” (Morley 2011, 223). Years later an issue of National Geographic described the community as once having been a “cheap-rent neighborhood,” “dilapidated,” and full of “second-class boardinghouses” (Kinney 1953, 513). The decline was even true of some of the grand old mansions. One Georgetown patrician, a descendant of Martha Washington, offered an example in a 1980 interview. Pointing through a window of his magnificent Palladian estate, Tudor Place, Armistead Peter said, “There was a house, across the street. It was a big old brick house, and, in my memory, it was completely disreputable. Every glass in the windows was broken [pauses] boys throwing rocks through the windows” (Peter 1980). One of the community’s most respected families, the Dodges, owned a flour milling business that had declined by the 1920s. Their mansion was left vacant for several years and it, too, became derelict. Peter recalled that “crystal chandeliers were destroyed and windows were broken in every direction” (Peter 1980). Urban economist Homer Hoyt, in reference to American cities such as Chicago, lamented the special problems imposed by decaying mansions such as these, noting that they caused “a deterioration of the neighborhood and a further decline in value” (1939, 121). The availability of more modern housing in Washington and its suburbs was one factor contributing to Georgetown’s decline. Some families relocated to newer city neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle and Kalorama or to Bethesda and Chevy Chase in nearby Maryland. But a more fundamental influence was the earlier erosion of Georgetown’s economy over the late nineteenth century. This was due in part to competition from other regional ports such as those in Alexandria, Virginia, and in Baltimore. Moreover, Georgetown’s Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, connecting Washington to the trans-Appalachian hinterlands, gradually lost ground in its competition with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. By 1924 all commercial canal traffic had ended. Similar small port cities with access to the Atlantic Ocean, such as Newburyport, Massachusetts, were buoyed by the industrial revolution, which enabled them to reinvent themselves as nineteenth-century manufacturing centers. Georgetown, however, never became much of a factory town. Consequently, its modest industrial base diminished between 1880 and 1920. Even its role as a retail center faded. Once a market town for nearby Maryland and Virginia farmers, Georgetown suffered as their patronage ebbed, in part because of the consumption of agricultural land by Wash­

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ington’s spreading suburbanization (K. Smith 1989, 17–46). Too, the expanding downtown retail area of Washington drew customers away from Georgetown’s stores. Once its cash cow, Georgetown’s canal and waterfront area, located south of M Street NW, became an odoriferous backwater. It housed a rendering plant, a waste incinerator, warehouses, flour and sawmills, a cooperage, lumberyards, sand and gravel firms, and derelict industrial and commercial buildings. Poor families were scattered about the waterfront. Many lived in squalor, some crammed into tenements that were once the mansions inhabited by ship captains and importers. Others lived in tiny twostory homes without central heating or sewer and water service. By the early twentieth century the canal had become a waste-befouled backwater trench (K. Smith 1989, 27, 76). So abject did waterfront housing conditions become, a book appeared describing slums there and in other sections of Washington. Neglected Neighbors: Stories of Life in the Alleys, Tenements and Shanties of the Nation’s Capital (1909) was written by Charles F. Weller, who headed the Associated Charities of Washington, D.C. The book was an account inspired by How the Other Half Lives (1890), authored by the renowned muckraking journalist Jacob Riis. For his efforts on behalf of the poor, Weller was thanked by President Theodore Roosevelt, who subsequently appointed him executive secretary of the President’s Homes Commission. Like Riis, Weller included in his book numerous photographs—ninetysix of them—most depicting crowded pockets of penury (Figure 1.3). Poor and working-class whites and blacks were crammed into shacks, stables, tenements, rooming houses, and cellars in small enclaves dubbed Tomcat Flats, Factory Hill, Cissel Alley, Cherry Hill, and the like (Weller 1909, 166– 167, 212–213, 226–228). Some of these warrens were occupied entirely by formerly enslaved people or their descendants, while others were inhabited by Irish or Italian immigrants. Very few were racially integrated. Indoor plumbing was rare, water was drawn from outdoor spigots or hand pumps, and overflowing box privies abounded. Lacking plumbing, some inhabi­ tants poured their wastewater out of second- and third-floor windows onto the homes of their neighbors. Through interviews with occupants, Weller found examples of out-of-wedlock births, crime, hunger, alcoholism, disease, and grossly unsanitary living conditions. In one hovel, he found three families living in three rooms: In one room which was not locked up there were then living two adults and five children, the youngest, two weeks old. This “home” measured ten by twelve feet. It contained a bed, a pile of rags and a broken stove whose three lengths of stove pipe, being of different

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Figure 1.3  This early twentieth-century photograph exemplifies both the abject poverty and the physical deterioration of Georgetown’s erstwhile slums. (From Weller 1909.)

sizes, were jointed together by the aid of cloths and paper. Near the glassless window, the house-mother was washing, with water carried from a hydrant a block away. The odor from the overflowing, vile wooden toilets standing twenty-five feet behind the row, with their broken seats covered with excrement, could be distinguished occasionally. (Weller 1909, 169) Though Georgetown’s most miserable living conditions were centered in the waterfront area, there were pockets of poverty in the residential sections north of M Street NW, as well. Houses on diminutive lots located along the narrow secondary streets were often occupied by poor or workingclass whites. Some of the first- or second-generation Irish or Italian immigrants were disadvantaged by anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic sentiments held by native white Protestants. However, Washington never attracted the large numbers of immigrants found in other East Coast cities such as Boston or Baltimore. In large measure this was because it was neither a major port nor a manufacturing city and thus did not offer the large number of unskilled or low-skilled jobs found in other eastern cities. Moreover, lying closer to Virginia and other southern states, Washington was more accessible to northward-migrating African Americans. Not surprisingly, a larger

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share of the capital city’s population was composed of black families than might be found in other eastern cities. Many of these people resided in the tiny brick or frame houses crammed into Georgetown’s alleys behind the comfortable homes. Overcrowding was common and living conditions were sometimes only marginally better than those in the waterfront area. Nonetheless, such dire circumstances were not unique to Georgetown. A police census in 1897 had counted almost nineteen thousand people in Washington who were living in alley dwellings. Nearly 90 percent were African Americans (Weller 1909, 11). Certainly, author Weller was no bleeding-heart liberal, for he wrote uncharitably of one abject tenement, “The whole settlement was clearly a low congregating place, a kind of human rabbit-warren, for degenerate, idle, parasitic people who ought long ago to have been cleared away as one would disinfect a pest hole” (Weller 1909, 214). About twenty years later William Henry Jones, an African American sociologist at Howard University, carried out a more comprehensive survey of Washington’s alley dwellings. It was sponsored by an interracial committee of the Washington Federation of Churches. Visiting nearly seven thousand homes—including several in Georgetown—Jones and his researchers found that poor African Americans occupied the vast majority of addresses, though most properties were owned by whites (Jones 1929). Like Weller, Jones displayed little sympathy for these people. The alleys, he wrote, were rife with crime, immorality, illegitimate children, unwed mothers, high mortality rates, disease, bootlegging, and thievery. Yet Jones found few alley residents who expressed a desire to leave these cramped slums. It would be many decades before a more benign study of Washington’s alley dwellings was published (Borchert 1980). It was probably scenes such as those experienced by Weller and Jones that inspired “The Tenement Pool,” a poem written in the 1920s by a Georgetown University student. The poet described the sight of tenement children playing in a pool of dirty water and lamented that “the shadow of the building cast a shadow of the grave” (Casey 1927, 67).

Renovation Comes to Georgetown By the turn of the twentieth century it was common for newcomers to Washington to reside in the townhouses and apartment buildings of newer neighborhoods such as Dupont Circle, Logan Circle, Mount Pleasant, and Kalorama. Elderly Georgetown was fraying at the collar, and to many people some sections appeared shabby, inconvenient, and obsolescent. Real estate firms were reluctant to direct home-seekers there because of its deteriorating conditions and decrepit older homes. But one such business defied the odds and published a pamphlet titled Genial Georgetown

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(Miller-Shoemaker Real Estate Company 1905). It extolled the virtues of life (and real estate) in the neighborhood. Gushing extravagantly, it declared that Georgetown was soon to undergo a veritable renaissance. “All of Georgetown property will yield a profit in the near future,” the authors promised. Indeed, the publication’s rhetoric proved to be prescient. Not only would a real estate boom appear; it would do so with no little impact on the area’s most vulnerable residents—renters. The pamphlet noted, “Stronger and stronger is growing the spirit that encourages home ownership. Soon on the door of every tenant will be written, clear to the eye of the true man, ‘Sluggard.’” Despite their exuberance, however, the authors would have to wait several years before their promises could be realized. It was during and after the United States entered World War I in April 1917 that Georgetown’s fortunes began to change. Thousands of workers and military personnel flocked to the capital to contribute to the nation’s defense effort. By the end of the summer, an estimated 60,000 to 75,000 workers resided in the city. At the war’s end, Washington’s population had swelled to 526,000, about double what it had been in 1914 (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 227). Housing, especially rental units, was soon at a premium, and the established District neighborhoods most accessible to the federal offices quickly filled up. In desperation, some workers found apartments in Georgetown, where rents in certain areas were modest because of the neighborhood’s tired image. Nonetheless, these newcomers soon discovered its advantages. Workers could walk or take the M Street NW trolley to the National Mall and federal office buildings. Shopping for groceries and household goods was conveniently located along Georgetown’s commercial corridors, M Street NW, and Wisconsin Avenue NW. Rock Creek Park and Montrose Park, both on the periphery of the neighborhood, were readily accessible for picnics and recreation. And there were several restaurants, taverns, and lounges for dining and relaxation. Most surprisingly, though, it was not just working- and middle-class families who moved in. Despite Georgetown’s diminished reputation, families of considerable social prominence began to arrive. They were aware that Georgetown still harbored a few small clusters of old families—locally known as “cave dwellers”—who lived quietly on their estates or in the grander homes and townhouses located north of M Street NW and east of Wisconsin Avenue NW. It was clear to the new arrivals that an elite society held forth in Georgetown, in spite of the neighborhood’s downhill slide. Elegant dinner parties and receptions were still held in these homes, and their residents supported respected churches and private clubs that appealed to some of the newcomers. Too, many of the latter recognized the august

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architecture of a grander day behind the sagging porches and untamed gardens. One of the first—and most prominent arrivals—was Robert Todd Lincoln and his family. They purchased the Dunlop House at 3014 N Street NW in 1912. The ex-president of the Pullman Car Company of Illinois, Lincoln was the son of the former U.S. president. And his wife was the daughter of a senator. A few years later Newton D. Baker, a former Cleveland mayor and Woodrow Wilson’s newly appointed secretary of war, leased a house directly across from the Lincolns at 3017 N Street NW (Kinney 1953, 513– 536). In 1920, Robert Woods Bliss, later a U.S. ambassador to Argentina, bought a sprawling estate on the heights of Georgetown that would later become Dumbarton Oaks and its library, a branch of the Harvard University Libraries. And in 1924 the future ambassador to Poland, F. Lamont Belin, acquired Evermay, a mansion and large garden tucked into the northeast section of Georgetown (Egan 1978). These and other notables brought new attention to the eastern side of Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown. There were no government programs to subsidize home renovations, and the newcomers paid for virtually all the work. Some of them were influenced by media coverage such as a longrunning column in the Washington Herald, “Looking Backward,” which first appeared in the late teens. Although its author dealt with the history of various Washington neighborhoods, he paid special attention to Georgetown, the city’s most venerable quarter. In one column, he portrayed its lofty past in period photographs and in antiquarian lore about one-time residents and buildings (J. Mitchell 1918, 8). Only a few years later, the Washington Times referred to the neighborhood’s “renewed prestige,” pointing out that prominent families were relocating there from other parts of the city and renovating the larger homes (“Historic Georgetown Enjoys” 1921, 3). Shortly after that, another newspaper published a page of Georgetown illustrations headlined “Booming Georgetown.” Several businesses located along the main commercial thoroughfare, M Street NW, were featured, and a reference to “Georgetown’s reawakening” was trumpeted (“Booming Georgetown” 1922, 6). Media coverage such as this contributed to reversing the declining social status of Georgetown, reassuring longtime residents that discriminating people still found their community appealing. But such articles also offered confidence to would-be residents that the neighborhood was becoming a promising investment and a flattering address with intimations of social status. In most cases, the affluent arrivals chose to remodel their homes, sometimes making substantial changes to upgrade outdated elec­ trical, plumbing, and mechanical systems. Painting and plastering were com­-

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mon. Gardens were replanted, and lawns were landscaped. Period details were often, although not always, preserved, and restoration work sometimes added affectations such as coach lamps and “colonial entrances” that had never been features of the original houses. Despite the appearance of upper-class households, Georgetown’s appeal extended more broadly. Ranking below the socially prominent was an even larger cohort of Georgetown in-movers. Among them were several employees of the State Department, at that time one of the few federal agencies in which America’s more privileged classes would consider working. Though not all of these people came from wealthy backgrounds, many enjoyed privileges uncommon to the vast majority of Americans. Joining them were others—journalists, writers, lawyers, doctors—who did not work in government but who were also new to the capital city and needed a home. One of the first of these was Eliot Goodwin, the acting president of the recently founded United States Chamber of Commerce. Having had some home remodeling experience in Boston, Goodwin bought a former doctor’s home and office in East Georgetown “for a song” shortly after 1920; he wasted no time in remodeling the property (Wykoff 1980). Sometime before 1922 a young lawyer named Dean Acheson moved into East Georgetown. Son of the bishop of the Episcopal Church of Connecticut, Acheson would later become secretary of state under President Truman. In 1920 John Ihlder, who also worked at the Chamber of Commerce, purchased 2811 O Street NW (Logan 2017, 11–15). His friend, J. Bernard Wykoff, business manager of Nation’s Business, a chamber magazine, purchased 2911 Q Street NW in 1922. He and his wife paid $11,000 for the property, a price that Wykoff later characterized as excessive at the time (Wykoff 1980). Many of the newcomers in the late teens and early twenties appear to have migrated from New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Although most did not apparently come from wealthy families, they were largely of middle- and upper-middle-class origins. The vast majority of the men (and some of the women) attended college and most held baccalaureate degrees. At a time when few Americans progressed beyond a high school diploma, the newcomers were decidedly of an educational, if not socioeconomic, elite.

The Neighborhood Mobilizes According to Bernard Wykoff (1980), one evening in 1924 Ihlder accompanied him on his walk home from work. Ihlder, who had studied the fledgling academic field of city planning at Cornell University, was imbued with the zeal of progressive reformism popular at that time. Concerned about threats to the charm and character of Georgetown, the two friends decided

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to form a resident organization to protect the neighborhood. In particular, they were worried that a local builder, Harry Wardman, had plans to replace the run-down Evermay estate on the eastern edge of Georgetown with apartment buildings. Also worrisome was the fact that the old and neglected Herman Hollerith estate, directly across the street, was another property ripe for redevelopment. (Hollerith, its former inhabitant, was widely credited with the invention of the punch card tabulating machine, the basis for the first IBM computers.) At the time, it was possible to build structures as tall as 130 feet under statutes imposed by federal authority (“Height of Buildings Act of 1910” 2020). Elsewhere in Washington, large office and apartment buildings were rising to new heights. Ihlder and Wykoff, suspecting that builders would try to erect substantially larger structures in their neighborhood, were doubtful that it could be protected for much longer without decisive action. The District government had enacted its first zoning ordinance in 1920, and Ihlder wanted to seek an amendment prohibiting construction of new apartment buildings in Georgetown. He knew that once an apartment building invaded the area, a legal precedent would be established, making it difficult to stem a tide of similar projects in the future (Wykoff 1980). The two men gathered several neighbors together one evening in May of 1924 to discuss their concerns. Some of those present were members of the Georgetown Citizens Association (GCA), a group established in 1878 primarily to support local businesses. The gathering quickly expressed support for Ihlder’s proposed amendment to the District of Columbia zoning code. They decided to call their group the Homeowner’s Committee of the GCA. This linked their cause to a respected and venerable organization, lending credence to their goals. Next, the committee would have to approach members of Congress, because at the time the District of Columbia government lacked home rule powers. In effect, it was governed by the U.S. Senate Committee on the District of Columbia. Within a month, Ihlder had shepherded his measure through the committee, and on June 24 it was adopted by Congress as part of the District’s zoning ordinance (Wykoff 1980). Now residential buildings in most of Georgetown could not exceed forty feet in height. With the rising cost of property there, and with much taller allowable building heights elsewhere in the city, Ihlder was confident that most developers would eschew building projects at such low densities (Logan 2017, 17–18). Wykoff and Ihlder then produced a pamphlet, The Future of Georgetown, complete with pen-and-ink sketches of notable buildings. Published under the auspices of the Homeowner’s Committee, it was widely circulated throughout the neighborhood and served as a clarion call to action. The text pointed to the many homes renovated over the previous five years and declared that Georgetown had experienced a “rebirth.” It asserted, “Scores of

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families are eagerly seeking old houses which have in them the possibilities of being made into attractive homes” (Homeowner’s Committee 1924). At the heart of their message, Ihlder and Wykoff sought to build a sense of pride among residents, as well as an appreciation for the rising property values in the neighborhood. Georgetown, the pamphlet insisted, was coming back (Logan 2017, 11–15). Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to assume that a historic preservation movement was under way. Nowhere in the pamphlet are the terms “preservation” or “restoration” employed. Neither is there an explicit appeal to Georgetowners in the context of the neighborhood’s historic legacy or architectural traditions. Rather the text makes occasional reference to the “present charm” and the “community of homes” and dwells on the mechanics of zoning, the protection of property values, access to light and air, and similar concerns. Considering Ihlder’s earlier study of city planning, it is improbable that he encountered much coursework on architectural preservation at Cornell. Indeed, it would be many years before universities developed curricula and programs in this field. Concepts, terms, and methods had yet to be created and popularized. The pamphlet expressed no social concerns either. Although the need for housing in Washington—especially affordable rental apartments—was great, this form of construction was undoubtedly anathema to members of the Homeowner’s Committee. (Ironically, some years later Ihlder would become one of the nation’s most prominent tenement housing reformers [Asch and Musgrove 2017, 252].) Protecting their little community appears to have been the group’s sole objective. Though Ihlder and Wykoff were among the first residents to initiate a formalized neighborhood preservation campaign, they did not remain at the forefront. In fact, the Homeowner’s Committee languished for a time. Then in 1926 Etta Taggart, a young attorney descended from an old Georgetown family, led the formation of the Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown (PCAG). Open to both sexes, the PCAG was a gentle rebuke to the GCA and its policy of admitting only males to membership. The new group concerned itself with matters relating to the residential sections of Georgetown, while the GCA’s interests involved the business community. In point of fact, many PCAG members were married to GCA members, so that in spirit, at least, the two organizations were far from being mutually exclusive. Although there has been some confusion about the aims and cooperation between these two groups, there are indications that the Progressives (female and male) deserve “much credit for the private urban renewal of Georgetown” (Zeitz 1979, 63). The PCAG forged ahead with a series of issues—zoning battles, traffic and parking problems, and attempts to stop demolition of older buildings,

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for example (Zeitz 1979, 63–65). Meanwhile the national economy surged in the 1920s, and buyer interest in Georgetown properties heightened. This was especially true of those in the eastern section, which was in closest proximity to other Washington neighborhoods, as well as the city’s downtown. An examination of District building permit data issued during the years 1915 to 1928 found that permit issuances along nine streets in East Georgetown ranged from a low of five in 1918 to a high of 21 in 1928. From 1915 to 1919 the average was nine per year; from 1920 to 1928 it rose to 13.5 (Gale 1982, 82). Although the number of permits issued was not huge, the rate of increase was substantial. Moreover, there is little doubt that some homeowners took advantage of the District’s lax enforcement habits and renovated their property without a permit. Although remodeling work was scattered over much of East Georgetown, nearly two-thirds of all permits were issued for homes on just three streets—N, Dumbarton, and 30th, the very heart of the old neighborhood.

Media Attention A content analysis of a sample of Georgetown real estate advertisements in the Evening Star offers further insights (Gale 1982, 80–81). (The Evening Star was reputedly Washington’s most popular newspaper during the teens and twenties.) Limited to the four Sunday editions in April in the years 1915, 1920, and 1925, the study found that ads in 1915 and 1920 described homes in conventional terms such as number of bedrooms and baths. Larger mansions were characterized as suitable for diplomatic, institutional, or group living quarters. The 1925 editions, however, yielded an early sign that Georgetown’s historic appeal was in its infancy. An advertisement appearing on April 12 read: Historical Old Georgetown We offer one of the few desirable old colonial homes left in Georgetown at a price worthy of your most serious consideration. The residence, built in 1790, typifies the architecture of that period and is replete with handcarved mantels, archways, door and window facings. Thirteen rooms and 4 baths, fully detached. Attractive old terraced garden and many other charming features. Premises fully restored to original charm and quaintness and ready for immediate occupancy. (“Historical Old Georgetown” 1925) In the ad, the firm characterized itself as “Specializing in Old Georgetown Homes.” Though this single example hardly confirms a trend, it illustrates how attitudes about Georgetown’s prestige and identity had begun

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to shift. Persuading a buyer to purchase a home in Georgetown was no longer a hard sell. A larger challenge was posed by the limited supply of elegant mansions and handsome townhouses. As these were snapped up by eager buyers, the remaining homes tended to be smaller and lacked aesthetic appeal. Indeed, even the modest homes of impecunious families were drawing attention as demand for living space—nearly any living space—accelerated. Still, historical appreciation of Georgetown was driven by other forces besides real estate ads. Not surprisingly, annual house and garden tours were established beginning in the late 1920s. With each passing year, these events drew successively larger crowds. Apparently the first book written in appreciation of Georgetown’s historic and architectural significance, Doorways and Dormers of Old Georgetown, appeared at about the same time (Torbert 1930). It featured illustrations of Georgetown’s many fine homes. On the book’s back cover was a real estate firm’s advertisement, its text indicating that although many of the most desirable homes had already changed hands, other charming properties were still available. These were just as venerable as those seen on the annual Georgetown home tour, the ad continued, though “not so obviously attractive.” Nevertheless, they “can be made so” (Torbert 1930, back cover). For the most part, it seems likely that the remaining homes were smaller, were located in less ideal places, and/or were in worse physical condition than those that sold earlier. And of course, some were the homes of poor and working-class Georgetowners. Despite these sanguine signs of the neighborhood’s resurgence, not all people had expunged doubt from their minds. There were those real estate professionals who could not believe the enthusiasm they were seeing among newcomers. Armistead Peter, a lifelong, old-family Georgetowner, quoted one real estate man who was perplexed by the early remodelers. It was “perfect nonsense,” said the man, “people spending money on reconditioning those houses when they could build a new house for not much more” (Peter 1980). An Evening Star reporter wrote of the newcomers’ lack of interest in buying a home elsewhere in the city: “The real estate men were puzzled. Wealthy newcomers arriving in Washington were impatient when shown the grand places they could have on or off Sixteenth Street and asked to be taken to Georgetown” (Kennedy 1951, 17). By the end of 1927, however, the same newspaper reported of Georgetown: “And now it is coming into its own again, not through the erection of modern mansions, but through the conversion of its old residences into more comfortable dwellings without changing their outward architectural appearance” (Oulahan 1927). Implicit in Richard Oulahan’s observation is the idea that Georgetown was gaining a new lease on its life, not through the usual process of constructing modern homes in newly settled areas (then appearing in other

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Washington neighborhoods), but rather via the somewhat more unconventional trend of recycling existing older properties through rehabilitation and restoration. This trend ran counter to the then-common assumptions underlying filter theory (i.e., that as buildings age, they inevitably depreciate to the point where demolition and replacement is merited). Among several new homeowners in the neighborhood were the brother of Alanson B. Houghton, the ambassador to England, living in Bellvue, an old estate; Alexander Comstock Kirk, a state department official, who was remodeling the Robinson House; U.S. Senator Millard Tydings, scion of an old Maryland family; Frank C. Page, son of the former U.S. ambassador to Britain, and U.S. Representative Parker Corning of Albany, New York (Oulahan 1927; Pringle and Pringle 1948). Also listed was Mrs. Marcus A. Hanna, widow of the former Ohio U.S. senator who played a pivotal role in the presidential election of William McKinley (Stern 1963). Another newspaper reference noted in 1929 that Mr. and Mrs. Francis Colt de Wolfe were restoring the house at 3322 O Street NW, converting it from a “slummy old apartment house” back to its original single-family configuration. Mr. de Wolfe was an assistant to the solicitor of the State Department (News Leader 1929). There seems to be little doubt that the arrival of such leading families did much to spur enthusiasm for and confidence in a Georgetown address among less prominent people.

Renovation, History, and Social Change Clearly, East Georgetown was undergoing a process that in a half century would begin to transform older neighborhoods in several American cities. In 1920s Washington, however, this process was in its embryonic stages, and apparently was most commonly known simply as “remodeling.” More than the random improvement of a few scattered properties though, remodeling or renovation in Georgetown achieved the status of a trend driven by accelerating market demand. Underlying this demand was rising consumer appreciation for the redeeming virtues of older homes; doubtless, just as important was the social status ascribed to residency in a neighborhood in the process of recovering its once-esteemed self-image. Terms such as “remodeling” or “renovation” would serve as precursors to the term “gentrification,” which would surface in the United States some fifty years later. Other terms, such as “reconditioning” and “rehabilitation,” were also occasionally employed in early twentieth-century Washington. To be sure, Georgetown’s embryonic gentrification trend was initially highly localized and essentially confined to the southeast corner of the neighborhood. And it progressed in accretions, more or less from street to

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street. Once homes were renovated along one block and became too expensive for most home-seekers, activity usually spread incrementally to an adjacent street. Doubtless, real estate agents, recognizing opportunities for profit, actively sought out nearby available properties just outside the centers of intense renovation. Would-be buyers, unable to purchase a home on a particularly trendy street, would be introduced to similar homes on nearby blocks. Thus, it took several decades for Georgetown to undergo complete transformation. Who carried out the renovations? Typically, middle-income newcomers did much of the work themselves, with technical repairs, improvements, and additions left to carpenters, electricians, and plumbers. Wealthier buyers could afford to hire contractors to carry out a full rehabilitation. Presumably, most renovators planned to occupy their property, although some leased space to tenants. No doubt, once market demand for Georgetown homes was well established, enterprising construction tradespeople and real estate agents acquired properties, realizing that not everyone wanted to do it themselves. These entrepreneurs improved old houses before selling them at a profit or renting them out as an investment. And speculators were undoubtedly vigorous, buying low and selling homes for a quick profit with few, if any, improvements—in contemporary terms, flipping properties. One matter that influenced which properties were renovated was architectural style. During the interwar period, structures that were often in high demand were those built in the eighteenth and early to mid-nineteenth centuries (Logan 2017, 42–48). Typically termed “colonial” by local people, they included Federal, Georgian, and Greek Revival styles. In Washington, there were few such houses outside of Georgetown, and most surviving homes elsewhere in the city were built after the Civil War. These included Italianate and Gothic Revival, as well as later Victorian idioms such as Queen Anne, French Second Empire, Romanesque Revival, Stick style, and Shingle style homes. Generally more ornate than their predecessors, those built after 1850 drew less interest during the early years of Georgetown’s embryonic gentrification. One expression of this attraction to early American architecture was publication of a book documenting twenty-two Georgetown houses built in the Federal period between 1780 and 1830 (Davis, Dorsey, and Hall 1944). The authors offered before-and-after photographs of several restored structures, demonstrating the possibilities of sensitive rehabilitation. By the first few decades of the twentieth century, many Americans had grown weary of the busy or eclectic Victorian variations, with their smorgasbord of materials and textures and their often asymmetrical massing. Turrets, gable dormers, gingerbread, stained glass, and other fussy ornamentation had lost their luster over the late years of the nineteenth century,

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called the Brown Decades by respected urban historian Lewis Mumford. Calling such ornaments the “worst emblems of the period,” Mumford compared Victorian architecture to “an inappropriate joke told too frequently by a tiresome uncle” ([1931] 1971, 1). Modernist architect Eliel Saarinen, referring to Victorian architecture as “vulgarly ornate stuff,” added that it was “the most tasteless nonsense that the human brain and the machine were able to bring about” (1943, 338). Sympathetic to such pronouncements, some Georgetown newcomers sought out homes that predated Victorianism—not only for their age or prestige but also because of the iconic ­simplicity, restraint, and sobriety of their lines, proportions, massing, and materials. When the older unrestored homes in these classical styles grew scarce, however, buyers often settled for Victorian properties. Sometimes they colonialized their exteriors by fitting entrances with pediments and columns to masquerade as relics of an earlier age. Such fakery was conceivable in part because the terminology, procedures, and principles of American historic preservation were still in their infancy. With time, the preservationists would develop these concepts, and historical restoration, rather than mere rehabilitation, would guide many homebuyers. Thus, it was a combination of Georgetown’s history and architecture, as well as its village-like morphology, that drew many newcomers. The neighborhood’s appeal, as it were, was based as much on what it was not as on what it was. Although those who contributed to the resurgence of East Georgetown’s social prominence were among the most visible in-movers, people of lesser circumstances were also settling into more modest homes on the side streets. That nearly all in-movers were white and in middle- to upper-­ income households is apparent. But there was another dimension to the story of the neighborhood’s resurgence. Many of the renovated homes were originally single-family structures that were later subdivided into rooms or apartments for people of more modest means. Whenever an owner converted one of these properties back to single-family status, Georgetown’s supply of inexpensive rental housing was diminished. This process, which would later be associated with household displacement, apparently drew little, if any, attention from public officials or those concerned with social welfare. The rights of private property ownership virtually always trumped tenant preferences. Hence, an evicted bricklayer, seamstress, maid, or elderly widow was simply considered the victim of his or her own failure to own a home, not a casualty of inequality, racism, or other conditions recognized today. While charitable or religious organizations might step in to help these hapless victims, it was not widely considered the responsibility of the public sector to spend public resources to shelter them. Not until the New Deal era, apparently, would this attitude begin to budge.

40 / Chapter 1

With time, the supply of the most desirable Georgetown properties dwindled as, one by one, they were purchased and rehabilitated. Once these homes were no longer on the market, real estate agents marketed the less appealing properties and with time they, too, were done over for middleclass residents. Buyers on a tight budget, singles, and couples without children were then left to choose among Georgetown’s smaller homes, most of which had long been occupied by poor and working-class families. Often tucked into small side streets and alleys, most were located on postagestamp lots. As the remodeling trend progressed, even occupants of these houses were replaced by others of more substantial means. And of course, for newcomers who chose not to buy a home, investors renovated many other structures for middle- and upper-class renters. Despite the fact that many poor and working-class people had lived in Georgetown for generations and were employed by local businesses or families, their numbers were diminishing as the supply of less costly housing shrank. Painters, handymen, cooks, nannies, servants, carpenters, gardeners, laundresses, and other manual workers faded from the scene. Some moved across Wisconsin Avenue to West Georgetown, where embryonic gentrification was initially less advanced. A few migrated southward to the Georgetown waterfront or to other city neighborhoods to the east or southeast of Rock Creek. Many of these movers were African Americans and the descendants of slaves. Others were first- or second-generation white immigrant families, including many Irish Americans (Gill interview 1980; K. Smith 1989, 99– 100). Thus, a historic pattern of racial and social class propinquity—in which white middle- and upper-income families lived in close proximity to low- and moderate-income African American and white ethnic households—was disappearing. Georgetown was becoming less inclusive and increasingly homogeneous.

The New Deal Hordes With the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed, fears abounded in Washington that the city’s population growth and its housing industry would grind to a halt. But the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the presidency in 1932 brought the New Deal, Keynesian economics, and a substantial increase in the size of the federal budget. New Deal agencies such as the Works Progress Administration, the Public Works Administration, the National Resettlement Administration, and the Federal Housing Administration were created to alleviate the suffering of millions of Americans and to put people back to work. The PWA, for example, constructed nearly 22,000 dwelling units in thirty-six cities during

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  41

the 1930s (Congressional Research Service 1973, 232–234). These and other government offices needed thousands of employees to run their programs. To the city’s real estate industry, this fact promised another spike in demand for homes and apartments. As new hires and hopefuls flooded into Washington, some discovered the charms of Georgetown’s restored homes, quaint streets, and village atmosphere. New Englanders and those from the Middle Atlantic states, in particular, felt at home living among the red-brick, shuttered houses and tree-shaded streets. Roosevelt and his cabinet appointees brought thousands of workers— among them, youthful graduates from elite colleges, university professors, settlement house leaders, lawyers, and Wall Street executives—to the capital. During the period 1933 to 1940 Uncle Sam added an average of ten thousand additional workers each year. By 1940 there were nineteen thousand more government workers in the Washington area than had been the case at the end of World War I (Gale 1982, 116). Hundreds of these new arrivals crowded Georgetown houses, tiny apartments, and even rooming houses in an often desperate quest for shelter (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 259). Decades later some observers would mistakenly date the origins of Georgetown’s revival to the New Deal era (Herken 2014, 17, 90–91; Zeitz 1979, 34–35, 54). As we have seen, however, the genesis of embryonic gentrification appeared there nearly twenty years earlier. What especially struck many Washingtonians was not just the number of newcomers pouring into the city but their relative youth. Many were in their twenties or early thirties. In previous presidential administrations, gray-haired men predominated. Now their numbers were complemented by scores of people (again, mostly men) with many just a few years out of college. Impecunious young New Dealers moved into the cramped restored little houses. Tiny fenced-off patches of ground at the rear, recently littered with rubbish, again turned into gardens and patios with lilac bushes and crepe myrtle nursed back to vigor by pruning and feeding. (Green 1963, 400) What has happened is that the New Deal young men, between their working periods, drink in heavy spurts and in the open and in the company of their ladies. They work hard, drink hard, play briefly, and talk well. They live modestly in apartment houses, the smaller hotels, and behind the small, brick fronts of Washington and Georgetown. (“Washington, D.C.” 1934, 55–56) Doubtless, at least a few of the newcomers had lived in similar neighborhoods such as New York’s Greenwich Village or Boston’s Beacon Hill. But

42 / Chapter 1

whatever their geographic origins, many brought with them a youthful willingness to endure cramped quarters in old houses, unreliable heating and plumbing, steaming summers, and balky water service. Most must have deemed their time in Washington a temporary hardship, and they knew that their employment would terminate should Roosevelt not remain in office. Hence, a sense of permanence would have been difficult for them to find. Although data on Georgetown’s early transition are scant, the 1930 and 1940 Decennial Census results offered insights that shed some light on demographic shifts that were occurring. These metrics provide a statistical snapshot of conditions not necessarily apparent from contemporary narratives. As embryonic gentrification progressed, Georgetown’s population declined by 17.2 percent, or nearly three thousand people, over the 1920s (Table 1.1). Then, during the 1930s the neighborhood’s population rose by more than eight hundred (5.8 percent), probably resulting from the influx of New Deal workers to Washington, which contributed to a 36.2 percent population increase citywide. One study found that about half of all U.S. government employees living in Washington shared a room with one or more unrelated persons. It reported that they resided “in all kinds of homes—from elaborate single houses to trailers and even chicken houses and houseboats” (Cornfield and Weber 1941, 1227, 1229). So desperate was Washington’s housing shortage, Hollywood movies such as The More the Merrier (1943) and Without Love (1945) exploited the situation for comedic effect. Clearly a demographic turnover was under way in Georgetown. Even as housing vacancies reached near-zero levels, the density of population per dwelling unit in Georgetown declined from 3.73 persons in 1930 to 3.65 in 1940 (Gale 1982, 124). Although the decline they show is modest, these figures suggest that on average, incoming households were smaller than those leaving the neighborhood. Put another way, younger singles and couples were replacing families with children or extended family members, many Table 1.1  Population of Washington, D.C., and Georgetown, 1920–1950 Washington Percent change over decade Georgetown Percent change over decade

1920

1930

1940

1950

437,571

486,869

663,091

802,178

—

11.3

36.2

21.0

17,083

14,139

14,958

14,529

—

–17.2

5.8

–2.9

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, decennial censuses, 1920–1950, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.1920.html.

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  43

of whom were African Americans or of Irish or Italian ethnicity. Further demonstrating Georgetown’s diminishing household size, between 1930 and 1950 the proportion of single persons living in the neighborhood rose from 34 to 40 percent (Gale 1982, 124–125). Meanwhile, the share of neighborhood children was declining. One study from the 1940s found that “whereby three buildings formerly housed the elementary school children [in Georgetown], only one is now necessary because the number of school children has decreased so sharply” (Ritzenberg 1951, 54). Even as the population composition was changing, then, population density was declining. Unquestionably, embryonic gentrification accounted in part for these shifts. But another factor involved a city campaign to eliminate Washington’s alley dwellings.

Official Duplicity In the mid-1930s the District government began to rid Georgetown and other neighborhoods of alley dwellings. The primary justifications were their poor sanitary conditions, the difficulty of fighting house fires in cramped alleys, and the frequent police calls in response to neighbors’ complaints about noise and crime. Built along narrow corridors behind the back yards and gardens of the more substantial houses facing the streets, these tiny brick houses typically had two floors and rented for twelve to fifteen dollars monthly. They were arranged in rows facing one another across the alley. Many were overcrowded. For example, one cluster of four alleys in Georgetown collectively housed more than two hundred people (nearly all African Americans). Of course, racial discrimination in housing was rampant in Washington, and the Alley Dwelling Authority ensured that tenants were assigned to its alley dwellings strictly on the basis of patterns of racial segregation. Segregated housing patterns in the nation’s capital were thus guaranteed, both through official public policies and through devices such as racially restrictive covenants and discriminatory rental practices sanctioned by local laws (Asch and Musgrove 2017; Rothstein 2017). Soon the city’s alley dwellings were slated for demolition. The process moved slowly, but by the early 1950s the last families had been evicted (Lesko, Babb, and Gibbs 1991, 82). Municipal action proceeded under the Alley Dwelling Act, an amendment to Washington’s zoning law (Borchert 1980). However, an odd thing happened on the way to protecting people from the perceived scourge of alley dwellings. Instead of demolishing all these units, the city allowed many to be sold to white families (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 382). Then, freshly painted, with a new roof, kitchen, and bath, they were outfitted with flower boxes and exterior coach lamps. In Georgetown, where real estate was at a premium, alley homes sold quickly.

44 / Chapter 1

Middle-income households could gain a foothold in what by then was Washington’s toniest residential community. What made this episode unusual was that the District government was using its condemnation powers to remove black families from Georgetown homes; they were not being forced out strictly through market actions such as landlord rental increases or evictions. When employed to protect public health and safety, condemnation was then legally justified. Public officials could take private property (with fair compensation to owners) as long as it did so in pursuit of a public purpose (e.g., protecting people from fires or from health threats such as a lack of sanitary sewers or access to potable water). Interestingly, John Ihlder—once an idealistic neighborhood leader in efforts to protect Georgetown from slums and inappropriate development—was by 1938 serving as executive officer of the city’s Alley Dwelling Authority (Scott 1969, 333). Was the alley dwelling campaign comporting with these conditions? There can be no disputing the lack of sewers or safe drinking water in these alleys. Nor can one doubt the fire dangers in cramped quarters such as alley dwellings. Therefore, there would seem to have been a legitimate public purpose involved in condemning and demolishing alley dwellings. But in too many cases, that is not what transpired. Instead, the District government was removing black people from unsafe homes so that those structures could be made safe for whites to inhabit! In hindsight, such practices seem to have been the ultimate in official duplicity. A case in point is Bell’s Court, an alley of twelve small houses on the west side of Georgetown. All were occupied by African Americans, many of whom worked in the larger homes nearby as domestics or cooks. An Evening Star reporter described Bell’s Court: Bottles, wood and debris littered the narrow court. The two-story brick row, each unit of which contains four rooms, is equipped with outdoor toilets and running water. The houses rented for $12.50 to $15.00 a month until condemnation stopped collection. (“10 Georgetown Families,” 1950) An architect whose back fence abutted the court decried the foul language he heard on weekend nights. He described in an interview what he claimed was a standard tactic used by Washington police to calm the reputed violence there: “When they’re cutting each other up on a Saturday night, the police back their motorcycles up to the alley and make them backfire. [The alley dwellers] think the police are shooting, so that stops the ruckus” (Chapman 1980). Of course, the architect’s somewhat insouciant account conveys little sensitivity to the contributions of poverty and racism in ­creating the alley’s negative circumstances. But it helps us understand the

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  45

attitudes of Georgetown’s middle- and upper-class white population regarding the alley dwellings. As embryonic gentrification advanced in this area, pressure mounted from residents to exorcise the few remaining warrens of poverty. By 1950 several congressmen and federal officials were living in restored homes in the neighborhood surrounding Bell’s Court. There was now a shortage of restorable properties in Georgetown, and real estate agents recognized the market potential in this little alley once the tiny structures were renovated. Adding further to the pressures for change, the Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown called for the complete rehabilitation of Bell’s Court (Gale 1982, 213). Before renovation occurred, a Georgetown real estate agent and her husband owned all twelve units. She described Bell’s as “a total slum” and said that “several murders” occurred there. She decided to sell the units to a developer, who purchased ten of them for $70,000. After renovation, they were sold for $15,000 to $17,000 each as coach houses (Nash and Colean 1959, 203). Given the poor reputation of Bell’s Court, the name of the alley was changed to Pomander Walk, an action that would later be known as rebranding (Figure 1.4). A few years later, the former alley was pictured in National Geographic magazine in a story on Georgetown’s history and prestige as the preeminent residential setting in the nation’s capital (Kinney 1953, 519). A highly regarded architectural guide summarized the alley’s

Figure 1.4  A typical alley dwelling enclave, Bell’s Court was renamed Pomander Walk in the 1950s. Its poor African American families were evicted and the rehabilitated row dwellings were sold to a more affluent clientele.

46 / Chapter 1

transition in stark terms: “Within the past 30 years this alley has changed from a slum to a small attractive center-block enclave; its 10 tiny houses display a light-hearted, almost fey, charm” (Weeks 1994, 226). Progress had come to the neighborhood, albeit at a price to its penurious black households.

Remaking the Image Accompanying the New Deal hordes was a new round of publicity for Georgetown’s embryonic gentrification trend. Between 1928 and 1933, for example, the Sunday Star printed no fewer than a dozen columns by its historian, John Clagett Proctor, on various landmarks, places, and people in the neighborhood. In addition, several publications on Georgetown’s ­history and architecture appeared in the 1930s. Aside from Alice Coyle Torbert’s Doorways and Dormers (1930), mentioned earlier, there were Henry Ridgely Evans’s Old Georgetown on the Potomac (1933) and Frederick W. Englert’s A Century and a Half of Freemasonry in Georgetown, 1789–1939 (n.d.). Too, Cordelia Jackson’s article “People and Places in Old Georgetown” (1932) appeared in a local historical society’s journal. Word of the neighborhood’s restoration went beyond local circles, however. For example, the July 1940 issue of House and Garden, a nationally circulated magazine, included several articles featuring restored homes in Georgetown and other parts of Washington. By 1930 both a house tour and a garden tour were held annually in Georgetown. The two events, sponsored by a Georgetown church, generated income that funded various charitable causes. Both proved popular and drew many nonresidents to visit the neighborhood. On one early 1930s garden tour, all but three properties were located in East Georgetown. Grand estates such as Evermay and The Oaks (later renamed Dumbarton Oaks) were included. But also on the tour was a converted carriage house and what was identified as the smallest house and garden in Washington at 1239 30th Street (Georgetown Garden Tour, n.d.). The message conveyed to visitors was that regardless of their price range, Georgetown had a home for them. Group consciousness about the special historic and social identity of the community was beginning to flourish. These efforts to draw attention to the neighborhood coincided with a rise in building permit issuances. The annual number of permits issued for repairs and improvements in East Georgetown rose from a low of thirty-one in 1929 to a high of eighty-seven in 1945. During this period, the average number of permits issued annually (53.94) was almost five times that of the earlier period, 1915–1928 (Gale 1982, 129–133). Newspaper real estate ads

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  47

continued apace and often stressed both a property’s esteemed architectural qualities—fireplaces, decorative woodwork, period details—and its modern conveniences such as a new kitchen, bath, and heating system. Still, even rather ordinary homes could be touted as “charming” by dint of their proximity to the grander houses, as well as to features such as brick sidewalks, cast-iron gates, and other architectural elements of yesteryear (Gale 1982, 132–133). This was especially true of West Georgetown. Although farther removed from downtown Washington than East Georgetown, it was closer to the Georgetown University campus, making it popular with faculty, staff, and students seeking housing. It also had a larger supply of small and mediumsized homes. As the supply of available properties in East Georgetown shrank, those on the west side drew more attention. For example, in the mid-1930s, John Ihlder’s fellow Georgetown booster, J. Bernard Wykoff, and a co-investor jointly purchased a “tumbled down place” on 33rd Street above P Street for $3,200 (Wykoff 1980). They razed the house, and their architect designed a sizable home to replace it. However, bankers refused to finance the project, fearing that the Depression would deter wealthy buyers. Smaller, less expensive houses, they reasoned, would have greater sales potential. Consequently, Wykoff and his co-investor had the architect design two smaller side-by-side houses for the lot. The bank quickly approved a loan, and the homes were built. Each was constructed of red brick and was designed to emulate the older homes around it. The two properties quickly sold, one to newlyweds and one to a judge’s widow. For their investment of $18,200 Wykoff and his partner realized a profit of $2,800. Other local investors acted similarly, purchasing West Georgetown properties and renovating them. Some, like Wykoff and his partner, tore down unsalvageable homes and built moderate-sized replacement housing (Gale 1982, 134). Clearly, buyer confidence in Georgetown’s resurrection was spreading well beyond the choicest sections.

A Growing Historic Preservation Consciousness As demand grew for a Georgetown address and pressures to build there escalated, the PCAG heightened its efforts to fend off threats to Georgetown’s character and identity. While the District government struggled with citywide issues such as controlling traffic and parking, standardizing street names, and paving over open spaces to minimize maintenance costs, individual neighborhoods across the city resisted. To Georgetowners, the whisk of the city engineer’s broom threatened to sweep away the diversity, serendipity, and individuality of many cherished features of local life

48 / Chapter 1

(Georgetown News 1933). Despite these distractions, however, group awareness about the neighborhood’s historic identity was emerging. Certainly, the Roosevelt administration played a role in this. Never before had the federal government intervened as deeply into matters heretofore considered to be substantially the province of the private sector as during the 1930s. The Public Housing Administration would become the houser of last resort for poor people who could not afford to rent homes at market rates. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board regulated banks in unprecedented ways. Entire communities were being planned and built by the Resettlement Administration instead of by private enterprise (Knepper 2001). And the Federal Housing Administration was lowering the cost of bank loans for first-time homebuyers through government-subsidized mortgage insurance. The notion that government has a larger responsibility for the public welfare—even when it involves regulating private property— was gradually taking root among many Americans (Kleinberg 1995, 94– 120). Nowhere was this more evident, it seems, than in the very birthplace of the New Deal—the city of Washington. Not only was the New Deal directly influencing housing markets and the national economy; it was also opening doors to the preservation of historic buildings and spaces. The federal Historic Sites Act of 1935 funded the hiring of unemployed architects and other design professionals to prepare measured drawings of architecturally distinctive older properties (Sprinkle 2014, 7–16). Some of these drawings showed how altered structures could be restored to their original appearance (Gale 1982, 129, 138). Similarly, the government’s Historic American Building Survey hired artists and photographers to research and write guides to the architecture of several American cities. Resources such as these contributed to a growing public awareness that the nation’s history, while not as superannuated as those in Old World Europe, had achieved a status worthy of pride and recognition. America’s political, religious, social, and economic accomplishments, as well as its cultural artifacts, were deemed deserving of preservation. These notions were not lost on Georgetown residents, including the PCAG, which invited a number of architects to lecture at its meetings as the decade of the 1930s neared its end. At these events, members were informed of the irreplaceable heritage represented by their homes, especially the stock of eighteenth-century houses, and they were urged to protect them (Georgetown Advertiser 1939a, 1939b; Georgetown News 1940). Soon the PCAG and the GCA approached the District government and the city’s planning body, the federal National Capital Park and Planning Commission. The Georgetowners asked the commission to endorse a measure to prohibit “the building of futuristic houses in the midst of ramshackle negro dwellings.” They also requested that the commission limit the issuance of building permits

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  49

so as to protect structures built in the “eighteenth century styles” (Georgetown News 1939). Thus, the earliest signs of a formalized, articulated, and conscious citizen movement to preserve, protect, and restore Georgetown’s historic architecture appears to have emerged during 1938 and 1939 (Georgetown News 1940). Nonetheless, it would be more than a decade before the first law specifically directed at preserving Georgetown’s architectural legacy was enacted. World War II would consume much of Washington’s energies, and a decade would pass before the matter would be revisited in earnest.

Socioeconomic Shifts Collectively, changes in the socioeconomic status of Georgetown residents appear to have been relatively modest during the late teens and twenties. But as embryonic gentrification spread, they became more pronounced. One important status indicator is educational attainment among household heads (Table 1.2). Although the number of household heads living in Washington with four or more years of college rose by more than twenty thousand between 1940 and 1950, the percentage change was negligible. Roughly one-fifth of those included in the decennial censuses of those years were holders of a university degree. But the percentages in Georgetown were Table 1.2 Education Levels in Washington and Georgetown, 1940–1950 1940 Education level

1950

Washington

Georgetown

Washington

Georgetown

1–3 years (no.)

65,456

1,098

80,410

830

1–3 years (%)

27.0

22.4

24.2

12.4

4 years (no.)

86,840

1,554

125,580

1,855

4 years (%)

36.0

31.8

37.8

27.7

52,255

1,225

High school

College 1–3 years (no.)

41,065

779

1–3 years (%)

17.0

16.0

17.2

18.3

4 years or more (no.)

47,252

1,461

68,155

2,795

4 years or more (%)

20.0

30.0

20.5

41.7

240,613

4,892

326,400

6,705

100

100

100

100

Total Percentage

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, decennial censuses, 1940–1950, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.1940.html.

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much higher. Over the 1940s, the number of Georgetown heads with a college degree almost doubled. In 1940, 30 percent of Georgetown household heads were college educated. By 1950 the measure had leaped to nearly 42 percent. At that point, Georgetown’s share of college-educated residents was twice the share citywide. Without question, the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood was rising substantially. Correspondingly, at the lowest end of the education spectrum—those with one to three years of high school—the share of household heads citywide declined by less than three percentage points over the 1940s. In Georgetown, on the other hand, the share declined from 22.4 to 12.4 percent. Clearly, the neighborhood’s population of poor and working-class households was decreasing, as an educational elite spread over much of Georgetown. These vast educational differences were further reflected in the occupational status of household heads. Table 1.3 displays changes in major occupational categories among household heads in Washington and Georgetown. Within the highest-status category, professional and semiprofessional workers citywide composed 11.4 percent of all household heads in 1940 and 13.8 percent ten years later. In Georgetown, on the other hand, this figure rose from 17.5 to 27.2 percent. By midcentury, then, about one-fourth of the neighborhood’s household heads were professional or semiprofessional employees. Smaller gains were made by managerial, proprietary, clerical, and sales-related workers. Correspondingly, at the lower end of the status ladder, the proportion of laborers in Georgetown shrank from 6.1 to 2.8 percent. By 1950, then, the neighborhood’s share of laborers was halved. Significant, though less extreme, changes occurred among craftsmen, foremen, operatives, domestic service workers, and other service workers. Similar findings appeared in a master’s thesis study of West Georgetown over the period 1930 to 1948 (Ritzenberg 1951, 41–45). Once again, the trend is clear. Georgetown’s demographic profile was undergoing a pattern of upward socioeconomic transition. The diversity of inhabitants once characterizing the neighborhood was declining as social homogeneity increased. As one historian observed of the city, “The nearly 120,000 white newcomers of the New Deal were generally well-educated upper-class citizens qualifying for governments posts” (Green 1963, 400). And still, the elites trickled into Georgetown. A study of “Fashionable Residential Areas” (FRAs) in Washington observed that in 1904 and 1917 no FRAs existed in Georgetown. By 1938, however, after more than twenty years of embryonic gentrification, the study found that FRAs were beginning to appear (Hoyt 1939, 169). Between 1933 and 1950 the New Deal and World War II drew people such as Adolf A. Berle Jr. Close to President Roosevelt, Berle was “one of the original brain trust triumvirate and a man of

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  51

Table 1.3 Occupational Categories of Washington and Georgetown Household Heads, 1940–1950 1940 Occupational category

1950

Washington

Georgetown

Washington

Georgetown

Professional, semiprofessional (no.)

34,900

1,125

51,020

1,799

Professional, semiprofessional (%)

11.4

17.5

13.8

27.2

Managerial, proprietary, officials (no.)

22,300

510

26,867

802

Managerial, proprietary, officials (%)

7.2

7.9

7.3

12.1

Clerical, sales (no.)

103,992

1,610

130,382

1,952

Clerical, sales (%)

33.9

25.0

35.4

29.5

Craftsmen, foremen (no.)

29,178

541

36,256

427

Craftsmen, foremen (%)

9.5

8.4

9.8

6.5

Operatives (no.)

32,610

878

36,102

452

Operatives (%)

10.5

13.6

9.8

6.8

Domestic service (no.)

25,308

708

18,561

508

Domestic service (%)

8.2

11.0

5.0

7.7

Service workers (no.)

42,174

676

48,550

485

Service workers (%)

13.7

10.5

13.2

7.3

Laborers (no.)

16,580

395

20,674

184

Laborers (%)

5.4

6.1

5.6

2.8

307,114

6,433

368,412

6,609

110

100

100

100

Total Percentage

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, decennial censuses, 1940–1950, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.1940.html.

independent means” (Kennedy 1951, 17). In addition, other new Georgetown residents included Frances Perkins, the secretary of labor and one of the nation’s earliest female cabinet secretaries; Francis Biddle, descendant of a distinguished Main Line Philadelphia family; Elliot and Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr., offspring of the president and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; and Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law School professor then recently appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court (Kennedy 1951). Federal elected officials composed another Georgetown cohort. My analysis of U.S. congressional directories for the years 1920, 1930, 1940, 1950, and 1960 established that the number of congressional members living in Georgetown never exceeded five until 1950. By that year, there were

52 / Chapter 1

twelve members in residence in the neighborhood. And by 1960, there were fifteen (Gale 1982, 165). Similarly, members of the Congressional Press Gallery increased their presence in Georgetown. Only two such distinguished journalists lived there in 1920. By 1930 their numbers had risen to thirtyone. In 1950, there were forty-seven press corps members, and in 1960 fiftyseven were residents of the neighborhood (Gale 1982, 166). Among their numbers were Joseph Alsop and Drew Pearson, two of the most highly regarded journalists of their day. Most writers in the neighborhood were establishmentarians like these and not the avant-garde. They were affiliated with mainstream newspapers and magazines, and only a few authored novels, poems, plays, and the like. Neither were there many political or cultural radicals of the type found in New York. Further on we explore the role of the intelligentsia in the restoration of Boston’s Beacon Hill and New York’s Greenwich Village. But it is safe to say that only a smattering of such people—novelists, poets, artists, musicians, and architects—made Georgetown their home. And there is little evidence that they imparted a distinctive bohemian-communitarian culture with distinctive dress, coffeehouses, bookstores, galleries, and candlelight cafes. Some of these newcomers were from comfortable, if not privileged, backgrounds. Then too, as a government town, Washington itself has never drawn large numbers of such people. There were several rising architects, however, and the capital city’s numerous commissions to design government or private buildings attracted several. Others provided the drawings and blueprints needed to restore old buildings in Georgetown and other neighborhoods (Gale 1982, 169). The fact that many newcomers to Washington chose to live in Georgetown signified that the old community was becoming an increasingly cosmopolitan place. As the interwar years drew to a close, there were fewer and fewer residents whose livelihood was earned in the businesses along the waterfront or the neighborhood’s retail corridors. Instead, neighborhood residents were increasingly concerned with national and international matters. Their work was carried out in government bureaucracies or private offices catering to the needs of the executive, legislative, or judicial branches. Though living in Georgetown, they had professional interests that were directed outwardly to the larger world, not inwardly to the neighborhood. Among Georgetown’s old families, such urbanity would raise questions about the concern for local civic issues among the newcomers. Some of this shift in collective consciousness can be attributed to the simple fact that Washington, including Georgetown, was gradually leaving behind its sleepy southern identity. Although its steamy, lazy summers, Dixie accents, and large black population were reminiscent of a community in the Deep South, a regional transition was under way. To a degree, at least,

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  53

the neighborhood was being “northernized,” as apartment-accustomed New York “cliff dwellers” met Georgetown’s freestanding house–­accustomed “cave dwellers” (Gale 1982, 172–173).

Race Relations As embryonic gentrification progressed over the 1940s and 1950s, relations between Georgetown’s white and black inhabitants became more strained. The aplomb with which many people viewed the uprooting of African Americans was succinctly displayed in one newspaper article. By today’s standards, its racial insensitivity is remarkable: The big rush today is toward little so-called “darkey houses” and “slave quarters.” Tiny “shacks” no more than 16 feet wide are responding to soap and paint and insulation. Any alley may lead to a newly fashionable home or studio. Some of the natives smile and declare some of the structures . . . “have no more history than anything”—but the sales continue just as briskly as before. (Sadler 1939, 27) The simple truth was that, as more homes were restored, those few that remained unaltered became increasingly conspicuous (Figure 1.5). The scattered, unpretentious homes of working-class families were like missing teeth in the denture-like rows of sparkling renovated homes. Many were in poor repair. Doubtless, most middle- and upper-class householders were anxious to see properties they considered eyesores restored or replaced—the better to enhance their own property values. Nonetheless, the gradual whittling away of homes occupied by low-income minority families was undermining historical patterns of racial and cultural diversity. Table 1.4 displays white and black population shifts from 1910 to 1960 in Georgetown and the city of Washington. Over that fifty-year period, Georgetown’s white population declined from 12,117 to 11,177, while its black population dropped from 3,922 to 381. Over the half century, therefore, the African American residency shrank to less than 10 percent of its earlier figure. Yet the number of blacks living citywide rose more than fourfold over the fifty-year period. How many of these losses in Georgetown were due to mortality versus migration is unclear. And how many moves were voluntary rather than forced through Alley Dwelling Authority condemnations or through landlord-imposed evictions, lease terminations, or unaffordable rent increases is anyone’s guess. In summary, Tables 1.1–1.4 reveal demographic trends that, decades later, would be widely associated in Washington and other U.S. cities with

54 / Chapter 1

Figure 1.5  As Georgetown’s more architecturally distinctive homes were restored, “vernacular” wood-frame dwellings such as these drew new interest. Middle- and upper-income households gradually replaced the poor and working-class families who once occupied them.

gentrification. But in the first half of the twentieth century few, if any, other American cities were experiencing similar dynamics. Hence, Georgetown was treated as a statistical outlier by planners, demographers, and other professionals. Nevertheless, the neighborhood was not alone in its resurgence. In subsequent chapters, we explore how embryonic gentrification in Boston and New York unfolded in parallel. Before we do so, however, it is important to consider how African American residents felt about the forces that were changing the makeup of Georgetown. Whatever misgivings the homeowners might have had about moving were at least partially ameliorated by the profits they presumably received on their investment. To what extent their move was voluntary and not the result of impositions such as strict code enforcement or higher property taxes remains to be seen. We would expect that many black renters, however, were displeased when landlords evicted them, raised rents beyond their means, or simply refused to renew their lease. One witness to black outmigration in the 1930s and 1940s was Everett Payne, a retired African American policeman, whom I interviewed in 1982. I asked if any members of his family were pressured by landlords to move out of their Georgetown home:

D.C.

—

94,446

—

236,128

—

331,069

GT

—

3,922

—

12,117

—

16,046

16.4

109,966

38.4

326,860

32.2

437,571

D.C.

GT

–4.1

3,761

6.8

12,938

6.5

17,083

1920

20.1

132,068

8.3

353,914

11.3

486,869

D.C.

GT

–16.6

3,136

21.0

15,661

–17.2

14,139

1930

41.8

187,266

34.0

474,326

36.2

663,091

D.C.

GT

0.03

3,215

–25.3

11,700

5.8

14,958

1940 D.C.

49.9

280,803

9.2

517,865

21.0

802,178

GT

–42.7

1,841

7.8

12,614

–2.9

14,529

1950 D.C.

46.6

411,737

–33.3

345,263

–4.8

763,956

GT

–79.0

381

–11.4

11,177

–19.6

11,686

1960

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, decennial censuses, 1910–1960, https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial-census/decade/decennial-publications.1910.html.

% change over decade

Black

% change over decade

White

% change over decade

Total

1910

Table 1.4  Population of Washington, D.C., and Georgetown (GT) by Race, 1910–1960

56 / Chapter 1

Payne: No, no. They didn’t pressure them. Gale: They never . . .

No. Uh-uh. They just say you had to—uh. No. You had to move; that’s all. Gale: Uh huh. Payne: And, um, you see, we had a little more common sense than people did. Prejudice—we didn’t know the word, y’see. [Pauses.] See, back there, see, we had our place, y’know. And we just stayed in it, and there wasn’t no argument about it, y’see. And we had fun. (Payne 1982) Payne:

Despite my additional probing, Payne insisted that neither he nor his relatives were forced or pressured to move out of their homes. He recalled no steep rental hikes or evictions. But he said that he eventually left Georgetown and moved to a predominantly black neighborhood in the center of the city. Payne volunteered the fact that some Georgetown minority homeowners were made “offers they couldn’t refuse.” Some sold their home, purchased another one outside Georgetown, “and still had enough money to put in the bank” (Gale 1982, 188). Payne displayed no overt resentment over the fact that in his youth Georgetown playgrounds and public schools were still segregated by race. He also accepted the legal prerogatives of property ownership then current and voiced no misgivings about the gradual dislocation of African American residents. Yet my perception was that, at times, Payne’s voice evinced some ambivalence, possibly signaling that he masked some feelings because he was speaking to a white interviewer about whom he knew little. Then again, his years as one of Washington’s first African American police officers may have given him an intense respect for the law, regardless of how it affected his friends, his family, or himself. Payne’s rather benign views may have been representative of one perspective among African American Georgetown residents, but there was also a less optimistic interpretation of the ongoing neighborhood trends. Pauline Mitchell, a retired black schoolteacher, was interviewed during a television appearance in 1982 about her life in Georgetown. She told a brief story from her youth about overhearing a conversation between two white men while riding a Washington streetcar during the late Depression or war years. I sat in front of two—evidently they were real estate men. I can’t prove it, but from the gist of their conversation, when they began to talk about Georgetown property, naturally I became very curious . . . to listen to what was said. And in the course of the conversation, one thing that was said was, “We’re going to get all those Negroes out of

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  57

Georgetown.” They said “Negroes,” of course, in those days. And, uh, I could not wait until I got home from school so I could tell my father what I’d heard. And, uh, he was very unhappy about it and decided that wasn’t the thing he was going to do. (P. Mitchell 1982) The details of Mitchell’s recollection exemplify a common perception among some Washington African Americans regarding the in-movement of whites to Georgetown and to other neighborhoods that later underwent embryonic gentrification. Talk of “The Plan” or of “reverse blockbusting” is a trope that has persisted in gentrification controversies for generations (Malach 2018, 113; N. Smith 1987, 1996). In Washington, it indicated a deepseated suspicion that the displacement of poor and working-class blacks was at the hands of a cabal of white businessmen, city officials, and influential private citizens. Despite insistence from some observers that Georgetown’s resurgence was simply the result of free market forces, with no overall orchestration, there were those who suspected otherwise. Doubtless, the Alley Dwelling Authority’s duplicity in evicting blacks and permitting their former homes to be sold to whites did nothing to dispel such suspicions. Nor did the existence of racially restrictive covenants in property ownership or of official redlining of minority neighborhoods to foreclose mortgage lending. Such conspiracy theories were common throughout the gentrification of Georgetown and do not appear to have been unsubstantiated (Zeitz 1979, 87). In the cases of Payne and Mitchell, as well as other resident-interviewees discussed herein, we must remember that human recollection is an imperfect instrument. Memories are not infrequently reshaped by time, and the recollections we share with others may become “historical fact” in our own minds. Perhaps Mitchell’s recall of an event from her childhood misperceived what she heard. Perhaps the two men were talking about a particular household or family of troublesome tenants, rather than all blacks living in Georgetown. Then again, maybe her memory was entirely accurate and there were indeed real estate agents who plotted to transform Georgetown into a lily-white community. Consider, for example, the words of Joseph Wise, a white real estate agent, who was quoted in a local Georgetown newspaper: Many excellent people have come over here and taken over small and inferior dwellings, some of which have been inhabited by colored people, and have made them over into very acceptable residences. This is a distinct improvement to Georgetown. (“Is Building Expansion Possible?” 1936) Wise left no doubts about where his sympathies lay. Restoration and a homogeneous white neighborhood were obvious goals. He estimated that

58 / Chapter 1

by 1936 about one-third of Georgetown’s black population had left. “Obviously, Georgetown needs new and virile population and better houses,” he added. He equated the loss of “coloreds” with progress and, emphasizing the inevitability of economic determinism, said, “We could not stop it even were we in Georgetown so inclined” (“Is Building Expansion Possible?” 1936). There were other signs of prejudice in Georgetown besides the racially segregated playgrounds and schools. For example, the all-male membership of the GCA decided in 1945 to admit women to the organization. But the revised wording of their constitution specified that “any white person” residing in Georgetown could become eligible for membership (Lesko, Babb, and Gibbs 1991, 90). In other words, African Americans would remain excluded from this influential association. While the Georgetown business community exercised racial discrimination, other neighborhood voices posed at least a counterpoint to such grim practices. The Mount Zion United Methodist Church of Georgetown, for example, included some of the most successful African American families in the city. The oldest black religious institution in Washington, it was founded in 1816. Nevertheless, though its congregation quietly stood for racial harmony over the years, even they could not stop the forces that were transforming their neighborhood. Between 1935 and 1945, for example, about five hundred housing units were substantially rehabilitated in Georgetown. By the mid-1940s nearly all of the least expensive housing was gone, and there were “no slums left” in the neighborhood (Lesko, Babb, and Gibbs 1991, 92–93). In response to these demographic shifts, two members of the Mount Zion congregation appeared before a U.S. House of Representatives committee in 1950 to express concerns about a proposal to designate a historic district in Georgetown. First enacted in Charleston and New Orleans, historic district ordinances extended the municipal protection of individual landmark buildings to encompass entire historic neighborhoods. The Mount Zion members worried that the measure would be used to exclude African Americans from securing housing in Georgetown and would reduce even further the number of black families living in the church’s neighborhood. Their suspicions were founded on solid reasoning. Only two years earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Shelley v. Kraemer that racially restrictive covenants were unenforceable by governments (Rothstein 2017). Could the proposed historic district law become a stealthy substitute, Mount Zion members wondered? And surely the Bell’s Court eviction debacle, occurring only months earlier, gave evidence of the sometimes deceitful nature of local lawmaking. Because it was the first such measure proposed for Washington, there was no previous experience with historic district ordinances to offer guidelines. Supporters of the ordinance assured the Mount Zion visitors that no

The Georgetown Neighborhood of Washington, D.C., 1915–1945  /  59

such powers or intentions were associated with the measure. Despite the church’s reluctance, the act was quickly adopted by both houses of Congress, some members of which were residents of Georgetown (Gale 1982, 223–226). Under the new Old Georgetown Act, regulations could be imposed to require owners to maintain their property’s exterior in conformance with historic architectural standards overseen by an historic district commission. Historic preservation was shifting into high gear in the neighborhood. At about this time Holiday magazine was waxing lyrical in its description of Georgetown’s embryonic gentrification to a national readership (“Georgetown: Washington’s Most Desirable” 1950). Still, the physical, economic, and social overhaul of Georgetown would not be complete until the last decades of the twentieth century. For the most part, the challenge remaining in the neighborhood’s embryonic gentrification was centered in a wedge-shaped area to the south of M Street NW in the waterfront section (Georgetown Historic Waterfront 1968).

2 The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945

T

he transformation of Georgetown illustrates how early twentieth-­ century embryonic gentrification established roots in the nation’s capital. However, we should not assume that experience to have been entirely representative of gentrification in other cities. New York City poses another variation on this theme. It was (and is) the nation’s most populous city, with a sprawling metropolitan region and one of the world’s busiest ports. Even in the early twentieth century it was already North America’s commercial capital and the nation’s cultural centerpiece. And it contrasted in several ways with the nation’s capital city. In 1910, New York’s population stood at 4,776,900, while Washington’s was 331,100, or about 7 percent, of Gotham’s. And Washington’s population density was one-third that of New York (Gibson 1998). New York’s ethnic population was much larger and more diverse than Washington’s, with Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Greek, Chinese, and other nationalities thronging its streets and culturally defining many of its neighborhoods. While several nationalities and ethnicities could be found in Washington, their numbers were much smaller, and their influences on political, social, and economic conditions were not as profound. Moreover, African Americans composed a much larger proportion of Washington’s populace than was the case in New York. However, the principal difference between New York and Washington lies in their physical forms. Unlike New York, Washington was laid out in the late eighteenth century according to the baroque-style L’Enfant-Ellicott plan. Its numerous geometric patterns emphasized the ceremonial and

The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945  /  61

monumental nature of the capital city (Gutheim 1977). Too, Washington experienced its first wave of development over the nineteenth century. New York, on the other hand, was settled in the seventeenth century and evolved more haphazardly. The city’s simple, functional grid street system contrasted sharply with Washington’s grid, which was overlain with diagonals, circles, and squares. As well, Gotham’s zoning code permitted towering skyscrapers while in Washington federal law mandated building heights subordinate to that of the U.S. Capitol. In New York, the emphasis was on commercial growth and the maritime economy, while in Washington, it centered on government, national pride, and the particular needs of a capital city. Finally, and most significantly, as the national capital, Washington’s fortunes were largely determined by the federal government. Congress and certain federal bureaucracies had more or less exclusive control over the city’s planning and governance. Like other American cities, New York was governed under home rule by an elected mayor and legislative council. Unlike other American cities, however, it was divided into five boroughs, each with its own elected borough president. And its population, larger than any other U.S. city and several states, ranged over seven million throughout most of the twentieth century. Arguably, New York more closely resembled a city-state than a conventional city. Thus, there were compelling and noteworthy differences between these two East Coast cities. Nonetheless, both cities experienced embryonic gentrification in the early twentieth century. In New York, a housing rehabilitation trend first appeared in a few small areas (Dolkart 2009) but most prominently in the Greenwich Village neighborhood (Figure 2.1). However, as discussed later, the Village’s journey through this process was propelled by a divergent cultural milieu, at the core of which resided an atmosphere of conspicuous social nonconformity. And hovering over these changes was a real estate economy unlike anything Washington had ever seen.

The Decline of Greenwich Village In the early eighteenth century, Greenwich Village was a bucolic farming hamlet located a short distance north of the southern tip of Manhattan Island and its bustling port (Strausbaugh 2013, 19–21). As the nineteenth century progressed, New York welcomed many thousands of new residents, and the city’s population exploded. Development swept northward, surrounding the Village. But as author Henry Wysham Lanier would later put it, the Village was “swallowed but not digested” (1949, 95). That is, like Georgetown, it maintained its unique character even as it lost some of its sovereignty. By 1811 an official plan was adopted to lay out future Manhattan Island streets in a rigid grid system (Koeppel 2015, 145). Although the Village’s existing

AV

E

62 / Chapter 2

W

14

8t h

th

ST

PATCHIN PLACE

5th

AV

E

Union Square Park

ST

ST

Greenwich Village

BR

KE

R

US

S OHO

WA OA D

CD OU GA MA

BL

EE

HO

Y

W Sq ashi ua ngt re on Pa rk

L

HUDSON

WESTSIDE HIGH WAY

WEST ST

Hudson River

N

TO

N

ST

ST

0

500 ft

Rutgers Cartography 2020

Figure 2.1  The Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. (Map by Michael Siegel.)

streets ran at eccentric angles, their configuration was grafted into the city’s street pattern (Ware 1994, 9–10). This created somewhat discontinuous travel patterns and several awkward intersections, but it also distinguished the Village from the rest of Manhattan. Opinions vary about the neighborhood’s boundaries, but the general consensus is that the Village today is encompassed by 14th Street on the north, Houston Street on the south, Broadway on the east, and the Hudson River on the west. Over the early twentieth century many forces molded Manhattan. ­Nineteenth-century European immigration had transformed dozens of neighborhoods into predominantly Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish, Greek, or African American colonies. Trains, oceangoing steamships, and local ferries brought millions of tourists and commuting suburbanites to the city. The rise of the automobile compelled construction of new bridges and tunnels connecting Manhattan to its suburbs and to other boroughs. Subway construction linked station stops in a web of mobility connecting large sections of the city. And the maturation of advertising, banking, finance, ­garment-making, port activity, publishing, and real estate development industries created hundreds of thousands of jobs. Seemingly no Manhattan neighborhood, not even Greenwich Village, completely escaped the influences of these forces.

The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945  /  63

Nevertheless, the Village harbored certain features that characterized its social and physical identity. One of these was its relatively low-density historic architecture and its nonconforming street layout (Figure 2.2). In the Village, most structures were two to four stories in height and only a few exceeded ten stories. This morphology contrasted sharply with a cluster of skyscrapers to the south in the city’s financial district, and another cluster that would arise to the north (including the Chrysler and Empire State buildings) in midtown Manhattan. Like Georgetown and Boston’s Beacon Hill, the Village harbored a number of small alleys off the main streets offering secluded havens for the poorest of the poor. However, the Village was not set on hilly terrain and lacked the topographical prominence of Georgetown and Beacon Hill. Considering that upper-class neighborhoods in American cities were often set on elevations, this detracted somewhat from the Village’s identity as a distinctive elite enclave. Like them, however, it was (and is) a cornucopia of culturally significant buildings and spaces (Lanier 1949; Gaylord 1991). Moreover, heavily inhabited by Italian, Irish, and Jewish immigrants, parts of the neighborhood reminded some visitors of a European town. By 1910, the Village had become a crowded little community, the southern portion of which was considered a “slum” (Ware 1994, 12). South of Washington Square, the neighborhood housed mostly working-class peo-

Figure 2.2  Compared to most of Manhattan, the average building density in Greenwich Village is much lower. Typically, three- and four-story apartment buildings such as these are interspersed with two- and three-story townhouses.

64 / Chapter 2

ple, with tiny islands among them where middle- and upper-class households had resided for generations. Italian families were especially numerous, with smaller numbers of African American families present (Strausbaugh 2013). Scores of tenement buildings built in the last decades of the nineteenth century existed in the Village but were concentrated south of Washington Square Park, the neighborhood’s symbolic center (Ware 1994, 11–13). Pauperism was common, especially among the large number of Italian families, and a local settlement house struggled to improve their circum­ stances (Simkhovitch 1917, 167). Despite the Village’s primarily residential character, its strategic location in lower central Manhattan made it convenient to the nearby garment district. This drew the attention of industrialists, who were trying to squeeze multistory loft structures and additional tenement buildings into the Village, especially its southern and western sectors (Greenwich Village Historic District Designation Report 1969, 12). The extreme age of most of the Village’s buildings, many lacking modern conveniences, persuaded landlords that investing capital in improvements was, in effect, throwing good money after bad. But even as the neighborhood was poised to undergo major physical, economic, and demographic changes, a new generation of young writers and artists was discovering the neighborhood’s faded charms. And like their predecessors, the newcomers would soon imprint the Village with their own cultural identity (Bunner 1969, 71–77; Parry 1960, 212–241).

Bohemian-Driven Renovation Greenwich Village underwent its first substantial wave of embryonic gentrification beginning in the mid-teens of the twentieth century (Ware 1994, 18). Unlike Beacon Hill and Georgetown, though, the driving demographic force behind the Village’s transformation was not primarily elite families. Rather, it was at the hands of a coterie of artists, novelists, poets, musicians, dancers, journalists, and left-leaning political activists that the neighborhood underwent its physical and cultural regeneration. Between 1912 and 1920 these people flowed into the Village in numbers of such magnitude as to raise the neighborhood’s visibility both locally and nationally (Ware 1994, 14–15). Still, this wave of bohemians was not the Village’s first. Even in the nineteenth century the neighborhood had been a haven for a small colony of intellectuals such as Mark Twain, Frank Norris, Walt Whitman, Horace Greeley, and William Dean Howells (Bunner 1969, 71; Folpe 2002, 247–254; Parry 1960, 212–241). But the sheer numbers of creative people arriving after 1910, and their youth and political liberalism, attracted more attention to the Village than ever before. Among them were several authors who took

The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945  /  65

up residence in the neighborhood (Gaylord 1991, 70–75). This energized a process variously described by historian Carolyn Ware, who wrote a seminal study of Greenwich Village, as “reclamation,” “reconstruction,” or “resurrection” ([1935] 1994, 14, 18). Most of the so-called bohemians were not native New Yorkers. Instead, many came from the eastern and midwestern states, while a smaller number were immigrants from Europe or Americans from the southern or western United States (Ware 1994, 32). At a time when few Americans studied beyond high school, most of the bohemians (according to one researcher who analyzed them) had at least some college education (“Medical Diagnosis” 1919). Several were graduates of elite colleges such as Columbia or Harvard. Though the vast majority were not well established financially, some had ties to family money, which sustained them through the often-worrisome vicissitudes of the creative life (Bunner 1969, 77; G. McFarland 2001, 116–122). However, as the Village’s popularity waxed, it drew many poseurs and voyeurs, wealthy and otherwise, to its streets and cafes. Poet D. Marquis demonstrated a comic impatience with these folks in “In Greenwich Village.” There, there, they sit and celebrate; The fervid Pote who never potes, Great Artists, Male or She, that talk But scorn the Pigment and the Chalk, And Cubist sculptors wild as Goats. Theosophists and Swamis, too. Musicians mad as Hatters be— (E’en puzzled Hatters, two or three!) Tame Anarchists, a dreary crew, Squib Socialists, too damp to sosh, Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds, Glib Females in Artistic Duds, With Captive Husbands cowed and gauche. (D. Marquis 1920, 85)

A Sampling of Village Bohemians To gain insights into the nonconformist culture imposed by many Village newcomers, it behooves us to examine some of them. During the teens one of the most prominent was John Reed, a young Harvard-educated journalist and poet from Portland, Oregon. Ever the romantic, Reed was attracted to revolutionary figures such as Pancho Villa, Vladimir Lenin, Alexander Kerensky, and Leon Trotsky, all of whom he interviewed during his abbreviated adulthood. His best-known book, Ten Days That Shook the World,

66 / Chapter 2

offered Americans a firsthand account of the birth of the Soviet Communist state. His wife, Louise Bryant, also wrote about Russia and became a journalist in her own right (Dearborn 1996). Reed and Bryant were but the tip of the iceberg. Playwright Eugene O’Neill was a heavy-drinking Princeton University dropout who penned several of his earliest plays while living in the Village. Often he was homeless and slept on the streets or on friends’ apartment couches. For a time, he and Bryant carried on an affair sub rosa while Reed was out of town. Some of his plays debuted at the Provincetown Playhouse, an avant-garde theater organized and run by several of his fellow bohemians. Years later, after leaving the Village, O’Neill went on to win a Nobel Prize and by 1957 had won four Pulitzer Prizes (Gelb and Gelb 1960). Some critics considered him the twentieth century’s greatest American playwright. Another literary denizen was celebrated poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (Milford 2001). Arriving right out of Vassar College in the mid-teens, she soon captured the hearts of Village men while writing some of her first poems for New York magazines (Figure 2.3). Millay won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for her collection The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. Until her marriage, she and her sisters were regulars on the Village cafe scene (Cheyney 1975). Regarded by many people as the dean of Village intelligentsia, Max Eastman left Columbia University without his Ph.D. in philosophy because he refused to pay an administrative fee that he considered unfair. Tall, handsome, debonair, Eastman easily won over his Village compatriots and became a respected man about town. Editor of the Masses magazine and later, the Liberator, Eastman published the work of many rising literary figures, including Reed and Millay, Edmund Wilson, Vachel Lindsay, Ernest Hemingway, Elinor Wylie, Carl Sandburg, Sherwood Anderson, Bertrand Russell, and Maxim Gorky. He authored literary criticism as well as books on socialism, humor, and the culture of bohemian life. His bohemian sister, Crystal, was one of the first female graduates of the New York University law school and a respected women’s rights advocate (Eastman 1964). Max Eastman’s friend Floyd Dell was a coeditor of the Masses (Dell 1933; Parry 1960, 187–190). A novelist and literary critic, Dell, a native Midwesterner, was considered by many to be one of the most astute observers of Village bohemian life (Clayton 1994; J. Hart 1971). Other Village bohemians of the day—including frequent visitors and residents—included novelists Djuna Barnes (Herring 1995), Maxwell Bodenheim (J. Moore 1970), and Harry Kemp; poets e. e. cummings (Norman 1958), William Carlos Williams (Williams 1948), and Claude McKay (McKay 1937); photographers Berenice Abbott, Jessie Tarbox Beals (Ramirez 1994), and Alfred Stieglitz; painter Marcel Duchamp; birth control advocate Margaret Sanger; and anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman (Beard and Berlowitz

The Greenwich Village Neighborhood of New York City, 1915–1945  /  67

Figure 2.3  In the 1920s, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay resided in this narrow three-story building (center) near 7th Avenue. She and her bohemian friends spurred an intellectual and artistic movement that contributed to the embryonic gentrification of Greenwich Village.

1993; Chalberg 1991; Churchill 1959). Of course, these few were among the vanguard of cognoscenti arriving in the teens. Others, though less notable, outnumbered them many times over (Chapin 1917; Hapgood 1972).

Bohemian Culture and Values How did this confluence of creative people spur embryonic gentrification in Greenwich Village? Certainly, it was not through the power of their financial assets. Unlike the Beacon Hill and Georgetown elites, many bohemians were apparently only slightly better off than the Village immigrant families they succeeded. Although a few received checks from their families, most

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lived on the intermittent and paltry earnings they received from their paintings, sculptures, poems, essays, and newspaper and magazine articles. A few worked as editorial staff in the offices of small literary magazines and radical journals. Many waited on tables, some were store clerks, and several simply cadged food and drinks, spending their nights on a park bench or a friend’s couch. Harvard magna cum laude graduate Joe Gould famously spent most of his adult life living on the streets of Greenwich Village. The vast majority of bohemians who had an address were renters who lived in tiny apartments or rooms heated (if at all) by a fireplace. Alcohol abuse was rampant, illegal drugs were occasionally sampled, and unwanted pregnancies were common (Churchill 1959). So how could impoverished poets and painters power a physical and economic rejuvenation of the Village? First, unlike their immigrant neighbors, significant numbers were voluntarily poor. With higher educations and family support, most had resources to fall back on. And by sharing an apartment and minimizing childbearing, they were able to pool their meager incomes and pay higher rents than many of the large, lower-class families in the Village. Sometimes two, three, or more bohemians cohabited in a walk-up apartment. The increased financial return to property owners from such people gradually emboldened investors, who began buying and rehabilitating buildings. Property values climbed. Nonetheless, economics offers only a partial answer to the question of what drove the Village’s early embryonic gentrification trend. Just as important, the bohemians created what we would refer to today as cachet or buzz. That is, they unleashed an intellectual, artistic, and political fervor—not just anywhere but in Gotham, then, as today, the nation’s cultural capital. This raised the visibility of the Village in popular culture and produced articles about the newcomers in newspapers and magazines. Yet it was not just a fortuitous concourse of creative people who brought about the Village’s revitalization. It was also the cultural revolution they ignited, which challenged Victorian ideals and contemporary tastes and mores. While most neighborhoods in New York achieved a degree of cohesion through their ethnic, racial, religious, or class composition, the Village did so through rebellion against mainstream ideas, morals, and manners. It had become a miniature commonwealth of ideas, a republic of dreams, rather than one based on more conventional criteria (Wetzsteon 2002). By the late teens, word was spreading across the continent that Greenwich Village was the home of the nation’s avant-garde. Some of the bohemians ardently fought for a woman’s right to vote and her right to birth control information. Some believed in free love and/or cohabitation before marriage and some endorsed extramarital sex during wedlock (Hapgood 1972; Maracaccio 1977; Trimberger 1991). Others, such

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as Mary Heaton Vorse (Garrison 1989) and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (1955), campaigned for laboring-class issues such as unionization and the right to strike. Many embraced the Socialist Party and cheered the Russian Revolution. Smaller numbers were anarchists. A few, such as Dell, Eastman, Reed, Goldman, and Berkman, sought redress for their constitutional free speech rights through legal proceedings. Although attitudes about World War I split their ranks, several Villagers risked imprisonment by encouraging young men to avoid the draft. Even the bohemians’ tastes in clothing and home decor flew in the face of mainstream trends. Moreover, their presence brought to the Village dozens of new teahouses, bars, restaurants, cafes, spaghetti houses, gift shops, and galleries. Among them were the Pig and Whistle, Vermillion Hound, Dragon Fly, Idee Chic, Black Parrot, Russian Tea Room, and the Samovar. Several “goofy clubs” appeared, serving up drinks, songs, and comedy. In establishments such as The Pirate’s Den, thematically costumed waiters portrayed swashbuckling buccaneers. These gathering places added to the romance of the Village and brought tourists as well as new residents. Too, homosexuals and lesbians found a modicum of acceptance, and bars and cafes catering to their numbers were opened (Chauncey 1993, 151–164; “Shift in Centre” 1917). The appeal of the Village among gay people would continue even into the 1970s and thereafter (P. Moore 2004, 78, 82). The attention generated by the first wave of bohemians in the teens drew legions of younger people in the decades between World Wars I and II. Many were aspiring artists or intellectuals, but others were simply hangerson attracted by the prospect of easy sex, bootleg booze, and all-night parties. Even among the wealthy, some people were not averse to slumming in the neighborhood’s taverns and teahouses. More than a few uptown bankers and Wall Street stockbrokers were known to keep a Village pied-à-terre for discreet extramarital liaisons with local damsels (“Justice Assails Greenwich Village” 1919; G. McFarland 2001, 139). And a Village adventure or two became de rigueur for thousands of testosterone-rich college boys (Parry 1960, 272, 344–345).

Embryonic Gentrification Emerges In the face of this hoopla, real estate businesspeople recognized a potential gold mine in Village residential property. Initially, the mother lode was located in the vicinity of Washington Square, a historic public park facing dozens of handsome brick townhouses inhabited mostly by the wealthy and old families. Of this exclusive enclave, author Henry James, who once resided there, wrote in 1881, “It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a

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riper, richer, more honorable look than any of the great longitudinal thoroughfares—the look of having had something of a social history” (James 1953, 95). Historian Carolyn Ware’s study of Greenwich Village in the early twentieth century pointed out that Washington Square, by maintaining its architectural and social class aspects, became the physical nucleus of the Village’s so-called reclamation. Had its environs instead become a slum or loft-­ manufacturing center, she wrote, the resurrection probably would not have occurred. Behind the Washington Square mansions lay a few dozen small coach houses and stables—the latter rendered obsolete by the automobile— which attracted artists and writers. Settlement house workers at nearby Greenwich House composed another group of newcomers. The frenzy of renovation that took over these areas encouraged investors to seek out other streets and alleys where housing might be improved and rents raised (Ware 1994, 17–18). Washington Square patricians appear to have composed a smaller share of their neighborhood’s population than did their counterparts on Beacon Hill or in Georgetown. Yet they maintained a stabilizing presence and continued to influence local civic affairs. As immigrants and blacks moved into the Village, some of these families, known locally as Knickerbockers, moved away, while others held on. During the teens, however, several hundred artists, writers, and other creative people settled among them. Although bohemians had long been a presence in the Village, the wave that descended in and around Washington Park starting about 1912 substantially increased their numbers and their prominence in local affairs (G. McFarland 2001, 226). Initially, they found tenements and small apartment houses with rents as low as $10 weekly (about $255 in 2018 dollars). But there were also many two- and three-story brick houses, some subdivided earlier into small apartments or rooms to accommodate immigrant families. When the bohemians circulated into the square and nearby areas they found these settings in quaint dishabille. Many buildings were ancient, some were structurally weak, and gas lamps lighted others. Few had central heating and most, lacking plumbing, had outdoor water pumps and privies. Immigrant families were stuffed into small apartments, and black households held forth in largely segregated small warrens. Poverty was common. Landlords, convinced that they would never realize a profit if they improved their properties, allowed them to deteriorate. Even before World War I, Greenwich Village had become what bohemian Floyd Dell termed “a picturesque twentieth century slum” (G. McFarland 2001, 2). Adding to the Village’s residential decline was the growth of factories. Since the late nineteenth century industrialists and entrepreneurs had torn down many old homes and erected multistory loft manufacturing

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buildings. Until the arrival of the bohemian hordes, there were signs that parts of the Village were destined to slide into decrepitude, while other sections would become sites for heavy industry. As the ranks of young bohemian home-seekers swelled, apartment landlords soon realized that their properties were potential gold mines. Not only did these newcomers seek shelter; they found the Village’s location and social and physical identity to their liking. In other words, many sought the ersatz prestige that a Village address posed to their peers. Residing there became a statement about one’s nonconformist values and beliefs. Consequently, owners could double or even triple the rent—often having made few, if any, improvements (Parry 1960, 351). No one was more adept at exploiting the Village’s newfound development potential than Vincent Pepe (Dolkart 2009, 122–136; G. McFarland 2001, 213). A longtime Village real estate agent, he became an ardent advocate for renovating its homes and restoring its historic architecture. Others who shared his sentiments about the Village aided Pepe in his efforts to advance embryonic gentrification. For example, in 1914 the Greenwich Village Improvement Society and the People’s Institute copublished a sixteen-page pamphlet. (The institute was an organization similar to a settlement house, providing social services to New York’s immigrants and working-class people.) The pamphlet was titled How Would You Like to Open a Door Like This—Ten Minutes after You “Punch the Clock”? (G. McFarland 2001, 213–215). The publication extolled the virtues and charms of Village life, and its twenty thousand copies were circulated widely in New York. Like The Future of Georgetown, this little document was an unabashed attempt to stimulate demand for properties in a neighborhood still thought by many to be shabby and crowded. There is little doubt that Pepe had a hand in the pamphlet’s creation. Moreover, in 1916 Pepe exploited the opportunity to contribute to the writing of New York’s municipal zoning ordinance, the first such law in the nation. He succeeded in adding language imposing regulatory controls over building in parts of the Village. Among other features the ordinance limited new construction to sections designated as residential on its official maps. Although these regulations applied only from 13th Street on the north to Houston Street on the south and Hudson Street on the west to Broadway on the east, preservation of the heart of the Village, as Ware observed, “was assured” (Ware 1994, 14). Later, the ordinance would be amended to protect areas farther west as remodeling and the bohemian populace expanded in that direction (G. McFarland 2001, 214–215; Ware 1994, 478). Pepe and others were motivated primarily by fears over the deterioration and demolition of many of the Village’s small houses and their replacement by industrial loft buildings. The larger floor areas of the lofts would

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bring their owners vastly increased rents from manufacturing firms over those possible from run-down immigrant housing. As early as 1912, the New York Times took note of this trend. In August, it announced that a Revolutionary War–era house was to be replaced by a new loft building (“Latest Dealings” 1912). Two months later the newspaper reported that the defunct Perry Street Methodist Church had been purchased by local real estate “operators” in an area of the Village that was losing its residential inhabitants to manufacturing development (“Real Estate Field” 1912, 20). Eleven days later plans were publicized to erect a ten-story warehouse for a drugstore chain on the site of several “old Greenwich village buildings” (“Warehouse for Greenwich Village” 1912, XX2). Within a few weeks the Times, suspecting a trend, featured a spread of photographs of several rows of alley dwellings in the Village, including those on Patchin Place and Milligan Place. The article warned that “old fashioned” residential enclaves such as these had already been replaced by new loft buildings. An exception, it pointed out, was Macdougal Alley, where artists, including socialite Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney, had reclaimed abandoned carriage houses for use as Village studios (“Manhattan’s Little Streets” 1912, XX3). It was clear, too, that more churches were threatened in the Village as congregations aged and congregants moved to other parts of the city or suburbs (“Old Churches” 1913; “Old St. John’s Church” 1913). Not only were alley dwellings and churches facing the wrecker’s ball; other structures were being altered for commercial purposes. For example, a fine brick house dating to Civil War times was to be refurbished for use as a commercial property (“Real Estate Field” 1913). An additional curse was the demolition brought on by the construction of the new Seventh Avenue subway, the north-south alignment of which was to run a few blocks west of Washington Square (“Historic Church to Go” 1913). New York’s growth necessitated the expansion of underground transit, and when the subway line opened in 1918 it connected lower Manhattan to the burgeoning Midtown office district and Times Square. Plus, improvements to Seventh Avenue’s roadway increased vehicular traffic through the Village. Consequently, the Village lost some of its isolation and increased its connectivity to the larger city (Ware 1994, 15). But this was not the only impact. More than 250 structures were designated for destruction or alteration to accommodate the subway’s slashing right-of-way through the Village (“Landmarks Doomed” 1913). Most of the buildings, described as “modest,” were between fifty and seventy-five years old (“Great Destruction” 1913, XX1). Even when workmen discovered the remains of a house once occupied by Aaron Burr, the third vice president

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and the killer of Alexander Hamilton, there was no move to protect the site (“Wreckers Uncover” 1913). Although no historic preservation organization had yet emerged in the Village, Pepe and his sympathizers realized that their attempts to protect the Village’s quaint character faced opposition from powerful financial forces who saw greater returns from renting or selling industrial space (“Business Expansion” 1913). As early as May 1913 neighborhood awareness of the threats facing the Village were apparent when the Village held its first Old Home Week celebration. A long article in the Times related the history of the neighborhood and its many fine landmark buildings, as well as former residents or visitors such as Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Paine (“Quaint Greenwich Village” 1913). Public appreciation of the historical attributes of New York and its neighborhoods was growing, in some cases fed by idealized perceptions not necessarily anchored in fact (Hood 2002). Marches, concerts, parades, and speeches marked the event, with several people wearing period costumes. Longtime residents gave speeches describing the Village of a half century earlier. Elected officials talked of progress and occasionally waxed nostalgic about “the old days” (“Greenwich Village Goes Back” 1913, 3). Old Home Week was intended not only to build pride and unity among Villagers but also to draw outsiders’ attention to the charms of Village living. Indeed, as one observer points out, such celebratory events were common in New York from approximately 1880 to 1920, especially among elite families (Hood 2002). Other forces besides the erection of industrial lofts, subway development, and street construction besieged the Village. Higher-income apartment buildings had spread northward in Manhattan until developers reached the southern edge of Harlem. However, resistance from Harlem residents and the difficulty of interesting white middle- and upper-income renters to reside there discouraged further expansion. Moreover, as metropolitan growth increased around New York, many commuters were faced with traffic congestion and crowded mass transit in their travels to and from the city. Some sought a home in Manhattan. Hence, in-town areas, heretofore bypassed as sites for higher-intensity residential development, received a second look from investors. As the stock of small Village houses and apartment buildings dwindled as a result of rehabilitation, commercial interests catered to rising demand by assembling land to erect large apartment buildings in areas of lower Manhattan, including Greenwich Village itself (Ware 1994, 19). The collective effect of these forces on the housing supply became increasingly obvious. In early 1915, the aforementioned People’s Institute released a housing study. Its results showed that the Village’s apartment

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vacancy rate was extremely low, an indication of the rapidly rising demand for rental housing. The report indicated that moderate rental units priced at $25 to $40 per month (about $624 to $998 in 2018) were at a premium, and new apartment buildings were filled almost immediately. Researchers visited twenty-eight buildings containing a total of 816 apartments and found only 20 vacant units (“Apartments in Greenwich” 1915). Doubtless, the Village’s housing dilemma was increased by industrial loft development and subway and street construction, which demolished hundreds of inexpensive homes. In partnership with the Washington Square Association, the People’s Institute formed the Greenwich Village Rebuilding Corporation (GVRC). Neighborhood residents were asked to invest capital with the corporation, allowing it to acquire declining buildings and renovate them for occupancy by tenants seeking a home in the Village. This would assist in fending off incursions from loft developers and in preserving the neighborhood’s stock of nineteenth-century homes. A spokesperson for the GVRC took note of the small army of writers and artists who were struggling to find a home there (“New Homes” 1915). Questions have been raised in recent years regarding the underlying purposes of the GVRC in this endeavor. One historian claimed that the organization aimed to halt the increase in bohemians and offset the dominance of Italian immigrant families in the Village. Instead, he indicated, the group sought to “re-colonize” the neighborhood with white, middle-class homeowners and renters (Strausbaugh 2013, 134, 136). Buildings with lowrent quarters were purchased by the corporation, even as cash-poor Italians, bohemians, and others were evicted. Rehabilitation followed, creating highrent apartments for professionals, downtown office workers, and affluent creative people (134–135). The New York Tribune reported that this group wanted to increase business for Village merchants and boost “realty values” (“Features of Realty Tendencies” 1914, 2). As if to fan the flames of commercialism, the same newspaper interviewed six prominent bohemians to learn why they lived in the Village. The interviewees offered lofty praises for the neighborhood, but doubtless their words only served as a clarion call, attracting others like themselves (“How Greenwich Village” 1914). What was it about the Village that inspired large numbers of creative people to move there? As historian Carolyn Ware later observed: They relished the charm of old, brick houses and greatly preferred their made-over interiors with high-ceilinged rooms and fireplaces to better-equipped apartments in buildings served by liveried

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doormen. They preferred the Village to other parts of the city because its buildings were low, its streets “quaintly” violated the checkerboard principle, and the green of Washington Square lent a sense of space. ([1935] 1994, 247) By the end of 1915, the opportunities for profit in Village real estate were becoming common knowledge among investors. In an interview, broker Pepe described two buildings rehabilitated by a realty company (“Made Over Houses” 1915). Prior to its purchase, one house brought $1,500 annually in rent. The new owner invested $8,000 to purchase and renovate the property and afterward received a total rent return of $3,550 per year (approximately $89,611 in 2018). The second property rented at $1,000 annually before its sale. Investing $10,000, its owner subsequently received $4,660 per year in rent (approximately $116,000 in 2018). In short, these investors more than doubled the yearly rental income from these properties. According to the interview, among those who rented in these buildings were a dancer, a sculptor, and an artist. Two weeks after Pepe’s interview, developers announced a large project designed to appeal to creative Villagers. It was to be located only a stone’s throw from Washington Place, the site of the horrific Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911. On the block of Eighth Street between Fifth Avenue and University Place, several small stores would be demolished and a new row of four- and five-story buildings would be erected with apartments intended for artists and writers. Each structure was to be designed in a European style—English, French, Dutch, or Spanish. Top-floor units were to be equipped with large skylights for studios. Behind the Eighth Street row was Washington Mews, which was lined on both sides by two-story carriage houses. The developers planned to convert these structures into artist studios with living quarters. Between the two new rows of housing, small gardens were planned. This project was ultimately completed and today, more than a century later, the units are considered a highly desirable Village address. Although rent levels were not mentioned, it is clear that the complex would not be affordable to the many “starving artists” who sought a Village home. The new addresses were intended for established artists or those with independent sources of income, a sign that a more affluent cohort of creative people was descending on the Village (Ware 1994, 34, 36). One example of this is the announcement that a venerable house on Charlton Street had been leased by Vincent Pepe to one Gardner Hale, a recent Harvard graduate and son of a University of Chicago professor. Having studied painting in

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Paris, Hale planned to occupy the house as his residence while using the stable in the rear as his studio (“Charlton Street Lease” 1917). As Ware points out, the entire process of Village reinvestment proceeded through stages—from a few simple improvements to formerly neglected buildings in the early and middle teens to increasingly more elaborate renovation and new construction projects in the late teens and twenties. These latter efforts, of course, catered to progressively wealthier home-­ seekers. By 1927 the Christian Science Monitor was proclaiming that bohemians had been priced out of the Village and that “only those who can write fluently in their check books can afford it” (Ware 1994, 21). By 1930, even unheated cold-water apartments were being listed for relatively high rents (20–21). Not only was he one of the most successful residential real estate agents in the Village; Pepe was equally adept at promotion. In the spring of 1916 he appeared before the city’s Commission on Building Districts and Restrictions making a plea for more apartment construction and renovation. Pepe was especially concerned that few property owners seemed willing to modernize their buildings to attract the journalists, editors, artists, and others seeking a home. Despite evidence to the contrary, he lamented, some owners still thought of the Village as a low-rent neighborhood where property values were stagnant. Hence, they were reluctant to take unnecessary financial risks by investing in rehabilitation (“Homes in Demand” 1916). More than a year later, Pepe still complained about this problem (“Demand for Washington Square” 1917).

Tourism, Commercialism, and Development While real estate agents such as Pepe focused their efforts on the predominantly residential Washington Square area, others were shifting their attention westward to the more commercialized Sheridan Square. There, the Christopher Street subway station opened on July 1, 1917, and a kaleidoscope of new cafes, teahouses, restaurants, and saloons appeared (“Seventh and Lexington” 1918). Soon Vanity Fair magazine declared that Sheridan Square and the area west of Seventh Avenue was the “new heart of bohemia” (Dolkart 2009, 152). A key reason for this metamorphosis was the combination of the new zoning law and the subway and street construction, each of which raised uncertainties about the future character of the square (G. McFarland 2001, 212). Some real estate owners there were anxious to sell their buildings as land use patterns shifted toward a combination of residential and entertainment zones. Several put their properties on the market, thus increasing the supply of available space to build new apartments and small shops (“Shift in Centre” 1917; “Review of Real Estate” 1918, 30).

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The burgeoning appearance of theaters and acting companies also served to attract newcomers to Village life. By 1920 the Provincetown Players, the Washington Square Players, and the Greenwich Village Theatre were drawing enthusiastic audiences to their productions. And a new stage, the Sheridan Square Theatre, was under construction. Tourists, as well as uptown Manhattanites, flocked to the Village on weekends to witness a risqué play or musical dealing with extramarital sex, unwanted pregnancy, or similar themes tweaking contemporary societal norms. But these artistic activities came at a price. Several ancient buildings such as a blacksmith’s shop were demolished to provide space for theaters and other endeavors. With their demise went a number of bohemian-serving teahouses, cafes, cabarets, and goofy clubs. In addition, a new branch of the Corn Exchange Bank “wiped out two or three miserable structures which were transitory art shop centres and teahouses” (“New Theatres” 1920, RE1). These activities were signs that the Village’s cultural life was becoming a victim of the real estate industry’s successes. Another sign that commercialism had invaded the Village was the fleet of tour buses full of visitors who ogled the denizens on the streets and in the teahouses. As the late teens unfolded, their numbers rose, irritating many members of the first wave of intellectuals and artists who arrived earlier in the decade. Several voiced complaints that their neighborhood was being taken over by pretenders, the wealthy, and mercantile interests. They began referring to these invaders as “Village Thrillagers.” It was inevitable that tourism would capitalize on the bohemian spectacle. An entrepreneurial young woman, Adele Kennedy, was among the first to exploit the trend. Just as the nation was entering World War I, she began conducting guided walking tours of the Village, both for New Yorkers and for out-of-towners (“And Now Greenwich” 1917). Affecting a bohemian guise, Kennedy wore a smock and sandals without stockings, and she bobbed her hair. She took her tour groups to the symbolic center of the bohemian Village, Macdougal and Bleecker streets. There they eyed long-haired socialists, short-haired anarchists, street corner poets, beret-wearing painters, bored novelists, penniless flaneurs, and women who flaunted Victorian manners by smoking cigarettes in long holders. Although Kennedy was hardly a true bohemian, she and others were quick to commercialize the Village’s nonconformist culture by catering to mainstream prurience. Others wrote books or articles about the charms of Village life. One in particular, Anna Alice Chapin, penned Greenwich Village, N.Y., a chatty volume describing the shops, streets, and people there. In the book’s foreword Chapin indicated that Pepe had encouraged her to write it (Chapin 1917). Whatever his personal sentiments about the neighborhood, doubtless Pepe recognized the business value of additional publicity about Village living.

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As the curious poured into the Village, real estate agents such as Pepe saw the opportunity to perpetuate embryonic gentrification and give new life to the neighborhood. One of his pet projects involved several row dwellings on minuscule Minetta Street and Minetta Place. His buyer planned to create an artist colony on the Minettas, a confluence of intersecting alleylike streets that Pepe likened to the Latin Quarter in Paris. Once the homes of black families, and later, Italian immigrant families, these residences had fallen into disrepair. Most had outdoor toilets and no plumbing. Under Pepe’s plan the finished units would be leased exclusively to artists and writers through a limited profit scheme, thus restraining excessive rent increases. Undoubtedly, by this time Pepe had become mindful of Village criticism of profiteers who were constantly hiking rents to new heights (Dolkart 2009, 158–159). Among Pepe’s first tenants were novelist Harry Kemp and popular entertainer Bobby Edwards, both bona fide bohemians and Village regulars (“New Artists’ Colony” 1919). Pepe was generally recognized as the Village’s renovation expert and was quoted again and again in local newspaper interviews (“Making Over” 1919). Indeed, his name often appeared in the real estate pages in connection with property transfers involving the renovation of older buildings into small studio apartments for artists and writers (“Sheridan Square Deal” 1920; “Greenwich Village Deals” 1922; “Trinity Sells” 1920). Pepe was fond of offering advice to readers about purchase and renovation costs and about the potential rate of return on investment. However, little was said in these newspaper stories about the previous tenants who vacated to make way for rehabilitation or occasional new construction projects. Improving the physical character of the Village, protecting its predominantly residential identity from harmful redevelopment, and increasing rents were portrayed as worthy outcomes of the embryonic gentrification trend. Social and economic diversity was evidently not considered a desirable attribute—or at least, was not one over which anyone was perceived to have much control. If Pepe’s Minettas project drew attention, a still-larger one gave evidence of the skyrocketing commercial appeal of the neighborhood (“Block Purchase” 1920). Hearth and Home, Inc., a development company, announced in the early spring of 1920 that it had purchased forty-one brick houses on a block south of Washington Square for renovation. Two apartments were planned for each two- or three-story structure. The firm anticipated investing about $1 million (about $12.5 million in 2018) in purchase and renovation costs. Over the previous three years, the firm’s primary investor had already renovated several Village homes into apartments. “All were rented at once,” reported the Times, “to a more satisfactory class of tenants than formerly occupied them, except in a few cases” (“Housing Plan” 1920, RE1).

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Figure 2.4  The Village’s literary landscape is epitomized by Patchin Place, a gated alley-like enclave containing modest three-story apartment buildings. A century ago, it was home to poet e. e. cummings and novelist Djuna Barnes.

Pregnant with inference, this statement begs the question, who were the former occupants? And who were the exceptions? By the end of the decade, it was evident that the ad hoc remodeling of properties by individual owners, which initially propelled the Village’s renewal, was being overtaken by commercial builders and investors who could renovate multiple properties in a single project. (Doing so usually resulted in economies of scale, which translated into higher profit margins.) In 1920, houses in Patchin Place and Milligan Place, both tiny alley-like corridors, were subdivided into two-room apartments and rehabilitated (Figure 2.4). A gate was placed at the entrance to each enclave, thus securing ingress and egress and producing an early twentieth-century example of a gated community. Poet e. e. cummings and novelist Djuna Barnes were among those who would soon reside on Patchin Place (Boine 1927, 57–62; Dolkart 2009, 154–156). When the Village’s embryonic gentrification began moving forward in the early teens, there were apparently enough vacancies in the housing supply to accommodate newly arriving people, as well as most longtime residents. And because a high percentage of the population was composed of renters, occupancy turnovers were frequent. But this game of musical chairs

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changed when the stock of low-rent units shrank as a result of rehabilitation and demolition, while demand was rising substantially. Gradually, increasing numbers of people—bohemians, immigrants, and other long-term residents—found themselves unable to afford the higher rents of the revitalized housing stock and had to move to other neighborhoods (Dolkart 2009, 114). By the end of the decade, the overall stock of Village apartments had grown but the number of low-rent units was declining (Ware 1994, 20). For example, in 1920 a new motion picture theater was announced for a location on Greenwich Avenue. The building site was then occupied by a row of seventy-five-year-old brick townhouses and a former omnibus company’s stable. (The omnibus preceded the streetcar and was a horse-drawn carriage, similar to a stage coach, that ran over a fixed route.) In one of the houses was a thirty-year tenant who, forced to relocate, moved to Harlem. Two elderly sisters, the granddaughters of the original occupants, were also compelled to move out of the Village. And a lifelong resident, a fiftyyear sexton at a neighborhood church, was dispatched to parts unknown (“Greenwich Ousting” 1920). Because of the new zoning regulations, the theater could not be built in most areas of the Village. But an exception was allowed along the new Seventh Avenue subway corridor through Sheridan Square. All of the brick townhouses there were destroyed. By 1930, approximately $18 million (about $232 million in 2018) had been spent over the previous decade on the upgrading of Village housing (Ware 1994, 21). The Times declared that the Village was “becoming a new modern residential district”: The Village is in the midst of a vast construction program. Houses that a few years ago were tenements or “studios” belonging to the era of the “hobohemia” of Sinclair Lewis have become one, two and three room apartments with modern plumbing, mechanical refrigeration and built-in beds. Where markets and cellar restaurants and sailors’ lodging houses held sway, modern apartments are towering up to roof gardens and penthouses. (“Village’s Building Era” 1930, 89) Only a year earlier, the stock market collapse had occurred a few blocks south of the Village on Wall Street. Yet investors, as well as homebuyers and renters, apparently knew no trepidation when Village investment property was available. “There is hardly a street, alley or row of rear houses—of which there are still many—that has not known the hand of the wrecker, seen new buildings rise, or witnessed the remodeling of houses that for many years had little value,” gushed the Times (“Village’s Building Era” 1930, 89).

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Nevertheless, progress had come at a price. The article pointed out that artists and writers had been pushed westward toward the Hudson River, where—for a time, anyway—rents were cheaper. But within a few years the frenzy of embryonic gentrification caught up with many of these exiles, and they were compelled by evictions and rent increases to move again (Dolkart 2009, 114; Ware 1994, 20–21). Some decamped for other parts of Manhattan Island. Others moved eastward to Brooklyn where, as we see later, a subsequent wave of gentrification was incited (Ware 1994, 20–21). As more affluent people replaced the intelligentsia and immigrants, inevitably there would be reactions from those dislocated. One such person was bohemian Guido Bruno. Bruno editorialized in his weekly publication that the Village was being taken over by “sharks,” whose high rents pushed artists and writers out of the neighborhood (Dolkart 2009, 170). Vincent Pepe was singled out by another critic who complained that the real estate agent colonized a slum by replacing immigrants with bohemians, and then crowded out “the wicked, vicious and slovenly tenants” among the latter group (171). By the early 1930s, claimed author Albert Parry, the Village had become a more commercialized and self-conscious setting, due in part to the “coarse profiteers who in good times made the Village their gold-egglaying goose” ([1933] 1960, 351).

Newcomers and Existing Residents Who were the in-movers and out-movers during the Village’s earlier remodeling years? And how did the rehabilitation trend affect them? Historian Carolyn Ware, without doubt one of the most astute analysts of Village life in the 1920s, wrote that despite popular perceptions, most of the immigrant families who moved away were not forced out by evictions, lease terminations, or rent increases. Instead, even before embryonic gentrification took root, many such people were moving to newer homes in other New York boroughs or across the Hudson River in New Jersey. Most did so, she wrote, to escape tenement life and find more comfortable accommodations. Ware estimated that between 10 and 15 percent of Village out-movers were people who were forced to leave during the 1920s (Ware 1994, 24–31). Citing decennial census data, she pointed out that the Village population decreased from just under 68,000 in 1910 to approximately 55,000 ten years later, a drop of nearly 20 percent. By 1930, the population had declined to 38,000, or by more than 30 percent since 1920 (Ware 1994, 462). Ware’s analysis, of course, is not necessarily inconsistent with the thesis (mentioned above) that the Greenwich Village Rebuilding Corporation sought to drive ­bohemians and Italian immigrants from the Village (Strausbaugh 2013,

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134–135). At a time when anti-immigrant and anti-working-class sentiment was common among native whites—especially upper-class Protestants—efforts to displace so-called undesirables were not uncommon. Perhaps to no one’s surprise, Ware found that newcomers arriving over those decades contributed to a substantial increase in overall average social and economic circumstances. Their incomes were often higher than those of incumbent longer-term residents, and their occupations were of a higher social status (Ware 1994, 34–36). But this was not the only economic benefit redounding to businesses and government tax offices. As affluent singles and couples without children replaced immigrant families, the costs of providing public services were probably reduced. By 1930, the proportions of single men and women living in the Village were more than eight percentage points higher than those in Manhattan overall (Ware 1994, 42, 476). By the end of the 1920s, these trends left Greenwich Village with a considerably smaller number of inhabitants and a lower population density. On the eve of the Great Depression, Ware observed, the Village was home not only to many members of the original bohemian wave of the teens but also to those who arrived in subsequent bohemian ripples in the twenties. By this time, though, the neighborhood was also attracting younger office workers—secretaries, stenographers, bank clerks, and stock brokers, for example—who shared an apartment and frequented the teahouses, saloons, and cafes of the neighborhood (Ware 1994, 256–257). Relatively few appear to have engaged in any artistic activity, yet many emulated aspects of bohemian life, rejecting bourgeois sexual norms, professing left-leaning political values, and donning distinctive dress. These “pseudo-bohemians,” as Ware termed them, though not always wealthy, often earned higher incomes than writers, actors, or artists and were better able to pay the rising rents (1994, 252). They also stoked the fires of scorn from critics who worried about the Village’s intellectual and artistic decline. Consequently, they probably did more to change the economics of Village life than anything the hand-to-mouth bohemians themselves could do. One measure of this situation was the finding that over the 1920s, the assessed value of Village property rose by 75 percent, while that of property in Manhattan overall increased by 69.5 percent (Ware 1994, 442). We should recall that assessed values have long been a poor proxy for current sales prices because cities such as New York did not conduct timely revaluations based on current data. Therefore, measurement error could account for this modest variation. Too, the citywide data would have included observations from commercial and industrial areas (such as the Midtown and lower Manhattan sections) where assessed values would be much higher than those in predominantly residential areas such as the Village. Therefore, the fact that the Village’s gains in assessed value exceeded citywide gains by a

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few percentage points may obscure the true import of this finding. Although appreciation in property values varied considerably within the Village— some areas rising more drastically than others—the overall result was to draw a great deal of public and investor attention to the neighborhood. By the late 1920s, some Village property owners complained that rising tax burdens were forcing them to upgrade their buildings to attract more affluent renters. This meant, of course, that some working and poor families would be displaced from their homes. Also of concern was the changing ownership patterns in the Village. Over the 1920s real estate corporations more than quadrupled their holdings there, while individual owners declined by twenty percentage points (Ware 1994, 446). And any hopes of fledgling painters or writers to live in the Village were discouraged. Even Ware’s choice of terminology offers insights into the sociological underpinnings of the Village’s transformation. She referred to a “backflow” of newcomers in language indicating that many of these people were former suburbanites who had chosen to settle in the Village. It was, she wrote in 1935, a residential backflow from the periphery of an overgrown city or from its suburbs to reclaim areas near the business heart of the metropolis. This residential backflow has been observable elsewhere on Manhattan, and in such sections of other old cities as the back side of Beacon Hill in Boston where houses and streets have been reclaimed from the slums for high-class residences. (Ware 1994, 7) Unfortunately, Ware offers no evidence for her observation. A more credible explanation, one suspects, is that most of the newcomers were migrating from other parts of the nation or were already residents of New York City before moving into the Village. Too, Ware refers to the reclamation of the Village by more affluent newcomers at the expense of those of lesser circumstances. However, she elected not to articulate a hegemonic argument based on Marxist or other class-conflict paradigms to characterize the social class shifts thus observed. It would apparently take more than a half century for such theories to develop around gentrification (Hackworth 2007; N. Smith 1996; Wittberg 1992). The Georgetown and Greenwich Village transformations make clear that across the first few decades of the twentieth century the nation’s political capital and its economic and cultural capital were each witnessing an unprecedented resurgence in one of their oldest residential areas. Prior to this time, doubts had been expressed about the social and economic ­viability of each neighborhood as a middle- or upper-class living environment. Deteriorating building stocks, increases in poor racial and ethnic minorities,

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and city neglect had seemingly doomed Georgetown and Greenwich Village to slumhood. Then in the teens and twenties came a resurgence of interest in each community. But whereas Georgetown’s embryonic gentrification was related to a city housing shortage and a rise in appreciation for older architecture, Greenwich Village’s parallel movement seems to have been propelled primarily by the concentration of a critical mass of intelligentsia in the nation’s cultural center. And yet neither Georgetown nor Greenwich Village told the whole story of embryonic gentrification in urban America before World War II. As Ware’s preceding observation noted, farther up the Atlantic coast, the city of Boston began to experience a comparable neighborhood resurgence commencing at about the same time.

3 The Beacon Hill Neighborhood of Boston, 1915–1945

I

f by the 1920s Washington and New York were achieving national and international stature as preeminent American cities, the same could not be said about Boston. Instead, it was best classified as the titular capital city of the six-state New England region. Its renown derived largely from its several respected institutions of higher education and its devotion to the arts and culture. Additionally, Boston investors had played important roles in financing development and industrialization in New England and the American Midwest. Both New York and Boston were first settled by Europeans in the early seventeenth century, and both were major Atlantic coastal port cities. But Boston lagged behind New York in business and commerce, and signs of economic decline were appearing in the early twentieth century.

Boston’s Early Evolution Throughout most of Boston’s history, land has been at a premium. The city was settled by English Puritans in 1636 on a narrow stretch of terrain extending into Boston harbor. Nearly surrounded by water, its topography gave it a shape resembling a manta ray, with the creature’s long tail representing Boston Neck, a slender link to the mainland. Although small sections of the city’s perimeter were filled in with gravel in the eighteenth century, not until the early nineteenth century did growth pressures drive the

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creation of substantial new land areas, as Boston ran short of buildable space. By the 1830s, parts of Beacon Hill and a nearby hill had been excavated for gravel to fill in the adjacent Mill Pond. Later a similar infill occurred on the other side of Boston Neck, creating the South End neighborhood (Whitehill 1973, 73–173). In both places, streets were laid out and thousands of masonry row dwellings were built. Much of the modern-day city of Boston was thus crafted (Seasholes 2003, 135–151, 153–210, 257–286). Just prior to the emergence of the city’s first gentrification trend, its 1910 population was 670,600, about twice that of Washington, and its population density was nearly as high as New York’s (Gibson 1998). Yet by the early twentieth century, Boston’s economy was showing alarming signs of distress (Scott 1969, 110–113). Although its bankers and businesses financed economic development there and elsewhere in the expanding nation, the city contended with the gradual decline of its fishing, mercantile, and manufacturing economies. For example, its leather and textile industries, seeking cheaper labor, were moving to southern states (O’Connor 1993). Furthermore, New York was securing an early edge in terms of the total volume of its waterborne commerce. In the early and midnineteenth century, New York’s port offered access to upstate New York, the Great Lakes, and Canadian markets via the Hudson River and Erie Canal; Boston’s port, however, had very limited water access to inland New En­ gland communities. New York’s advantage was later enhanced when it developed a more extensive railroad network than Boston, linking itself to midwestern, southern, and far western states. While some observers may question the extent to which Boston and New York openly competed for economic activity, the mere fact that they were geographically located in relatively close proximity made such interurban competition inevitable. Another factor differentiating the progress of the two cities was the reality that most Boston businessmen had a reputation for hidebound traditionalism in social, cultural, and commercial matters; businessmen in New York, on the other hand, were more speculative, adaptable to changing circumstances, and less constrained by the past (Domosh 1998, 157–158). And thanks to the rise of Boston’s powerful Irish political machine, the influence of its moneyed patricians and commercial elite was slipping at city hall and the state house. Both cities were losing population to suburbanization and westward continental migration. But New York’s 1898 consolidation added four boroughs to the burgeoning city, providing new land to accommodate growth and enhancing its economic and cultural dynamism. Boston, on the other hand, was confined by a band of established suburban municipalities and had little land for expansion. Hence, when embryonic gentrification first appeared in Boston, it came at a time of growing economic distress.

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Beacon Hill While the Back Bay and South End land reclamation projects were progressing in the nineteenth century, the Beacon Hill neighborhood must have resembled a citadel (Figure 3.1). Living above the construction and noise, its residents could look below and see immigrant laborers and dray horses at work. From their heights, the noise, dust, and other inconveniences would probably have offered most of them only occasional inconveniences. After all, the Hill’s detachment from the hustle and bustle of city life was one of the attractions that first drew people to erect handsome houses on its intersecting streets. Cooler in the summertime than most of the city, somewhat distant from pestilential swamps, the Hill offered peace, safety, and repose. It could truly be said that Beacon Hill was in, but not entirely of, the city of Boston. The neighborhood was considered one of the city’s most historic residential settings. It was also the seat of Massachusetts government, one of the oldest state governments in the nation. Set prominently on the crest of the Hill is the iconic State House, an architectural treasure designed by Charles Bulfinch. Its gold-leaf dome overlooks Beacon Street, the Boston Common,

Figure 3.1  The Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. (Map by Michael Siegel.)

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Figure 3.2  Bow front townhouses such as these on Beacon Street are as ­emblematic of Boston as brownstone townhouses are of New York City. Many were converted from single-family homes to apartments and condominiums.

and the Boston Public Garden. Surrounding the State House complex are a few thousand homes, most of which were built of red brick. Cherished among these are the distinctive bow front townhouses, which, as their name suggests, project a convex front wall to the street (Figure 3.2). The most highly prized were those whose front windows were tinted purple, testimony to the ancient manner in which the glass panes were once manufactured. Many fine houses line the most prestigious corridors—Beacon, Chestnut, and Mount Vernon Streets—the last of which includes the loftiest of addresses, Louisburg Square. These streets and a few others compose what was referred to locally as the Hill’s South Slope (Bergen 1990, 61–69). Naturally, its south-facing orientation offered the best exposure to sunlight during frigid New England weather. In the nineteenth century, the Hill—and especially the South Slope— had attracted men and women of letters. Among the literati who lived there were William Dean Howells, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Julia Ward Howe, and Louisa May Alcott (O’Connor 2001, 101). Statesmen, including John Quincy Adams and Charles Francis Adams, had also resided on the Hill (Firey [1947] 1968, 96). The oldest Hill families, locally anointed “Brahmins” if they descended from certain lofty ancestries, clustered in quiet splendor. The South Slope also afforded privileged

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Yankees an easy stroll or carriage ride to the city’s banks, investment firms, law offices, and corporate boardrooms. The high status attached to living on the South Slope, along with its handsome streets, houses, and gardens, made this small area the most desirable part of the Hill.

Declining Sections In spite of Beacon Hill’s assets, its elite families were confronted with growing evidence in the early twentieth century that some homes on the South Slope were not being maintained. On top of this threat, the Hill’s proximity to downtown Boston made it appealing to apartment developers, a concern to Brahmins who rued the intrusion of a less selective class of residents. Demographic shifts, especially those that brought immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and people with substance abuse, health issues, and unfamiliar norms of behavior, were additional worries. Throughout most of the twentieth century in Boston and other U.S. cities, these conditions were often collectively referred to as “blight.” Blight is an “organic metaphor” portraying a city’s well-being in anthropomorphic dimensions (Bennett 2010, 42–43). Probably influenced by the work in human ecology of scholars associated with the Chicago School of Sociology, noted architect Eliel Saarinen, for example, thought of the American city as analogous to a living organism and urban decline as a “contagious disease which threatens the whole organism” (1943, 143). In the case of Beacon Hill, blight was an oftused trope signifying a process akin to a spreading health epidemic. Blight, in other words, connoted a communicable condition which, like typhus or cholera, could metastasize from property to property, block to block, thus “infecting” the entire neighborhood. Also, blight implied an incipient condition that, if not addressed, could result in an area becoming an irreversible “slum.” Although utilitarian definitions of what constitutes a blighted urban area were never well articulated (Gordon 2004; R. Platt 2014, 79), two conditions were frequently cited: areas experiencing real property assessments that were either stagnant or declining, and areas in which buildings were becoming outdated and obsolescent (Fogelson 2001, 346–352). But implicit in many usages of the term were underlying social inferences regarding racial and ethnic minority groups and conditions such as crime, prostitution, mental illness, and alcohol or drug abuse (Teaford 1990, 11). On Beacon Hill, blight was associated with once-grand old homes being torn down and others being converted to what long-term residents considered the dreaded rooming or lodging house. According to sociologist Walter Firey’s intensive study of land use in central Boston during the 1940s, stores, rooming houses, “shacks,” and the occasional apartment building further

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challenged the quiet, lower-density residential nature of the neighborhood, raising concerns encompassed by the blight narrative ([1947] 1968, 118– 119). As the twentieth century progressed, these and other conditions would be vastly overused to evoke a phenomenon similar to an epidemic. Although residents of the South Slope were among the Hill’s first neighbors to raise concerns about declining conditions, others soon joined the chorus. The Flats, a section built on level terrain in the western section of the neighborhood, was beginning to show similar signs of neglect. Homes there were among those built on landfill during the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, the Flats was populated mostly by middleclass families, along with small clusters of domestics, gardeners, and cooks who worked in the Hill’s finer townhouses and mansions. A Flats address was considered by locals to be a notch or two lower in the status hierarchy than one on the South Slope. Many of the rooming houses and tenements inhabited by service workers in the Flats were in poor repair. With time, Hill elites, subscribing to the disease metaphor, feared that the neglect of these properties would soon infect others (Firey [1947] 1968, 121). Too, the growing popularity of the horseless carriage rendered several Flats stables and carriage houses obsolete (Figure 3.3). Some of these were rented to artists and other tenants of modest means. Despite various threats to the more affluent sections of the Hill, the nearby North Slope posed even more worrisome concerns. Most residents were renters, many were poor, and the North Slope’s buildings were not only less architecturally distinctive; they were less well maintained. The North Slope’s northern boundary was doughty Cambridge Avenue, with its ­working-class taverns, diners, and crowded little shops. Across the avenue was the West End, a separate ethnic neighborhood. Here conditions were worse than any on the Hill, and there were fears that the West End’s deterioration was spreading southward, disease-like, to the North Slope. Lying just below the surface of interethnic relationships in Boston was the antipathy felt by many native white Protestants toward Catholic immigrants from poorer nations such as Ireland and Italy. Because Boston attracted such large numbers of these newcomers, ethnic discrimination in housing and employment was commonplace (Handlin 1957). The home of several black families during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the North Slope had later attracted Jewish and Italian immigrants (Chamberlain 1925, 218–219; Daniels 1914, 144–145; Horton and Horton 1999, 1). The small houses and tenements there were packed with indigent working-class families. Property was poorly maintained, prostitution was not unusual, raucous parties occurred, and alcoholism destroyed families (Firey [1947] 1968, 88). How long would it be, asked Beacon Hill’s patricians, before this contagion spreads to the rest of the Hill? Streets

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Figure 3.3  Former stables such as these were converted to apartments and studios, as demand for Beacon Hill live/work space rose. A flourishing historic preservation ethic protected such sites from higher-density redevelopment.

such as Myrtle, Revere, and Pinckney—juxtaposed between the North Slope and the elite South Slope—were already perceived as declining. Transient tenants were living in deteriorating homes now converted to low-rent lodging houses and apartments (Wolfe 1913, 24). Were there any doubts about this peril, the Brahmins had only to look at two other Boston neighborhoods, both of which were built in the nineteenth century for middle- and upper-class families. Boston’s South End and parts of the Back Bay were already suffering disinvestment and numerous social ills. As if to confirm these elite fears, the Harvard University Press published a scholarly study in 1913 indicating that Beacon Hill and parts of the adjacent West End were exceeded only by the South End in their concentrations of lodging houses (Wolfe 1913, 24). Unlike boarding houses, in which the owner or the owner’s employee lived on the premises, lodging houses typically were overseen by absentee owners. Careful management suffered and reputedly, parties, drinking, prostitution, and other undesirable activities were commonplace. Of parallel concern was the conversion of single-family townhomes to multifamily lodging houses, thereby increasing the popu­ lation density on the Hill and attracting more renters (118). More people, it  was thought, brought more noise, more troublemakers, and greater

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demands for police and fire protection. And more renters, it was believed, meant that property would not be well maintained, thereby undermining neighborhood stability and property values. Similarly, another Harvard University Press study, published twenty-five years later, compared the Hill’s North Slope and east side to Boston citywide statistical averages. It found higher shares of older housing and higher rates of housing vacancies and substandard housing on the Hill (Walker 1938, 64–65). Hill residents raised complaints, too, about escalating property taxes imposed by allegedly corrupt Boston politicians and growing traffic congestion throughout their neighborhood. Adding to their concerns was the fact that dozens of longtime residents were vacating the Hill for other locations. Some had purchased homes in sections of Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood that were still considered socially pristine. Others chose to move to one of the high-status towns in Boston’s suburbs. In fact, Walter Firey, a Harvardtrained sociologist, found that by the early years of the twentieth century the number of Beacon Hill families listed in the Boston Social Register was declining significantly ([1947] 1968, 88–89). How much of this flight was due to threatening social, economic, or environmental circumstances? And how much to the Yankee’s dwindling political power in the face of Irish American ascendency? The answer is unclear. Additionally, large numbers of migrants from Europe and rural New England had poured into Boston, and housing was at a premium (Handlin 1957). Pressures were everywhere to accommodate new growth within Boston’s water-girdled confines. The logical strategy was to build upward, rather than outward. It was only a matter of time before the modern iron- or steel-reinforced skyscraper would migrate from Chicago and New York, where such structures were being erected, to the somewhat hidebound city of Boston. When it did, higher apartment and office towers, as well as larger commercial emporiums, vied for space in the densely built central business ­district and surrounding neighborhoods. By the early twentieth century, growth pressures were pushing out of the downtown and into adjacent residential areas such as Beacon Hill. The growing popularity of the horseless carriage brought cut-through traffic and demands for parking space there. Worse yet, outmoded city codes regulating development were toothless in the face of these pressures (Holleran 1998, 248–262). Boston had transitioned from a reign of stability and growth in the nineteenth century to an era of rapid change in the early twentieth century. While many Brahmins, especially bankers, lawyers, and insurance executives, profited from the new business activity, it was not difficult to foresee an end to the old ways of life once associated with the city. Public displeasure was growing. Control of land use and growth became a preeminent

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concern. Not surprisingly, within a few years after New York City adopted America’s first municipal zoning law, Boston and a few other cities began to write their own ordinances (Holleran 1998, 264–265; Toll 1969). By the mid-teens, middle- and upper-income Hill residents were confronted with troublesome signs of blight that, in their estimation, threatened to overtake the entire neighborhood. Although it is uncertain whether the Hill became a true slum, the South Slope and the Flats sprouted properties here and there showing signs of low maintenance. Several were converted to rooming or lodging houses, and others seemed ripe for demolition to make way for apartment buildings. Brahmins and their neighbors were particularly alarmed. Some observers may question whether Walter Firey’s observations were overblown and whether Beacon Hill was truly an incipient slum. Whatever the case, there are indications that many Hill residents had a lower tolerance threshold for signs of physical or economic deterioration, as well as changing racial or socioeconomic demographic patterns, than residents of most other Boston neighborhoods.

Embryonic Gentrification and the Bohemian Invasion These conditions formed the backdrop to Beacon Hill’s embryonic gentrification. Local lore suggests that the rejuvenation began only a few years into the new century with the arrival of Frank A. Bourne (Holleran 1998, 263). The young architect purchased a run-down house located on Mount Vernon Street in the Flats. A popular magazine of the time noted that in short order Bourne changed “a commonplace building into an interesting and delightful dwelling” (“Regeneration of Beacon Hill” 1909, 92). According to Walter Firey, this act was a factor in triggering “the regeneration of Beacon Hill as a preferred residential district” ([1947] 1968, 119–120). From there, Bourne went on to restore other Beacon Hill houses (“Regeneration of Beacon Hill” 1909, 94). Inspired by Bourne’s efforts, his friend, real estate agent William Coombs Codman, a Beacon Hill Brahmin, formed the West End Associates and began purchasing homes along Pinckney, Revere, and Myrtle Streets. These corridors linked the North and South Slopes and were considered by Codman to be in the path of approaching blight. He then sold the properties, but only to buyers who made legally binding agreements (probably through deed restrictions) to restore and occupy them. Speculators and landlords were excluded. Profits were placed in a revolving fund and used to buy additional homes for the same purpose (Li-Marcus 2002, 45). Encouraged by his success and by favorable comments from neighbors, Codman decided to reinforce his efforts to thwart the forces of decline. He formed Beacon Hill Associates in 1917 and began buying properties on the North Slope of the Hill and in the Flats, imposing similar restrictions

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on buyers. Clearly, the tireless preservationist was not marketing his properties solely to affluent families who wanted a Hill address. Through the purchase of houses in the less expensive areas of the neighborhood, Codman must have realized that there was plenty of demand among younger middleclass buyers and renters who were attracted by the history, architecture, and imputed social status associated with Beacon Hill. It is probably no coincidence that Codman’s efforts unfolded in the immediate aftermath of the Boston 1915 campaign. Organized by a group of Boston business and civic leaders, it was an attempt to spur regional planning, improve municipal services, reduce poverty, and achieve a panoply of other reformist objectives (Scott 1969, 110–117). The nationwide progressive reform movement had alighted even in traditional Boston. At about this time, the bohemianization of Beacon Hill accelerated. Though it had long harbored a smattering of intellectuals and artists, the North Slope began attracting larger numbers of such people just after World War I. The bohemian colony that arose was smaller and less prominent than the one in Greenwich Village. Modest rents, quaint surroundings, colorful European immigrants, and easy access to Boston’s saloons and cafes drew artists and writers to the Hill’s less luminous streets. Too, the Hill was popular among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people. One study of the period from 1920 to 1960 found that eight gathering places for LGBTQ people were open over varying periods on Beacon Hill (History Project 1998, 160–161). It was to these people, as well as more conventional households, that Bourne, Codman, and others marketed their renovated apartments. As author Lucius Beebe—himself a Boston Brahmin—playfully characterized the bohemians, “Overnight large numbers of previously rational and plausible youths and maidens discovered James Joyce, the artistic temperament and the formula of synthetic gin” (1935, 303). Beacon Hill’s bohemia, spatially centered on Joy and Pinckney streets, began to flourish during the early Prohibition years, when bootleg liquor thrived. The Green Shutters, a new tearoom, served gin in tea cups. Another tearoom, the Brick Oven, was opened soon after by Reginald Lawrence, a Princeton alumnus, who installed a printing press there to publish local fiction, poetry, and plays. Small theaters were opened and impromptu performances played to enthusiastic, if sometimes sparse, audiences. Women wore smocks and smoked from long cigarette holders. Men sported beards, generous locks, and black hats and berets. Unmarried couples lived together and groups of single people sharing quarters were not uncommon (305–306). On Beacon Hill, as in Greenwich Village, Victorian conventions were furtively, and sometimes flagrantly, disregarded.

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Among the Hill bohemians were several with elite credentials. Prescott Townsend, a Harvard Law School graduate, acquired a house on Joy Street and proceeded to renovate a barn behind it for use as another theater. Robert Hillyer, a Harvard faculty member, lived in an apartment on a mews off Charles Street. Newspaper editors, writers, medieval scholars, and the like visited often or lived on the Hill for varying periods of time. Although women were less numerous than men on the North Slope, some drew attention to themselves through unladylike behavior. For example, four bohemian women squatted rent-free in a vacant mansion on Myrtle Street and created a salon for entertaining visitors (Beebe 1935, 310–315). Why did these aesthetes and flaneurs choose to live on the Hill? Then as now, suburban living connoted bourgeois conventionalism. Probably inspired by the colony of artists, writers, and intellectuals inhabiting Greenwich Village, graduates of prestigious colleges settled in Boston seeking adventure, intellectual and artistic fervor, social engagement, and, of course, the rituals of mating. Some Hill newcomers were influenced by more experienced hands such as Viola Black, formerly of Greenwich Village. Black had vacationed in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where Villagers operated the Provincetown Playhouse during the summers (Beebe 1935, 306). There she would probably have known—or known of—visiting New York writers and social activists such as John Reed, Louise Bryant, Floyd Dell, Eugene O’Neill, Max and Crystal Eastman, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Armed with these experiential credentials, Black became a mentor and arbiter of taste among younger followers on the Hill. Beacon Hill, with its long identity as a haven for establishment intelligentsia, was a logical place for nonconformists on the margins of society, as well. Despite its faded sections, the Hill was the oldest sizable neighborhood in Boston and was rich in nineteenth-century architectural charm. Stately mansions with ornate ironwork, carriage houses, and gardens abounded on the South Slope and parts of the Flats. Plus, the topography of Beacon Hill gave it a very distinctive identity and cachet in the city. Narrow sloping streets, brick-paved sidewalks, and quiet mews were reminiscent of Old World settings. Possibly, it was this very otherness, this conspicuous lack of modernity, that attracted some people to the Hill’s quiet sanctity. Rather than succumbing to twentieth-century newness, Beacon Hill turned its back on it. By doing so, its residents proclaimed to the world that they had chosen to live there because they embraced Boston’s historical past, rather than apologizing for its seeming obsolescence. When the neighborhood first began to undergo embryonic gentrification during and after World War I, it was already superannuated in comparison to most other sections of Boston. Yet

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the Hill’s very antiquated identity had become a bulwark against creeping commercialism, the automobile, and taller office and apartment buildings. Beacon Hill Brahmins could remember fine old houses and churches in the center of the city that had been demolished to accommodate office and retail growth. As more automobiles and trucks pushed into the city center, service stations and parking lots were being built here and there to cater to growing demand. In short, progress was coming, and Boston’s landscape was beginning to show its effects. .

North Slope and South Slope Renovation Even as Boston’s downtown was undergoing new business pressures, on nearby Beacon Hill little had yet changed—at least according to the naked eye. And while many would-be residents could not afford to live on the South Slope, the North Slope and parts of the Flats met them halfway. The patchwork pattern of grand and grubby—august townhomes here, small apartment buildings there, and run-down tenements around the corner— made it possible for bohemians to live in these areas in close proximity to the wealthy. Moreover, they could do so without shouldering the obligation of high rents, taxes, or mortgage installments that were borne by the elite. Similarly, students and younger working singles and couples could find affordable lodging in the less auspicious parts of the Hill. Though they might have to make do in a dingy subterranean basement apartment, they still had a toehold in this unique residential sanctum. And unlike the poor families some of them supplanted, many of these newcomers could circumvent the ravages of indigence, thanks to the timely bank check mailed by comfortable, if not wealthy, parents. Even as the early stages of the Hill’s embryonic gentrification took shape, the North Slope was still home to many poorer inhabitants, including Jewish, Italian, and African American families (Daniels 1914, 143–144; Dolkart 2009, 180). But concerns escalated as the North Slope was increasingly associated with the “squalid West End” (Murch 1926, 1). As if to rescue the North Slope, Cambridge Street, the dividing line between the two neighborhoods, was widened during the 1920s. This heightened the sense of separation and resulted in the North Slope’s gradually becoming more closely identified with the rest of Beacon Hill. With gentrification gathering steam on other parts of the Hill, interest among those who could not afford mainstream housing prices or rents shifted to the North Slope. Investors recognized that the prestige of a Beacon Hill address was rising and they exploited the North Slope’s location just blocks from the South Slope. Soon they were purchasing older buildings there, evicting their tenants, and rehabilitating the run-down properties. As one Boston Transcript reporter

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Figure 3.4  Primus Avenue, on Beacon Hill’s North Slope, once housed a dense concentration of working-class immigrants and minorities. In the 1920s it was renovated into a private gated residential enclave for affluent residents.

rhapsodized in 1924, “Artistic interiors and delightful gardens are to be found where a few years previously were squalid tenements and dirty, foulsmelling alleys and streets” (Murch 1926, 1). Making no secret of his enthusiasm for this renovation “movement,” the writer promised that the new projects “sooner or later will be welded into one pleasing residential district” (Murch 1926, 8). One such example was tiny Primus Avenue (Figure 3.4). Intersecting with Phillips Street, it was in reality not an avenue at all but rather “a dirty obscure alley notorious for its

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vice, crime and frequent police raids” (Firey [1947] 1968, 121). Members of “the underworld” were said to haunt its environs (Murch 1926, 1). Overcrowded, unheated, and deteriorating wooden tenements were crammed into its tight confines. But then, intrepid builder Elliott Henderson purchased the little warren of properties. He renovated the houses and created an eye-appealing mews with a private garden. Like Patchin Place and Milligan Place in Greenwich Village, Primus Avenue was accessible via a locked iron gate. Only tenants residing there were issued keys. Electric service and new plumbing and heating were added, and kitchenettes were installed. Several two-level units were completed, some with fireplaces. Top-floor studios had exposed wooden beams. Another sign of the Hill’s shifting socioeconomic structure was this observation in the Transcript: “Many of the tenants have travelled widely and appreciate the friendly cosmopolitan atmosphere” (Murch 1926, 1). But the escalating gentrification trend did not stop at Primus Avenue. Nearby, another builder purchased four three-story houses, each approximately one hundred years old, just off Anderson Street along minuscule Champny Place. The properties lacked furnaces and had marginal plumbing and gas illumination. The new owner added steam heat, electric wiring, plumbing, and reconditioned fireplaces. Wherever practical, he restored interior Dutch ovens and exposed hand-hewn wooden beams. The renovated units had “taken the fancy of a high class of tenants” and a “genial community feeling” was unfolding (Murch 1926, 1). Beacon Hill’s Primus Avenue and Champny Place developments demonstrated to investors that now even the most obsolete properties could be refashioned to appeal to affluent renters of a higher social class while yielding a handsome financial return. Of course, poor and working-class households would be swept away. Not all renovation activity on the Hill was carried out by developers and then sold or rented. Some newcomers purchased property for personal use. For example, one buyer acquired a three-story house on Myrtle Street, the back of which was connected to a four-story house facing Revere Street. After extensive rehabilitation, the owner moved into his new, enlarged home. Full-length windows were installed overlooking the garden (once a dirty courtyard), and bookcases were built to house an extensive personal library. A smoking room was added for male gatherings, and a closet was created to house a Victrola for the owner’s dance parties. He decorated his new residence with furniture imported from France (Murch 1926, 8). By the teens and twenties, worries about the economic viability of South Slope real estate were doubtless abating as renovation of the more august properties continued apace. Even some homes along the most esteemed corridors, Chestnut and Mount Vernon Streets, and those around Louisburg Square had been neglected. As investor confidence rose, however,

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these properties were soon snapped up by families recognizing that the economic tide on Beacon Hill was shifting. By the mid-1920s, word of Beacon Hill’s comeback reached a national audience when articles appeared in issues of House Beautiful magazine describing the reclamation of landmark properties and a once-neglected alley on the Hill (Gillespie 1925; Russell 1926). When prices in these sections continued to increase and few properties were on the market, home-seekers moved on to somewhat less prestigious nearby blocks such as Pinckney, Joy, Hancock, and Bowdoin Streets, which gained status merely by dint of propinquity and vaunted demand. West Cedar Street and narrow little Acorn Street, the latter still paved with weathered cobblestones, drew more buyers and renters. Pressures rose to subdivide single-family townhouses into apartments. But long-term residents resisted, not wanting their section of the Hill to be overrun by renters. Even in staid old Boston, the Roaring Twenties and the period’s aggressive climate of optimism had ignited demand for Hill properties. America was on a binge of buying and investing, and caution was in suspended animation. Over the 1930s, however, the Great Depression retarded reinvestment on Beacon Hill. Most vulnerable was the North Slope. By the mid-1930s, according to a study by several Harvard professors, conditions there remained dire enough to merit placing that section on a list of “substandard areas” of Boston. Population density on the North Slope was more than eight times that of the citywide average (Walker 1938, 65–66). Additionally, data on assessed values of property showed that North Slope land was valued at more than twice that of the buildings or improvements on the land. (Economists saw this condition as a sign that properties were underutilized, relative to their highest and best use.) The study pointed out that 16 percent of structures there were “unfit or in need of major repairs” (65–66). Yet it was these very liabilities that kept North Slope property prices lower than those elsewhere on the Hill. Consequently, the greater difficulties of selling or renting homes were at least partially offset by the lower investment costs needed to launch a new rehabilitation project.

Embryonic Gentrification in the Flats and the West End Although embryonic gentrification on Beacon Hill first centered on the North and South Slopes, the trend eventually spread to other sections during the 1920s. On the west side of Charles Street, the neighborhood’s primary retail corridor, the Flats was attracting new home-seekers. Several streets there were only a few blocks long, discouraging through traffic and promoting an air of insularity. For home-seekers averse to the North and

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South Slopes’ steep inclines, difficult street parking, and wintertime icy sidewalks, the Flats offered a level and less hazardous residential setting. Among the newcomers were painters, sculptors, and actors. Drawn by the fledgling bohemian colony, they settled in ancient carriage houses and stables. Others “bought up dilapidated ‘rat houses,’ as they were known, fixed them up and lived in them” (Firey [1947] 1968, 121). But domestic service workers who had long resided atop the stables and carriage houses, as well as in rooming houses and tenements, were now confronted with rising rents as their homes were converted to artists’ studios or antique shops (Firey [1947] 1968, 121). With time, a Beacon Hill address attained such cachet that some people were settling in nearby areas where rents were lower. One such spillover place was the West End (Fisher and Hughes 1992). Older apartment buildings within easy walking distance of the Hill were located just north of Cambridge Avenue (the dividing line between the North Slope of the Hill and the West End) (Firey [1947] 1968, 120–121). The West End attracted artists and would-be artists who were priced out of Beacon Hill. But with Massachusetts General Hospital and a series of medical offices there, hospital workers were also neighborhood denizens. Immigrants and students composed other residential cohorts. Even in the 1960s, this area defied conventional norms of propriety. As sociologist Herbert Gans observed, homosexuals working as male nurses at the hospital “were able to practice their deviant ways in an area which disapproved of them, but which tolerated them grudgingly” (1982, 10). Even though Walter Firey made his observations on Beacon Hill and the West End in the mid-1940s, there are signs that some people were recognizing the West End’s locational potential for revitalization much earlier. A glimpse of the earliest stages of this process of neighborhood rebuilding was provided by the Craftsman, a national magazine edited by Gustav Stickley, the dean of America’s Arts and Crafts movement. In the publication’s April 1909 issue, an unsigned article reported that one Matthew Hale, a young Boston alderman who lived in the West End, had acquired “a pair of tumbledown wooden tenements on Lime Street, better known as ‘Slime Alley.’” Here, twelve families were “speedily induced to seek other accommodations” (“Regeneration of Beacon Hill” 1909, 95). Once demolished, the houses were replaced by a new structure designed as craftsman-style studios. The new inhabitants, the author wrote, had brought “a most desirable element into a part of the city which badly needs such associations.” The building “promises to give a still stronger impetus to the movement for improving the neighborhood” (95). Although located just off Beacon Hill, and involving new construction rather than rehabilitation of existing structures, Hale’s project offers evidence that the earliest taproots of embryonic

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gentrification may have predated even the liminal reinvestment activity on the Hill during the teens.

Shifting Social Composition In accounts of the transformation of Beacon Hill, much has been made of the influence of the old families and to a more modest extent, the bohemians. But there were less illustrious households who also had a hand in this process. By the 1940s, if not sooner, there were substantial numbers of residents who, though not wealthy or bearing an old family name, identified with those who were so blessed. Sometimes young couples of good family but for the time being living on a shoestring will rent moderately priced apartments in converted Beacon Hill houses. Thus, without too great expense to themselves they are able to live in a socially acceptable neighborhood and thereby symbolize their class position. (Firey [1947] 1968, 99) Firey underscored the neighborhood’s vaunted reputation, especially among young women. “Office girls,” he wrote, “who reside on the Hill feel a certain distinction through living there” (100). In fact, the sociologist found, by the 1940s female Hill residents had inverted the previous gender imbalance, with women far outnumbering men. In 1940, for every 100 men with a Beacon Hill address, he calculated, there were 184 women, a gender ratio far in excess of citywide averages (105). Younger women in their twenties and early thirties constituted the largest age cohort. Not all Hill females were young, however, or bereft of patrician credentials. There were, as well, “elderly spinsters, frequently living on depleted patrimonies, who maintain residence of Beacon Hill primarily because their home was a part of their inheritance and they could ill afford to live anywhere else” (99). When compared to the city overall, Hill households had a smaller share of married couples and children and a greater share of older residents (Firey [1947] 1968, 105). Along with the Hill’s Brahmin families, young singles and couples, office workers, and older single women, there were also the “nouveau riche” (100). According to Firey, such families lived on the Hill “to advance the social prospects of their daughters” (100, 108–109). Here, the author suggests that Brahmin-nouveau crossover marriages were not infrequent. The idea of enhancing the family bloodline, not to mention its social and economic status, through marriage is a very old one (Baltzell 1958; Howells 1912). Such unions can open doors to membership in elite clubs and other social organizations that in turn may build the nouveau family’s reputation and business prospects.

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Despite Firey’s emphasis on the social and sentimental attachments to the Hill found among the various demographic groups, we should not discount the influence of another locational variable. As mentioned above, the Hill was conveniently accessible to downtown offices and stores as well as to Boston Common and the Public Garden. Elite private clubs such as the Boston Athenaeum were at hand. Streetcars, buses, and taxis connected Hill residents to the city’s train stations and to large parts of the city and suburbs. Were it not for this factor, one wonders to what extent social and sentimental attachments would have been sufficient for Beacon Hill to attract the population it did. Though Firey did not probe the Hill’s demographic variables deeply, he did examine data indicating socioeconomic status. He found that in 1940 Beacon Hill’s share of professional and white-collar workers was much higher than the city’s overall share; conversely, its proportion of blue-collar employees was considerably lower. Despite having fewer such manual laborers, the Hill’s proportion of domestic service workers—cooks, gardeners, nannies, and maids, for example—was much higher than citywide figures (Firey [1947] 1968, 107). This was explained by the fact that many such workers were employees who lived in the residences of the families for whom they worked. Like alley-dwelling families in Georgetown, others lived cheek-by-jowl with their employers in tiny apartments or rooming houses. For the most part, then, the Hill’s demography was composed primarily of upper- and middle-class residents, with a minority occupying the lower rungs of the social ladder. Only the North Slope appears to have departed from these parameters. According to Firey, it was mostly the increase in elite families that occurred over the early twentieth century that accounted for Beacon Hill’s turnaround. In the years before 1905, the number of the Hill’s Brahmin households had been declining. Between 1905 and 1929, however, his data revealed a reversal of this trend, with a net gain of 120 Social Register families (Firey [1947] 1968, 122). Most probably, patrician leadership in renovating properties—mainly on the South Slope and the Flats—emboldened banks and small-scale builders to make similar efforts in less prestigious sections of the Hill. This attracted bohemians, middle-class office workers, and younger working women, all of whom lent a fashionable aura to the neighborhood. Firey’s findings on Beacon Hill and other Boston neighborhoods were significant in and of themselves. But the young sociologist had bigger fish to fry. Did his Harvard professors embolden him to lock horns with faculty in the University of Chicago’s Department of Sociology, which was then the most prominent center for research on the nation’s cities (Tonkiss 2005; Zorbaugh 1929)? We will probably never know for sure. Chicago School

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adherents found a strong relationship between class, race, and ethnic residential patterns, on the one hand, and geographically measured economic variables such as property assessments or sales prices, on the other. Nonetheless, Firey believed that the Chicago School’s emphasis on “human ecology,” as their theories became known, underestimated the influence of nonquantifiable social factors on urban settlement patterns. He pointed out that upper-class “spatially referred values” regarding the history, family genealogy, and architecture of the Hill were not based on economic criteria, as ecological theorists would then insist (Firey [1947] 1968, 102). Rather, they were undergirded by sentiments seemingly oblivious to the current market value of land. Had all Brahmins instead been motivated solely by financial concerns, they would have sold their old homes to the highest bidder, as it were, to realize maximum return on investment. Even though doing so might bring destruction of their family home and its replacement by an apartment building or commercial structure, ecological theory—as interpreted by Firey—might argue that this was a “rational” outcome (Firey 1968, 313). But, of course, Hill elites were guided—in part, at least—by values having little to do with economic rationality. Indeed, in hindsight it seems that Walter Firey identified a partial explanation for the apparent irrationality of middle-class people choosing to reside in an older, possibly declining, urban neighborhood, rather than in a more stable section of Boston or its suburbs. Many Beacon Hill residents, he insisted, exercised a personal calculus regarding residential choice that was only secondarily influenced by concerns about rent levels, purchase prices, and investment potential. Uppermost in their minds, if not their hearts, was the primacy of social status via associational proximity and social and environmental historicity. These sentiments would become even more apparent in the future as the historic preservation movement matured and embryonic gentrification appeared in many more city neighborhoods.

Leadership and Neighborhood Mobilization Motivated in part by sentimental attachments to the architecture and heritage of the Hill, neighbors bonded together. They opposed municipal and private plans to erect structures that were at odds with the prevailing character of the neighborhood. As Boston city hall considered adopting its first zoning regulations—in part to advance new development in the city and to raise tax revenues—the Brahmins and their cohorts realized that they had to mobilize their forces and pursue their objectives more formally. In 1922, they founded the Beacon Hill Association (BHA), a neighborhood organization with nearly eighty members (Holleran 1998, 264; Li-Marcus 2002, 54–55). Their shared spatially referred values led them to organize

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c­ ollectively to thwart creeping economic rationality and the power of the marketplace. BHA members attended city meetings to press their case for zoning, while at the same time making clear that such a law should help the neighborhood protect historic resources, not merely facilitate economic development (Li-Marcus 2002, 57–62). Two years after the BHA’s founding, the city of Boston enacted its first zoning ordinance, a measure to control the location and height of new buildings and the types of uses to which land parcels could be put (Holleran 1998, 262). Now that new building regulations were in place, the BHA shifted its tactics and began using them to prevent tall apartment buildings and commercial outlets from disrupting the Hill’s residential sanctity (Firey [1947] 1968, 129; 1968, 312). On the heels of these efforts, two books appeared in the mid-1920s bringing new attention to the distinctiveness of the Hill’s architecture. Although Charles Bulfinch: Architect and Citizen (Place 1925) was a biography, it identified several Bulfinch-designed buildings, some of which were located on Beacon Hill. And because Bulfinch had been one of America’s most respected architects, Charles Place’s study burnished the image of the Beacon Hill landscape. Even more compelling was Beacon Hill: Its Ancient Pastures and Early Mansions (Chamberlain 1925). This volume documented the history and architecture of more than six hundred Beacon Hill homes. Plumbing the depths of deed and title records, as well as historical archives and family histories, the author pieced together a compelling study of the Hill’s architectural heritage and many of its long-term residents. Beacon Hill indicated that some homes were built as early as the 1780s and 1790s. Photographs and maps offered copious illustrations. In addition to making important scholarly contributions, the book made a powerful case for preserving Beacon Hill and restoring its many structures. Whatever thoughts lingered among the general public about the social and economic attributes of living on the Hill, Beacon Hill offered insights about history and architecture that assuaged uncertainties. Apparently, the Boston Transcript’s editors concluded that the book had popular appeal. The newspaper serialized several chapters between 1923 and 1925, thus spreading the word to thousands of area readers. Such publicity contributed to legitimizing the efforts of old-family Hill denizens such as William Codman’s son, John, and Marian Nichols, a Radcliffe graduate, who served as secretary of the BHA from 1922 to 1939 (LiMarcus 2002, 47–52, 155n12). Together, Codman and Nichols led BHA ­historic preservation campaigns to protect the character of Beacon Hill. Among BHA board members who could offer legal expertise was Felix Frankfurter, a Harvard Law School professor and future U.S. Supreme Court justice. He would later live in Washington’s Georgetown neigh­

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Figure 3.5  Charles Street is Beacon Hill’s main commercial corridor. Local historic preservation laws foster period sign designs and reproduction gas street lamps evoking nineteenth-century patterns.

borhood, where he witnessed a second example of embryonic gentrification (156n21). As the automobile gained in popularity, the BHA sought to prevent heavy traffic flows through the neighborhood. City plans to repave  certain streets and sidewalks with materials inconsistent with the Hill’s historic character were thwarted (48, 68–69, 91). In 1953, learning of Georgetown’s historic district ordinance of 1950, John Codman sought comparable status for Beacon Hill. In 1955, the Massachusetts legislature approved the listing of the South Slope as a state-designated historic district (107–109). The district’s powers were expanded in 1958 and 1964 (Weinberg 1979, 121). This measure protected not just individual landmark buildings but virtually the entirety of the neighborhood itself (Holleran 1998, 268, 327n72). City hall established the Boston Architectural Commission to review proposals to alter the character of the Hill (Figure 3.5) and to recommend action to municipal authorities to maintain its historical character (Li-Marcus 2002, 51). Although cities such as Charleston, South Carolina, and New Orleans had preceded Boston in the enactment of historic district laws, Boston was the first large northern city to adopt this new form of preservation (Holleran 1998, 193, 268, 326n65). New development projects proposed for Beacon Hill could no longer receive rubber-stamp approval by city hall officials.

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An Invaluable Ally It would be misleading to suggest that Nichols, Codman, and other Beacon Hill activists pursued their goals in a vacuum, for there was another preservation sentinel in Boston whose aspirations were even more elevated than those of the BHA. William Sumner Appleton, an old-family Bostonian, spearheaded the founding of the Society for the Preservation of New En­ gland Antiquities in 1910 (Firey [1947] 1968, 226–238). Modeled on a similar organization in Virginia, SPNEA established its headquarters in 1916 in the Harrison Gray Otis house, a grand structure built by celebrated architect Charles Bulfinch in 1795. This historic property was located at the edge of the West End directly across Cambridge Avenue from Beacon Hill’s North Slope. Appleton and John Codman were friends, and Appleton often lent the BHA his moral support in their preservation campaigns. Appleton used the organization’s publications and his own lofty reputation to lobby against ac­ tions threatening to desecrate the historic integrity of important buildings throughout New England. He found that mobilizing people, especially prom­ inent Massachusetts families, on behalf of a preservation cause brought its own form of political pressure on public officials, investors, and builders. As part of the original thirteen American colonies, the New En­gland region elicited an abiding devotion among its many residents in support of its historic and architectural patrimony. Using his personal and family connections, Appleton’s tactics took advantage of the spatially referred values of moneyed people who shared his strong sentiments for preserving aged buildings. He obtained financing from such benefactors to create a revolving fund. In some cases, money from the fund was used to purchase threatened properties and hold them for safekeeping. In other cases, families wanting to preserve a historic home donated the property to SPNEA in return for a pledge that the organization would protect it in perpetuity. Some of the acquired properties were rented to sympathetic families or sold to new owners who were prohibited by deed restrictions from making any changes to the structure or lot that were inconsistent with its historic and architectural character (Holleran 1998, 237). No matter how many times the properties changed hands in the future, the deed restrictions were legally attached to the property and enforceable through court action. Income from the sale or rental of these properties was placed back in the society’s revolving fund for future preservation activities. By the time of Appleton’s death in 1947, SPNEA owned fifty-one historic properties scattered across the six New England states. The society did a great deal to heighten consciousness about the region’s history and ­architecture, all of which probably redounded to the benefit of the Hill’s

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preservationists (Conforti 2001). Such was the role of historic preservation in the embryonic gentrification of Beacon Hill. As we soon see, SPNEA was among a small group of vanguard organizations nationally working to advance the cause of historic preservation.

Beacon Hill Comes Full Circle As time passed, the North Slope’s nonconformist identity faded. Although its modest bohemian era persisted from the late teens to the mid-twenties, the flame of youthful nonconformity apparently flickered out in the years thereafter. Doubtless, many of the Hill’s young denizens acquired careers, families, and mortgages, and their lives moved on. The tearooms and ersatz playhouses disappeared (probably eased out by Boston’s new zoning regulations), and the boisterous parties became less frequent. Rents were escalating, and the Hill was becoming somewhat less congenial for young people of nonconforming temperament and modest means. By the time their presence was fading, however, the bohemians had instilled in Beacon Hill a more youthful and creative identity. They had also demonstrated that culturally, at least, diverse populations—poor immigrants, African Americans, and bohemians, for example—could reside in close proximity with little apparent friction. By the mid-1920s Beacon Hill’s public image was no longer widely perceived as an incipient slum. Rather, it was coming full circle and recovering its identity as an elite neighborhood for those who identified with the Hill’s social, cultural, aesthetic, and historical attributes. The growing number of upper-class families and middle-class white-collar workers living there testified to the fact that Beacon Hill was once again the preferred address for people of taste, if not always high social standing. One by one during the interwar years, houses and shops were renovated or restored. As if to thumb their noses at technological modernity, Hill residents even succeeded in reversing the clock by replacing electric street lights with gas lamps. Brick paving replaced concrete sidewalks. Stores removed brightly lit or oversized signs, replacing them with hand-painted wooden ones mimicking those of a bygone era. Shops echoed the Hill’s antiquarian theme, offering antiques, paintings, silverware, expensive gifts, jewelry, fine books, and similar merchandise. City authorities rationed liquor licenses, permitting only a few taverns to operate along commercial thoroughfares such as Charles and Cambridge Streets. Beacon Hill was on a path to restore its original primary identity as an elite enclave for upper- and middle-class people with urbane and cultured tastes. Thus, between World Wars I and II, the Hill, Georgetown, and Greenwich Village largely succeeded in reversing their internal processes of urban

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decline. This put their cities among a handful to have experienced what were apparently the first signs of embryonic gentrification in the American urban landscape. However, as I point out further on, it would take additional decades before elected officials would embrace the gentrification paradigm as an element of government policy. The transformation of all three neighborhoods occurred largely through private market forces, with only modest influence from governmental sanctions such as zoning and historic district designations. Reinvestment and renovations by homeowner-occupants and commercial firms were the primary engines of revitalization. Just as significant, the negative impacts of embryonic gentrification on low- and ­moderate-income incumbent residents—especially renters—were revealed, however willy-nilly, by these early examples of urban regeneration. Yet the lessons that public officials should have harvested from Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill were nowhere in evidence when embryonic gentrification accelerated and spread in the second half of the twentieth century. Indeed, the federal government’s efforts to reverse urban decline would take a decidedly different shape with outcomes threatening the urban poor and minorities.

4 Early Embryonic Gentrification An Atlantic and Gulf Coast Phenomenon

T

he previous three chapters examine case studies of Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill independently of one another. It is important to note that, while the Georgetown case was based on my extensive research into primary and secondary sources, the other two cases are grounded for the most part in observations from two previous studies: Carolyn Ware’s Greenwich Village ([1935] 1994) and Walter Firey’s Land Use in Central Boston ([1947] 1968). I have elected to draw liberally on their firsthand observations in large measure because it is my impression that relatively few urban scholars today are familiar with these critically important sources. In my estimation, they are quite possibly the first two empirical studies of a phenomenon that would someday be known as gentrification. Thus, a thorough accounting of Ware’s and Firey’s research seems justified. It is also worth noting that, while the Village case is liberally supplemented by my own archival research in contemporary periodicals, I found very little documentation in Boston periodical archives to similarly document the Beacon Hill case. In short, it appears that the gentrification of Beacon Hill occurred largely under the radar. My hope is that this book will stimulate further research among contemporary scholars to shed further light on such matters. This chapter compares and contrasts the three neighborhoods to gain additional insights into the seminal phases of urban gentrification in the United States. Among my concerns are the roles played by architectural

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tastes, morphology, social elites, and bohemian nonconformists in shaping neighborhood transformation. Also of concern is an accounting of how gentrification spread from Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill, to other neighborhoods in their respective cities. In addition, I examine three other cities—Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans—for further insights about embryonic gentrification. (These are brief examples rather than full-blown case studies.) Among other observations, these examples point out that gentrification was not a uniquely East Coast trend and that it sometimes faltered in its earliest stages. Finally, I consider the role of enhanced governmental intervention in land use through planning and zoning and its influence on embryonic gentrification in the United States.

Embryonic Gentrification in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C.: Architecture, Morphology, and Identity My research indicates that Washington, New York, and Boston were among a handful of cities experiencing the nation’s earliest examples of embryonic gentrification between World War I and World War II. As such, Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill served as exemplars for similar trends that subsequently transformed other neighborhoods. In all three cases, at least four elements were present: 1. The renovation and occupancy of older housing units, complemented by smaller levels of new housing construction, constituted the prevailing form of revitalization 2. A gradual increase in middle- and upper-income households and a decrease in poor and working-class households, especially those of racial and ethnic minorities 3. A commitment to preserving neighborhood historical and architectural heritage, including resistance to the erection of modern buildings or to infrastructure out of keeping with the prevailing character of their surroundings 4. Refutation of the inevitability of the obsolescence thesis and filter theory These three neighborhoods provided the nation with some of its first paradigms demonstrating that slum status was not an inevitable outcome of neighborhood aging. Neither filter theory nor the obsolescence thesis was founded on immutable truths. But Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill not only defied these negatives; they established the positive

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attributes of residence in an older city neighborhood. Affordable economic factors were certainly a key variable governing the emergence of embryonic gentrification. Housing demand and supply levels, sales prices and rents, and real estate tax burdens, for example, would be significant elements involved in the home-seeker’s mental calculus. So were the estimated expenses necessary to modernize an unimproved property, such as electrical and plumbing systems and new bathrooms and kitchens. Doubtless, accessibility to workplace and to cultural and neighborhood amenities played a role in housing decisions of many of the gentry. Too, perceptions of a low level of threats such as crime and negative land uses such as bars and liquor stores would influence their choices. But while these matters may have affected most household locational decisions, less tangible considerations, such as architectural appeal, neighborhood morphology, and social status also played a role. Why did embryonic gentrification first appear in Washington, New York, and Boston? Recall that Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill were among the most venerable residential areas in their respective cities. Each neighborhood had a sizable number of homes built before the Civil War, and their very age set them off from areas with newer homes. In Georgetown and Greenwich Village, for example, Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles projected a certain dignity, propriety, and sobriety to early twentieth-century eyes. On Beacon Hill, the locally popular bow front townhouse exuded a similar aura. These more traditional styles stood in stark contrast to the comparatively flamboyant architecture of the late nineteenth century. Dubbed the “Brown Decades” by urban historian Lewis Mumford ([1931] 1971), the Victorian period introduced a cavalcade of stylistic variations, including Queen Anne, Romanesque, Italianate, Gothic, Mansard, Stick, and Shingle styles (F. Platt 1976). And while all three embryonic gentrification communities contained Victorian and post-Victorian architecture, the older, pre–Civil War structures distinguished them from other less venerable neighborhoods, thereby emblematizing neighborhood historical and architectural character. By 1920, many Americans were growing weary of what they perceived to be the architectural excesses of the Brown Decades. Streetcar lines built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had opened new areas for the erection of hundreds of thousands of detached and row houses in various Victorian styles (Warner 1978). Such structures were often asymmetrically massed and displayed a riot of features—gables, corbels, dentils, brackets, turrets, and minarets, for example. Rich ornamentation might include stained or leaded-glass windows, gargoyles, elaborately detailed bargeboard, and intricate cast-iron cresting. By 1920, what had been fash-

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ionable to late nineteenth-century eyes was increasingly perceived as oldfashioned to a younger generation. Victorian eclecticism, it seems, had been exploited to the end of tolerance (Kidney 1974). Early twentieth-century architects responded to changing consumer tastes by designing new residences, banks, schools, courthouses, and post offices in styles evocative of the antebellum Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival forms. Termed “classical revival” or “neoclassical” architecture, these more restrained patterns enjoyed considerable popularity in the interwar years of the last century. For some home-seekers in Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill, pre-Victorian architecture was a refreshing antidote to Victoriana. Stylistic elements that would have been rather ordinary to their grandparents’ generation appeared to younger consumers as quaint or charming. So, too, were features such as ancient oak, elm, chestnut, or magnolia trees, narrow streets paved with cobblestones or Belgian block, sidewalks of red brick, and ornate cast-iron streetlights. For some early gentry, it seems, going backwards in time was going forward in life. Adding to the appeal of the first gentrifying neighborhoods was their distinctive morphologies. Both Georgetown and Greenwich Village had once been more or less freestanding towns before they were absorbed by their host cities. As such, their street patterns diverged from those of their surroundings, setting them off from the rest of the city. And Beacon Hill derived topological distinctiveness from the fact that its most prestigious sections were elevated, almost fortress-like, above their urban surroundings. In each city then, significant physical features crystallized the neighborhood’s public image and precluded its complete integration into its environs. However, it was not only the architecture and physical corpus of these places that proved appealing to newcomers. Another attraction involved the social class identity of current and former residents. Indeed, Walter Firey alluded to the combination of past dignitaries and contemporary elites living on Beacon Hill whose presence or former presence conferred a reflected social status on Hill residents with less prominent credentials ([1947] 1968, 92). Much the same could be said about Georgetown and Greenwich Village. Nearly every important colonial figure visiting Washington, D.C., during the new capital city’s genesis lodged at a Georgetown inn or rooming house. Similarly, there were respected dignitaries and men and women of letters living in Greenwich Village in the nineteenth century. Additionally, by the teens and twenties some upper-class families still remained in each of these neighborhoods in spite of scattered twentieth-century slum conditions. Collectively, these associations reinforced each gentrifying neighborhood’s reputation as a socially desirable place to reside. For early gentry, a

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kind of vicarious social status was ascribed through their neighborhood’s association with past elites. Moreover, prestige begets prestige. Families already well established socially were more susceptible to living in Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill as those places regained their former luster, reassured that their own social standing would be enhanced by doing so. The embryonic gentrification paradigm had a particular character in each neighborhood. All three underwent their transformation on the strength of a rising level of elite identity. But in Georgetown’s case, it was primarily a socioeconomic elite that led the movement. Just as Washington has never been known as a center of nonconformist thought or behavior, so also was this true of Georgetown. In Greenwich Village, on the other hand, an intellectual and artistic elite captured the identity of the neighborhood. This situation, of course, can be attributed largely to the fact that for generations New York has remained the nation’s most influential center of publishing, art, and fashion. Beacon Hill’s gentrification represented a hybrid, combining elements of the Georgetown and Greenwich Village models. The primary momentum involved a social and economic Brahmin elite. But for a short period during the 1920s, at least, a secondary thrust resulted from a relatively small bohemian artistic and intellectual elite. Doubtless, the Boston area’s large number of higher education institutions and its long dedication to intellectual and cultural life contributed to the formation of a mixed elite/bohemian model of gentrification on Beacon Hill. Although Washington, New York, and Boston yield strong evidence of having spawned the earliest examples of U.S. embryonic gentrification, it would be misleading to leave readers with the impression that they represent the final word on this subject. The next section will briefly consider three other cities: Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans (Ross 2014, 58, 87). Philadelphia offers evidence that market-driven gentrification by itself could falter, resulting in the need for public intervention to successfully revitalize declining neighborhoods. And the Charleston and New Orleans examples testify that embryonic gentrification was decidedly not an exclusively East Coast phenomenon but, rather, one associated with the sheer age of a city and its built environment. A short summary of each, rather than full case studies, suffices here.

Embryonic Gentrification in Philadelphia, Charleston, and New Orleans The Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill case studies may lead readers to assume that once embryonic gentrification appeared in a given

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city neighborhood, its ultimate transformation was a foregone conclusion. However, the experience in Philadelphia reveals a divergent outcome worth noting. It illustrates the temporary failure of market mechanisms to reverse urban decline and in some cases the ultimate necessity of public intervention to indemnify investor confidence. Only under government assistance, it seems, was Philadelphia’s embryonic gentrification advanced to a degree commensurate with experiences in Washington, New York, and Boston. As I point out later, the initial failure of gentrification to make sufficient progress in Philadelphia may offer insights as to the reluctance of federal officials in the late 1940s to adopt a strategy of rehabilitation (including embryonic gentrification) as the most promising means of reversing urban decline. Instead, they launched the Urban Redevelopment program, an initiative that would ultimately engender widespread controversy and resistance among Americans. There is evidence, although limited, that a somewhat halting spate of housing renovations occurred during the interwar years in Philadelphia’s core area, known as Center City (Burke et al. 1985). Initially located in the vicinity of historic Rittenhouse Square, it nevertheless failed to accelerate and spread during the interwar years. “Prestige rehabilitation,” as one study termed it, was found on a few small streets (Nash and Colean 1959, 25). For example, in the 1920s, alley-like Panama Street, between 19th and 20th streets, was lined with small two- and three-story brick homes inhabited mostly by impoverished African American families (Rapkin and Grigsby 1960, 27). Once vacated, the properties were renovated by investors and sold to new owners. Similar renovations occurred on nearby Lantern Lane (Dolkart 2009, 183–186). These examples of embryonic gentrification, although not sponsored by a public authority, are remindful of Georgetown’s alley dwelling conversions. Purchasers were white households, mostly childless couples, including wealthy Main Line suburban families. Some were seeking a pied-à-terre to occupy while visiting the city to shop and socialize, or to attend the opera or a concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Typically, builders refinished or replaced interior surfaces and windows and doors. New plumbing, heating equipment, and wiring were added. Cellars were excavated to make complete basements, and concrete floors were poured. New kitchen and bathroom fixtures were installed. Period details such as brass doorknockers and carved fireplace mantles were restored. On several homes a rear addition was added to house a new kitchen or living room extension. One developer installed window boxes and a patio with French doors (Nash and Colean 1959, 28–29). Despite these small-scale projects, housing renovation in the Rittenhouse vicinity during the interwar years was overshadowed by the construction of new apartment and office towers and the conversion of townhouses

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and mansions to apartments and rooming houses (Heinzen 2009, 96–98, 102–103, 115). The defining characteristic of embryonic gentrification—the do-it-yourself rehabilitation of older housing, mostly by owner-occupants— does not seem to have pertained to an appreciable degree in this instance. Rather, commercial contractors carried out most of the work in turnkey fashion, selling the completed properties to individual buyers. Even after World War II, embryonic gentrification puttered along in Center City (Rapkin and Grigsby 1960, 27–28). West of Rittenhouse Square was Fitler Square Park, once characterized as a “mudhole inhabited by drunks and empty bottles” (Lowe 1967, 338). By 1946, city hall had restored the park, and several nearby houses were privately rehabilitated. The neighborhood gradually transitioned from poor and working-class status to ­middle-class stability (Nash and Colean 1959, 29–30). Similarly, farther to the east of Rittenhouse Square, housing along a few residential streets near Washington Square was undergoing rehabilitation (Jacobs 1961, 92; Rapkin and Grigsby 1960, 28). When compared to Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill, embryonic gentrification in Philadelphia appears to have been less concentrated and more episodic. This is surprising considering that the city’s architectural and historic attributes were easily the equal of (if not superior to) those in Washington, New York, or Boston. As Part II shows, it would take substantial public intervention in Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood to overcome the reluctance of private sector actors to launch a transformation comparable to that occurring in the three case study neighborhoods. And when it did, it was propelled by a combination of public agency and private enterprise, rather than by the largely private market dynamics found in Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill (Klemek 2011; N. Smith 1996). If embryonic gentrification in Philadelphia was at first somewhat timid, such was not the case in Charleston and New Orleans (Freehling 2000). Both cities show evidence of early embryonic gentrification in trajectories seemingly comparable to those of Washington, New York, and Boston. Moreover, they demonstrate that the nation’s earliest embryonic gentrification was limited not to a few East Coast cities but, rather, to a small number of its oldest cities. In spite of its one-time successful maritime economy, Charleston had slipped into perilous decline by the early twentieth century (E. Hart 2010; M. Moore 1997, 10–33, 35–53). A 1934 report on America’s cities indicated that the South Carolina city had “the worst housing facilities of any city studied, with both African-Americans and lower-class whites living in substandard facilities” (Bland 1994, 165n26). Charleston’s incidence of dwellings lacking running water, indoor plumbing, bathtubs or showers, and gas

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or electric lights ranged from two to seven times higher than averages for the study’s sample of sixty-four U.S. cities (Abrams 1946, 21). These problems were particularly common in the historic Battery neighborhood and in the vicinity of nearby Broad Street, both of which lay at the city’s southern tip and were among the oldest areas of Charleston. However, during World War I, The Dwelling Houses of Charleston (Smith and Smith 1917) was published, bringing fresh attention to the city’s rich legacy of pre–Civil War homes, especially those near the Battery and Broad Street (Hosmer 1981, 234). Moreover, an enterprising real estate businesswoman, Susan Pringle Frost, began restoring older housing, retaining period details and selling or renting homes to people who appreciated their history and architecture. Among these buyers were a number of wealthy and influential northerners from cities such as Boston and Philadelphia (273–275). In 1920, Frost and her followers organized the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwelling Houses (235–237). By 1931, they had persuaded city hall to establish the nation’s first true historic district (240–242; Yuhl 2005, 41–44). The district, incorporated as part of the city’s new zoning ordinance (Weinberg 1979, 39), placed controls on nearly all properties in the southeastern sector of Charleston, including the Battery neighborhood. An architectural review commission was established to evaluate applications for exterior changes; those inconsistent with the architectural character of the neighborhood were banned (Yuhl 2005, 41–44). Just as the number of minority and working-class families had declined in Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill, they did as well in Charleston. Frost and her followers campaigned to see that the Old and Historic District was “zoned as a white neighborhood” (Silver 1991, 74). Although violating a 1917 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the city’s general plan provided for “legal separation of black and white neighborhoods” (74). The displacement of incumbent families, especially blacks, was a reality persisting for decades as gentrification spread north of Broad Street to other sections of Charleston (Bland 1994, 178; Tournier 1980, 175–176). One author summarizes Charleston’s transformation thus: White elites selected, reshaped and packaged a historical memory for Charleston that was simultaneously a force of domination, a way to impose their hegemony on the local scene, and a force of resistance, a way to critique the contemporary course of American culture. (Yuhl 2005, 190) New Orleans, decidedly less genteel than Charleston, was distinctive among American cities for its mixed heritage of Spanish, French, English, and African American cultures (Asbury 1936, 432–452). By the beginning

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of the twentieth century its most historic section, the Vieux Carre or French Quarter, had become a haven for bordellos, streetwalkers, gambling, and saloons. By the 1920s, though, the neighborhood was also attracting artists, writers, and tourists who coveted its low rents and wealth of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings (Stanonis 2006, 146). Soon a small bohemian colony took root. At various times over the first half of the century, authors such as Sinclair Lewis, Tennessee Williams, Sherwood Anderson, Lillian Hellman, and William Faulkner lived in the French Quarter or were habitués (Dupont 2004, 889; Moses 2015, 6). As historian Nathan Weinberg points out, their presence contributed to “a receptivity to preservation” that expanded from the late 1930s onward (1979, 50). The Vieux Carre became a cultural bouillabaisse of Italians, African Americans, Greeks, Jews, and others. However, the city’s civic elite worried as prostitutes abounded, trash filled the streets and alleys, property was neglected, and the neighborhood was increasingly perceived as a slum. Yet an abundance of restaurants and taverns, especially along fabled Bourbon Street, plus ragtime, Dixieland jazz, and Cajun music venues, as well as the annual Mardi Gras, fed its expanding tourism economy (Stanonis 2006, 145–149). Bit by bit, people purchased Vieux Carre properties and renovated or restored them. The Vieux Carre Society and Le Petit Salon du Vieux Carre, both organized during the 1920s, were founded to protect the neighborhood’s historic architecture from demolition or unsympathetic renovation (Stanonis 2006, 151–154). Preservationists came into conflict with the growing tourism and commercialism wrought by French Quarter businessmen and sought to impose controls to prevent their destruction or insensitive alteration of building exteriors. Additionally, a racist undertone appeared among preservationists, who often opposed the activities of black business operators (Souther 2006, 38–72). Although city hall created a locally sanctioned Vieux Carre historic district, it lacked legal authority and proved ineffective (Hamer 1998, 7). In 1936, an alliance of preservation advocates under the leadership of Vieux Carre resident Elizabeth Werlein succeeded in persuading Louisiana to designate the neighborhood a historic district under state authority (Hosmer 1981, 294–295). Codified in the city’s new zoning law, the district was overseen by an architectural review commission that considered applications for exterior alterations to Vieux Carre buildings (Stanonis 2006, 156–169). Although embryonic gentrification of private properties in the historic district was advanced largely through market forces, a New Deal agency, the Works Progress Administration (WPA), funded the restoration of five landmark structures located around the Vieux Carre’s historic French Market (Eggler 2011, 1). Additionally, the WPA published a book extolling the

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neighborhood’s history and architecture, thereby further legitimizing the cause of historic preservation (Federal Writers’ Project 1938). By the late 1930s and early 1940s, middle- and upper-income buyers were aggressively snapping up and restoring properties in the Quarter. Not surprisingly, market values and property assessments rose as buyers competed for choice homes (P. Lewis 2003, 88–89). As their numbers rose, at least some gentry associated African Americans with crime, vagrancy, poor property maintenance, and lowered property values. These newcomers believed that the community should be composed largely, if not entirely, of white people (Stanonis 2006, 45–50, 141–153). At a time in the Deep South when Jim Crow laws and practices not infrequently resulted in the beating or lynching of African Americans, one can only imagine the risks taken by those with the courage to continue living in the Vieux Carre. As might be expected, their numbers dwindled in parallel with the growth of the white population. Thus, there are signs that an elite-driven model of embryonic gentrification existed in both Charleston and New Orleans. In Charleston, its primary momentum appears to have come from middle- and upper-income people, both local and seasonal residents. In New Orleans, although socioeconomic elites held sway, available evidence suggests that a small colony of writers, artists, and other intellectuals imparted an identity that was to some degree similar to those in Greenwich Village and on Beacon Hill. Both examples, Charleston and New Orleans, establish that the earliest signs of U.S. gentrification were not limited to the East Coast. Instead, the common thread, woven throughout all six of the cities previously discussed, was their sheer age. With the exception of Washington, the rest were settled in the seventeenth century, primarily by Europeans. (And Washington’s oldest section, Georgetown, was settled in the 1750s.) They were among the oldest continuously occupied cities in the New World and parts of their physical fabric—buildings, streets, infrastructure, and other tangible elements—were superannuated in comparison to cities in the continental interior and along the West Coast. Consequently, their very age explains why they were among the first to experience the economic and physical deterioration that would become widely known in the twentieth century as slums.

Embryonic Gentrification Metastasizes in Postwar Washington, New York, and Boston The transformations of Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill proceeded from gentrification’s origins in the teens to the decades of the twenties, thirties, and forties. The Great Depression and World War II

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dampened the pace of housing rehabilitation, but they do not appear to have halted it altogether. However, housing prices crept upward in all three neighborhoods as fears of slumhood diminished and buyer/renter confidence returned. Not surprisingly, some who sought to rent an apartment or purchase a house were simply priced out of these places. For others, properties possessing the attributes they desired—charm, historic character, spaciousness, for example—were in short supply; many of the units remaining on the market might be considered picked over. New homes were constructed in the interstices among existing older properties, but rising land prices and a shortage of land parcels zoned for residential use limited this option. Consequently, housing demand was redirected to other neighborhoods in Washington, New York, and Boston possessing some, if not all, of the characteristics found in Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill. Of the three cities, Washington appears to have experienced the largest ripple effect from its first gentrifying neighborhood. By the 1960s, the one section of Georgetown that remained largely unrenovated—its waterfront area—was the subject of intense debate and speculation, so much so, that the National Park Service conducted a study to assist in resolving issues regarding the area’s architectural heritage (Georgetown Architecture 1968). Yet even as those issues unfolded, embryonic gentrification had already migrated from Georgetown to the Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill neighborhoods in what might be termed a second generation of this trend (R. Lewis 1960). It had even hopscotched from the city, across the Potomac River, to Alexandria, Virginia (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 382; Weinberg 1979, 121). Foggy Bottom, just southeast of Georgetown, possessed few impressive historical associations, and its modest homes dated largely from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lacking much architectural distinction, the neighborhood also lacked social distinction. For the most part, its incumbent population was a mixture of government workers, aging manual laborers, and poor African Americans, some of whom worked as cooks, domestics, and warehousemen. A large gas works and a brewery, among other industrial facilities, lined its western edge. Crisscrossed by two diagonal avenues, the Bottom’s street grid pattern was sliced into wedges, bringing heavy through-traffic and confounding efforts to foster neighborhood cohesiveness. However, in the late 1940s the Department of State opened its new headquarters in Foggy Bottom, drawing attention to the neighborhood. Despite the Bottom’s mixed identity, two housing experts wrote in the late 1950s of the neighborhood’s tiny alley dwellings: “These same hovels were also to become one of the prime investment outlets for twentieth-century rehabilitators” (Nash and Colean 1959, 9–10).

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As noted earlier, even alley dwellings in Georgetown underwent renovation by middle-class buyers, thus emboldening investors in similar properties in the Bottom. For those of lesser affluence, an alley dwelling was a foot in the door of embryonic gentrification. The Bottom’s appeal was rooted in an admixture of relatively low prices, proximity to Georgetown and the National Mall, and a bit of speculative fever on the part of those hoping to profit from the next Georgetown. As interest rose in the 1950s and 1960s, some Bottom residents sought to have the district government designate the area as an Urban Renewal project site (Sherwood 1978, 30–37). This would allow home-seekers denied financing by private banks to apply for low-­ interest mortgage loans from the Federal Housing Administration. However, district officials resisted the designation, reputedly because commercial developers feared that the neighborhood would be perceived as a slum (Gillette 2006, 151–189). Meanwhile, far removed from Georgetown and Foggy Bottom was Capitol Hill, located to the east of downtown Washington. By 1948, wrote one observer, parts of the Hill had deteriorated to the status of a slum (Zeitz 1979, 35). At about this time, housing rehabilitation began to appear on a few blocks close to the Capitol grounds (Lewis 1960). House and garden tours were first held in 1958 under the auspices of the newly organized Capitol Hill Restoration Society (Logan 2013, 960). Despite notable reinvestment activity in both Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill, key differences between them contributed to illuminating the varying conditions under which embryonic gentrification progressed. First, Capitol Hill had a substantially greater supply of housing than Foggy Bottom, offering many more opportunities for home-seekers. Second, the Hill had a much larger stock of Victorian-era homes than existed in the Bottom. And because Victorian architecture was gaining in popularity in the post–World War II decades among a younger generation of homeseekers, the Hill possessed an appeal not as evident in the Bottom (Logan 2017, 38–39). Third, the Hill was anchored by a corpus of congressional buildings, plus the Library of Congress, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, on its western edge. These cultural institutions—open to the general public—presented a welcoming façade to neighborhood residents and bestowed greater prestige and stability on the Hill neighborhood. Contrastingly, the new State Department building, a huge government office complex, resembled a fortress and presented a more forbidding image to Bottom residents. Fourth, while the Bottom’s gentrification was generally understood to have resulted from nearby Georgetown’s spillover reinvestment activity, the Hill was quite remote from Georgetown. Related to this was the fact that both Georgetown and Foggy Bottom were located in the predominantly white Northwest quadrant of Washington, while Capitol Hill was divided by the

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Northeast and Southeast quadrants, both of which were more heavily pop­ ulated by African Americans. Thus, extant observers who believed that Georgetown was unique and that gentrification was unlikely to spread to other Washington neighborhoods were apprised of the wider geographic possibilities offered by a form of urban revitalization that was still in its early stages. For consumers desiring a period home but wary of Foggy Bottom and Capitol Hill, there was a third alternative. The nearby suburb of Alexandria, Virginia, like Georgetown, was originally a Potomac River port community settled in the eighteenth century. Alexandria’s historic core, Old Town, was full of neglected brick and frame two- and three-story townhouses, many built in the Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles. Beginning in the latter 1940s, Old Town witnessed much the same type of gentrification as Georgetown was experiencing (Weinberg 1979, 160). Buyers unable to find a pre-Victorian-period residence in Georgetown could seek a comparable home in Alexandria. Among the newcomers were military personnel working at the Department of Defense’s Pentagon complex, located just to the north of Alexandria. Similarly, the post–World War II era demonstrated that the appeal of embryonic gentrification in New York was not confined to Greenwich Village. Brooklyn Heights, a nineteenth-century enclave of brownstone townhouses overlooking the East River and the Manhattan skyline, offered easy access to the city’s employment and cultural centers via the Brooklyn Bridge (Lancaster 1961; Lockwood 1972). Signs of physical and economic decline had appeared there as early as the 1920s, and rents remained relatively affordable. Perhaps in an effort to buff up the neighborhood’s image, a local bank even published a monograph heralding the neighborhood’s once-­ prestigious historical identity (Brooklyn Savings Bank 1927). By the late 1940s, disenchanted authors and artists, among others, who could no longer afford Greenwich Village housing were moving to Brooklyn Heights (Osman 2011, 100, 121). Among the newcomers were writers such as W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Alfred Kazin, Norman Mailer, Carson McCullers, and Richard Wright (Hughes 2011; Sexton and Powers 1994, 142). Capote even published an article describing his impressions of Brooklyn Heights in its early stages of embryonic gentrification (1959). Although never equal to the Village as a center of bohemian culture, the Heights had drawn writers such as Hart Crane, John Dos Passos, Henry Miller, and Thomas Wolfe as early as the 1920s and 1930s (Hughes 2011). They were accompanied by a coterie of homosexuals and lesbians who contributed to the neighborhood’s nonconformist ideations (Osman 2011, 100–115). As in the Village, bohe­ mians in the Heights were seldom able to afford the purchase and reha­ bilitation of a tony dwelling; instead, the newcomers lent cachet and a

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cosmopolitan atmosphere that in turn attracted new residents of greater means to carry out the physical transformation. In Boston, embryonic gentrification on Beacon Hill mimicked trends in Washington and New York, inflating housing prices and rents. Desiring a more affordable city residence with similar characteristics, younger homeseekers discovered Bay Village in the late 1940s and 1950s (Goetze 1979; Weinberg 1979, 121). A tiny patch of nineteenth-century red brick homes, the neighborhood was located just a few blocks from Boston Common and the Public Garden (Teaford 1990, 249–250). Bay Village was reminiscent of Beacon Hill, with narrow streets that discouraged cut-through traffic. Many of the newcomers were gay men, and Bay Village soon developed a reputation as a meeting spot for homosexuals from across the Boston area (Pattison 1983). One study found that eighteen bars and other gathering places for LGBTQ people had existed in Bay Village between 1920 and 1960 (History Project 1998). Research during the Great Depression noted that most of the neighborhood was composed of blighted or slum housing (Walker 1938). Nevertheless, house by house, Bay Village underwent renovation over the postwar decades (Whitehill [1959] 1973, 223–224). By the late 1960s, it had become a trendy Boston sanctum of approximately 350 residents, and its real estate had tripled in value over the previous ten years. In addition, city hall had installed $400,000 worth of brick sidewalks, gas street lamps, and new sewers (Boston: A Closeup 1967, 33). Moreover (as I point out further on), Bay Village kindled a similar pattern in the adjacent and much larger South End neighborhood (Weinberg 1979, 121). In Washington, New York, and Boston, therefore, younger households appear to have led the spread of post–World War II embryonic gentrification. In nearly all cases, the gentrifying neighborhood lay only a short distance from the city’s central business district. And in all cases, housing rehabilitation, rather than new construction, was the predominant approach to revitalizing the neighborhood. For the most part, the renovation work was carried out by do-it-yourself homeowners, supplemented by the assistance of electricians, plumbers, and other skilled tradesmen. As investor confidence rose, more affluent gentry arrived, some of whom hired contractors to do all or most of the work. Many embryonic gentrifiers added one or more accessory rental units to their home to enhance their income and finance construction. When homes suitable for rehabilitation eventually became scarce in a given area, developers—now more confident that the neighborhood’s middle-class identity was secure—were encouraged to undertake infill new construction projects for sale or rent. Therefore, unlike the Urban Redevelopment paradigm’s policy of widespread demolition, clearance, and building anew, the embryonic gentrification paradigm concentrated on recycling existing structures, with limited new infill con­

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struction as a secondary and supplemental activity. In essence, Redevel­ opment replaced urban neighborhoods, whereas embryonic gentrification reused them. The critical point here is that the assumptions regarding the primacy of filter theory and the obsolescence thesis were proven inadequate, if not misleading, by embryonic gentrification. In spite of the fact that neighborhoods in three major cities demonstrated unequivocally that urban decline was reversible through means other than the complete eradication of neighborhood fabric and social structure, the U.S. Congress remained oblivious to (or willfully ignored) such empirical evidence, choosing instead to implement the Urban Redevelopment paradigm in 1949. Yet as we shall explore further on, lawmakers were later forced to relinquish their reliance on Urban Redevelopment/Renewal and instead adopt new policies incorporating building rehabilitation, including the embryonic gentrification paradigm. Embryonic gentrification represented a repudiation of the Urban ­Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm, but it also symbolized a rejection of what had become the orthodox rules of home buying among real estate professionals. Gentry housing choices differed from these rules along several dimensions (Gale 1979, 298): 1. Gentry were more accepting of the heterogeneous social character of the inner city than were middle-class households who chose suburban life. 2. Gentry preferred less dependency on the automobile than suburbanites for commuting to employment, shopping, entertainment, and cultural opportunities, while being more willing to travel by means such as walking, bicycling, or public transit. 3. Gentry were attracted to the more affordable housing choices frequently found in older urban neighborhoods than were available in the suburbs. 4. Many gentry preferred the traditional architecture and morphology of an older city setting to the more modern and spacious choices available in the suburbs. The relative strength of these preferences, of course, varied among gentry households. But beneath them was an emotional element less easily articulated. The power of sentiment portrayed by Walter Firey regarding Beacon Hill approximates the more intangible qualities motivating embryonic gentry to live in older city neighborhoods across the United States. Also worth noting were the housing preferences of gentry, which were not static or uniform. As time passed, a gentrifying area underwent suc­

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cessive changes. For example, later in-movers may have perceived the neighborhood with less enthusiasm for civic life than earlier gentry (Zeitz 1979). Similarly, later waves of gentry homebuyers may not have shared the social idealism of earlier gentry, for many of whom living in a mixed ethnic, racial, and/or class setting was tantamount to a statement of their moral and ethical character (Ley 1996; Slater 2003; Tissot 2015). Gentry who moved into a revitalizing neighborhood during the later stages of gentrification may have hesitated because of lower risk tolerance for threats such as crime, incivility, inconveniences, and real estate investment losses. Urban planning scholar Rolf Goetze, for example, referred to a tripartite distinction among gentry as the “risk oblivious,” “risk-and-gain conscious,” and “risk averse” (1979, 32, 100).

Markets and Public Agency Before turning to Part II, I should point out one other valuable insight from the case studies and briefer observations. I maintain that prior to the late 1970s, embryonic gentrification was driven largely by the market forces of demand and supply, encompassed in consumption theory, and by the pricing dynamics imposed by shifting rent gap patterns, embodied in production theory (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008; N. Smith 1987, 1996). Nevertheless, this premise should not be interpreted to mean that public authority played no role in advancing early gentrification. In all three case study neighborhoods, and in the more cursory insights gained from the Charleston and New Orleans examples, there was clear evidence that the early twentiethcentury city planning profession was intervening at least tentatively in the dynamics of private market processes. The innovation of municipal zoning, codified under the police power of local governments, provided authority to regulate land use on behalf of the health, safety, and welfare of the general public. In Georgetown and Greenwich Village and on Beacon Hill, each city’s new zoning ordinance aided gentry activists in safeguarding their community from construction of tall buildings whose scale and use were considered inconsistent with the prevailing character of the neighborhood’s built form. Zoning and planning also discouraged the establishment of precedent, whereby the construction of one undesirable building created legal grounds for permitting more such projects in the future. In Charleston and New Orleans during the 1930s, the zoning ordinance went even further by including protections for aged buildings and spaces through historic districting. Rather than merely preserving a selection of individual structures, this new power permitted local activists to impose comprehensive regulatory authority over development in an entire subarea of each city. Moreover, where zoning regulated land uses and matters such

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as the allowable height and setback of a structure, the first historic district ordinances permitted the protection of buildings and spaces based on assessments of their historic significance by architectural review commissions. Although it would take many more years, the historic district technique would later spread to Boston, New York, Washington, and several other cities, reinforcing the influence of preservationists and serving the interests of most gentry. In the case of Georgetown, the role of a public agency in supporting embryonic gentrification was further abetted by the questionable actions of Washington’s Alley Dwelling Authority. After condemning the tiny alley houses and evicting their poor African American renters, the authority sold some of the properties for occupancy by middle-income white people. Especially egregious was the justification of the evictions as necessary in order to demolish the houses based on their alleged vulnerability to fires, overcrowding, and lack of sanitary features such as indoor plumbing and toilets. Comparable public actions apparently have not been documented in either Greenwich Village or on Beacon Hill, although further research might be merited. As pointed out above, another example of public intervention associated with embryonic gentrification appeared in the Vieux Carre; the federal Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency, financed the restoration of five landmark buildings there in the vicinity of the historic French Market (Eggler 2011, 1). Notwithstanding these few examples of governmental influence in early embryonic gentrification, my research strongly suggests that the relatively unfettered market dynamics of demand, supply, and price exercised a far greater influence over the phenomenon than did public agency. In Part II, the shifting role of public intervention over gentrification during the second half of the twentieth century is examined. In particular, the acceleration of federal programs to reverse urban decline during the 1950s and 1960s, such as Urban Renewal, Public Housing, and Interstate Highways, offers a powerful contrast to the gentrification paradigm.

II

Urban Redevelopment/Renewal Contends with the Gentrification Paradigm, 1945–1980

5 Federal Policies to Reverse Urban Decline, 1949–1974

A

fter a cataclysmic World War II, Americans embraced peace and normalcy, a resurging economy, and the pursuit of long-deferred domestic priorities. One such concern was the nation’s urban centers. Largely neglected during the Great Depression and the war, American central cities, despite the appearance of a few embryonic gentrifying neighborhoods, were showing worrisome signs of neglect and deterioration (Beauregard 2003; Fogelson 2001). As one author wrote in the mid-1950s, the American city was “now in the throes of decline and disintegration” and some had “come to their dead-end” (Vigman 1955, 142). Yet perceptions varied, and more recently another author has insisted that the nation’s cities were not at a nadir but rather at their zenith in the 1950s (Johns 2003). Whatever the case, definite signs of economic and physical deterioration appeared between World Wars I and II, thanks in part to the Great Depression. Merchants, corporate executives, and real estate and banking leaders expressed growing alarm to city, state, and federal lawmakers over rising crime and expanding slums. So-called blighted neighborhoods—those destined to become slums without public intervention—were also vexing. Over the 1940s and 1950s, as growing numbers of minority households escaped poverty and racial bigotry in southern states, several million migrated to northern cities in a great diaspora. African Americans and other minorities often found better living circumstances than were available to them in their former communities. However, while Jim Crow laws were largely absent in the North, racial discrimination in hiring, in housing, in

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access to schools and open space, and in police behavior was still common. The tragic result was widespread interracial disharmony. White workingand middle-class residents were often at odds with black poor and workingclass families. In many cases, whites refused to occupy housing and neighborhoods in which minorities were living. And as minorities moved into their areas, whites often fled. The attitude that blacks and whites were better off living in separate spaces was widely accepted by both public officials and the white population at large (Rothstein 2017). Thus, any federal program to attract middle-income people to live in revitalized former slums and blighted areas would have to contend with the presumptions of racial separation. Many property owners were reluctant to undertake repairs or improvements, fearing that they might lose their investment should conditions continue to erode. Differences between landlords and tenants often went unresolved, partly as a result of cultural disparities based on race, ethnic, and class biases. The accelerating outmigration of stable middle-class white families from racially shifting city neighborhoods threatened to undermine property values and municipal tax revenues as homeownership decreased and rental tenancy grew. Rapid shifts in the racial and socioeconomic composition of neighborhood schools, parks, and playgrounds were followed by the appearance of for-sale signs on property after property (K. Jackson 1985). As suburbs grew, their middle-class families visited city downtowns less frequently. Instead, these consumers took their business to the nearby shopping centers and malls that were proliferating during the 1950s and 1960s. Downtown business owners were worried. Even white-collar employers were beginning to relocate their workers to suburban towers and office campuses. Increasingly, it seemed, only the poor and minorities, plus small bastions of middle- and upper-class families, were willing to reside and shop in the old central cities. Urban businesses were suffering from diminished consumer demand, and many city halls were contending with a drastically shrinking revenue base (M. McFarland 1962). State and local leaders besieged official Washington with pleas for action. Cities called for a comprehensive strategy to reverse the physical and economic decay in their midst. Over the late 1930s and 1940s, municipal, state, and federal interests had debated how to arrest the spread of slums and blighted areas, particularly in the country’s larger cities. New Deal agencies such as the Public Works Administration, the Works Progress Administration, the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Resettlement Administration created jobs for the unemployed and built public infrastructure such as post offices, schools, city halls, parks, libraries, and dams (Kleinberg 1995, 99–103). The Public Works

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Administration, for example, funded construction of 22,000 housing units in thirty-six cities during the 1930s (Congressional Research Service 1973, 231). The New Deal established a precedent that economic development, job creation, and social welfare were legitimate federal government objectives in the otherwise sacrosanct workings of the capitalist economy. Indeed, federal intervention was considered an antidote to the failures of private markets to serve consumers at all income levels. Still, many New Deal opponents viewed such programs as unwarranted meddling in the dynamics of free markets. World War II military production and rationing would interrupt these efforts to reverse urban decline until the late 1940s and 1950s. But the benchmarks established by New Deal policies would later reinforce congressional support for post–World War II programs designed to eliminate slums and spur urban revitalization. Of special note was the U.S. Housing Act of 1937 (Public Law 75-412). It created the Public Housing program, which provided fiscal assistance to local authorities to clear urban slums and build and operate publicly owned housing for poor families. At the end of this program’s first operational year, about fifty such projects were under way in thirty-five cities. In the same year, the program was formalized and expanded with the creation of the U.S. Housing Authority and a budget of $500 million. Over the next four years, in excess of six hundred housing projects were under construction or completed (Boyer 1983, 234–241, 258). The Public Housing program provided a method for eradicating slums and blight, but also offered a prototype for an even more elaborate public initiative that would appear in 1949. During the late 1940s, the federal government contended with growing concerns over urban decline in cities such as Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Philadelphia (Teaford 1990, 108–112). Even as officials pondered how to attack this problem, however, an alternative model of neighborhood revitalization had been progressing in Washington for more than thirty years. Embryonic gentrification in Georgetown had reached a point where there could be no doubt that the neighborhood’s putative drift toward slumhood had been reversed. Moreover, right outside the doors of Congress, as it were, much the same process was in its fledgling stages in the Capitol Hill neighborhood during the 1950s. The trend was spreading to Foggy Bottom and suburban Alexandria, Virginia, as well as to other neighborhoods in Boston and New York. Paradoxically, though, the path that would be chosen by the federal government to reverse urban decline was the antithesis of the housing rehabilitation process defining embryonic gentrification. Apparently, too few members of Congress believed that merely renovating homes and neighborhoods would bring about the transformation they sought. Some of their doubts may have originated from twin demonstration projects funded under New Deal auspices in the late 1930s. In Baltimore’s

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Waverly and Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhoods, both predominantly poor and minority enclaves, local authorities launched an experiment to see if a combination of housing rehabilitation, improved planning, and the organization of neighborhood advocacy groups would stabilize those communities without the necessity of wide-scale demolition and rebuilding. In both cases, though, these efforts were judged insufficient to counter the spreading of negative conditions referred to as blight (Light 2009, 94–97, 112; Teaford 1990, 32). Furthermore, the flagging progress of embryonic gentrification in cities such as Philadelphia, as discussed earlier, signaled to public officials that a trend of market-based rehabilitation would not be sufficient to stanch the forces of urban decline. It seemed that an even more penetrating and extensive intervention was needed to thwart trends such as disinvestment, property abandonment, middle-class outmigration to the suburbs, and stagnating property values and tax revenues (Scott 1969, 379). By 1949, despite more than thirty years of experience with embryonic gentrification in a handful of American cities, federal officials crafted an approach to revitalizing central cities that was wholly dependent on the complete demolition, clearance, and rebuilding of so-called slums and blighted areas. Influenced by the presumed logic of filter theory and its corollary, the obsolescence thesis, many members of Congress were persuaded that rehabilitating older housing and neighborhoods was futile as a strategy for reversing widespread urban decline (Boyer 1983, 234). To compete with the attractions of suburban living and to entice middle-income households to live in cities, a more dramatic, more transformative alternative would have to be created. Washington would have to empower local governments to design new, modern, living environments. Simply fixing up city housing stocks and infrastructure that were outdated and neglected was deemed a recipe for failure (Light 2009, 151–159).

The Federal Urban Redevelopment Program Although it would take several attempts, Congress finally responded to America’s cities with enactment of the Urban Redevelopment program in Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 (Public Law 81-171). The new legislation declared sweepingly that its goal was “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.” (Later the program would be renamed Urban Renewal.) Like the 1937 Public Housing program, Urban Redevelopment aimed at clearing slums and arresting the spread of so-called blight (Congressional Research Service 1973, 232–234). But where the Public Housing program limited local officials to replacing slums with subsidized, publicly owned rental housing for low-income households (von Hoffman 2000), the new legislation permitted the building of entire new

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neighborhoods, including market-rate and subsidized housing, as well as shops and offices. It provided federal funding for eligible communities to prepare master plans, acquire slum properties, evict occupants, demolish obsolete buildings, and install public infrastructure (Kleinberg 1995, 131– 148). State and local governments were required to contribute revenues, albeit in much smaller amounts than those supplied by Washington. Localities could sell or lease land parcels at write-down prices, meaning prices well below the expenditures necessary to acquire and clear them (Handbook of Information 1949). The financial backbone of Redevelopment, however, was the necessity to attract substantial private investment. Once local authorities acquired and cleared slum properties, capital from banks, insurance companies, hospitals, universities, and development companies, for example, was necessary to build new neighborhoods. Funding from other federal programs could be used to build, for example, new post offices, roads, sewer and water systems, and public buildings such as Public Housing; but construction of market-rate private housing, retail shops, and institutional structures such as religious facilities—the warp and woof of neighborhood life—was limited largely to private funding sources. This stipulation would prove to be an Achilles’ heel for Urban Redevelopment. Congress authorized $1 billion (about $9.5 billion in 2019) for Redevelopment over the program’s first five years. Notably, funding for the relocation of displaced households was paltry and evictions often left them unassisted. If owners refused to sell their property, state and local powers of condemnation under eminent domain law could be invoked, allowing authorities to gain necessary titles. Developers of cleared sites—be they public agencies or private for-profit entities—were required to build in conformance with site plans formally adopted by local governments. Redevelopment carried far greater powers than those associated with earlier New Deal programs seeking to create jobs and construct public buildings. And yet the new program groaned under the weight of multiple, and sometimes conflicting, objectives. Federal authorities intended for it to rid cities of slums and blighted areas, unsafe building conditions, outdated street patterns and infrastructure, and public health threats such as house fires, lack of indoor plumbing, and structural failures. But it also had aims addressed at middleclass concerns such as removing slums located near commercial districts and replacing them with market-rate apartments, office buildings, and public facilities such as sports stadiums or civic centers. Furthermore, Redevelopment was intended to elevate municipal property values and raise public revenues. Finally, the program was designed to offset middle-class outmigration and prevent cities from becoming overwhelmingly populated by poor and minority families (Greer 1965).

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The terminology of Redevelopment was laced with references portraying cities as living organisms requiring medical treatment. This organic metaphor was infused throughout the urban decline narrative. For example, the prominent architect and planner Eliel Saarinen wrote that planners “must amputate slums by a decisive surgery” and “transfuse vitality only into those areas that are protected against contagion” (1943, 144). Blight was referred to as a cancer. In time, Urban Redevelopment would become saddled with such ideas, which vastly oversimplified the complex social, cultural, and economic realities of race, poverty and disinvestment. By comparison to living organisms, the organic metaphor served to reify Redevelopment, imbuing it with the inarguable properties of naturalness and biological inevitability. Perceived in this light, it is not difficult to grasp why an alternative approach to reversing decline—the reuse of existing structures and spaces and the preservation of historic neighborhood scale and character—was not selected by Congress. The house-by-house private rehabilitation process associated with embryonic gentrification did not project the bold commandand-control dynamism of Urban Redevelopment, a program that set out to vanquish the enemy—ostensibly, slums and blight (but unofficially, poor and working-class people, and minorities as well). And Redevelopment proposed to do so by sweeping them away, creating a tabula rasa, and rebuilding (and repopulating) neighborhoods from scratch. Metaphorically, at least, a rehabilitation strategy such as embryonic gentrification would only appear to capture the enemy and attempt to reform it, as it were, resulting at best in a temporary tidying up of the slums. As mentioned earlier, federal officials could not have been unaware of the failed New Deal experiment to rehabilitate Chicago’s Woodlawn and Baltimore’s Waverly neighborhoods or the faltering progress of embryonic gentrification in Philadelphia. If so, they would likely have found the housing rehabilitation option lacking in the promise of transformative and decisive change. It was probably no accident then that Redevelopment reflected almost perfectly the philosophy of one of America’s pioneer city planners, Daniel Burnham. It was Burnham who, decades earlier, had advocated long-range, comprehensive planning and rebuilding, rather than short-range, timid incrementalism. He urged city officials and leaders to forgo small-scale, patchwork planning, or “projectitis,” as such approaches would later be mockingly characterized (Scott 1969, 102–109). Instead, Burnham’s idealism found expression in the Redevelopment paradigm. Unprecedented in its scope and methods, Redevelopment signaled an all-out war on urban decline hauntingly remindful of the recently completed defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan by Allied forces. Ironically, though, as Redevelopment progressed, the cleared, denuded project areas left in its wake would soon

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resemble nothing so much as the eerie landscapes of rubble found in European and Japanese cities at the war’s end. With time, the federal government would revisit the strategy of rehabilitation as an alternative to clearance and rebuilding. But by and large, during the decade of the 1950s, the Urban Redevelopment order held sway. As we examine the program’s evolution, it is important to recall that actions undertaken on behalf of other federal programs were not infrequently confused with those associated with Urban Redevelopment. In particular, the Public Housing and Interstate Highway programs—the latter enacted as the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 (Public Law 84-627)—both employed public funds to acquire and clear property under state-granted eminent domain powers (Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 356–357; T. Lewis 1997). Local Public Housing authorities constructed publicly owned housing for the poor, and state transportation agencies built highways linking cities to their surrounding suburbs and to other cities. In some cases, all three programs provided authorization and funding for rebuilding work in city neighborhoods. Thus, disentangling programmatic responsibilities and lines of authority could prove challenging. Local municipal officials often complained that they needed greater flexibility from Washington to mix and match funding for complicated projects that involved these and other federal programs. But federal interagency cooperation was difficult to choreograph, generating enormous amounts of red tape and confusing reporting requirements. As we move forward in our study of gentrification, readers should keep in mind that blame for the depredations and missteps of Interstate Highway or local Public Housing agencies were sometimes erroneously misdirected at Urban Redevelopment/Renewal authorities (and vice versa). Poor interagency cooperation at the federal, state, and local levels only served to obfuscate lines of responsibility for problematic actions taken on behalf of all three of these federally authorized programs. Tragically, local citizens affected negatively by them, as well as local officials, were often left bewildered when trying to pin down responsibilities among the agencies.

Modernism and Urban Redevelopment To this point in Part II we have traced the workings of the federal Urban Redevelopment program. But we have not addressed the rationale behind official thinking regarding what type of new neighborhoods should replace those swept away by demolition and clearance. The embryonic gentrification paradigm, centered on housing rehabilitation, proposed a strategy of  retaining and reusing most of the existing built form. Yet this path was  rejected by many public officials and private sector actors. When

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Redevelopment was enacted in 1949, the American modernist movement in architecture and planning had been gaining momentum at least since the 1930s. As planners, architects, public officials, and real estate professionals considered how to design urban living environments that could compete with suburban residential choices, in most cases the modernist trope seized their imaginations (Zipp 2010, 370–371). Conveying an idealized model of urban form, it dispensed with the pediments, Doric columns, and Palladian windows of Colonial Revivalism, as well as the gothic arches, elaborate cornices, and ornate corbels of the older Victorian era (Boyer 1983, 283–287). In their place modernism offered sleek uncluttered lines, towering slabs and shafts, and broad, sweeping vehicular corridors (Longstreth 1987, 46–50, 63–67). Typically, its buildings employed ornamentation sparingly (if at all). They were massed to great heights with striations of human habitat, and were composed of materials such as concrete, glass, or metal cladding. Moreover, the greater population and housing densities achievable through modernist architectural forms would require less land than comparable lower-density developments of a more human scale. Plus, the public image represented by towering, minimalist buildings would convey notions of a confident civic future rather than one of a decaying urban past (Osman 2008, 116–117). Similarly, modernist city planning principles, epitomized by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City and Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, prioritized construction of medium- and high-rise towers surrounded by large open spaces and easily accessible to broad high-speed highways (Alofsin 1999, 57; Scott 1969, 336). They were intended to offset the outflow of ­middle-class families seeking closer ties to nature in the suburbs and to increase vehicular access to urban downtowns. Such concepts, of course, contrasted radically with the largely unplanned patterns of development then characterizing city life. Historically, American communities had evolved in an incremental fashion, with little long-range planning and few attempts to rationalize spatial interrelationships among competing land uses. Neighborhoods and downtowns were composed of a hodgepodge of structures of varying masses and heights. Outdated street alignments posed danger to pedestrians and created traffic congestion for motorists. Conflicting land uses subjected residents to fumes, smoke, noise, hazardous substances, and traffic hazards. Modernist designs aimed to sweep away inherited morphological patterns, replacing them with vast superblocks (the size of several standard blocks with any internal streets limited to local traffic), high-rise towers, and generous parkland. Of particular concern to planners was the rising scarcity of buildable urban land and the need to achieve greater population and building densities to accommodate presumed future population growth.

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The contrasts between two competing visions of the ideal city—one traditionalist, the other futurist—became the focal point of high-profile contestations between the activist and author Jane Jacobs (1961) and the planner and builder Robert Moses (Flint 2009; Laurence 2016). In opposition to modernist city planning, Jacobs emphasized more human-centered ideas. She stressed the primacy of concepts such as the mixing of old and new architecture and diverse cultures, the subservience of city space to human circulation patterns, and the contributions to public safety of resident and bystander surveillance of local streets and spaces (Jacobs 1961). Although Jacobs was not a historic preservationist, many of her traditionalist notions of urban physiography converged with a growing public interest in such issues. She and her husband had renovated an old row house in an Irish working-class section of Greenwich Village. Consequently, at least one scholar has observed that she bore “the characteristics of an early gentrifier” (Larson 2013, 163). By the time Jacobs’s landmark book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), was published, modernist design and planning was becoming the new urban vernacular among architects and planners. And in the process, hundreds of mostly nineteenth- and early twentieth-century neighborhoods and downtowns were destroyed or drastically altered (Isenberg 2004, 143–152). Original neighborhood grid street patterns were eliminated, and the human scale of low-rise row or detached dwellings was expunged. In some cases, these elements were replaced by medium- and high-rise Public Housing projects located on superblock sites, or by private rental apartments, shopping centers and strip malls, government facilities, or hospital or university buildings (Dobbins 1963). Residential areas were split by highspeed, multilane concrete highways that were hazardous, if not impenetrable, to pedestrians. Although unhealthy conditions such as firetraps, structurally unsound buildings, unsanitary outdoor toilets and water wells, and dangerous street patterns were eliminated, these gains came at a price.

Rehabilitation versus Redevelopment in Washington and New York Washington and New York—both cities experiencing early embryonic gentrification—offer examples of the tensions between strategies of housing rehabilitation and redevelopment. Washington’s Southwest quadrant, designated an Urban Renewal project area, was the subject of research by social work scholar Daniel Thursz. Thursz found that in 1950 the neighborhood was home to 23,500 inhabitants and 5,600 dwelling units (1966, 1). Seventy percent of residents were African Americans and 90 percent were poor. In

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1952, 80 percent of the Southwest’s houses failed to meet local building code standards, although according to two historians, some properties could have been improved with relatively little expenditure (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 320, 323). Regardless, Thursz had deemed the Southwest a “run-down, dilapidated, sub-standard neighborhood” and “one of the worst housing areas in the United States” (1966, 1). More than 43 percent of families had outdoor toilets, and more than 70 percent had no central heating. Twentyone percent had no electrical service. The Southwest, Thursz observed, “was a rat-infested, refuse-covered, unsanitary slum” (1966, 2). The original local authority plan, prepared by city planner Elbert Peets, proposed renovating most buildings and adding a few new affordable housing complexes. It emphasized maintaining neighborhood character and minimizing the dislocation of incumbent households (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 320, 323). But fears arose among local officials that a rehabilitation strategy would fail to produce a community attractive enough to discourage the migration of middle-income families from Washington to its suburbs. And the federal Housing and Home Finance Agency (predecessor to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) announced its unwillingness to finance projects emphasizing rehabilitation, fearing that this strategy would prove impotent to the challenge of reversing urban decline. Daniel Thursz noted that the Southwest’s pre-redevelopment conditions “were such that the rehabilitation of existing structures was not feasible and the drastic measures of the bulldozer and the crane were needed” (1966, 95). Accordingly, planners Louis Justement and Clothiel Woodward Smith were hired to prepare a second Southwest plan. They recommended clearing most of the neighborhood and erecting modern townhouses and apartment buildings, a shopping center, open space, and a waterfront recreational area (Logan 2017, 26–28). Unlike the Peets plan, the Justement-Smith plan was a blend of contemporary urban and suburban features. Ultimately, the new plan was approved and 99 percent of Southwest buildings were demolished, 1,500 businesses were closed, and 23,000 people were routed from their homes. Eighty percent of relocated families in the Thursz study were nonwhite and 88 percent were low-income earners (1966, 2, 19–20). Just under 1,000 new Public Housing units were built in the Southwest, providing a toehold for the roughly one-fourth of relocatees who continued to live there. The remaining families were widely scattered, with most moving to the city’s Southeast and Northeast quadrants (Thursz 1966, 25). Between 1950 and 1970 the Southwest’s population shifted from 70 percent minority to 70 percent white (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 324; Gillette 2006). Daniel Thursz described the rebuilt Southwest as composed of “majestic apartment buildings,” and “modern and convenient facilities for Government officials and diplomats” (1966, 2). He added that a new shopping

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plaza, new churches, and a theatre “give the neighborhood a sophisticated atmosphere which is attractive to educated young people as well as to established professionals who have tired of suburban values” (2). Thus, Washington’s Southwest Urban Renewal plan was clearly rooted in the modernist aesthetic. Washington local officials were hardly unique in their doubts about the viability of a strategy of renovation over one involving clearance and rebuilding. Similarly, New York City’s planning czar, the redoubtable Robert Moses, found the western section of Greenwich Village blighted and sought to designate the area an Urban Renewal project site. Despite the fact that this area had already undergone some embryonic gentrification during the interwar years, Moses was convinced that higher-density development patterns were necessary to create sufficient space for New York’s growing population. But simple housing rehabilitation would retain historic lowerdensity residential patterns insufficient to accommodate such new growth. Village neighbors stressed the architectural integrity and the human scale of their community. Opposition from author and activist Jane Jacobs and her allies ultimately precluded the destruction of the West Village, and the plan was scuttled in 1961 (Flint 2009, 120; Laurence 2016, 281–289). A few years later, the renovation versus redevelopment issue surfaced again in an area to the north of the Village. As in the case of Washington’s Southwest Urban Redevelopment project, two plans were prepared for the neighborhood located west of Central Park between 59th and 125th Streets. One emphasized housing renovation and conservation and the other, clearance and reconstruction. Moses opposed the former plan even as neighbors argued vehemently on its behalf. The issue was finally resolved when the city settled on a third plan incorporating a mix of rehabilitation and redevelopment (Davies 1966, 116–123). Such examples illustrate the pitch and intensity of official presumptions undergirding policies to stem suburban outmigration and reverse urban decline. Despite the rehabilitation and restoration of Washington’s Georgetown area and New York’s Greenwich Village, the powerful grip of the Redevelopment paradigm held sway in those cities in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, in 1946, Southwest Washington planner Louis Justement had this to say about the applicability of the “rejuvenation” process in Georgetown and Alexandria to other Washington neighborhoods. Georgetown, far from becoming a blighted area, has shown a remarkable renaissance in the last two decades. This same rejuvenation cannot be applied generally to other portions of the city. Only a few blocks of Georgetown and Alexandria have this historic, sentimental, and aesthetic interest. (Justement 1946, 98)

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While Old Town Alexandria was in the earliest stages of renovation in 1946, Justement’s observations seemingly ignored about three decades of embryonic gentrification in Georgetown. By that time, the reinvestment process had far surpassed “a few blocks.” Thus misinformed, Justement and his co-planner recommended the nearly complete devastation and rebuilding of the Southwest neighborhood. Apparently, they found no “historic, sentimental, and aesthetic interest” there, even though it was one of the oldest sections of Washington. Doubtless, the planners’ recommendations were colored by the all-or-nothing tenor of Urban Redevelopment’s funding policies: if cities wanted federal authorization to carry out their plans, they had to agree to a clearance and rebuilding strategy, rather than a rehabilitation strategy. Thus, the original Southwest community was doomed. Ironically, as the liabilities associated with comprehensive redevelopment later become more apparent, a high-ranking federal housing official would cite Georgetown’s restoration as a classic example of what other city neighborhoods could accomplish if conditions were favorable (M. McFarland 1962).

Urban Redevelopment and a Litany of Problems In the mid-1950s, the federal Urban Redevelopment program was a half decade old. But its progress had not been marked by smooth sailing. The program’s chief accomplishment was the razing of many so-called slum neighborhoods (Kleinberg 1995, 134–136). Four issues in particular proved vexing: rising public antagonism toward the program and its methods and goals, complex federal requirements or red tape, a faulty economic structure, and perceptions of class and racial bias. Some neighborhood organizations fought Redevelopment with demonstrations, petitions, marches, and sit-ins. Victims of property condemnation filed lawsuits. Local elected officials tried to mollify constituents while chafing at the program’s procedural rigidities and intensive bureaucratic scrutiny. News media editorialized for or against federal and local urban policies (Wilson 1966). As if these issues were not enough, the vast majority of designated Redevelopment sites were populated predominantly by poor and working-class households, especially black families, giving rise to the phrase “Negro Removal” as the national civil rights movement was gaining headway. Developers and investors, too, were wary of delays caused by government bureaucracies, tenants who refused to move, or property owners who held out for excessive prices (Kleinberg 1995, 136–138). Property owners were often pitted against renters in Redevelopment project areas, the former group possibly benefiting by the public improvements and the latter fearing higher rents and evictions. Congress contended with the program’s high costs and indications that it would require ever-higher dollar outlays to

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achieve its complex objectives (Scott 1969, 498–499). Suburban officials and interest groups complained to members of Congress that central cities were receiving millions of dollars in federal aid to fight urban decline while surrounding metropolitan communities were contending with rapid urban growth, but with far less federal financing to address its impacts (Bradbury, Downs, and Small 1982). As mentioned earlier, a major difficulty with Redevelopment was the assumption that once slums were cleared, developers and investors would readily buy or lease land and build new housing, shops, and offices. Instead, many hesitated to do so, partly because of deteriorating buildings located near their own properties but outside official project boundaries. Banks and other potential investors were reluctant to lend developers their depositors’ savings in areas classified as slums or blighted areas. They also feared that crime, drugs, poverty, and the presence of racial and ethnic minorities would deter potential homebuyers, renters, and businesses from locating in project areas (Bellush and Hausknecht 1967). Consequently, Urban Redevelopment—and its successor, Urban Renewal—were widely associated with cleared parcels of raw land which lay vacant for many years. These weedbedecked sites, encompassed by chain-link fences, soon became dumping grounds for unwanted trash—or worse. Dislocated residents and merchants were left to wonder how public officials could justify replacing their homes and neighborhood with barren wastelands (Scott 1969, 496–497). Not long after President Dwight D. Eisenhower took office in 1953, the White House commissioned a study of Urban Redevelopment (von Hoffman 2000, 309–310). The President’s Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs found that the Redevelopment strategy was “just economically and physically impossible” (Olsen 2003, 44). The program’s complicated tasks—acquiring properties, evicting occupants, demolishing buildings, clearing rubble, enticing developers and investors to build new structures, and negotiating adversarial politics from city councilors—proceeded sluggishly and at costs far in excess of original expectations (Glaab and Brown 1983, 308; Scott 1969, 498–499). The committee, heavily peopled by representatives of the construction industry, made several recommendations for improving the program (Gelfand 1975, 172). Among them was a greater emphasis on renovating and reusing existing urban structures, rather than replacing them (sometimes termed the “rehab option”). This change would reduce the need for local authorities to acquire ownership of hundreds of private properties at great expense and with lengthy time commitments. Instead, property owners would be encouraged to remain in place and rehabilitate their property to comply with local building codes. Federal low-interest loans would supplement owners’ own financial

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resources. Among the stakeholders supporting the rehab option were the National Association of Homebuilders and the National Association of Real Estate Boards, the endorsements of which were critical to gaining support among some members of Congress (von Hoffman 2008, 287–288). The National Housing Conference, on the other hand, expressed doubts that rehabilitation through code enforcement programs would be sufficient to “reverse the blight process once it had started” (Gelfand 1975, 174).

Urban Renewal Supplants Urban Redevelopment Eisenhower embraced most of the committee’s recommendations and urged Congress to enact legislation adopting the changes (Gelfand 1975, 175; Olsen 2003, 45–46). Language permitting rehabilitation as an alternative to redevelopment was added to the bill, and it was signed into law in July 1954 (Title I of the Housing Act of 1954). Under the legislation, amendments to the Redevelopment program renamed it Urban Renewal (Keyes 1969, 3). The new label was then a benign phrase intended to connote a wider menu of neighborhood improvement options than the wholesale clearance and reconstruction denoted by the word redevelopment (Flanagan 1997). Reviving Our Cities (1953), written by economist Miles L. Colean, is credited with informing and inspiring Urban Renewal’s key provisions (von Hoffman 2008, 289). To be sure, Renewal permitted localities to continue demolishing slums. But it also authorized them to promote housing conservation, mainly by requiring localities to mount more stringent building code enforcement programs (Teaford 1990, 113–115). Five years of Redevelopment experience had demonstrated that many cities had weak building codes and failed to adequately enforce them through periodic building inspections and penalties (Barnhart 1953, 5; Listokin 1973, 49–56). These omissions, it was learned, aided and abetted the deterioration of neighborhoods. If localities wanted to continue receiving federal funding, the Urban Renewal program pressed them to update and systematically enforce their codes. This option, it was felt, would discourage property neglect, maintain property values, and render housing renovation a more viable option for renewing neighborhoods (Friedman 1968, 161– 162). Best of all, it was assumed, the rehab option would reduce public outlays to acquire properties for demolition. Existing owners could retain title to their properties, improve them to building code standards, and save local authorities the costs of acquisition, household eviction and relocation, demolition, clearance, and construction of replacement facilities. These provisions were among the first signs that official confidence in  filter theory and the obsolescence thesis was beginning to unravel. ­Washington seemed to be telling the cities that maybe, just maybe, compre-

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hensive clearance and redevelopment was not necessary in every case to reverse urban decline. In some cases, parts of some neighborhoods could be restored to a sound physical and economic status through careful renovations and improvements to existing structures. And maybe, just maybe, such structures could actually be viewed not through the lens of obsolescence but, rather, through a newly emerging appreciation of the historical attributes of architecture from a bygone era. Of course, not everyone agreed with this reasoning. Some people were convinced that rehabilitated older city homes could not match the consumer appeal of new suburban homes with modern features. Other observers warned that renovated city properties would soon begin deteriorating again through continued neglect and vandalism. Despite these concerns, however, general public and congressional dissatisfaction with Urban Redevelopment made clear the necessity of rethinking how Congress could promote city revitalization.

Urban Renewal’s Sluggish Beginnings Despite the 1954 amendments, Urban Renewal’s rehab option did not fall into place overnight (Olsen 2003, 46–47). Although program funding was increased after 1954, much of it financed rebuilding in downtowns rather than in residential neighborhoods (Flanagan 1997, 274–275). This emphasis was related to the Eisenhower administration’s favoritism toward Re­ publican-leaning central business district interests (Gelfand 1975). Urban Renewal policy specified that up to 10 percent of local Renewal projects could involve nonresidential structures (von Hoffman 2008, 294). By 1965 this policy had been raised to 35 percent (Kleinberg 1995, 138). Millions of dollars of federal subsidies that might have financed housing rehabilitation or public housing to replace demolished slum houses was thus diverted. Members of Congress had decided that commercial development would aid in jump-starting a city’s chief economic engine, the downtown or central business district, thereby yielding increased tax revenues, jobs, and income (Fogelson 2001). This multiplier effect, they reasoned, would ultimately redound to the benefit of all city residents, rather than just those living in a renewed residential neighborhood. Although Urban Renewal would continue to fund housing and neighborhood revitalization, such projects would be assigned a lower priority. Other issues materialized, as well. Many of the older Redevelopment projects were already in the pipeline when the Renewal amendments were enacted. Contracts had been signed, financing had been arranged, and deed transfers had occurred. In the event that major changes in these plans were implemented, costly and time-consuming lawsuits loomed. Thus, the

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Renewal legislation’s new rehabilitation options had little immediate effect, meaning that household evictions—especially among African Americans— and large-scale demolition would persist until these older Redevelopment projects were completed (von Hoffman 2008, 295). Adding to these matters was the underfunding of Renewal in the late 1950s (Gelfand 1975, 185). Consequently, the rehab option got off to an inauspicious start, while the public face of Urban Renewal remained one of bulldozers, evictions, and the destruction of familiar neighborhood buildings and streets (von Hoffman 2008, 295–296). By 1955 just 455 dwelling units nationally were being renovated under Urban Renewal (Welfeld et al. 1975, 238). Five years later, only eighty-seven municipalities had ongoing housing rehabilitation programs (Listokin 1973, 7–8; M. McFarland 1962, 26). There were several reasons for the plodding pace of rehabilitation activity (Listokin 1973, 10–31). Among them, potential investors worried that modest improvements to slum buildings would be insufficient to change the image of a poor neighborhood and attract middle-income families. Thus, they feared, housing and infrastructure would continue to deteriorate and their investments would be lost (Teaford 1990, 115). Also, a policy of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), an important source of financing for Urban Renewal, presumed that the “estimated remaining economic life” of a renovated older property would be much shorter than that of a newly constructed unit. FHA, therefore, was less enthusiastic about financing rehabilitation programs, viewing them as a short-sighted stopgap measure (M. McFarland 1962, 26). Adding to their concerns, local officials often found it difficult to manage rehabilitation efforts. When buildings were acquired for demolition under Redevelopment, property titles could be secured through eminent domain powers, giving local authorities substantial legal control. Under Renewal, the officials first tried to interest property owners in undertaking home renovation on their own. The enforcement of local building codes gave them some leverage and the offering of low-interest loans provided an incentive. But many owners were reluctant to rehab, not wanting to shoulder debts or doubtful that their return on investment would exceed their financial liabilities. Local authorities were then faced with the possibility of acquiring titles to properties, undertaking rehabilitation on their own, and then renting or selling the finished units. This was an expensive and timeconsuming alternative. Unsurprisingly, little Renewal progress was made in target neighborhoods over the latter 1950s (Slayton 1966). And securing property titles bore nearly the same cost burdens as those associated with the old Redevelopment strategy, thereby reducing the level of financial savings sought from rehabilitation. As a result, the rehab option proved most effective when

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middle-income people purchased and renovated a home of their own accord in a Renewal project area (i.e., embryonic gentrification). Needless to say, most local Renewal authorities welcomed this trend because it provided visual evidence that progress in reversing urban decline was being made. Still, while infusing desperately needed capital into poor and working-class neighborhoods, embryonic gentrification sometimes exacerbated social class and racial tensions. Although lenders were often reluctant to provide loans in slums or blighted areas, the fact that city halls were willing to bring official sanctions and public funding to such projects could loosen their purse strings. Additionally, some lenders sought to avoid negative publicity and curried an image of civic responsibility. Consequently, although some gentry households encountered financing difficulties, others qualified for private as well as public financing. It was this reality that aided expansion of Urban Renewal’s rehab option to include public subsidies furthering embryonic gentrification. Despite the growth of embryonic gentrification, stimulating housing rehab among working-class incumbent homeowners proved to be much more challenging. Owner-occupants often feared that improvements to their home would result in higher property assessments and inflated tax burdens. Some could not qualify for government or private financing because of poor credit records or low incomes. Landlords were hesitant to debt-finance apartment renovation, fearing that too few home-seekers would be willing to pay the higher rents necessary to amortize their outstanding loans. Plus, they feared, the stigma of living in a neighborhood officially labeled a slum by Renewal authorities would deter many potential tenants. For some residents, the housing rehab option of Renewal was irrelevant. Many of these people lived below the federal poverty level—including the homeless, mentally ill, and substance abusers. For them, the dynamics of private housing markets were unable to produce affordable, much less safe and sanitary, shelter. Their only hope was government-subsidized housing, most of which could be financed solely through the federal Public Housing program. Yet as more embryonic gentrifiers moved into Renewal neigh­ borhoods such as Boston’s South End and Philadelphia’s Society Hill, resistance to Public Housing construction rose (Tissot 2015; Mollenkopf 1983; N. Smith 1996). Over the 1960s, small numbers of housing units financed under other federal initiatives were built or renovated. But these were intended for ­moderate-income borrowers, rather than low-income families. Known as “below-market-interest-rate” (BMIR) programs, they included Section 221(d)3 and Section 235 and 236 housing (Malach 2018, 26; Congressional

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Research Service 1973, 220). Such housing, if carefully designed to be compatible with existing building scales and styles and built in relatively small numbers, might be acceptable to middle-class gentry. But federal financing for BMIR projects was limited, and relatively few units could be completed. Moreover, scandal would scar the Section 236 initiative in the 1970s, leaving it in tatters. The result was that, as rehabilitation progressed through Renewal project areas, precious little affordable housing appeared in most cities. And aspirations of achieving a truly mixed-income community often fell by the wayside (Tissot 2015; Vrabel 2014).

Urban Renewal Meets the Baby Boom Nevertheless, the paradigms posed by the earliest and most transformative embryonic gentrification neighborhoods—Georgetown, Greenwich Village, Beacon Hill, the Battery, and the French Quarter—provided inspiration to young middle-income home-seekers in the age of Renewal. Growing numbers of white-collar, college-educated singles and couples, products of the postwar baby boom, were reaching the household formation stage of life by the latter 1960s. Many, raised in the postwar metropolitan suburbs, were ready to live in city neighborhoods with people of varied racial, class, and ethnic identities. And with local and federal officials under political pressure to show progress in transforming so-called slums, public authorities were receptive to the newcomers. To city halls, the gentry’s financial capital and their willingness to exert sweat equity to revive older dwellings were valuable resources at a time when many incumbent owners were neglecting their properties. Moreover, the newcomers were helping in a modest yet symbolically important way to offset the flow of middle-class families moving to the suburbs. The gentry’s endorsement of inner-city living, especially in the sections often mislabeled as slums, was an affirmation of value to public and private actors hoping to enhance and elevate a city’s image. And as gentry colonies organized politically, their votes were often sought by local elected officials eager to curry favor with new constituencies. Clearly, in the 1960s and thereafter, the rehab option was proving appealing to increasing numbers of younger, mostly affluent, consumers (Teaford 1990, 8). And as it did so, embryonic gentrification—heretofore a largely private market process—was crossbred with the publicly directed and financed program of Urban Renewal. Although the original Redevelopment paradigm was at or near collapse, now official Washington was promoting an alternative approach, one composed of a mixture of bottom-up free market dynamics and top-down public policies. The conservation and reuse of neighborhood buildings was an escalating trend nationally, although new construction in the form of infill projects—typically smaller in scale than

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those sanctioned by Redevelopment—appeared in scattered locations. The new paradigm under Renewal proved considerably less draconian in its effects on the lives of incumbent poor and working-class residents than had the Redevelopment paradigm. But even as embryonic gentrification crept forward, with time, its impacts would still produce urban neighborhoods more favorable to middle-class interests than to people of lesser circumstances. Anticipating the spread of embryonic gentrification, one prescient author offered several examples, including Beacon Hill, in which “constant physical regeneration” was occurring at the hands of residents “tinged with snobbishness” who fought the conversion of old mansions (Cunningham 1965, 56). Shortly after taking office, John F. Kennedy, who had barely edged out Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election, rewarded his urban supporters with increased funding for Public Housing (Gelfand 1975, 320). Some of these units could be used as replacement housing for families relocated from their homes by Renewal projects. Meanwhile, Renewal’s rehabilitation alternative was beginning to draw more interest (Listokin 1973, 7–9, 16–18). Contrary to earlier assumptions, developers and local officials found that rehabilitated housing units generally involved less financial risk than newly built ones (10–13, 20). One catalyst to increasing rehab activities was to strengthen local building codes, the enforcement of which, it was expected, would incentivize owners to upgrade their properties. In 1964, new federal policies permitted expenditure of Urban Renewal funds for such purposes. Soon thereafter, Congress increased funding for code enforcement and housing renovation (von Hoffman 2000, 321; 2008, 296). As city administrations pressed property owners to repair violations threatening public safety, investor confidence rose. This, in turn, reinforced the goals of housing rehabilitation and preservation. Furthermore, government policy now forbade federally financed demolition unless a federal administrator determined that local objectives could not be achieved through structural rehabilitation. Measures such as these were chipping away at the assumptions such as filter theory and the obsolescence thesis underlying the original Redevelopment rationale. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, housing rehabilitation efforts were firmly taking root (Kleinberg 1995, 137–138; Teaford 1990, 8). From 1954 to 1968, about 30,000 dwelling units had been rehabilitated through the Renewal program. By 1972, this figure had risen to 73,000 units (Listokin 1973, 20). Seeking to advance Renewal’s housing renovation strategy, federal officials even launched a few experimental projects to develop new techniques. For example, efforts were made in Boston to rehabilitate housing in the pre­ dominantly black Roxbury neighborhood without permanently displacing

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residents (Keyes 1970). Affected families were moved to nearby temporary housing while their buildings were rehabilitated, and then returned home when the work was completed (Conference on Rehabilitation 1968; Keyes 1969). A demonstration project on East Fifth Street in New York sought to accelerate renovation while reducing its costs. Prefabricated bathroom and kitchen modules were lowered by cranes through openings in the roofs and floors of aged buildings and plugged into apartment units (Conference on Rehabilitation 1968, 8–9). Over the midcentury decades, exemplars of market-driven housing renovation such as Georgetown, Greenwich Village, Beacon Hill, the Battery, and the French Quarter had demonstrated the viability and appeal of inner-city living for middle-class people. Indeed, after World War II a second generation of revitalizing neighborhoods, including Foggy Bottom, Capitol Hill, Brooklyn Heights, and Bay Village, was evolving, even as federal support for housing rehabilitation was unfolding. And as it did so, the overarching image of an American urban crisis began to erode as small numbers of mostly young, middle-class people expressed a preference for the cosmopolitan attributes of a city address (Malach 2018, 26; Teaford 1990, 255). At one time, federal policy aimed to eliminate urban decline by replacing older structures, spaces, and infrastructures with new ones; by the 1960s, however, it was emphasizing the reuse of most such resources and the maintenance of the neighborhood’s historic scale. Once, federal officials aimed to replace poor and working-class incumbent populations, especially racial and ethnic minorities, with middle-class newcomers; but these goals were downgraded in the 1960s as authorities increasingly sought to achieve a mixed population composed of incumbents and newcomers. Still, a rehabilitation strategy did not completely foreclose the need for new construction. Some structures had deteriorated as a result of fires, water damage, or neglect to the point that their renovation and reuse was infeasible. In other cases, schools, playgrounds, and subsidized and market-rate apartments were needed to provide space and services for residents and businesses. For the most part, however, the Renewal program was shifting its emphasis from the meat ax of Redevelopment to the scalpel of renovation and reuse.

A National Historic Preservation Movement If reversing urban decline through a combination of new construction and renovation, rather than new construction alone, was slowly making headway in the nation, it was not doing so in isolation from other events. In particular, many Americans were developing an appreciation for the nation’s history and, in particular, for its architectural legacy. A growing historic

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preservation consciousness was converging with the Urban Renewal housing rehabilitation option and would gradually set in motion an enlarged embryonic gentrification movement partially driven by public subsidies (Logan 2017). Throughout the late nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, historic preservation was an activity characterized by scattered, often disparate, congeries of mostly middle- and upper-income enthusiasts. Many were notable citizens with political and economic influence. The residences of prominent people, mostly men, were sometimes singled out for protection and restoration. Organizations such as the Daughters of the American Revolution and various genealogical societies were particularly active. As the mid-twentieth century approached, however, there were growing signs that a nationwide coalition of individuals and organizations was developing a concerted effort to preserve and protect worthy elements of America’s architectural patrimony (Hosmer 1965). In 1949—ironically, the same year in which the Urban Redevelopment program was enacted—the National Trust for Historic Preservation became a congressionally chartered organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. (Hosmer 1981, 809–865). Although not a government agency, the nonprofit trust received priority for periodic federal funding to advocate for the protection and preservation of America’s historic resources. (Other funding would come from membership dues, publications, preservation events, and individual, corporate, and foundation donors). The trust conducted research, held meetings and conferences, published studies and reports, and offered technical assistance to private and public preservation entities nationally (Birch and Roby 1984). Because many of its members were social elites, the organization brought attention to Urban Renewal not simply from poor and working-class people and their advocates but from the loftier echelons of American society. Most importantly, the trust, modeled on the British National Trust, became the nucleus of a national preservation movement in the United States (Frank 2002). Its membership rose from 640 people in 1952 to 42,000 by the end of the 1970s (Birch and Roby 1984, 199). Prior to this, most American preservationists confined their activities to local issues. But by the mid-1950s, with the existence of historic districts in Charleston, New Orleans, Alexandria, Boston, Washington, and a few other cities, citizens and public officials were actively questioning the premises on which Urban Redevelopment was based. If declining city neigh­ borhoods could be revitalized without extensive clearance, was federal policy misdirected? And were the conceptual underpinnings of Urban ­Redevelopment—filter theory, as well as the obsolescence thesis—no longer credible? Put another way, could formerly declining urban sectors filter upward (Schill and Nathan 1983, 13, 141)? Urban Redevelopment had already

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destroyed numerous structures, some of which were considered by preservationists to be of local, statewide, or national significance, and there was a growing sense of urgency within the fledgling preservation movement. Preservationists, therefore, were adding their voices to those of others who opposed the Redevelopment paradigm for its social impacts or economic inefficiencies (Mayne 1993, 165). Unlike the frequently unorganized city poor, however, preservationists’ concerns could not so easily be ignored. Although the National Trust became another Urban Redevelopment/ Renewal watchdog, its goals were not entirely congruent with those of other interest groups. Where rehabilitation advocates aimed to modernize housing to provide affordable, safe shelter, preservationists generally pursued a somewhat more abstract goal. Not content with mere rehabilitation, they supported the exterior restoration of appropriate properties to their original or near-original appearance. Rehabilitation efforts that were insensitive to this concern for architectural integrity were often rejected. Improvements such as metal window awnings, aluminum storm doors, chain-link fences, street-facing window air conditioners, and siding made of aluminum, vinyl, or Formstone (a stucco coating simulating stonework), for example, were considered eyesores by most preservationists (Lawrence-Zuniga 2016, 85– 87). But for working-class families, these relatively inexpensive improvements were both affordable and practical (Krase and DeSena 2016, 95). Thus, while most preservationists and poor and working-class residents shared a dislike for wholesale neighborhood clearance, they differed somewhat in the outcomes they desired for recycling existing structures. Underlying preservationists’ dislike of clearance and redevelopment in residential neighborhoods, of course, were the subtler issues of obtrusive modernism in architecture and design (Tissot 2015, 256). It was not so much that preservationists were uniformly opposed to contemporary architectural norms; rather, they objected to Redevelopment’s posture of treating modernism as the only acceptable response to reversing urban decline. From their perspective, the American urban landscape should be a living chronicle of local history, including its built form, as well as its social and cultural legacies. With regard to specially designated historic districts, however, preservationists were generally less supportive of new contemporary architecture, although new buildings designed to be compatible with traditional forms were likely to face less resistance. While the rehabilitation options of the 1954 Urban Renewal law were generally considered an improvement by preservationists, the National Trust lobbied Congress to expand the revised program still further. It sought tools and funding to assist people seeking to restore inner-city structures. In 1963, federal agencies produced a pamphlet documenting the restoration of historic architecture within Urban Renewal project areas

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(Historic Preservation through Urban Renewal 1963). Over the 1960s, the trust and its affiliates persuaded Congress to include additional financing for building acquisition, preservation, restoration, architectural studies, measured drawings, and neighborhood historic plan preparation (Benson and Klein 2008, 30–50). Plus, even with a new name, Urban Renewal could not fully escape the dark shadow of its forerunner, Urban Redevelopment. By the late 1960s, preservationists, as well as Renewal officials, began to employ phrases such as “neighborhood preservation” and “neighborhood conservation” in reference to activities funded under the program (Neighborhood Conservation and Rehabilitation 1970). Unfortunately, years earlier these seemingly benign labels, implying the preservation or conservation of a neighborhood’s physical fabric, had become euphemisms for efforts in cities such as Baltimore and Chicago to “conserve” a neighborhood’s white population while stabilizing or reducing its minority residency (Millspaugh and Breckenfeld 1960, 67–76, 90–117). The alleged purpose was to maintain a racially mixed neighborhood. Sometimes, however, this goal was pursued through efforts to prevent the neighborhood’s racial composition from “tipping,” or becoming largely or entirely black—and therefore, racially segregated. Thus, some minority residents were distrustful of neighborhood conservation initiatives. While the neighborhood “conservation” and “preservation” rubrics remained popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the enactment of the federal Fair Housing law in 1968 discouraged at least some of the racially discriminatory aspects of these expressions.

Historic Preservation Achieves New Stature A critical turning point occurred when the National Trust and the then powerful U.S. Conference of Mayors jointly published With Heritage So Rich (1966). Filled with examples of urban restoration projects, the report included articles by prominent people stressing the benefits of saving, rather than destroying, the nation’s older neighborhoods. This booklet made clear that many city halls, as well as preservationists, were now behind the protection of assets once destroyed in the name of Redevelopment or Renewal. Although the British term “gentrification” had not yet entered the American lexicon, the expanding rehabilitation and preservation movements of the 1960s augmented the growing popularity of urban living for new generations of Americans. Neighborhoods such as Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill would stand as premier examples of how formerly declining areas could be renovated and restored to offer an alternative to suburban living (albeit mostly for middle- and upper-income people).

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Adding momentum to the cause of historic preservation was a monumental donnybrook erupting in New York City in the mid-1960s. The planned demolition of the landmark Pennsylvania Station, a Classical Revival rail terminal of colossal proportions, mobilized numerous prominent citizens, including former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. Opponents considered the project a rapacious drive to destroy architectural treasures in the name of progress. The resulting controversy catalyzed action on Capitol Hill, where legislators enacted the 1966 National Historic Preservation Act (Public Law 102-575). The cornerstone of a new historic preservation ethos, the law specifically named the trust as one beneficiary of programmatic funding (Hosmer 1981, 1067). It supported protection of both publicly and privately owned historic properties. Among other features, the law created the National Register of Historic Places, an official federal government listing of buildings, sites, structures, districts, and archeological resources deemed to be of national significance (Keune 1984, 69–87). Places so classified became eligible to receive federal financial assistance, so long as those monies were not used for inappropriate alteration or destruction (von Hoffman 2000, 322). Although some places listed on the National Register might still be threatened when federal funds were not involved, the prestige conferred by this distinction often proved effective in preventing such outcomes (Jakle and Wilson 1992, 241–245). In most cases, historic landmark properties must first be placed on an official local or state register to become eligible for nomination to the National Register. Experience has shown, however, that even the prestige of local or state designation may be sufficient to discourage harm to listed properties. Another provision of the 1966 Historic Preservation Act was the creation of the federal Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (T. Lewis 1997, 202). The council, under the aegis of the White House, was empowered to review highway and other federally funded projects that could threaten historic resources. The council could recommend support or denial of funding to the president and Congress. This body offered further evidence of the growing stature of the nationally organized preservation movement. Indeed, one historian has opined that the 1960s “saw the most significant legislative milestones for historic preservation in the twentieth century” (Logan 2017, 34). With enactment of the 1966 historic preservation law and the maturation of the National Trust, the national preservation community became less fragmented and increasingly vertically integrated. This more formal organizational structure enhanced the influence of preservationists nationally and led to additional federal resources. Now Urban Renewal funds could be used to pay for the preparation of architectural resource inventories and for hiring architects and architectural historians to ensure accurate  restoration plans. Nonetheless, projects such as these continued to

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­ rimarily benefit middle-class white people, with relatively few housing p ­opportunities for minority, poor, and working-class neighborhoods. By 1970, in reaction to criticism, the Urban Renewal program was offering lowinterest loans and small grants for refurbishing both residential and business premises in moderate-income areas (Neighborhood Conservation and Rehabilitation 1970). Meanwhile, federal support for urban rehabilitation and restoration continued throughout the 1960s and did much to encourage and popularize embryonic gentrification in a number of U.S. cities, including Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, Oregon (Abbott 1981). Two particularly notable examples, Boston’s South End and Philadelphia’s Society Hill, illustrate how federal policy and the rising popular interest in renovating inner-city housing were converging.

Urban Renewal and Embryonic Gentrification in the 1960s It is probably true that no large American city was more successful than Boston at transitioning from Redevelopment to Renewal. One critical reason for this was the national opprobrium directed at the city following the publication in 1962 of The Urban Villagers by Herbert Gans (1982). Sociologist Gans lived in Boston’s West End before the city’s Redevelopment program transformed it from a working-class ethnic community to a rebuilt enclave of apartment buildings and medical facilities. His research documented the negative impacts of Redevelopment on residents’ emotional health and the neighborhood’s social structure. By 1960 about 2,700 households had been relocated and 700 buildings had been demolished and cleared (Vrabel 2014, 13–16). Additionally, psychologist Marc Fried’s article, “Grieving for a Lost Home: Psychological Costs of Relocation” (1966), an examination of West End Redevelopment, contributed more fuel to the growing resistance movement against Renewal. These two studies helped mobilize members of Boston’s large community of academics and social activists to oppose the program. Consequently, when Renewal of the much larger South End area was undertaken, a new city administration decided on a strategy of retaining most of the neighborhood’s buildings and much of its racially and socioeconomically mixed population (South End Urban Renewal 1963). Leading the campaign was Edward J. Logue, Boston Redevelopment Authority administrator and already one of the nation’s most highly respected Urban Renewal leaders (Cohen 2019). According to historian Walter Muir Whitehill, among the community’s residents were substance abusers, homeless people, prostitutes, and pimps. Halfway houses, soup kitchens, and lodging houses were common, and extensive problems of disinvestment and poverty

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abounded (1973, 119–140). Although the South End population was composed mostly of non-Hispanic whites, African Americans and Hispanic people made up a significant minority (Keyes 1969). As long ago as 1938, author Mabel Walker characterized the neighborhood as composed mostly of blighted or slum housing (80–82). Nonetheless, the South End encompassed a sizable part of inner Boston, and its most challenging sections were clustered near the city’s central business district. Some other subareas, populated by working- and middle-class families, were stable and showed few, if any, signs of blight. By the decade of the 1960s, however, the embryonic gentrification of Beacon Hill and the smaller Bay Village stood as exemplars of neighborhood revitalization, albeit with a decided slant toward middle- and upperincome people (Boston: A Closeup 1967, 33). Public and private sector actors were gaining confidence that urban decline might be reversed without resorting to the extremes of comprehensive clearance and rebuilding. Young singles and couples and gays and lesbians were buying South End properties and renovating them (Tissot 2015, 100–101, 158–160; Vrabel 2014, 121). The neighborhood’s northern section, offering easy walking distance to employment, shopping, and mass transit connections, was among the first to gentrify (Figure 5.1). The South End Historical Society was founded in 1966,

Figure 5.1  One of the attractions of Boston’s South End neighborhood is its proximity to the office and commercial section of Back Bay, providing a short commute to employment and shopping for many residents.

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Figure 5.2  In 1968, people protesting the South End’s Urban Renewal program set up a tent city and occupied a lot slated for a parking garage. Ultimately, their demands resulted in Tent City (right), an affordable housing complex comprising 269 units.

and the first neighborhood house tour was held in 1967 (Tissot 2015, 153– 154). By then, the Boston Globe reported that “more than 300 middle-class professional families” had moved “into an area which lost 16,000 people between 1955 and 1965” (Boston: A Closeup 1967, 32). Many years later, Common Ground, a Pulitzer Prize–winning nonfiction book, would include an extensive account of one such family, the Divers. An idealistic professional couple, they moved into the South End in the 1960s (Lukas 1985). Among other matters, the book revealed the many challenges faced by political liberals from burglaries, robberies, vandalism, street litter, incivility, and noise. Even as they promoted embryonic gentrification to stem the tide of Boston’s middle-class outmigration, Renewal officials walked a tightrope trying to address the needs of the neighborhood’s large low-income population (Keyes 1969, 63, 74; Mollenkopf 1983, 199). As embryonic gentrification whittled away at the low- and moderate-income rental stock, protesters became more vociferous, resulting in victories such as the Tent City complex (Figure 5.2). However, affordable housing often became collateral damage as once-overcrowded buildings were rehabilitated, not only increasing rents but typically combining two or more dwelling units into a single, larger apartment for the more affluent occupants who desired more space. This

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practice, of course, reduced the number of affordable dwelling units in the South End. Unsurprisingly, then, the share of rooms in lodging houses declined from 69 percent of all South End housing in 1960 to 16 percent in 1978. Over the same period the incidence of homeowner-occupancy rose from 7 percent to 28 percent of all dwelling units (Schill and Nathan 1983, 75). Here and there, new condominiums and townhouses were inserted, sometimes integrating historic architecture and new building forms (Figure 5.3). Further diminishing the housing supply was the conversion of rental housing to nonresidential uses such as retail or office structures. Not surprisingly, between 1960 and 1975 the South End’s population decreased from 33,700 to 27,100 (1965/1975 General Plan, n.d.). From 1960 to 1980, approximately 25,000 neighborhood residents lost their homes (Vrabel 2014, 110). One local expert noted that the price of vacant South End row houses, ranging from about $2,000 to $3,000 in 1960, had tripled or even quadrupled by 1964–1965 (Listokin 1973, 30). Meanwhile, in Philadelphia’s Center City, a similar Urban Renewal project was moving forward in the 1960s despite that city’s initially unpromising experience with embryonic gentrification (Society Hill, n.d.). Located considerably to the east of Rittenhouse Square, Society Hill was just south of the landmark Independence Hall complex. The neighborhood abutted the Delaware River and was once a busy portside industrial complex. Predating Boston’s South End by many decades, Society Hill was a treasure trove of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century buildings (Weinberg 1979, 69–75). But by the 1950s, it, too, was marked by substantial disinvestment, poverty, crime, and social problems (Frank 2002). As noted previously, private sector efforts in Philadelphia’s Center City had failed to stimulate a restoration movement comparable in scale and pace to those in Georgetown and Greenwich Village, or on Beacon Hill (Society Hill, n.d., 3). Like the South End’s Urban Renewal planners, those working on Society Hill ­adopted a municipal strategy composed primarily of rehabilitation and historic restoration of existing buildings. Demolition and rebuilding (Figure 5.4) was limited to relatively small areas (Ryberg 2012, 202–204; Teaford 1990, 151). For example, modern high-rise apartment towers and a public park were erected along the waterfront. Yet the opportunity to turn Society Hill into a mixed-income, integrated community was lost, and it became instead an elite enclave like Charleston’s Battery or the Vieux Carre of New Orleans (Cybriwsky, Ley, and Western 1986, 94–106; N. Smith 1996). By these limited terms, so successful was the Society Hill project, some subsequent observers have assumed that the neighborhood was among the first in the nation to spawn “preservation-based revitalization” (Hurley 2010, 26) or the U.S. gentrification paradigm (P. Smith 2012, 138). Although these are understandable misperceptions, they are without substance.

Figure 5.3  A fire in 1982 destroyed this former South End church. Its remains were incorporated into a 60-unit condominium complex, exemplifying the ­premium placed on maintaining the neighborhood’s historic character and scale.

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Figure 5.4  As this cleared lot testifies, despite the emphasis on housing restoration in Philadelphia’s Society Hill Urban Renewal plan, some buildings were so deteriorated that demolition and subsequent redevelopment were considered necessary.

The Philadelphia experience demonstrated that in some cities, public and private sector confidence in the power of market forces alone to reverse urban decline was insufficient to the challenge. When during the interwar years scattered incidences of embryonic gentrification in Center City failed to ignite patterns comparable in scale and momentum to those in Washington, New York, and Boston, for example, Philadelphia officials initially embraced the Redevelopment paradigm. But the city’s Eastwick Urban Redevelopment project—similar to Boston’s West End—had virtually erased an entire neighborhood, demonstrating the numerous liabilities of comprehensive clearance and rebuilding. Thus, like Boston’s South End, Society Hill represented an attempt by public authorities to adopt the embryonic gentrification paradigm in a policy configuration combining elements of rehabilitation, spot new construction, and historic preservation (Figure 5.5). Trusting purely capitalistic forces to reverse urban decline carried the onus of failure in cities such as Philadelphia, where the embryonic gentrification paradigm had failed to prove sufficiently transformative. Other 1960s examples of Urban Renewal projects employing embryonic gentrification included Chicago’s Lincoln Park (Bennett 1990; Fidel 1992; Hertz 2018) and Hyde Park/Kenwood (Davis 2013; Hirsch 1983, 136–170) areas, Providence’s College Hill section (College Hill 1959; Hurley 2010, 7–8;

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Figure 5.5  Where historic restoration on Society Hill was infeasible, modern infill structures were designed to blend compatibly with the late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century architecture prevailing in the neighborhood.

Leazes 2004, 53–56), Baltimore’s Mount Royal–Bolton Hill community (Millspaugh and Breckenfeld 1960, 67–81), and Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood. Similarly, smaller cities such as Savannah, Georgia, made extensive use of rehabilitation and preservation strategies in their local Renewal activities (Frank 2002). So did Annapolis, Maryland, and Newburyport, Massachusetts (Neighborhood Conservation and Rehabilitation 1970; Weinberg 1979, 95–107). However, local records of Renewal subsidies for housing renovation were not always carefully maintained. Therefore, 1960s embryonic gentrification neighborhoods such as the Historic Hill district of St. Paul probably benefited from federal financing (Black, Borut, and Dubinsky 1977). The same is likely true of the Lafayette Square neighborhood in St. Louis (Hurley 2010, 57–58) and the Mount Adams neighborhood in Cincinnati (Neighborhood Preservation 1975; Weinberg 1979, 126–129, 136– 142). Once it was clear to public officials that the Urban Redevelopment paradigm was often economically and politically unsustainable, many overrode previous reservations about the effectiveness of housing rehabilitation and conservation and adopted strategies incorporating embryonic gentrification. In the period from 1949 to 1968, federal officials approved a total of 1,946 Redevelopment and Renewal projects in 912 cities (von Hoffman 2000, 317). But over the 1960s and 1970s, structural renovation policies

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slowly gained favor in the battle to reverse urban decline (Kleinberg 1995, 137–138). Ideas undergirding the inevitability of the downward filtering and obsolescence of housing were slowly losing credence. These conditions catalyzed the spreading of embryonic gentrification in a number of cities. However, while the complete elimination of entire residential neighborhoods would largely cease as the primary policy to reverse urban decline in the United States, the use of clearance and rebuilding for relatively small-scale projects would continue. For the most part, federal policies to revitalize urban residential neighborhoods would entail some combination of housing rehabilitation and preservation, with spot redevelopment or the selective but limited clearance of unsalvageable properties followed by new infill construction. Not until the 1990s would the demolition of public housing under the federal HOPE VI program bring reminders of Redevelopment’s all-or-­ nothing strategy to reverse urban decline (Vale 2013). But for the most part, HOPE VI projects did not involve the clearance of entire neighborhoods. Moreover, the demolished public housing projects were replaced by lowerdensity, mixed-income residential developments designed to be more physically compatible with their surroundings. Yet both Urban Redevelopment/ Renewal and HOPE VI typically erected far fewer housing units for lowand moderate-income people than had existed prior to each program’s commencement (Kingsley, Johnson, and Petit 2003). In the case of HOPE VI, this policy was attributable to official concerns that too many poor neighbors would discourage middle-income people from moving into the newly built mixed-income developments. Although it is not widely recognized among urbanists, the policy shift away from clearance and rebuilding signified the more or less complete capitulation of the old Urban Redevelopment order in deference to the more politically and economically palatable option of housing rehabilitation, including embryonic gentrification. By no means, however, does this observation imply that strategies of rehabilitation such as embryonic gentrification were or are a completely satisfactory means of reversing urban decline; the class and racial favoritism inherent in its social and economic outcomes demonstrates that it remains, at best, an incomplete strategy.

The Denouement of Urban Renewal A negative externality or unanticipated outcome of the Urban Renewal and Interstate Highway programs nationally resulted from the massive demolition of hundreds of thousands of low- and moderate-income housing units. In most cases, local authorities built far fewer affordable replacement homes. And while many of the destroyed units were uninhabitable or marked by

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serious health hazards, their loss left poor home-seekers competing for fewer low-rent units. By the 1960s, housing affordability and other problems were reaching critical proportions. These federal programs, together with police corruption and brutality, and racial discrimination in housing, employment, and education, were contributing to growing militancy among the poor, and especially so among African Americans (Report of the National Advisory Commission 1968). In the mid-1960s major episodes of civil unrest—termed “riots” by some observers and “rebellions” by others— erupted in New York City, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Chicago, Newark, Detroit, and Rochester, New York. And before the decade ended, even more outbursts would follow the assassination of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Gale 1996). These tragedies underscored the necessity of reforming federal efforts to revitalize cities, wage war on poverty, and eliminate de facto and de jure racial discrimination. In response to these events, federal and local officials struggled to adopt new policies aimed at reversing urban decline that were compatible with the changing social order. The Model Cities program, enacted by Congress in 1966, represented a desperate last-gasp attempt to address civil unrest while vanquishing urban decline (Kleinberg 1995, 175–186; Moynihan 1969). Poor and minority residents in 145 cities were given greater control over the social and physical revitalization of their communities (Scott 1969, 622– 624). Many participants fashioned plans emphasizing the reuse of older buildings, rather than their destruction (von Hoffman 2000, 321). The Model Cities program was one more sign that federal officials were increasingly disengaging from the harsher realities of Redevelopment and Renewal policies. Two years later, in yet another attempt to soften its image, federal officials renamed Urban Renewal the Neighborhood Development Program (NDP) (Birch and Roby 1984, 202). NDP permitted local authorities to carry out rehabilitation measures throughout their city, not just in officially designated Renewal areas (Congressional Research Service 1973, 245–246). By 1970 NDP was offering localities subsidized loans, grants, and mortgage guarantees for the renovation of homes and business properties (Neighborhood Conservation and Rehabilitation 1970). At about the same time, federal officials launched Project Rehab in thirty cities. The new initiative sought to renovate thirty thousand dwelling units and to prove that large-scale renovation of neighborhoods, rather than demolition and new construction,  could be successfully carried out (Congressional Research Service 1973, 223). Thus, the late 1960s and early 1970s represented the final repudiation of federal policies that had been based on discredited assumptions of the inevitability of downward filtering and the necessity of large-scale demolition,

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clearance, and reconstruction. In their place, there took root a growing awareness of neighborhood conservation through reuse and rehabilitation—with more moderate levels of new construction—as a viable strategy for reversing urban decline. Although this strategy encouraged (and in some cases, subsidized) embryonic gentrification, or housing renovation by middle-income people, it also encouraged some incumbent property owners—working-class families and landlords, as well as institutions—to improve their properties. Thus, the policy that supplanted Redevelopment was not embryonic gentrification alone, but rather all forms of structural reuse and adaptation. Nevertheless, embryonic gentrification was a critical element in the federal renovation campaign, channeling many millions of private dollars into declining neighborhoods. The failure of federal officials to recognize these realities had prolonged the search for a viable strategy to reverse urban decline. One noteworthy sign of this transition was a brief acknowledgment from influential economist Homer Hoyt, one of the nation’s most steadfast proponents of filter theory. In the mid-1960s, referring generally to the slums and blighted areas of inner-city neighborhoods, he wrote, “In some cases these older close-in residential sections may be rehabilitated and become fashionable, as in the Georgetown area of Washington, D.C., Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, and the Near North Side of Chicago” (1966, 289; see also Scargill 1979, 42). Despite the fact that his examples posed indisputable evidence of the vulnerabilities of filter theory and raised questions about the need for widespread demolition, clearance, and redevelopment policies, Hoyt offered no explanation for the success of such outlier neighborhoods. His silence, it might be said, would prove to be deafening.

6 The Decade of the Neighborhood and the “Discovery” of Gentrification

F

ollowing the presidential election of 1968, Richard M. Nixon succeeded Lyndon B. Johnson, bringing an end to an eight-year reign of Democratic leadership in domestic policy making. The Great Society and the War on Poverty would soon become memories. And the 1970s would bring a transformation in federal efforts to thwart urban decline. Before the decade was over, Urban Renewal would be supplanted by a new program fundamentally unlike its predecessor. Moreover, a series of other federal initiatives would permit localities more leeway to design policies to reverse urban decline, rather than being limited to what many observers considered the straitjacket of Urban Renewal orthodoxy. Several conditions contributed to these policy shifts. Civil rights and social welfare organizations were demanding an end to the destruction of neighborhoods populated by minorities and people of color. Costly civil unrest in dozens of cities during the mid- and late 1960s indicated that Renewal, among numerous other issues, had triggered a powerful public backlash (Altshuler and Luberoff 2003, 252). Enhanced minority voting rights and heightened black power consciousness had strengthened the hands of the African American electorate. And most Republicans were not congenitally supportive of urban or social programs providing resources to urban Democratic strongholds. Some members of Congress implored ­President Nixon to reduce domestic spending. His landslide victory in the 1972 presidential election gave him the political momentum necessary to

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eliminate several federal urban programs. Accordingly, in 1973 he suspended most Urban Renewal activities (Chudacoff, Smith, and Baldwin 2016, 214; von Hoffman 2000, 322). Furthermore, the federal Interstate Highway program, another mechanism for sweeping away older neighborhoods, was encountering similar resistance. By the mid-1970s, most of the forty-three thousand miles of multilane highways planned under the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 were completed, in construction, or blocked by public protest (Mohl 2004; Scott 1969, 536–539). And Public Housing construction, halted by Nixon in 1973, never regained the momentum necessary to offset affordable housing unit losses resulting from arson, abandonment, Renewal, embryonic gentrification, and other causes. Between 1963 and 1971, more than forty thousand units of public housing were built in cities in the northeastern and midwestern United States; but from 1971 to 1977, only four thousand units were built (Osman 2008, 120). By the mid-1970s, the federal bulldozer was grinding to a halt. In 1974 Nixon persuaded Congress to eliminate several urban development programs, including those supporting Model Cities, open space development, and water and sewer infrastructure. And yet, even as the federal government’s commitment to urban programs was wilting, the relatively subdued progression of embryonic gentrification was about to accelerate. As the decade of the 1970s opened, however, few people were expecting any significant shift in city-suburban dynamics. One exception to the conventional wisdom appeared in a modest forty-five-page monograph published by a New York City–based nonprofit, the Committee for Economic Development. Analyzing 1960 census data for seventy-three U.S. metropolitan areas, the author found early signs that a highly educated cohort of blacks and whites would soon bring “increased pressure for the rebuilding of present ghetto neighborhoods to serve the needs of this elite” (Birch 1970, 34). Expected growth in service sector employment, wrote the author, would pose “an increasing incentive for wealthier families to reclaim larger sections of the city for their own use, be it in the form of large new apartment complexes or renovated townhouses” (26). Just as surprising, he noted, late 1960s data showed that suburbanization was beginning to rise among African Americans. The author cautioned that his data were preliminary, but he opined that the forthcoming release of 1970 decennial census statistics would confirm his conclusions. The report proved remarkably prophetic. Yet in 1970 its startling forecast generated precious little attention, in no small measure because of widespread urban civil disorders in the 1960s that seemed to many people to seal the fate of the American city.

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The 1970s and the Decade of the Neighborhood The abolition or suspension of several federal urban programs permitted Republicans to weaken the Democratic Party’s financial lifelines to America’s cities. Yet plenty of Republican and Democratic mayors, governors, members of Congress, and business leaders pressured Washington to come up with a new urban strategy more aligned with the prevailing political winds. The result was an array of new forms of federal assistance that collectively rendered the 1970s the decade of the neighborhood (Jakle and Wilson 1992, 235–236). Indeed, President Gerald Ford acclaimed 1976, the nation’s bicentennial year, the Year of the Neighborhood (Osman 2008, 123). Once again, programmatic nomenclature carried emblematic significance. Just as “renewal” had once symbolized a more benign approach to reversing urban decline, “neighborhood” intimated that families and residential enclaves were now a priority of federal policy. And where “urban” had once implied a citywide abstraction of homogenized sameness, “neighborhood” and “community” connoted that official Washington was now recognizing the particularities of smaller geographical units, including those more closely associated with home- and family-centered values. Not surprisingly, then, first among the post-Renewal strategies was the new Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program (Kleinberg 1995, 213–220). CDBG (Title I of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974) substituted “community” for “urban” in the new programmatic lexicon. Sensing the American electorate’s weariness with Johnson-era urban priorities, the Nixon administration and congressional Republicans, in particular, sought an end to large-scale federal support for cities and the poor (and their predominantly Democratic voters). Redevelopment and Renewal, as well as other urban development programs, had pumped billions of public dollars into city coffers while offering little for suburban jurisdictions, many of which were Republican strongholds. CDBG signaled that official Washington’s support for reversing the decline of central cities was now of diminished importance. Furthermore, it indicated that henceforth, metropolitan communities surrounding central cities would share in the federal largesse. For cities, this meant that federal funding would be spread over many more local governments, thereby shrinking allocations to the neediest communities (Summary of the Housing 1974, 4). At its core, CDBG loosened bureaucratic control over federal purse strings, devolving more discretion to recipient communities than was permitted under categorical grant programs such as Urban Renewal (Kleinberg 1995, 213–220). Now, city halls could distribute block grant monies to more city neighborhoods than was possible under Renewal policy mandates,

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which had limited expenditures to formally designated Renewal project sites in putative slums and blighted areas. Furthermore, unlike Urban Renewal, most CDBG-recipient communities no longer had to compete nationally for federal funds each year with complicated applications and formally adopted master plans. Local authorities simply submitted an annual budget request briefly documenting the intended use of CDBG funds. They had to devote a mandated percentage of annual funds for improvements benefiting low- and moderate-income residents. And at the end of each yearly budget cycle, localities were required to file a report on how the CDBG funds had been spent. Also appealing was the fact that CDBG did not require municipalities to provide matching funds in order to receive federal monies, as had Redevelopment and Renewal (Dommel et al. 1982). Of importance for our purposes, under CDBG, large-scale clearance and redevelopment was discouraged, although not banned, and rehabilitation and conservation were prioritized (Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 416). Evidence of the continued political clout held by the national historic preservation community is evident in the new law’s call for “conservation and expansion of the nation’s housing stock and preservation of buildings for historic and aesthetic purposes” (von Hoffman 2000, 322). Of the more than 4,500 communities receiving block grants during the first two fiscal years of the program, 1,443 budgeted funding for rehabilitation projects (Directory of Localities 1977). Thus, by the mid-1970s, federal policies to reverse urban decline had vastly diminished the role of demolition and new construction and sanctioned the reuse and upgrading of existing neighborhood capital (Directory of Localities 1977). Filter theory and its corollary, the obsolescence thesis, twin rationales for federal clearance and rebuilding ultimatums, were losing credibility. One sign of this shifting perspective appeared in the findings of two nationally respected housing economists. They concluded in 1975 that, subject to certain caveats, urban housing rehabilitation programs were a viable and cost-effective method for increasing access to housing and revitalizing neighborhoods (Grigsby and Rosenberg 1975, 268–272). Nevertheless, change would not appear overnight. Initially at least, most recipient communities chose to dedicate a portion of their CDBG funding to complete rebuilding activities begun under Urban Renewal. With time, however, the greater flexibility devolved to local governments for the expenditure of block grant funds resulted in new revolving loan programs to provide low-interest funding for housing rehabilitation and building code compliance (Fosler and Berger 1982, 101; Rehabilitation Financing Handbook 1974). Neighborhood newcomers, as well as long-term residents, could be eligible to participate. CDBG funds were also spent to build or repair lo­ cal public infrastructure such as curbs and gutters, street furniture, and

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sidewalks, as well as for historic preservation projects. Congress even earmarked a subset of block grant funds for state governments to allocate to smaller communities not eligible as central cities or urban counties. In the face of this new inclusiveness, however, Washington’s commitment to America’s cities was shrinking. Discretion over block grant expenditures, as well as other federal domestic spending, was devolving from Washington to states and localities under President Nixon’s “new federalism” (Bolan 1973). This in turn led to greater variability in CDBG program outcomes for the poor and minorities (Kleinberg 1995, 213–220). Although block grants were the primary source of federal assistance to cities seeking to impede urban decline, several other new initiatives were enacted over the 1970s to replace the Urban Renewal program. Some of these subsidized the expansion of the evolving embryonic gentrification paradigm. The federal Urban Homesteading Demonstration, for example, launched in 1974, was based on a local program in Baltimore designed to rid the city of hundreds of abandoned houses (Chandler 1988). In forty-three cities, the new federal program donated properties acquired for debts owed under various federal programs to local homesteading initiatives (Case Study of Local Control 1983; Varady 1986, 37–136). Their new owners had to occupy their property for a period of years and renovate it to comport with local building code standards. Purchasers paid a pittance—as little as one dollar—for such properties, reducing their financial risks (Keune 1984, 487). Terminated in 1986, the homesteading demonstration reconditioned thousands of older homes that might otherwise have been destroyed by demolition or arson. Plus, formerly abandoned homes were now generating property tax revenues again. Although apparently never empirically analyzed, the federal homesteading program had a secondary goal of generating spillover effects by raising confidence among nearby homeowners in the viability of investing in improvements to their property. Another federal initiative aimed at housing rehabilitation was the Section 312 program, offering low-interest loans to qualified homeowners for terms of up to twenty years. Borrowers were charged 3 percent per annum. These terms were more favorable than those available from commercial lending organizations (Case Study of Local Control 1983). Authorized under the Housing Act of 1964, Section 312 conferred about 55,000 loans between 1966 and 1978. In fiscal year 1977, for example, the program lent $85 million to borrowers, including many with low or moderate incomes (Methods of Urban Impact Analysis 1979, i–iv, 1–2). As loans were repaid, local governments could place the revenue in a revolving loan fund to be lent later to other home renovators. Despite its popularity, the program was terminated in 2001. The Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) program, enacted in 1974, is another measure of federal support during the 1970s for neighborhoods

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and housing renovation (Neighborhood Preservation 1975). The NHS program encouraged private lending institutions to extend loans to homeowners in declining areas (Varady 1986, 23–26). Local NHS offices also offered services such as tool lending libraries and instructional workshops to encourage do-it-yourselfers to improve their properties (Neighborhood Housing Services Model 1975). In 1978 Congress established the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, a nonprofit organization to spur housing rehabilitation through financing, technical assistance, and training (von Hoffman 2008, 296–297). A few years later, the federal Neighborhood Strategy Areas demonstration was established (Case Study of Local Control 1983). Funded at $1.2 billion, the initiative included 116 cities and provided funds for the substantial rehabilitation of deteriorating housing. Many of the renovated units were formerly vacant. Similarly, the private Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) was founded in 1979 with major support from the Ford Foundation. With chapters in several cities, LISC staffs offered financing, political support, and technical assistance for community-based organizations to improve urban housing and infrastructure (von Hoffman 2008, 297). A primary goal of LISC was the strengthening of neighborhoods. Finally, even the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Park Service awarded small grants to help urban groups conduct studies and prepare reports advancing the arts, urban design, historic preservation, and neighborhood conservation (McNulty et al. 1986). While the amount of funding from these agencies was relatively modest, the program was one more sign that the decade of the neighborhood had arrived. Despite this emphasis, however, the term “urban” was not yet moribund in the federal lexicon.

Urban Development Action Grants and Historic Preservation Tax Incentives The aforementioned federal initiatives underscored the shifting policy emphasis in official Washington directed at revitalizing America’s city neighborhoods. Nevertheless, not all of the new neighborhood-based federal tools were identified as such. Two programs that undoubtedly contributed to embryonic gentrification were Urban Development Action Grants (UDAG) and Historic Preservation Tax Incentives. With the demise of the Renewal program, city officials and business communities were soon complaining to Congress that new government resources were needed to spur rebuilding and renovation in areas that were not primarily residential, such as central business districts. While conditions were slowly improving, many investors were still skittish about risking private capital in core urban areas. And

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competition among many city interests for CDBG funding left relatively few dollars for large-scale building projects. Responding in 1977, Congress enacted the UDAG (Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, Section 119a, 91 Statute 1125) program to encourage public-private partnerships for inner-city revitalization (Fosler and Berger 1982; Kleinberg 1995, 253–259). Unlike the policies permitting comprehensive slum clearance and rebuilding in the Redevelopment program, UDAG provided financing for commercial developments of a considerably smaller scale. Unlike block grants, which nearly every eligible community could receive on an annual basis, action grants were competitive awards confined to a single project. Successful applicants had to pledge several dollars of private investment for every federal UDAG dollar received (Kleinberg 1995, 221–224). Hotels, conference centers, office buildings, and retail complexes were typical project examples (Urban Action 1978). In its ten-year life, UDAG contributed financing to 2,860 development projects in 1,180 cities, reportedly raising a total of about $35 billion of public and private funding (Barnekov, Hart, and Benfer 1990, 9). The Historic Preservation Tax Incentive program was enacted in 1976, the nation’s bicentennial year (Keune 1984, 359–368). It signified the rising political power of historic preservationists (Boehm and Corey 2015, 307). Developers and investors willing to restore certified historic structures under federal guidelines could apply to receive Internal Revenue Service tax credits reducing their income tax liability for a specified period of years (Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 416–419). The program’s terms were liberalized in 1978, drawing more applicants, and then diminished by Congress in 1986, reducing participation. Since its enactment, the tax subsidy program has attracted more than $102 billion from private investors and preserved more than 45,000 historic properties (Technical Preservation Services, n.d.). In excess of 247,000 housing units were renovated, and more than 230,000 new units were built (Ryberg 2014, 12–13). Neither UDAG nor tax incentives were intended primarily as housing or neighborhood development programs. Yet many projects funded under these initiatives were located in or near urban downtowns or in depleted industrial or waterfront sections. Not infrequently, they financed projects involving the rehabilitation of old hotels, apartment buildings, factories, warehouses, and office structures. In some cases, newly built structures were appended to older restored buildings, creating more space and modern amenities while preserving period architecture. Downtown and waterfront attractions such as festival marketplaces, aquariums, museums, galleries, libraries, concert halls, performing arts centers, and sports facilities not only drew tourists; they countered images of dull, fading downtowns and

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contributed to the appeal of inner-city living (Isenberg 2004). Thousands of such projects were built during the 1970s and 1980s. Undoubtedly, many housed middle- and upper-income households. Others housed employers, live/work spaces, and cafes, bars, and restaurants appealing to gentry culture. In this regard, then, many UDAG and Historic Preservation Tax Incentive projects could be conceived as supportive of the interests of middleand upper-income residents, visitors, and businesses, including those associated with embryonic gentrification. In summary, with the demise of Urban Renewal, an array of federal and local programs directed at enhancing the appeal of inner-city living was enacted during the 1970s (Neighborhood Preservation 1975). The abandonment of large-scale clearance and rebuilding policies in residential areas signaled that official Washington was, by deed and by word, embracing rehabilitation, conservation, and historic preservation. “Neighborhoodism” had become “the foundation of state and federal policy” directed at urban decline and its proponents were prioritizing “sweat equity and private rehabilitation” over “modernization and renewal” (Osman 2008, 122). Not surprisingly, these policy shifts opened the door to an implicit, if not explicit, endorsement of the embryonic gentrification paradigm. Of course, officials recognized that while embryonic gentrification was a necessary engine of urban revitalization, it was not sufficient unto itself. But with assistance from public agencies and nongovernmental organizations to address at least some of the needs of poor and working-class households—housing, schools, job training, and public health, for example—public officials transitioned into what would become known as the era of neoliberalism (Hackworth 2007; Künkel and Mayer 2012). Even though overall federal financial support to cities was diminished over the 1970s and 1980s, the gentrification trend not only gave evidence of a rising level of public confidence in city living; it stood as a much-needed source of private capital to assist in bankrolling the reversal of urban decline.

The “Discovery” of Gentrification By the mid-1970s, embryonic gentrification—the reinvestment in older neighborhoods, primarily through building renovation by individual homeowner-occupants—had been an ongoing trend for more than a half century in parts of Washington, New York, Boston, and a few other cities. And although the term “gentrification” had been in existence since it was coined by British sociologist Ruth Glass in the mid-1960s, it had not yet gained currency in the United States (Glass 1964). One of the earliest scholarly publications on U.S. gentrification dubbed the phenomenon the “back-to-the-city movement” (Laska and Spain 1980).

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In other cases, it was referred to as neighborhood “resettlement” (Gale 1984, 293). And nowhere was this phenomenon more pronounced than in New York City. By the late 1960s and 1970s, the earlier gentrification of Greenwich Village and Brooklyn Heights had inspired a new generation of housing renovators. Many identified themselves as “brownstoners,” taking their name from the cocoa-colored sandstone masonry once widely used in townhouse construction in Gotham (Osman 2008). At their hands, “brownstoning” was transforming parts of Manhattan (Abu-Lughod 1994; N. Smith 1996; Zukin 1982), as well as Brooklyn neighborhoods such as Park Slope and Boerum Hill (Hymowitz 2017; Kasinitz 1988). But in New York and in other cities, the phenomenon was becoming an increasingly structured social and economic activity. For example, citywide organizing among New York brownstoners began in 1968, and by 1974 they had convened a Back-to-the-City Conference (Back to the City 1974, 10–12). The conference proceedings made clear that many brownstoners were enthusiastic, if not messianic, bearers of the city revival torch. Participants from Savannah, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Norfolk, and Portland, Maine, described similar revitalization efforts in their communities. One speaker reported that the Brownstone Revival Committee, a New York group, actively promoted home purchase and remodeling in the city’s townhouse neighborhoods through periodic house tours, block parties, and neighborhood street fairs. When local bankers refused to finance mortgages in several depleted areas of the city, brownstoners invited loan officers to an annual party. There, residents showcased a few restored homes and established personal ties to the bankers, some of whom subsequently agreed to lend bank funds for home purchase or rehabilitation. One speaker at the conference was the editor of the Old-House Journal, a new national periodical offering how-to advice on remodeling and restoration. The Brooklyn-based magazine publicized the challenges and rewards of inner-city living to thousands of potential homebuyers. For a few years in the late 1970s, American Preservation magazine performed a similar mission. The PBS series This Old House, about renovating and restoring older homes, began broadcasting in 1978 (Boehm and Corey 2015, 307; Goetze 1979, 118). (As of 2018, the program was completing its fortieth year.) Furthermore, the National Trust for Historic Preservation was a major drumbeater for the renovation and restoration of city neighborhoods. Through annual conferences, newsletters, and its Preservation magazine (first published in 1954), it showcased neighborhood revitalization success stories in  communities across the nation. As one Back-to-the-City Conference speaker put it, “We’ve found that the pace of community renaissance tends to rise along with the volume of ‘noise’ a community can generate for itself” (Back to the City 1974, 12).

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Clearly, the 1970s was a pivotal decade in which the urban decline narrative in the United States found itself in contention with a spreading ­counter-narrative idealizing inner-city living. Moving to a declining neighborhood and renovating an older home—the “urban pioneer” trope—was gaining cachet. Embedded in that identity was the implicit, if not explicit, rejection of the popular ideal of a middle-class suburban lifestyle (Palen and London 1984b, 257–260). Growing out of a rising public disenchantment with social conformity, status seeking, and what were seen as the organization man and the corporate rat race, this attitude caused many younger people to consider an alternative lifestyle. But unlike their poorer neighbors, for whom inner-city living was their only alternative, most gentry could exercise far greater choices. To have the socioeconomic wherewithal to afford either a suburban or urban lifestyle, and to choose the latter, effectively turned the mainstream ideal on its head. In many cases, gentry could have it either way but were voluntary city dwellers. By rejecting suburban living, they appeared to signify that for themselves, such orthodox middle-class memes and mores no longer held much appeal. Yet there was a second element associated with gentry identity. Public discourse on the “urban crisis” often portrayed white people as abandoning cities and their rising minority populations. Embryonic gentrification, however, presented an alternative trope. To borrow from a popular slogan of that period, gentrifiers could become part of the solution, rather than part of the problem. Choosing to reside in close proximity to poor, working-class, and minority neighbors was for some gentry, at least, a tacit rejection of middleclass suburban status ascription. Of course, as the issues of displacement and housing affordability rose in salience, it became clear that embryonic gentrification was a much more complicated process than earlier impressions had assumed. Understandably, in light of the often negative assessments of gentrification among contemporary observers in the twenty-first century, these ideas may appear quaint and naïve. But they were very much an element in the motivations of gentry of an earlier age (Ley 1996). Aside from labels such as back-to-the-city and neighborhood resettlement, gentrification in the 1970s was known among urbanists variously as neighborhood revitalization, regeneration, or rejuvenation (Laska and Spain 1980; Lipton 1977). Apparently, one of the earliest references to “gentrification” to appear in a U.S. newspaper was published in the Washington Post in 1973 in reference to the phenomenon in London; in 1977, the expression surfaced again in that newspaper, this time referring to the same trend in Washington (Asch and Musgrove 2017, 531n87). A year later, an article in Harper’s Magazine employed the term (Allman 1978). As the end of the

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1970s approached, “gentrification” appeared in a few U.S. scholarly publications (Auger 1979; Clay 1979a; Goetze 1979; N. Smith 1979). In his edited book on urban conservation, Donald Appleyard and his contributors referred to gentrification in both the European and U.S. contexts (1979, 30–32, 39, 192–193). On November 29, 1981, the CBS television network aired a segment on 60 Minutes reporting on the growth of gentrification and displacement in the U.S. (Palen and London 1984b, 261). Roughly speaking then, by the late 1970s and early 1980s the G-word was becoming the generally accepted nomenclature among journalists and scholars. In all of these instances, its definition encompassed a process of neighborhood reinvestment primarily through the private market renovation of older housing (Clay 1979a, 1–2, 22–24; Downs 1981, 73; Schill and Nathan 1983). As embryonic gentrification appeared in more cities, questions surfaced. What were the demographic characteristics of the gentry such as age, marital status, occupation, race, and educational achievement? Were the gentry former suburbanites or were they already city residents when they moved to a revitalizing neighborhood? How many were do-it-yourself renovators? How many were renters versus homeowners? In pursuit of further insights, a multicity study was carried out in 1977 by the Urban Land Institute (ULI), a large membership organization for real estate developers and investors. The final report concluded that a significant increase in urban housing rehabilitation activity had occurred over the previous five years. Reliable data, however, were scarce, and ULI drew on its network of local chapters for member insights. The study offered neighborhood case studies in Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, St. Paul, and San Francisco (Black, Borut, and Dubinsky 1977). In Atlanta, for example, the Ansley Park, Inman Park, and Virginia Highland neighborhoods had been undergoing embryonic gentrification from the 1960s onward (Abbott 1981, 227; Keating 2009, 255–259). Not long after the ULI publication appeared, a book was published documenting the transformation of neighborhoods in cities such as San Francisco, St. Paul, Chicago, Savannah, Galveston, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Portland, Maine (Reed 1979). A year later, a federal government study of rental apartment conversion to ownership status, a common trend in many gentrifying areas, was released (Conversion of Rental Housing 1980). Clearly, by the end of the decade, embryonic gentrification was gaining new exposure and more widespread public attention. Media reports generally lauded the renovation of older neighborhoods, and by the late 1970s there were signs that some observers believed that the urban crisis was over—or indeed, had never really existed (Allman 1978; Beauregard 2003, 181–209; Malach 2018, 26; Tobin 1979, 10–12). Well in advance of these claims, President Richard Nixon had

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declared the demise of urban decline in 1972, just as he was preparing for his reelection bid (Goldfield and Brownell 1990, 389).

Displacement Even though embryonic gentrification was being celebrated by some observers as a panacea for the deterioration of the American city, it was increasingly being perceived by others as a bitter pill. In fact, according to urban planner Alan Malach, when Ruth Glass coined the term “gentrification,” she allegedly portrayed a process that was “politically charged,” “pejorative,” and “never meant to be an objective description of a neutral phenomenon” (2018, 98). Not unlike Urban Redevelopment and Urban Renewal, gentrification produced certain negative externalities or side effects. Instead of being routed from their homes by a local public agency, now many incumbent residents—those whose tenure generally predated the arrival of gentrifiers—were vulnerable to displacement through evictions, nonrenewal of leases, or unaffordable rent increases imposed by private landlords. Although Urban Renewal ultimately provided funds to pay for displacees’ relocation counseling, moving expenses, and in some cases, temporary rental payments at their new home, there were no federal programs dedicated to those uprooted by the more surreptitious dynamics of embryonic gentrification. Where Renewal destroyed many low- and moderaterent dwellings, gentrification preserved most such structures but converted them to middle- and upper-income occupancy. Whether through Renewal or gentrification, as rents and property taxes rose in response to new investment, grocery stores and community institutions needed by incumbents were often replaced by restaurants, cafes, bars, clothing boutiques, nail salons, and furniture emporiums catering to newcomers’ tastes. Yet these were not the only controversial issues associated with gentrification. In the early stages of Renewal, displaced families were sometimes able to move to a home outside official project boundaries but convenient to their former neighborhood (Thursz 1966, 25). But gentrification respects no governmentally mandated boundaries, and unleashed market demand created uncertainty among hapless, displaced home-seekers. As well, some Renewal dislocatees could qualify for public relocation assistance to Public Housing or other affordable dwellings. However, gentrification-induced displacement is not normally accompanied by housing or other subsidies for its victims. Nor does it ordinarily proceed in tandem with the pace of affordable local housing production. Thus, its victims usually have even fewer options for alternative housing than those relocated by Renewal. As concerns about gentrification rose nationally, federal officials began to investigate. Soon a national study of household displacement appeared,

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but its results were of limited value because reliable data were difficult to isolate and identify (Grier and Grier 1978). In the same year, the U.S. House of Representatives convened hearings on inner-city restoration and family displacement (Task Force on Homeownership 1978, 1019–1020). Dozens of witnesses testified, some expressing concerns about the destruction of minority communities and shrinkage in the affordable housing supply. The National Urban Coalition, a respected civil rights organization, published a report expressing concerns about the impact of gentrification on minority households (Displacement: City Neighborhoods 1978). A year later, at least three large cities produced reports on local household displacement resulting from reinvestment (Displacement in St. Paul 1979; Residential Displacement Report 1979; Seattle Displacement Study 1979). A few years later the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development released a national study of gentrification-related issues (Residential Displacement—an Update 1981). With little authority over local land use issues, however, Congress and the executive branch did nothing to alleviate the situation.

III

Dilemmas in Definition and Dialectics

7 Embryonic Gentrification and Advanced Gentrification, 1980–2018

F

rom the 1980s onward, the popular and scholarly definitions of gentrification underwent a gradual mutation. As we have seen, originally gentrification denoted the process of reinvestment in older urban neighborhoods, primarily through the renovation of existing structures, and to a lesser extent through the construction of new buildings (Keating and Smith 1996, 29). It also involved upward socioeconomic transition—the partial, if not complete, replacement of poor and working-class residents primarily by middle-income newcomers. This characterization held sway both in Ruth Glass’s London and in a number of North American cities. Why is the element of structural rehabilitation in embryonic gentrification important? From a purely economic perspective, housing rehabilitation was generally less expensive than the demolition of existing dwellings and the construction of new ones. It is this distinction that helps explain both the emergence of embryonic gentrification and the ultimate loss of political support for Urban Redevelopment/Renewal. Consider the economic parameters of new housing construction versus housing rehabilitation during the 1960s and 1970s. First, there was the issue of capital outlay. In most cases, the costs of new construction considerably exceeded those for renovating an older structure (Listokin 1973, 8–13). Therefore, builders of new housing had to raise more capital than renovators. Except where vacant parcels of land were available, they had to demolish and clear existing buildings before constructing new housing, an expense renovators (by definition) do not normally undertake.

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If construction was undertaken by a private household with the intention of occupying the completed dwelling, these costs were in addition to the expense of their rent or mortgage prior to moving to their new home. Do-ityourself gentry, on the other hand, were frequently able to occupy their home while it was under rehabilitation. A second issue differentiating new construction from renovation was the ease of accessing financing. As noted earlier, doubts among lenders about housing renovation in older neighborhoods had lingered for decades. Many felt that merely rehabilitating a home surrounded by others in decline was futile. However, by the 1970s these attitudes were being reexamined. Gentrifying neighborhoods were found in a rising number of cities. As lenders became more familiar with the trend, some were gaining confidence that housing rehab in these locations could offer an acceptable level of risk. In some respects, renovation posed fewer hazards than new housing construction. This was due in part to the issue of property equity. Should a new-build borrower fail to erect a habitable house and default on the mortgage obligation, the lender might have nothing to repossess but a vacant, unimproved lot. On the other hand, if a renovator failed to complete improvements to an existing house and defaulted, the lender still had that property to repossess. Moreover, it could be leased or sold. It represented a fungible asset, providing greater equity to the lender and reducing financial risk. Once again, housing rehabilitation posed advantages over new construction. Ceteris paribus, the combination of these two factors spelled less financial risk for gentry than for new-build homebuyers and developers. Although investment in a declining neighborhood was never entirely free of liabilities, those improving an older dwelling normally shouldered a lighter burden than those who built anew. This fact helps explain why the element of housing rehabilitation is so central to an understanding of embryonic gentrification in its earlier stages. More to the point, renovation’s more favorable financial parameters shed light on why the federal Urban Redevelopment paradigm ultimately failed. Anchored as it was to a mandated process of comprehensive clearance and new construction, Redevelopment was dependent on major investments by a relatively small number of corporate, institutional, and public entities acting largely in pursuit of organizational goals, primarily economic in nature. Yet even when local Renewal authorities sought to acquire properties for rehabilitation and later sale (rather than demolish and redevelop), a host of problems, including difficulties obtaining clear property titles, vandalism, theft of workers’ tools, and rent delinquencies plagued their progress (Listokin 1973, 32–42). By contrast, embryonic gentrification simplified Renewal by leaving property ownership and the renovation process in the hands of middle-income gentry households, rather than local authorities, thereby avoiding many such pitfalls. Disag-

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gregating power, it was characterized by the participation of larger numbers of private households, most of whom acted as small, noncommercial investors and pursued personal domestic goals such as securing a home, maintaining employment, and, not infrequently, raising a family. (This is not to maintain that gentry were unconcerned about financial return on investment but, rather, to point out that for most, such matters were usually of lower priority than the satisfaction of domestic concerns.) Redevelopment represented a radical attempt to restructure the market dynamics of inner-city demand and supply, chiefly through massive public intervention. In effect, neighborhood demolition and clearance sought to create a tabula rasa setting emulating suburban conditions in which open farmland was converted to a residential subdivision. By eliminating slums and blighted properties (and removing poor and minority residents), developers would have fewer negative influences to undermine the marketability of newly built neighborhoods. Embryonic gentrification, on the other hand, largely accepted existing neighborhood conditions, finding appeal in period architecture, ethnic and racial diversity, and ease of access to employment, shopping, and a range of entertainment and cultural attractions. Thus, it did not require such extensive interventions and permitted neighborhood revitalization to unfold in harmony with the dynamics of local market conditions, as specified in consumption theory (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008). Put another way, Redevelopment constituted a centralized, top-down, hierarchical command-and-control modus operandi while embryonic gentrification comprised a decentralized, bottom-up process grounded for the most part in the messiness of free markets. Yet we should remember that embryonic gentrification is seldom a static, unchanging phenomenon. Although the foregoing account characterizes its earlier stages, with time the economics of this process typically shifted. As the supply of available and affordable properties in a given neighborhood dwindled, real estate actors had other options. One response was to direct potential gentry to similar “undiscovered” neighborhoods that were not yet characterized by gentrification, thereby enlarging the geographic footprint of the trend (Hackworth and Smith 2001). A second response was to create more housing units in the gentrifying neighborhood by converting nonresidential properties such as offices, warehouses, or factory buildings to residential uses such as apartments, condominiums, or live/work studios. This approach intensified the dynamics of gentrification within a single area. Both of these alternatives concentrated on the renovation of existing properties. A third response was to erect new housing in the gentrifying neighborhood. As previously noted, however, new construction in the early stages of gentrification could pose a riskier choice as a result of higher development costs and longer lead times before income could be

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generated from rental or sales. Moreover, as one respected economist observed nearly eighty years ago, there is a high probability that new homes built in a declining area may prove to be far less profitable than the builder’s expectation (Hoyt 1939, 95). Consequently, new construction was not usually a significant factor in the early stages of gentrification. With time, however, the social composition of a gentrifying neighborhood typically shifted from predominantly poor and working-class renters to a larger share of middle-class homeowners. Therefore, as the supply of properties suitable for rehabilitation diminished and asking prices rose, the perceived liabilities associated with new construction usually faded. In fact, home-seekers who were unprepared to assume the responsibilities of renovating an older property might even be attracted to newly built inner-city dwellings. With an increase in the neighborhood’s middle-class population as a result of housing rehab, capital providers became more willing to undertake the higher financial risks associated with new construction (Hackworth and Smith 2001). Consequently, although a typical gentrifying neighborhood was characterized mostly by housing renovation in its initial stages, with time the profitability of new housing production often rose and the perceived financial risks declined. While new construction was often financially unfeasible in the early stages of embryonic gentrification, as the dynamics of demand and supply became more robust, it became increasingly cost effective. To this point, we have sidestepped discussion of the effects of an intervening variable: real estate speculation. Speculation—the relatively shortterm buying and selling of property with few, if any, improvements—contributed to appreciation in sale prices and rents. In effect, speculators interceded in the otherwise direct relationship between home-seekers and home sellers. While speculatively induced price inflation disadvantaged some potential homebuyers in a gentrifying area, it could motivate others, who, encouraged by rising sales prices, were incentivized to buy before properties became unaffordable. Builders, hoping to avoid further price increases, might be emboldened to build or renovate housing sooner. Therefore, although embryonic gentrification in its early stages tends to concentrate on housing rehabilitation, with time its economic dynamics modify, resulting in a mix of renovation and new construction.

Redevelopment/Renewal and Embryonic Gentrification Hopefully, the preceding discussion helps frame our understanding of the failures of the Urban Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm. Based almost entirely on new construction, the original Redevelopment paradigm rejected rehabilitation as too little, too late. As we have seen, the high costs of this

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strategy, together with its political and social burdens, doomed Redevelopment (Teaford 1990, 113–115). Embryonic gentrification, on the other hand, effectively inverted the paradigm. Whereas Redevelopment/Renewal mostly replaced slums and blighted areas, embryonic gentrification essentially reused them. Instead of attempting to reverse urban decline by acquiring property, demolishing and clearing it, and constructing new neighborhoods, gentrification retained most such structures and conserved neighborhood built form largely through rehabilitation. Instead of concentrating risk among public agencies and a relatively small number of hand-picked commercial and institutional actors, gentrification disseminated risk by distributing it among hundreds, even thousands, of do-it-yourself home-seekers and smaller numbers of commercial renovators, as well as neighborhood startup businesses. And instead of mandating expensive project plans, bureaucratic administration, and complicated title searches, embryonic gentrification left much of the reinvestment process to the relatively unfettered workings of capital markets. As I have pointed out, while the economics of a new construction strategy could become the Achilles’ heel of Redevelopment/Renewal, the erection of new buildings would prove feasible once embryonic gentrification had gradually escalated investor confidence through the less costly process of housing rehabilitation.

Additional Considerations If Redevelopment/Renewal’s emphasis on demolition and new construction was a key financial liability, there were other costly elements worth recalling that the gentrification paradigm largely circumvented. Redevelopment/Renewal invariably involved the construction of additional millions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure improvements. Street widenings, new street and sidewalk layouts, and traffic flow patterns, for example, could substantially reconfigure neighborhood morphology and character. (A primary consideration here was linking downtown employment and retail centers to the suburbs via new interstate highways that passed through a city’s older inner neighborhoods.) The replacement of lower-density row housing by mediumand high-rise multifamily buildings also altered neighborhood character and often required new sewer, water, and utility facilities. In contrast, gentry-led patterns of rehabilitation seldom elicited demands for such extreme restructuring. Although residents of gentry neighborhoods typically requested new infrastructure such as parks, playgrounds, or public school facilities, they did not seek the drastic morphological ­transformations often associated with Redevelopment/Renewal’s comprehensive rebuilding patterns. Once again, reversing urban decline through

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embryonic gentrification tended to impose lower costs on public budgets than did clearance and new construction. Finally, one of the thorniest issues associated with Redevelopment/­ Renewal was the condemnation of private property through eminent domain. Local redevelopment authorities were empowered under state laws to take private property for a public purpose, so long as they offered just compensation to the owner. Eminent domain was essential to the success of the Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm. Based on the premise that reversing urban decline required a complete physical and social transformation of the project area, the paradigm was dependent on a legally defensible procedure for acquiring property titles and assembling land for new construction. In order to assemble land parcels of sufficient size, location, and configuration, local authorities were empowered to condemn properties whenever owners refused to sell them voluntarily. Condemnation under eminent domain, however, might take years before owners exhausted all legal channels. This prospect could discourage investors, add to project expenses, and delay project completion. As if these matters were not enough, substantial negative publicity usually resulted when public authorities exercised eminent domain and thereby undermined local political support. Contrastingly, embryonic gentrification largely avoided this hazard because, by definition, large-scale state-sponsored property acquisition was unnecessary. Typically, property changed hands between willing sellers and willing buyers with little fanfare and often little public intervention. Gentrification, then, was a stealthier, less disruptive, process.

Nonfinancial Attractions of Embryonic Gentrification In spite of the generally lower expenses associated with embryonic gentrification, it would be misleading to convey the impression that the gentry themselves were guided in their decisions purely by financial considerations. In fact, their motivations appear to have been multilayered. For example, the expanding historic preservation movement and America’s growing appreciation for period architecture—in some cases a reaction to the rampant modernism of the midcentury decades—influenced their housing decisions. (The widespread organization of historic societies and house tours in gentry neighborhoods testified to the enthusiasm reinforcing these ideals.) In particular, a newfound attraction to the nation’s wealth of Victorian architecture propelled some gentry (Clay 1979a, 18; Tissot 2015, 161– 165). The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s support for Victorian and early twentieth-century idioms lent cachet to neighborhoods that were home to such architectural styles (Birch and Roby 1984, 199). For these

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gentry, choosing to live in a neighborhood of late nineteenth-century homes constituted what Canadian geographer David Ley terms “residential credentialism” or a kind of philosophical declaration embedded in aesthetic and historic values (1996, 312–313). Suleiman Osman captured this intangible element in his study of the postwar gentrification of Brooklyn Heights. Newcomers, he wrote, “imagined” that by living in the neighborhood they were communing “with a Victorian gaslight bourgeoisie,” and “felt an intimate connection to the ghosts of the original owners” (2011, 101). Another motivation among many gentry involved access to their place of employment. Those who worked in the city could enjoy shorter commuting trips than suburbanites and could choose to spend longer hours at their jobs. After-hours socialization with workmates or clients was easier, as well. Or they could more conveniently carry out household shopping duties and tend to child care demands. Access to culture, entertainment, dining, nightlife, and recreational venues was another feature of gentry living. For lowincome artists, bohemians, and LGBTQ people, living in an older city neighborhood was often less expensive than suburban choices. Moreover, it could provide a more accepting community with social networks that were more sympathetic to unconventional lifestyles. Urbane gentry were thus able to indulge their cosmopolitan preferences more readily than their suburban counterparts, who confronted longer and more expensive travel times to city-centered activities. Although probably not true for most gentry, another concern would seem to have motivated a significant minority, especially during the 1960s and 1970s. For these people, choosing to live in a so-called slum or blighted area not only signified their rejection of middle-class suburban living; it proclaimed their dismissal of conventional status hierarchies marked by class and racial segregation. Many gentry had spent their youth in the new metropolitan suburbs and later, imbued by liberal values popular among young adults in the 1960s and 1970s, no longer found that lifestyle as appealing as had their parents. However tenuously, however awkwardly, their residential choice stood as a reification of personal values embedded in egalitarian and communitarian unity with their neighbors (Ley 1996).

Advanced Gentrification Notwithstanding the foregoing matters associated with embryonic gentrification during the 1970s and 1980s, gentrification discourse has shifted dramatically since then. Definitions of gentrification have expanded to encompass virtually any form of urban development resulting in the succession of low-, moderate-, and even middle-income people—particularly racial and ethnic minorities—by those of a higher socioeconomic status

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(Hackworth and Smith 2001; Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008). Not surprisingly, this greater inclusivity has resulted in the coining of multiple gentrification prefixes: new build-, rural-, tourism-, environmental-, and ethnic-, for example (Lees, Slater, and Wiley 2008, 131–154; Lees 2018). Indeed, as global climate change has resulted in sea level rise, variations in the value of property vulnerable to flooding has created a status hierarchy embodied by the phrase “climate gentrification” (Tibbetts and Mooney 2018). In recent years, we have even been confronted with the concept of “planetary gentrification” (Lees, Hyun, and Lopez-Morales 2016). Unfortunately, current usages of the term gentrification often stray so far from the phenomenon’s original meaning (i.e., embryonic gentrification), it has lost considerable explanatory power. What once was labeled urban development has transmogrified to become gentrification. The vagaries resulting from this definitional elasticity are many. One scholar, for example, has noted that in St. Louis the term “gentrification” is sometimes misapplied as a result of public confusion about its meaning; he calls for a “more nuanced vocabulary” for understanding the complexities of urban change (Swanstrom 2018). Similarly, a city planning director has declared gentrification a “useless word” that lacks an “agreed-upon meaning” (Segedy 2019). Other fuzzy elements associated with gentrification are legion (Franklin 2010, 143). For example, scholars and community activists have apparently failed to articulate at what point the gentrification of an urban neighborhood ceases. Should neighborhoods that first began to experience gentrification in the 1960s, such as the SoHo section of Manhattan (Hudson 1987; Zukin 1982) or Lincoln Park in Chicago (Bennett 1990; Hertz 2018), still be considered gentrifying neighborhoods a half century later? If the super-rich are replacing the merely rich in Brooklyn Heights, should we accept that the neighborhood is now experiencing “super-gentrification” (Lees 2003)? And if early gentrifiers on Washington’s Capitol Hill or in Columbus’s German Village (Weinberg 1979, 143–144) were later unable to afford continued residency there, should they be considered displaced? At what point does gentrification metamorphose to the more or less conventional processes of residential mobility and succession characteristic of virtually all neighborhoods, regardless of their physical, economic, and social structure? These issues notwithstanding, it is important to elaborate the core elements of advanced gentrification that clarify its most critical contrasts with embryonic gentrification. Recognizing that many American cities thus far have experienced relatively little gentrification, no matter how defined, I confine my observations to gentrification in cities where its manifestations have been most significant. Three elements appear to be paramount. First, embryonic gentrification typically involves individuals who either carry out

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most of the rehabilitation work themselves (i.e., do-it-yourselfers) or hire others to do so. Neighborhoods are transformed property by property, often by owner-occupiers who finance the work either from their own resources or from individual mortgage and home improvement loans. Small-scale builders who renovate a few properties for sale or rental are also involved. At this early stage of transformation, financial risks are generally considered greater than will be the case as the neighborhood becomes more completely middle-class in character. Advanced gentrification includes these dimensions but in addition is propelled by commercial real estate interests such as corporations, banks, and investment trusts (Stein 2019). As investor confidence increases, it becomes easier to finance new construction and rehabilitation at a larger scale than occurs in embryonic gentrification. As noted earlier, advanced gentrification can encompass a surfeit of forms of urban development well beyond those associated with embryonic gentrification, all of which are perceived to primarily benefit middle- and upper-income people. For example, the conversion or adaptive reuse of former industrial or commercial buildings to offices, apartments, or live/work studios is common. So is the construction of new infill developments such as condominiums, hotels, and mixeduse structures. Health spas, private gyms, start-up business incubators, restaurants, and craft breweries are additional examples. And facilities such as dog runs, public gardens, and bike trails are considered by some people to be gentrification bellwethers. Today, all these examples and others frequently fall under the rubric of what is popularly deemed gentrification in contemporary parlance (and what I refer to as advanced gentrification). Not uncommonly, developers resort to rebranding target neighborhoods by creating new names and advertising copy that seek to camouflage or distort historic identities once associated with poor or working-class communities. To be sure, advanced gentrification encompasses all the elements of embryonic gentrification. But with advanced gentrification, the gentry newcomers are less likely to be the primary source of energy and reinvestment driving a neighborhood’s revitalization. Instead, they are forced to compete with big capital for financing and sales contracts, confronting higher property acquisition costs and grappling with the growing corporate political power characteristic of growth machine politics (Stone and Sanders 1987). Moreover, embryonic gentry are motivated not merely by personal economic concerns but by complicating goals concerning domestic values such as home, family, schools, and community. Their commitment to their neighborhood thus is multidimensional, embodying both emotional and financial matters. In contrast, big capital, or what one author terms “the real estate state,” is by definition nearly always concerned primarily with the

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repayment of outstanding credit obligations and its financial return on investment and equity (Stein 2019). Of course, public image is important and such entities may include affordable housing and community amenities in their projects in order to comply with local development protocols, diminish political resistance, and build support among residents. A second variation between embryonic and advanced gentrification is the more aggressive role taken by the local state. During the interwar years, municipal governments maintained a somewhat laissez-faire posture regarding the renovation of homes in blighted or slum areas. As I have pointed out, local governments might implement zoning regulations, historic landmark and district ordinances, and subsidy programs to finance such activities. But the transformation of neighborhoods via embryonic gentrification transpired largely through the collective actions of individual households, rather than from the leadership of city halls. From the 1960s or 1970s onward, however, confidence rose among public and private sector actors in the prospects posed by embryonic gentrification for reversing urban decline. As it did so, local governments set in motion measures to catalyze neighborhood reinvestment. Under advanced gentrification, publicly sanctioned agency has become the norm in many municipalities as governments partner with private sector entities in the age of neoliberalism (Stein 2019). Mechanisms such as tax increment financing, development impact fees, inclusionary zoning, public-private land swaps, and the development of ­mortgage-backed securities and investor syndication, for example, have appeared in cities experiencing advanced gentrification. Although embryonic gentrification—the house-by-house renovation of older buildings by owner-­ occupants and small-scale landlords—still occurs, it is often encompassed within the larger context of advanced gentrification and the neoliberal state. A third distinction between embryonic and advanced gentrification involves the physical form taken by revitalization activity. As my case studies have demonstrated, gentrification was originally associated primarily with the structural rehabilitation of existing buildings, rather than the construction of new ones. This was due in part to the generally lower financial risks and to the less demanding level of technical skills involved in do-it-yourself rehabilitation. Neighborhoods were thus physically conserved rather than totally rebuilt, even as their demographic profiles were altered. As embryonic gentrification spread and governments and investors became increasingly confident, however, they became more willing to undertake the somewhat riskier new construction projects, as well. Ranging in size and cost, some projects produced dozens, even hundreds, of units of new housing, as well as stores, offices, hotels, and other forms of income-producing urban development. In some cases, new construction has become so lucrative, developers have been willing to include free or low-rent space for nonprofit

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organizations, art galleries and studios, and other neighborhood-serving activities as quid pro quos in return for government and public support for their income-producing developments. Even though the Urban Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm collapsed in the 1970s, it is ironic that its ultimate successor—advanced gentrification— bears uncomfortable similarities. The combination of intensive political agency (including cooperation between public and private sectors), the commercialization and professionalization of the rebuilding process, and the emphasis on larger new-construction projects are all elements associated with Urban Redevelopment. Yet, viewed in retrospect, embryonic gentrification appears to have served as an intermediary between Redevelopment and advanced gentrification. It demonstrated that there was still a market for middle-class residency in older urban neighborhoods that did not require heavy-handed public intervention through eminent domain and comprehensive clearance and rebuilding. Once embryonic gentrification established this reality, confidence among public officials and big capital in the viability of inner-city living was elevated, paving the way for the emergence of advanced gentrification. Despite the somewhat more diffuse nature of contemporary advanced gentrification, the public hostilities it inspires are remindful of those associated with Redevelopment a half century ago. From a panoptic perspective, advanced gentrification appears to be leading to the general rebuilding of entire city centers, rather than the piecemeal rehabilitation of scattered neighborhoods associated with embryonic gentrification. As it does so, the middle and upper classes increasingly predominate in the urban core. Correspondingly, parts of the surrounding suburbs, once largely populated by middle-class whites, are experiencing rising numbers of working- and middle-class ethnic and racial minorities (Anacker 2015; Gale 1987). This process of “inversion,” although limited to certain U.S. cities thus far, continues the urban restructuring associated with economic forces such as metropolitanization, deindustrialization, and globalization (Ehrenhalt 2013). Readers may perceive similarities between advanced gentrification and third-wave gentrification as originally discussed by Jason Hackworth and Neil Smith (2001; see also Hackworth 2007). However, I resist fully adopting their characterization. First, it appears that third-wave theory fails to recognize the deep historical roots of gentrification dating back a century ago in the U.S. context. As a result, by the 1970s the gentrification paradigm was a much more firmly developed alternative to reversing urban decline than is apparent from my reading of third-wave theory. Second, the first wave in the Hackworth-Smith sequence appears to amalgamate federal Redevelopment activity with the process I deem embryonic gentrification. As previously indicated, however, the Urban Redevelopment and embryonic

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gentrification paradigms differed substantially and only later did Redevelopment’s successor, Urban Renewal, begin to incorporate elements of embryonic gentrification. My third concern with third-wave theory involves its failure to distinguish clearly between embryonic gentrification’s emphasis on lower-risk building rehabilitation and the later appearance of higherrisk new construction projects. This shift fundamentally changed the nature of inner-city reinvestment activity from a process powered mostly by amateur renovators motivated primarily by a search for a home to one driven more intensely by the capitalistic pursuit of financial gain. Nevertheless, third-wave theory’s emphasis on the commercialization and professionalization of reinvestment activity, the less intensive tenor of public intervention with the demise of federal Urban Renewal, and the more interactive, yet cooperative, relationship between the public and private sectors comports comfortably with my own characterization of advanced gentrification.

The Displacement Issue Most contemporary understandings of gentrification continue to conflate the incidence of gentrification-induced displacement with the myriad other factors that account for residential mobility (Hamnett 2003a, 2419). In the 1950s and 1960s, when residents of Urban Renewal, Public Housing, or Interstate Highway project areas were evicted from their home by governmental authority, the incidence of this form of displacement was usually codified in public records. (A noteworthy exception occurred when such residents moved away in advance of official evictions, raising questions regarding undocumented displacement.) But in areas where private market processes predominate, with no official actions abridging the rights of occupancy, determining whether displacement has occurred constitutes a heavier cognitive lift. As mentioned earlier, people—and especially rental tenants—move for many reasons (Downs 1981, 84). Most scholars and activists can probably agree that evictions, steep rental increases, and lease terminations in gentrifying areas are strong signs of gentrification-induced displacement. Yet evictions can occur for just cause—for example, for failure to pay rent on time, carrying on an illegal activity, or disturbing other tenants (Desmond 2016). Rental hikes can result from a landlord’s increased operating expenses, including property taxes, repairing code violations, and meeting rules for handicapped access. As long ago as the 1934 Federal Real Property Inventory, it was revealed that renters change their address more frequently than homeowners (Hoyt 1939, 61). Tenants may choose to relocate for many reasons, including marriage, divorce, the birth of a child, death in the family, loss of a job, a job change,

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accessing a better school district, or obtaining a federal housing choice voucher for use in another neighborhood or municipality (Hymowitz 2017, 56–58). Further complicating this picture is the laudatory rise in the incidence of minority suburbanization since the 1960s. In part because of the 1968 federal Fair Housing law, many minority households, especially African Americans, were able to move from inner-city neighborhoods to better circumstances in the metropolitan suburbs (Clay 1979b; Gale 1987; Wiese 2004). As researchers have discovered, collecting reliable and broadly representative data on gentrification-induced displacement is an extremely forbidding challenge (Freeman 2006, 2009). As a result of these definitional issues, the concept of displacement itself can easily become orphaned from the conventional strictures of sound empirical social science research through misapplication. With regard to the definitions of gentrification and displacement, then, scholars, activists, and journalists continue to struggle with a phenomenon that is elusive and poorly defined and whose negative consequences are difficult to measure. By no means does this observation discount the enormous progress achieved by scholars in the study of gentrification, no matter how defined. But difficulties in distinguishing gentrification from other forms of urban development may offer a partial explanation for why the U.S. Congress was still struggling with how to respond to the gentrification dilemma even in the mid-1980s (Revitalization, Gentrification 1986). Not surprisingly, observers today continue to raise concerns about the elusiveness of gentrification’s definition (Drew 2018; Herriges 2018). Nearly all forms of urban development result in places characterized by higher property values and land uses more attuned to current market demand. Put simply, private capital does not normally erect buildings in order to lose money. To ameliorate the negative social effects of capitalism, governments can subsidize the efforts of public, nonprofit, and for-profit entities to build and operate affordable housing. They can also impose regulations such as rent control on landlords or affordable housing mandates on developers through techniques such as impact fees and inclusionary zoning. Absent such measures, marginal urban spaces face two possible outcomes: they will continue to be neglected or they will eventually be converted to so-called higherand-better uses. For scholars with a social conscience, acknowledging these realities is not necessarily to endorse them. But to ignore them is to become mired in the muddy conceptual bogs that foreclose scholarly progress.

Complications in the Gentrification Dialectic Among urban scholars and activists, the past forty-odd years have led us to a curious conundrum. Over the third quarter of the twentieth century,

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Urban Redevelopment/Renewal served as the oppositional target of many people who believed government’s primary role to be that of social justice—inclusively building and maintaining cities for the benefit and welfare of all people. And despite public authorities’ struggles to salvage Urban Renewal through adaptations such as housing rehabilitation, historic preservation, neighborhood conservation, and affordable housing construction, the Renewal paradigm was eventually toppled (Klemek 2011). Even the Model Cities program, a desperate, last-ditch attempt by Congress to quell civil unrest and humanize Renewal, ultimately lost political support. But the vacuum created by Renewal’s demise was soon filled by a new target—gentrification—which, in its initial stages, did not carry the rigid imprimatur of nationally directed, top-down sponsorship and administration once associated with federal policies directed at reversing urban decline. By the late 1970s, the phenomenon that was becoming known as gentrification in the United States had already been in existence for more than a half century. But it unfolded largely as a process lacking centralized authority, an identifiable trajectory, or publicly inspired goals. (Only later did it become the object of substantial political agency.) While scholars and activists have differed over the primacy of so-called production theories (N. Smith 1979, 1996) and consumption theories (Hamnett 2003a), as well as issues of agency (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008), there seems to be little question that embryonic gentrification in the 1960s and early 1970s was largely extraneous to governmental control and authority. As I have tried to demonstrate, those two decades served as a pivotal period during which federal authorities gradually disengaged from measures to reverse urban decline through extensive hierarchical planning and management regimens and instead yielded ground to local authorities and to free markets (Fainstein et al. 1983). This outcome created a quandary for liberal and radical activists and urban scholars. Discontent over crosscutting issues of urban decline and revitalization, such as social justice, inequality, spatial mismatch, uneven development, and commodification, could no longer be as readily directed at specific public policies or public officials. In effect, the phenomenon of agency had been undermined by the decentralization of liability. And to complicate matters still further, the gentry themselves—many of whom were politically progressive, college-educated people—resembled nothing so much as the politically progressive, college-educated intelligentsia who criticized them for displacing the poor and minorities (Schlichtman and Patch 2013). Unsurprisingly, some of these people were both gentry and scholarly or media critics of gentrification (Moskowitz 2017; Schlichtman, Patch, and Hill 2017). From the vantage point of minority and working-

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class activists who opposed gentrification, this congruency of class identity between the blamers and the blamed often led to confusion and suspicions. Further complicating the gentrification dialectic was a curious antinomy that appeared in the 1960s and 1970s. On the one hand, the migration of middle-class people from cities to suburbs was sometimes characterized as their abandonment of the poor and minorities, who were left behind in so-called slums. For example, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once wrote that “the suburbs are the white nooses around the black necks of the city,” employing a dramatized trope to convey just how dire this situation was perceived to be (T. Jackson 2007, 277). Intimations of racism, apartheid, and classism lingered in the air. Declining municipal revenues, poorly performing schools, property abandonment, and slums could easily be blamed on those who had departed the city. On the other hand, middle-class people who chose to reside in a city, but could not afford to purchase property in a well-established middle- or ­upper-income neighborhood, were often subjected to another characterization. When not being heralded as “pioneers” or “the vanguard” by enthusiastic journalists and public officials, they were sometimes depicted as insensitive elites imperiously invading communities that reputedly belonged only to longtime incumbents. Some scholarly and media critics and community activists disapproved of gentrifiers for moving to a formerly declining city neighborhood and dislocating incumbent residents (Tissot 2015; Moskowitz 2017). Despite the willingness of many gentry to risk their personal capital by investing in areas suffering disinvestment, and despite their long hours of sweat equity, their contributions to the city’s economy and public revenues, their efforts to improve local services, and their vulnerability to crimes such as vandalism and burglary, the newcomers often found themselves referenced in tendentious, if not willfully pernicious, terms (Tissot 2015, 90). Not surprisingly, many felt “damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.” While not always inaccurate, such characterizations simply distracted attention from the central dilemma: only massive public subsidies could hope to reduce inequality and increase opportunity. Yet just as embryonic gentrification and other forms of reinvestment were contributing to the reversal of urban decline in parts of several cities, governments at all levels were relinquishing responsibility for continuing the War on Poverty and maintaining an adequate social safety net. In effect, federal decision makers elected to decentralize the war to substate levels of government and to the private sector. At the same time, as a cost-cutting measure, they chose to privatize many functions of government, handing over the reins, as it were, to profit-making and nonprofit entities, sometimes with hazy lines of public

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accountability. Had federal, state, and local governments maintained their budgetary commitments at levels proportionate to those of the late 1960s, public subventions might have been sufficient to offset some of the negative consequences of advanced gentrification. Still, to render such an observation should not ignore parallel realities of the past half century. Even if gentrification had never materialized in American cities, other issues would still have contributed to the sorry state of affordable housing, declining neighborhoods, and matters of human welfare. Massive deindustrialization radically altered the American economic landscape (Bluestone and Harrison 1982; Teaford 1990, 288). Consequently, millions of jobs in manufacturing and related sectors were eliminated or transferred, mostly from cities to suburbs and from the Frostbelt to the Sunbelt (Kleinberg 1995, 128). As congressional representation has diminished in Frostbelt states and increased in Sunbelt states, issues critical to several of the most severely declining American cities have lost political momentum (Goldfield and Brownell, 1990, 394–400). Additionally, globalization exported both capital and employment from the United States to other nations (Sassen 1991). Automation, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the gig or sharing economy, among other dimensions of the information age, are drastically altering the nature of work and the skills necessary to compete in the employment marketplace. Wages, salaries, and other forms of compensation such as health care insurance have suffered. These are not the only trends accounting for today’s urban conditions. The national deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients and services from the 1970s onward and the concomitant failure to create adequate community mental health alternatives have contributed substantially to the American pandemics of homelessness and substance abuse. Health threats such as the AIDS epidemic took the lives of thousands of Americans. The vast challenges of environmental remediation, now complicated by global warming and climate change, compete for scarce public resources while human welfare is threatened by sea level rise, wildfires, hurricanes, species depletion, and other disasters. In the face of these forbidding realities, therefore, we are obligated to remember that our expectations of governments have mushroomed exponentially over the past half century. In such a political climate, it is difficult to fathom how it is possible to resurrect the image of urban reform we once knew. At the heart of this conundrum is a new kind of spatial mismatch, this one continental in scale. For purposes of discussion only, I suggest a classification of U.S. metropolitan areas based purely on my forty-plus years of personal observations and without a lengthy quantitative analysis to justify my observations. Some readers may disagree with my typology or with

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my assignment of individual metro areas to particular subcategories. However, my intent is merely to offer a simple conceptual schema to serve as a basis for interchange and reflection.

Comeback, Struggling, and Interval Metropolitan Areas Among the nation’s larger metropolitan areas, those located along the East and West Coasts are for the most part leading what might be termed America’s urban revival. If we round up the usual suspects, New York, Washington, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon, are likely to be included among the leading “comeback” metros. Several coastal metros have developed global economies, becoming America’s windows to the Pacific Rim, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or South America. Not surprisingly, all have experienced significant levels of gentrification. Along the southern Atlantic and Gulf coasts, Miami, Tampa, and Houston appear to have achieved a similar status. Not all comeback metros are confined to the U.S. coasts. Atlanta, Denver, Charlotte, Austin, Nashville, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Sacramento, and Minneapolis-St. Paul, for example, although located inland, maintain an economic, political, and cultural dominance within their individual geographical regions. Aiding them are advantages reinforcing their economic and political stature. Austin, St. Paul, Indianapolis, Sacramento, Denver, and Columbus, for example, are state capitals, with thousands of public sector jobs and taxpayer-subsidized economies (not to mention local or nearby public university campuses). Cities such as Nashville and Austin have developed distinctive identities as the nation’s commercial music capitals, drawing musicians, recording companies, and millions of tourists. At the other extreme are what I term “struggling metros,” such as Baltimore, Detroit, St. Louis, Milwaukee, Buffalo, Cleveland, Dayton, Newark, Memphis, and Youngstown. All contend with widespread disinvestment, substantial poverty, and underfunded public services. Moreover, they are situated in disadvantageous locations relative to other, more competitive metros that dominate their geographic region. For example, in the New England–Mid-Atlantic coastal region, Baltimore competes with Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, all of which have attributes often more appealing to new and expanding economic and cultural activities. Newark vies with nearby Jersey City and Hoboken, both highly gentrified small cities directly opposite New York City on the Hudson River. Detroit, St. Louis, and Milwaukee, once midwestern industrial powerhouses, are outperformed by Chicago, inarguably the symbolic economic and cultural capital of mid-America.

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Ohio struggles to sustain a plethora of declining industrial centers such as Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, and Youngstown. In the postindustrial era, there is simply not enough current or potential manufacturing activity for which an Ohio location is advantageous. The attributes that once rendered these cities good locations for manufacturing are not necessarily as attractive to banking, insurance, technology, and other corporate enterprises that provide white-collar or advanced-services employment. Therefore, employment creation lags and these cities struggle to pump up local economies from within, often through publicly subsidized development projects and state and federal welfare programs (Glaeser 2013). Finally, lying between the polar extremes of comeback and struggling metros are what I term “interval metros,” which might include Philadelphia, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Oakland, Oklahoma City, and Kansas City, Kansas. Interval metros are those that have demonstrated significant signs of reinvestment and revitalization while still experiencing worrisome levels of poverty and declining neighborhoods. Philadelphia and Cincinnati, for example, have undergone substantial gentrification and downtown redevelopment in their core areas. Yet Philadelphia’s location, less than a two-hour drive from New York, puts it in a difficult position to compete with the Big Apple for new investment, jobs, income, and tax revenues. On the one hand, office rentals are lower in Philadelphia; on the other hand, those in New York put firms in closer contact with world markets and Wall Street investment capital. Consequently, Philadelphia is able to attract some economic activity but not enough to substantially reduce its relatively large population of underemployed and unemployed households. Similarly, Cincinnati lies within a few hours’ drive of Louisville, Indianapolis, and Columbus, placing it in competition with those metros for economic and population growth. New Orleans, a major port city with connections to Central American markets, competes with its more economically competitive regional neighbors, Houston and Miami. Although its tourism economy is the envy of many other cities, its large population of low-income families and its vulnerabilities to rising sea levels handicap the city’s advancement. And of course, in the face of future threats from climate change, all three metros will contend with greater incidences of catastrophic weather from hurricanes and flooding. In the case of Oakland, long a center of economic disadvantage and lagging opportunities, its proximity to San Francisco hampered its ability to compete for new investment. But more recently, as land availability and prices, as well as construction costs and interest rates, have escalated in San Francisco, Oakland’s fortunes have risen. Spillover investment capital has migrated there, creating thousands of new jobs, corporate offices, and residential development. Yet divisive political dynamics and a dysfunctional

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government hamper the city’s efforts to create more opportunities for its sizable impoverished population. With regard to all such interval metros, the point here is that, while showing many positive signs of rejuvenation, they are still more vulnerable to economic downturns or catastrophic environmental events, rendering them less resilient than metros with stronger economic performance. With time, some will improve their status, while others will continue to contend with lagging economies. In the twenty-first century, the old inequalities between central cities and metropolitan suburbs and between Frostbelt and Sunbelt regions are confronting the newer inequalities separating coastal and interior, or socalled flyover, regions. While disparities among Americans in terms of welfare and opportunity have always existed, the vastly differential outcomes now emerging are centered, more so than ever before, in geography.

Conclusion

T

he central thesis of this book is that contemporary conceptualizations of gentrification suffer from inadequate and misleading historical contextualization. Despite the extraordinary body of media accounts and scholarly literature produced on gentrification over the past forty-odd years, we have contended with a phenomenon whose origins have remained largely unacknowledged in modern discourse. By shedding light on the “prehistory” of gentrification, I have attempted to reframe our understanding of its complex parameters. In so doing, I hope to stimulate fresh thinking about the goal of reversing urban decline in America, including our quest for diverse communities welcoming to people of all incomes, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and conditions of disability. I am hopeful that we can approach this herculean task with a more nuanced and firmly grounded perspective than has been possible with the somewhat myopic images we have labored under thus far. I sincerely hope that the following conclusions will be considered in such a task.

Gentrification in the United States Emerged Approximately a Century Ago Ironically, even though embryonic gentrification first appeared in a few American cities during the teens of the last century, it played out largely under conditions of anonymity. Apparently, only a handful of journalists

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recognized its existence, although none coined a name that achieved widespread currency. A few journalists referred to gentrification simply as “remodeling,” thereby relegating a complex physical, economic, and social process to a more or less humdrum act involving the physical improvement of a building. Among scholars, I have been able to identify only two—Carolyn Ware ([1935] 1994) and Walter Firey ([1947] 1968)—who published research on embryonic gentrification in the United States before 1950. Even by the 1950s and 1960s, gentrification proceeded under terminology such as the misleading “back-to-the-city movement” (Palen and London 1984a, 7–8) or others such as neighborhood preservation, conservation, rehabilitation, renovation, reclamation, resettlement, revitalization, or renewal, nearly all of which tend to emphasize the phenomenon’s purely physical dimensions. It was not until the latter 1970s that Americans began to appropriate the English term “gentrification.” This was a curious development, however, because the English concept of “gentry” was then slowly emerging from the historically rigid pattern of social stratification found in Great Britain. At best, this system bore only a passing likeness to the somewhat more fluid class structure characteristic of the United States (Palen and London 1984a, 7–8). Yet “gentrification”—both the nomenclature and the empirical phenomenon—caught on quickly in the United States. Unfortunately, this belated discovery occurred under the popular assumption that gentrification was a recent trend at the time. One scholarly study, for example, reported inaccurately that the revitalization of Beacon Hill was “an early central-city historic preservation success, coming shortly after World War II” (Jakle and Wilson 1992, 243). Two other authors discussed Greenwich Village as a relatively modern example of gentrification, apparently unaware that the neighborhood’s transformation originated nearly a century earlier (Alexiou 2006, 30; Levy 2000, 167). Such misperceptions, although understandable, risk misleading readers. An entire half century, encompassing the phenomenon’s origins and evolution in the early to mid-twentieth century, has gone largely unrecognized by scholars, journalists, activists, and others from the 1970s onward. While some observers may regard this omission with fewer qualms than others, ignoring it only perpetuates an incomplete, if unintentionally specious, intellectual framework for understanding one of the most controversial and transformative American urban trends of the past century. As I have tried to show, the failure to fully contextualize the evolution of gentrification in American society has led to misunderstandings regarding its modern definition. Today, gentrification discourse is Aladdinlike, taking on an elusive panoply of identities, all more or less variations of the generic phrase “urban development” (or “real estate development”). When defined so expansively, gentrification suffers from a heterogeneity

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of meanings, which risks obscuring more than it reveals. Although such conceptual fuzziness may promote constructive discourse among scholars in the early stages of any social phenomenon, forty years of gentrification research has only led to semantic elasticities that have frustrated many scholars (Lees, Slater, and Wyly 2008). Indeed, some authors have employed the G-word while neglecting to define it at all (Stone and Sanders 1987, 40, 137, 146). It is difficult to understand how the social sciences and professions such as urban planning and architecture can inform the development of sound theories and effective public policies given the widespread confusion around this important trend.

History, Architecture, and Place Matter It was no accident that embryonic gentrification first appeared in the United States in a few large cities on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. With the exception of Washington, D.C., they were all settled in the seventeenth or early eighteenth centuries, overwhelmingly by people of European descent. (More accurately, they were expropriated from Native Americans and resettled.) And though Washington began its evolution as the national capital in the 1790s, its oldest section, Georgetown, was originally settled in 1751 as a freestanding community. By the early twentieth century, these cities, including their built environments, were among the oldest on the North American continent. As massive immigration and the industrial revolution imposed drastic pressures on the social, economic, and physical character of these places, their oldest surviving sections—including Georgetown, Greenwich Village, and Beacon Hill—were among the first to exhibit signs of decline. Overcrowding, rising crime, and the neglect of real property all contributed to fears that these once-valued spaces were becoming slums. Widespread beliefs in the obsolescence thesis and filter theory catalyzed and legitimized these anxieties. With time, the differences between their depressed current values and their potential for future appreciation were sufficient to attract investors hoping to exploit the rent gap (Gruen 2010, 100– 101; N. Smith 1987). On Beacon Hill and in Georgetown, investors first sought to erect apartment buildings or convert existing single-family dwellings to apartments or rooming houses. In Greenwich Village, they initially tried to add not only apartments but loft manufacturing structures. Nevertheless, other people, including old-family elites, the nouveau riche, and/or bohemians, who valued each neighborhood’s central location and fading historic character, imposed a different trajectory. And early embryonic gentrification eventually transformed each neighborhood, undermining the presumed authority and inevitability of filter theory and the obsolescence thesis.

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Each neighborhood, because of its advanced age, contained relatively high concentrations of period architecture. And despite signs of deferred maintenance and disinvestment, many early gentry were attracted to the stately homes of a bygone era. Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival structures exuded propriety and dignity, even in various states of disrepair. In some cases, the newcomers, weary of what they perceived to be the architectural excesses of the later Victorian age, gravitated toward the more aged vintage forms as a statement of their cultural tastes. As well, some embryonic gentry reacted to the meteoric rise of modernism in architecture and design, seeking the smaller scale and familiarity of older forms. Related to architectural tastes was morphology. Some newcomers reacted positively to a neighborhood’s self-contained character or to its topographical features such as hilly terrain or water views. Brick sidewalks, cobblestone streets, or an abundance of mature trees offered reminders of a quieter era before the machine age. Although the country’s historic preservation movement would not ascend to national status until after World War II, local enthusiasts were growing in numbers during the interwar years.

Causal Factors versus Catalysts When scholars and other observers first attempted to account for the “discovery” of embryonic gentrification in the late 1970s and thereafter, it was tempting to associate the phenomenon with other social and economic processes then unfolding in parallel. Whether by intent or oversight, however, these observations were easily misconstrued, sometimes leading to the assumption that they were causal factors. Thus, gentrification might be portrayed as an outcome of deindustrialization (Hamnett 2000, 334). As thousands of factories closed or downsized, hundreds of thousands of blue-collar employees were thrown out of work. Automation and robotics further chipped away at factory employment rolls. As the nation was undergoing economic restructuring, many workers and their families were forced to move out of inner-city neighborhoods. Rent gaps grew as property values slipped or stagnated, and young middle-class newcomers supplanted the former inhabitants (N. Smith 1996, 54–55). Closely related in this discourse was the rise of globalization (Feffer 2007, 303–304). Capital flight and the migration of jobs meant that these resources were not simply being redistributed within the United States from Frostbelt to Sunbelt; now the nation’s total supply of relatively well-paid manual jobs—unskilled, semiskilled, and skilled—was shrinking as a result of plant downsizing, closings, and relocation to other nations. In their place, the global economy was creating white-collar employment in cities and ­suburbs for which unemployed blue-collar workers were rarely qualified.

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Consequently, the college educated were often favored by the new economics of deindustrialization and capital flight. As various scholars have pointed to the interrelationships between deindustrialization and globalization, on the one hand, and gentrification, on the other, it was not difficult for their readers to assume a cause-and-effect scenario (Hamnett 2003a, 2402; Hymowitz 2017, 50). Whether intended or not, such presumptions have unfolded in the absence of a sufficiently historical perspective. As we have seen, American gentrification long predated these trends, first arising as it did at the zenith of the nation’s industrial age, rather than at its denouement. While few scholars would argue that modern gentrification has been unaffected by deindustrialization or globalization, its roots trace back in time considerably before the advent of these trends. Among the exceptions, however, geographer Chris Hamnett has been careful to clarify that gentrification itself predates the catalytic impacts of the postindustrial economy (2000, 334). A third commonly cited contributor to gentrification in the early literature was the postwar baby boom population (Feffer 2007, 303–304; Schill and Nathan 1983, 17). Boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, reached the household formation stage of their life cycle during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Their unprecedented numbers, relatively high levels of college education, and affluent status heightened demand for housing. Many boomers turned to faded city enclaves in close proximity to employment, recreation, and entertainment opportunities. Often, they were able to outbid poor and working-class families for housing, contributing to displacement and affordable housing shortages. The availability of new birth control methods gave boomers better control over family planning, allowing them to postpone childbirths or to reject child-rearing altogether. Concerns about safe play spaces for children and poorly performing city schools were thus allayed. For certain, deindustrialization, globalization, the maturation of the baby boom generation, and rising levels of college education each influenced the growth of gentrification over the last quarter of the twentieth century. Yet they should be considered catalysts, not causes, of gentrification. As my research has shown, long before these four trends surfaced in the United States, embryonic gentrification was already a fact (although a highly localized one) of American urban life. Even though it was in its early stages, the gentrification paradigm was in evidence in at least six U.S. cities between World Wars I and II. Thirty-odd years after the end of World War II, the belated recognition of the gentrification trend led some observers to interpret its appearance as dependent on some combination of deindustrialization, globalization, the baby boom generation, and increases in college-educated people (Hymowitz

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2017, 51). In fact, however, none of these trends was an indispensable precondition for the genesis of embryonic gentrification in the United States. It is entirely conceivable that, even in their absence, embryonic gentrification would have continued to spread, albeit probably at a slower pace and to fewer urban neighborhoods, over the last quarter of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, this observation does not clarify why the first signs of embryonic gentrification appeared in the United States in the teens and twenties. Probable elements of an explanation include the following: Walter Firey’s thesis regarding the sentiments of high-status elites toward family, identity, and social class; Carolyn Ware’s thesis regarding the needs and desires for social propinquity among artistic and intellectual nonconformists; and the early twentieth-century emergence of an appreciation for American historic architecture and morphology. We can hope that urban historians will carry out the trench work necessary to shed further light on the factors giving rise to U.S. embryonic gentrification in the early twentieth century.

The Gentrification Paradigm Complemented, and Later Supplanted, the Redevelopment Paradigm The recognition of the nation’s urban crisis after World War II essentially pitted two opposing strategies against one another. One of these, embryonic gentrification, was largely a nongovernmental, market-driven approach, based on the exploitation of the rent gap (production theory) and on changing housing demand factors within a cohort of mostly younger home-­ seekers (consumption theory). At its center was the concept of reuse or recycling of the neighborhood’s physical capital, plus the gradual replacement of most of the incumbent population by people of a higher socioeconomic class, and often of a different race or ethnicity. As pointed out, this paradigm basically inverted the obsolescence thesis and filter theory (Gruen 2010, 54–55, 89). Among the first efforts to conceptualize the triggering element of embryonic gentrification was rent gap theory (N. Smith 1987, 1996). It argued that as property filters downward it does not (as filter theory would predict) necessarily deteriorate inexorably to the point of slumhood, abandonment, and zero value. Instead, when its perceived potential rent significantly exceeds its current rent, the property may then justify reinvestment through renovation or through demolition and new construction. Rent gap theory, then, rejects the finality of filter theory and its corollary, the obsolescence thesis. Opposing embryonic gentrification was the second strategy, Urban Redevelopment. It largely accepted the obsolescence thesis and filter theory as

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inevitable outcomes of the urban crisis. Initially, the Redevelopment program sought to overcome market conditions such as the outmigration of middle-class families to the suburbs, the repopulation of urban neighborhoods by racial minorities and low-income people, and the physical and economic deterioration of inner-city neighborhoods. Of these conditions, it should be noted, some observers have referred to race as the “subtext” or overarching concern underlying perceptions of the urban crisis (Beauregard 2003, 153–157). At first, Redevelopment’s modus operandi in responding to these trends involved the demolition of older neighborhoods and the dispersal of most existing residents, businesses, and organizations to other neighborhoods; this was followed by the construction of new buildings and infrastructure and the repopulation of the community. However, as the Redevelopment process became increasingly politically contentious, new amendments renamed the program Urban Renewal in 1954 and permitted an alternative to demolition and clearance—the conservation and renovation of existing structures. Subsequent amendments proffering government grants and loans for housing renovation and subsidies to advance historic preservation demonstrated that the embryonic gentrification paradigm was growing, albeit sluggishly, in popularity over the late 1950s and 1960s. When Urban Renewal finally lost critical political support in 1974, Congress replaced it with a plethora of new federal programs in subsequent years. Nearly all were neighborhood-based and supportive of housing preservation. For the most part, public policy makers had abandoned the Redevelopment rationale, with its emphasis on conquering slums by distorting market conditions through a muscular emphasis on centralized government and hierarchical administration and control. Instead, they adopted structural reuse and rehabilitation, including the embryonic gentrification paradigm, as the primary approach to thwart urban decline. To some degree, their actions were reinforced by the rising prestige of the historic preservation movement and the social status of its proponents. For the first time, public officials were discovering that at least some older inner-city neighborhoods had a constituency of affluent Americans, rather than solely a congeries of powerless poor and working-class people. Indeed, the lesson was manifest: the middle class had not completely turned its back on the nation’s inner cities. Because the gentrification process was initiated predominantly by do-ityourself homeowner-occupants rather than large corporations or institutions, it was based on the collective actions of thousands of individuals laboring primarily on their own behalf, but often with attendant efforts to improve general neighborhood conditions. The essentially private, entrepreneurial character of gentrification eventually segued into compatibility with

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the growing federal emphasis on the privatization of government services to for-profit and not-for-profit entities and the devolution of federal authority over government resources to state and local governments. The new age of neoliberalism was emerging, and for the most part, gentrification was convergent with its tenets (Fainstein 1994).

Semantic Transmutation With the demise of the federal Urban Renewal program, academic and activist opponents seldom had a conspicuous, publicly sponsored and funded target at which to direct resistance and protest. The program’s successor, Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), devolved substantial discretion over expenditures from the federal government to local governments and private organizations (Dommel et al. 1982). For the most part, CDBG abandoned comprehensive neighborhood clearance. By distributing block grant funds widely across all or most city neighborhoods (instead of a few Renewal project sites) and permitting expenditures for a multiplicity of purposes, the new program diminished local resistance. City politicians were more supportive, in part because they could steer funds to their ward or precinct, allowing city hall to reward specific constituencies while defusing antipathy from potential critics. Washington’s interrelationship with cities was further altered with the imposition of drastic federal budget reductions for urban and social purposes during the presidential administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and to a lesser extent, during that of Bill Clinton (Morgan and Hirlinger 1993; Teaford 1990, 262). The neoliberal age was in its infancy. For a time after the demise of Urban Renewal, “urban renewal” assumed a generic status in popular parlance. The one-time name of a federal program became a catch-all phrase for nearly any form of real estate development in cities. But this urban renewal, now largely disassociated from the vulnerabilities of state sponsorship, conveyed an image of diffuse, often indeterminate agency. Consequently, the phrase did little to stir one’s soul and coalesce organized resistance. As it so happened, however, community activists and critical scholars soon found a new target against which to lodge protests. By the early and mid-1980s, the concept of gentrification was becoming widely recognized—and politicized. But just as the Urban Renewal program involved a complicated cast of individuals and organizations—local public housing and renewal agencies, state highway authorities, developers, bankers, universities, and medical institutions, for example—the process of gentrification encompassed the lives of a diverse array of interests. Among them were career-oriented, often idealistic, young adults whose commit-

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ment to city life aided the reversal of decline and disinvestment; incumbent residents, many of whom struggled to keep their homes and support their families; historic preservationists, who opposed the destruction of architectural patrimony; dedicated activists seeking to harness economic growth for assets such as affordable housing; speculators, some of whom cared little for the neighborhoods they exploited; and people whose unlawful activities—drug dealing, robbery, burglary, and vandalism, for example—often composed an atypical, but not always inconsequential, element of neighborhood economic life. The wide diversity of interests associated with embryonic gentrification, however, operated largely outside of the state-imposed disciplinary framework once governing Urban Renewal. Gentrification, it might be said, was composed not only of many voices but of several choirmasters, each of whom conducted in a different key and tempo. Opposition to gentrification, therefore, was more difficult to compose than simply targeting a local Renewal headquarters or a project site office. Lacking even the loosely structured accountability of publicly sponsored Urban Renewal, gentrification became a convenient catch-all concept for nearly any form of urban development deemed to disadvantage poor, working-class, and minority residents and the organizations serving their interests. And as that process transpired, gentrification lost definitional precision and instead became increasingly associated with diffuse and nebulous concepts. As Loretta Lees, Tom Slater, and Elvin Wyly have observed, gentrification has become “a political, politicized, and politically loaded word” (2008, 155). Consequently, one can now read through scholarly publications (doubtless including some of my own) on aspects of gentrification that completely sidestep definitions of intended meaning. In effect, gentrification has become the victim of a process of semantic transmutation that has appended layers of connotation diffusing the concept’s meaning nearly to the point of opacity. “Advanced gentrification,” as I term it, has become the equivalent of pornography: we cannot really define it, but we know it when we see it. At least, we think we do. And just as our conceptions of pornography have undergone massive changes over the past half century, so also have our conceptions of gentrification. Its primary attribute, according to several ­recent studies I have read, is the assumption of displacement: those of lesser circumstances are involuntarily forced from their homes by those of greater circumstances. Too often, the polarities resulting from this oversimplification have degraded discourse to the level of demonization and scapegoating. It is time to refocus our scrutiny from the nebulous gentrification dialectic to a broader frame of reference.

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We need to focus on a few simple, yet overarching, truths. Income inequality is at the heart of the issue. Market capitalism has become even less adroit at providing adequate housing for all socioeconomic groups than it was decades ago. And the state—in the form of federal, state, and local governments—has largely forsaken its once dedicated role as the housing provider of last resort. Congress and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development have substantially reduced the nation’s supply of publicly owned housing through devolution and privatization. Strategies such as the demolition of thousands of units of public housing and construction of far fewer affordable units in mixed income, privately owned, HOPE VI developments constituted one approach (Varady et al. 2005). As a result, the national state evaded the responsibility to offset market failures through constructing and operating adequate supplies of housing whose costs are intended to be shared equitably among all Americans. Another response was the distribution of a woefully insufficient supply of federal housing choice rental vouchers (Varady and Walker 2007). This supply dilemma is further complicated by the increasing unwillingness of private landlords to accept vouchers, especially in cities with strong local economies. Voucher recipients are not infrequently relegated to a veritable scavenger hunt for privately owned shelter. Another federal initiative, the low-income housing tax credit program, offers tax relief incentives to investors who finance private rental housing for households earning less than 60 percent of the area median income. In part because the tax credits are rationed annually by the federal government, far fewer housing units are constructed or rehabilitated than are needed (Duda 2001). And with the 2017 federal tax law amendments, lower personal tax rates risk reducing the incentive for investors to purchase tax credits, thereby diminishing funding for affordable housing. Finally, beyond these federally sponsored policies, many local governments have turned to the private sector to boost affordable housing stocks by imposing impact fees and inclusionary zoning requirements. These mechanisms simply pass on the costs of housing needy families to developers’ middle- and upper-income clients. But for clients at the margins of affordability, the higher cost of housing from these mandates only pushes them further away from the possibility of homeownership. And because investment capital is portable, such policies risk the unintended consequence of reducing urban housing construction rates, thereby increasing competition for existing housing. The elusive goal of income and wealth redistribution in America appears to be the only truly promising route to social justice. Redistribution does not mean that economic disparities will not continue to exist between and among people. It does, however, assume that a nationwide “floor” of

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resources, as well as a “ceiling,” are necessary to ensure that a fair and humane standard of living is secured by all. The gross maldistribution of wealth in America is an embarrassment not simply of riches, but of greed as well. Nations such as Denmark, Sweden, and Norway have long shown the way to a more just and equitable society. We can only hope that the twentyfirst century will bring such reforms to the United States. In the meantime, gentrification—in all its dimensions—will continue to play a role in revitalizing certain cities. The revival of market demand for inner-city living constitutes the good news in the dialectical binary over the future of American cities. The bad news, however, is that even in these places, market dynamics alone will not house many of those who become victims. In other cities—those thus far largely untouched by gentrification—the prognosis is even less sanguine. Where private capital is reticent to invest, housing tends to filter downward in quality, leaving even greater numbers of residents living in more affordable, yet often unsafe, conditions. No matter how controversial, gentrification will continue to be a critical tool in the revitalization of American cities. But by itself, gentrification will not be enough. It remains to be seen if the federal, state, and local governments will finally fulfill the pledge of “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family,” as promised by the National Housing Act of 1949. In the meantime, we can ponder the irony that this noble goal was articulated in federal legislation that included a program resulting in the destruction of thousands of units of housing in the name of Urban Redevelopment.

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Index

Abbott, Berenice, 66 Acheson, Dean, 32 Acorn Street (Boston), 99 Adams, Charles Francis, 88 Adams, John, 24 Adams, John Quincy, 88 Adams Morgan (Washington, D.C.), 3 advanced gentrification, 10–13, 185–189. See also embryonic gentrification; gentrification Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, 152 aesthetes, 95 African Americans: on Beacon Hill, 107; on Capitol Hill, 121; in Charleston, 115; in Georgetown, 28–29, 40, 43–46, 53–59; in Southwest Washington, 121; in the suburbs, 164; in the Vieux Carre, 117–119 AIDS epidemic, 194 Alcott, Louisa May, 24 Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, 88 Alexandria, Virginia, 26, 119, 121, 131, 139; gentrification in, 121; Louis Justement on, 139–140; as maritime competitor with Georgetown, 26

Alley Dwelling Act (Washington, D.C.), 43–46 Alley Dwelling Authority, 43–44; and eviction and segregation of black tenants, 44–45; and John Ihlder, 44 alley dwellings: in Boston, 97–98; in New York City, 72; in Washington, D.C., 43–46, 119–120 Alsop, Joseph, 52 American Preservation magazine, 171 Anderson, Sherwood, 66, 117 Anderson Street (Boston), 98 Annapolis, Maryland, 159 Ansley Park (Atlanta), 173 apartments, 3, 6, 13, 119; in Boston 88–89, 91–96, 99–104, 114–115; and “cliff dwellers,” 53; conversion of, to condominiums, 13, 88, 156–157; conversion of nonresidential structures to, 181; in New York, 63, 68, 70–71, 73–76, 78–80; in Philadelphia, 114–115; in Washington, D.C., 13, 29–30, 33, 39, 41, 53 Appleton, William Sumner, 106 architectural review commission, 125; in Boston, 105; in Charleston, 116; in New Orleans, 117

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artificial intelligence, 194 Arts and Crafts movement, 100 Associated Charities of Washington, D.C., 27 associational proximity, 103 Atlanta, Georgia, 8, 195; gentrification in, 153, 173; and regional economic dominance, 195 Atlantic coast, 11, 84–85, 109, 195, 200 Auden, W. H., 121 Austin, Texas, 195 automation, 194 avant-garde, 52, 66, 68 baby boom, 146, 202; as catalytic versus causal, 16–18 Back Bay (Boston), 91, 199; as haven for former Beacon Hill residents, 92; and land reclamation, 87 back-to-the-city movement, 170–172; national conference of, 171; as synonym for gentrification, 170 Baker, Newton D., 31 balloon frame technology, 6 Baltimore, Maryland: Mount Royal–Bolton Hill, 159; neighborhood conservation in, 151; struggling metros in, 195; and Urban Homesteading, 167; Waverly neighborhood, 132, 134 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, 26 Banneker, Benjamin, 23. See also L’EnfantEllicott plan Barnes, Djuna, 66, 79 Baroque city planning, 23, 60 Battery (Charleston), 116, 146, 156; decline of minority families in, 116; historic district designation of, 116; poor housing conditions in, 115 Bay Village (Boston), 122, 148 Beacon Hill (Boston), 41, 52, 63–70, 83–125, 146–148, 151–156, 199–200; bohemianization of, 93–96; Flats section of, 90–102; LGBT people in, 94; North Slope, 91–107; ratio of women to men in, 101; signs of decline in, 89–93; social composition of, 101–103; South Slope, 88–105 Beacon Hill Associates (Boston), 93–94 Beacon Street (Boston), 87–88 Beals, Jessie Tarbox, 66 Beebe, Lucius, 94–95

Belin, F. Lamont, 31 Bell’s Court (Washington, D.C.), 44–46. See also Pomander Walk Berkman, Alexander, 66, 69 Berle, Adolf A., Jr., 50 Bethesda, Maryland, 26 Biddle, Francis, 51 bisexual people, 19, 94. See also gay people; lesbians; LGBTQ people Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Connecticut, 32 Black, Viola, 95 Black Parrot, 69 Bleecker Street (New York City), 77 blight, 5, 9, 19, 89–93, 122, 129–134, 139–142, 145, 154, 162, 166, 181–188, 215, 226. See also ghetto; slums Bliss, Robert Woods, 31 block grant, 165–169, 205 Bodenheim, Maxwell, 66 Boerum Hill (New York City), 171. See also Brooklyn bohemians, 16, 64–70, 74, 78, 80–82, 94–96, 102, 107, 185, 200. See also creative class Boston, Massachusetts, 8–9, 16–17, 32, 41, 52–54, 63, 83–122, 125, 131–149, 153–158, 170–173, 195; Back Bay, 87–92; Bay Village, 122, 148; Beacon Hill, 86–108; compared to New York City, 85–86; Social Register of, 92; South End, 122, 153–158 Boston Architectural Commission, 105 Boston Athenaeum, 102 Boston Globe, 155 Boston Redevelopment Authority, 153 Bourbon Street (New Orleans), 117. See also Vieux Carre bourgeoisie, 185; conventions of, 82, 95 Bourne, Frank A., 93–94 Bowdoin Street (Boston), 99 bow front townhouses, 88, 111. See also brownstone townhouses Brahmins, 88–96, 103. See also Knickerbockers; patricians Brick Oven, 94 Broad Street (Charleston), 116 Brookland (Washington, D.C.), 3 Brooklyn (New York City), 81, 121. See also Boerum Hill; Park Slope Brooklyn Heights (New York City), 121. See also Boerum Hill; Park Slope Brownstone Revival Committee, 171

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brownstone townhouses, 88, 121, 171. See also bow front townhouses Bryant, Louise, 66, 95 building codes, 6, 138, 142, 147, 166–167, 190 building permits, 35, 46, 48 Bulfinch, Charles, 87, 104 Burnham, Daniel, 134–135 Burr, Aaron, 24, 72 Cajun music, 117 Cambridge Avenue (Boston), 90, 100, 106 capitalism, 191, 207 capital outlay, 179–180 Capitol Hill (Washington, D.C.), 3, 119–121, 131, 148, 152, 186 Capitol Hill Restoration Society, 120 Capote, Truman, 121 carriage houses: on Beacon Hill, 90, 95, 100; in Georgetown 46; in Greenwich Village, 72, 75 catalysts, 147, 201–202; versus causal factors, 202–203 categorical grant, 165–166. See also block grant Catholic immigrants, 90 Catholic University, 3 causal factors, 201–202. See also catalysts “cave dwellers,” 30, 53 Center City (Philadelphia), 156–158 central business district, 122, 143, 168; in Boston 154. See also downtown Champny Place (Boston), 98 Chapin, Anna Alice, 77 Charleston, South Carolina, 8, 16, 58, 105–113, 116–118, 124, 149, 156; the Battery, 116, 146, 156; Broad Street, 116 Charles Street (Boston), 105, 107 Charlotte, North Carolina, 195 Charlton Street (New York City), 75–76 Cherry Hill (Washington, D.C.), 27 Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (Washington, D.C.), 26 Chestnut Street (Boston), 88 Chevy Chase, Maryland, 26 Chicago, Illinois, 8, 75, 89, 92, 102–103, 132–134, 151, 158, 161–162, 173, 186, 195 Chicago School of Sociology, 89, 102–103 Christopher Street subway station (New York City), 78 Cincinnati, Ohio, 159, 171, 196

Cissel Alley (Washington, D.C.), 27 city planning, 16, 23, 34, 124, 134–139, 186; modernist versus human-centered approach to, 135–137 Civilian Conservation Corps, 130 civil rights movement, 140, 163, 175 classical revival architecture, 112 Clay, Henry, 24 Cleveland, Ohio, 31, 161, 195–196 “cliff dwellers,” 53. See also “cave dwellers” climate change, 186, 194–196 Codman, William Coombs, 93–94 College Hill (Providence), 158 Colonial Revival architecture, 136 colonial style, 32, 35, 38, 136 colonial towns, 23–24, 112 Columbus, Ohio, 8, 186, 195–196 comeback metropolitan areas, 195. See also interval metropolitan areas; struggling metropolitan areas Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, 165–166, 205. See also block grant condemnation, 44, 133, 140, 184. See also eminent domain condominium conversion, 13 condominium housing, 13, 88, 156–157, 181, 187 congressional directories, 51–52 Congressional Press Gallery, 52 consumption theory, 15, 124, 181–182, 203. See also production theory; rent gap theory Cornell University, 32–34 Corn Exchange Bank, 77 Corning, Parker, 37 cottage industry, 6 Crane, Hart, 121 creative class, 19. See also bohemians cummings, e. e., 79 Dallas, Texas, 173 Dayton, Ohio, 195–196 decade of the neighborhood, 165–168 deed restrictions, 93, 106. See also racially restrictive covenants Deep South, 52, 118 definitional overload, 13–14 definitional promiscuity, 16 deindustrialization, 16, 18, 189, 194, 201–202

230 / Index

deinstitutionalization, 194 Delaware River (Philadelphia), 156 Dell, Floyd, 66–70, 95 Democrats, 10, 163, 165 demography, 16, 19, 42, 50, 53, 58, 64, 89, 93, 102, 173, 188 Denver, Colorado, 8, 195 development impact fees, 191 devolution, 18, 205, 207 de Wolf, Mr. and Mrs. Francis Colt, 37 Dickens, Charles, 24 diminishing marginal utility, 7 disinvestment, 8, 14, 91, 132–134, 153, 156, 193, 195, 201, 206 displacement, 12–15, 39, 57, 116, 172, 174–175, 190–191, 202, 206; and Alley Dwelling Authority, 43–46; in Charleston, 116; government studies of, 175 District of Columbia Alley Dwelling Authority, 43–44. See also Alley Dwelling Authority Dixieland jazz, 117 Dos Passos, John, 121 downtown, 13, 27, 47, 74, 89, 92, 96, 102, 120, 130, 136–137, 143, 169, 183, 196; and Interstate Highways, 130, 136–137, 183. See also central business district Dragon Fly, 69 Duchamp, Marcel, 66 Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, D.C.), 31, 46 Dupont Circle (Washington, D.C.), 26, 29 East Coast, 28, 61, 110, 113, 195 Eastman, Crystal, 66, 95 Eastman, Max, 66, 95 ecological theory, 103. See also Chicago School of Sociology; human ecology economic rationality, 103–104 Edwards, Bobby, 78 Eighth Street (New York City), 75 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 141 elite people: in Beacon Hill, 89, 90–91, 95–96, 101–103, 107, 112; in Georgetown, 30, 32, 41, 50; in Greenwich Village, 63–67, 73; influence of, in gentrification, 16, 64, 86, 109–110, 113, 116, 118, 149, 164, 200, 203; as invaders, 193; private clubs of, 101–102; in Society Hill, 156; worries of, 90–91, 117. See also Brahmins; Knickerbockers; patricians

Ellicott, Andrew, 24, 60. See also L’EnfantEllicott plan embryonic gentrification, 10–13, 67–69, 93– 99, 109–125, 153–160, 167–175, 179–197, 198, 203. See also gentrification embryonic gentry, 124–125, 170–173, 180–181, 185, 192–193, 201 eminent domain, 133, 135, 144, 184, 189 Erie Canal (New York), 86 European gentrification, 19, 48 Evermay estate (Washington, D.C.), 31, 33, 46 evictions, 12, 44, 53, 56, 58, 81, 125, 133, 140–144, 174, 190 Factory Hill (Washington, D.C.), 27 factory system, 6 Fair Housing Act, 151, 191 far western states, 86 Faulkner, William, 117 Federal Aid Highway Act, 135, 164. See also Interstate Highway program Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 48 Federal Housing Administration, 48, 120, 144 Federal style architecture, 25, 38, 111–112; as antidote to Victoriana, 111–112 filter theory, 5–7, 166; Homer Hoyt on, 5 financing, 166; and FHA policy on rehabilitation, 144 Firey, Walter, 88–123, 199, 203; early gentrification research by, 109; and elite sentiments toward Beacon Hill, 103, 203 Fitler Square (Philadelphia), 115 flaneurs, 95 The Flats (Boston), 90–102; declining character of, 93, 99 Flynn, Elizabeth Gurley, 69 Foggy Bottom (Washington, D.C.), 119– 121; Department of State in, 119; second generation of embryonic gentrification in, 119 Folger Shakespeare Library (Washington, D.C.), 120 Ford, Gerald R., 165 Ford Foundation, 166 Frankfurter, Felix, 51, 104 French Mansard architecture, 25 French Market (New Orleans), 125 French Quarter (New Orleans), 117. See also Vieux Carre

Index / 231

French Second Empire architecture, 38 Frost, Susan Pringle, 116 Frostbelt region, 194–197, 201 The Future of Georgetown (Wykoff and Ihlder), 33–34 Galveston, Texas, 173 Gans, Herbert, 100, 153; on homosexuality, 100 gay people, 19, 69, 94, 122, 154. See also homosexuals; lesbians; LGBTQ people gender imbalance in Beacon Hill, 101 gentrification, 4, 10–13, 67–69, 99–101, 110–124, 153–160, 170–175, 179–195, 203–208; “discovery” of, 170–174; embryonic and advanced, 179–195; outside the United States, 19; as synonym for urban development, 11. See also embryonic gentrification gentrification dialectic, 193 gentrification paradigm, 9–10, 16–18, 108, 113, 125, 135, 146–147, 156–159, 167–170, 183, 190, 202–204 gentry, 4, 9, 12, 19, 111–112, 122–125, 145–146, 170–173, 180–184, 192–201 Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), 3, 23–59, 116–125, 162, 200; decline of, 25–29; historical origins of, 23–25 Georgetown Citizen’s Association (GCA), 33–34, 48, 58; and gender discrimination, 34; and racial discrimination, 58 Georgetown University, 24, 47 Georgian architecture, 25, 38, 111–112, 121, 201 ghetto, 6, 164. See also blight; slums gig economy, 194 Glass, Ruth, 4, 170, 179 globalization, 18, 189, 194, 201–202 global warming, 186. See also climate change Goldman, Emma, 66, 69 Goodwin, Eliot, 32 goofy clubs, 69, 77 Google, 9 Google Scholar, 9 Gorky, Maxim, 66 Gothic Revival architecture, 38, 111, 136 Gould, Joe, 68 Great Depression, 40, 47, 82, 99, 118, 129 great diaspora, 129 Great Lakes, 86

Great Society, 163. See also War on Poverty Greek Revival architecture, 25, 38, 111–112, 121, 201 Greeks, 117 Green, Mrs., 3 Green Shutters, 94 Greenwich Avenue (New York City), 80 Greenwich House, 70 Greenwich Village (New York City), 60–84, 94–98, 109–125, 137, 139, 146, 148, 151, 156, 171, 199, 200 Greenwich Village Improvement Society, 71 Greenwich Village Rebuilding Corporation, 74, 81 Grigsby, William, 6, 114–115, 166; and filter theory, 6, 166 growth machine politics, 187 Guido, Bruno, 81 Gulf Coast, 11, 109, 195, 200 Hale, Gardner, 75–76 Hale, Matthew, 100–101 Hamilton, Alexander, 73 Hancock Street (Boston), 99 Hanna, Mrs. Marcus A., 37 Harrison Gray Otis house (Boston), 106 Harvard University Press, 91–92 Hearth and Home, Inc., 78 Height of Buildings Act of 1910 (Washington, D.C.), 33 Hellman, Lillian, 117 Hemingway, Ernest, 66 Henderson, Elliott, 98 Hillyer, Robert, 95 Historic American Building Survey, 48 historic district ordinance, 108; in Boston, 106; in Charleston, 116; in Greenwich Village, 64; in New Orleans, 117; in Washington, D.C., 58–59 Historic Hill District (St. Paul), 159 historicity, 103 historic landmarks, 58, 73, 105, 125, 152, 156 historic preservation, 10, 17, 19, 125, 134, 148–153, 156–159, 166–171, 210–226; in Boston, 91, 103–107, 199; in Charleston, 116; in New Orleans, 117–118; in New York, 71–73; in Washington, D.C., 34, 39, 47–48, 59 Historic Preservation Tax Incentives, 169–170

232 / Index

Historic Sites Act of 1935, 48 hobohemia, 65, 80 Hoboken, New Jersey, 8, 195 Hollerith, Herman, 33 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 88 homelessness, 194 Homeowners Committee (of Georgetown Citizen’s Association), 33 homosexuals, 69, 121–122. See also gay people; lesbians; LGBTQ people HOPE VI program, 160, 207 horseless carriage, 90 Houghton, Alanson B., 37 house and garden tours, 36, 120, 171, 184 Houston, Texas, 195–196 Howard University, 29 Howe, Julia Ward, 88 Howells, William Dean, 64, 88 Hoyt, Homer, 5, 6, 26, 50, 162, 182, 190; on filter theory, 5–6, 26, 162, 182 Hudson River (New York City), 62, 81, 86, 195 human ecology, 89. See also Chicago School of Sociology; ecological theory Hyde Park/Kenwood (Chicago), 158 Idee Chic, 69 Ihlder, John, 32–34, 44, 47; as head of Alley Dwelling Authority, 44 inclusionary zoning, 191 incumbent residents, 14, 19, 82, 108, 145–148, 174, 193, 206 incumbent upgrading, 9 Independence Hall (Philadelphia), 156 Indianapolis, Indiana, 195–196 information age, 194 Inman Park (Atlanta), 173 Internal Revenue Service, 169 Interstate Highway program, 9, 125, 135, 160, 164 interval metropolitan areas, 196–197. See also comeback metropolitan areas; struggling metropolitan areas investor syndication, 188 Irish immigrants, 27, 28, 62–63 Irish political machine, 66 Irving, Washington, 24 Italianate architecture, 25, 38, 111 Italian immigrants, 27–28, 63, 90

Jacobs, Jane, 12; on gentrification, 12; on modernist city planning, 137; as protecting West Village, 139 James, Henry, 69 Jefferson, Thomas, 25 Jersey City, New Jersey, 8, 195 Jewish immigrants, 90 Jim Crow laws and practices, 4, 129 Johnson, Lyndon B., 163 Jones, William Henry, 29 Joy Street (Boston), 95, 99 Justement, Louis, 138–139; on “rejuvenation” in Georgetown and Alexandria, 139; and Southwest Urban Renewal plan, 138–139 Justement-Smith plan, 138 Kalorama (Washington, D.C.), 26 Kansas City, Kansas, 196 Kazin, Alfred, 121 Kemp, Harry, 66, 78 Kennedy, Adele, 77 Kennedy, Jacqueline B., 152 Kennedy, John F., 147 Kerensky, Alexander, 65 Key, Francis Scott, 24 Keynesian economics, 40 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 161, 193 Kirk, Alexander Comstock, 37 Knickerbockers, 70. See also Brahmins; patricians Lafayette Square (St. Louis), 159 land use, 6–7, 92–93, 104, 110–111, 119, 124. See also zoning Lantern Lane (Philadelphia), 114 Lawrence, Reginald, 94 lease termination, 12, 53, 190. See also evictions L’Enfant, Pierre Charles, 23. See also L’Enfant-Ellicott plan L’Enfant-Ellicott plan, 23–24 Lenin, Vladimir, 65 Le Petit Salon du Vieux Carre, 117 lesbians, 19, 69, 94, 121, 154. See also gay people; homosexuals; LGBTQ people Lewis, Sinclair, 80, 117 LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) people, 19, 94, 122, 185. See also gay people; homosexuals; lesbians

Index / 233

Liberator magazine, 66 Library of Congress, 120 Lime Street (Boston), 100 Lincoln, Robert Todd, 31 Lincoln Park (Chicago), 158, 186 Lindsay, Vachel, 66 literati, 88 Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), 168 local register of historic places, 152 lodging houses, 80, 91–93, 153–156. See also rooming houses Logan Circle (Washington, D.C.), 29 London, United Kingdom, 4–8, 179 Los Angeles, California, 161, 195 Louisburg Square (Boston), 88 Macdougal Alley (New York City), 72 Macdougal Street (New York City), 62, 77 Mailer, Norman, 121 Main Line (Philadelphia), 114 Manhattan Island (New York City), 61–64, 72–73, 81–83, 121, 171, 186 Mardi Gras, 117 Marshall, John, 24 Marxist theory and gentrification, 83 Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston), 100 Massachusetts State House (Boston), 87. See also Bulfinch, Charles Masses magazine, 66 McCullers, Carson, 121 McKay, Claude, 66 McKinley, William, 37 Medley, Wilfred, 2–4 Memphis, Tennessee, 195 metropolitan areas, 6, 60, 141, 146, 185, 191–197; comeback, 99, 195; interval, 196–197; struggling, 195–196 metropolitanization, 18 Miami, Florida, 195–196 Miami Beach, Florida, 8 Midwest, 12, 65, 85, 164, 195 migration, 53, 86, 138, 193, 201; of blacks from Georgetown, 54; from cities to suburbs, 4, 6, 130–132, 139, 155, 204 Millay, Edna St. Vincent, 66–67, 95 Miller, Henry, 121 Milligan Place (New York City), 72, 79 Mill Pond (Boston), 86

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 173, 196 Minetta Place (New York City), 78 Minetta Street (New York City), 78 Minneapolis, Minnesota, 195 Model Cities program, 161, 164, 192 Montrose Park (Washington, D.C.), 30 morphology, 63, 110–111, 183, 201–203; of Georgetown, 110; of Greenwich Village, 63, 110; as reconfigured by Urban ­Redevelopment/Renewal programs, 183 mortgage-backed securities, 188 mortis-and-tenon construction, 6 Mount Adams (Cincinnati), 159 Mount Pleasant (Washington, D.C.), 3, 29 Mount Royal–Bolton Hill (Baltimore), 159 Mount Vernon Street (Boston), 88, 93, 98 Mount Zion United Methodist Church (Washington, D.C.), 58 M Street NW (Washington, D.C.), 25–31 Mumford, Lewis, 39, 111 Myrtle Street (Boston), 93–98 Nashville, Tennessee, 195 National Association of Home Builders, 142 National Association of Real Estate Boards, 142 National Capital Park and Planning Commission, 48 National Endowment for the Arts, 168 National Historic Preservation Act, 152 National Housing Conference, 142 National Mall (Washington, D.C.), 23, 30, 120 National Park Service, 168 National Register of Historic Places, 152 National Resettlement Administration, 40, 48 National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington, D.C.), 3 National Trust for Historic Preservation, 149–152, 171; founding of, 149 National Urban Coalition, 175 neighborhood conservation, 16, 142, 146, 151; and Urban Renewal, 142–146 Neighborhood Development Program, 161. See also Urban Renewal Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) program, 167–168 neighborhoodism, 170

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neighborhood preservation, 151. See also neighborhood conservation neighborhood rebranding, 45, 187; in Georgetown, 45 neighborhood reclamation, 65, 70, 87, 99, 199; in Boston, 99; in Greenwich Village, 65, 70, 83 Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, 168 neighborhood resettlement, 171, 199 neighborhood revitalization, 15, 68, 100, 110, 121, 131, 143, 154, 156, 161, 169–172, 187–188, 191–192, 196–199; in Boston, 100, 110; in New York, 68; and Urban Redevelopment/Renewal, 143, 154–156, 161; in Washington, D.C., 121 Neighborhood Strategy Areas demonstration, 168 Newark, New Jersey, 161, 195 Newburyport, Massachusetts, 26, 159 New Deal, 39–50, 131–134; agencies of, 130; and embryonic gentrification in Georgetown, 40–43; and landmark restoration in Vieux Carre, 117–118 New England, 41, 85, 88, 92, 106, 195 new federalism, 167 New Orleans, Louisiana, 16, 58, 105, 110, 113, 116–118, 124, 149, 156, 196; French Quarter/Vieux Carre, 117–118 New York City, New York, 8, 16–17, 41, 52–54, 85–86, 92–95, 110–125, 131–139, 158–162, 163–171, 195–196; Brooklyn Heights, 121–122, 148, 171, 185–186; compared to Washington, D.C., 60–61; Greenwich Village, 60–84; Harlem, 73, 80 Nixon, Richard M., 147, 163–173 Nobel Prize for Literature, 66 Norfolk, Virginia, 171 North Slope, 90–102, 106–107 nouveau riche, 101, 200 N Street NW (Washington, D.C.), 31 Oakland, California, 196 obsolescence thesis, 6–7, 11, 95, 110, 123, 132, 142, 147–149, 160, 166, 200–203. See also filter theory office girls, 101 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 196 Old and Historic District (Charleston), 116

Old Georgetown Act (Washington, D.C.), 59 Old Home Week, 73 Old-House Journal, 171 Old Town (Alexandria), 121 O’Neill, Eugene, 66 organic metaphor, 89, 134 outmigration, 4–6, 54, 130, 132, 133, 139, 155, 204. See also migration Pacific Rim, 195 Page, Frank C., 37 Paine, Thomas, 73 Panama Street (Philadelphia), 114 paradigm, 9–18, 83, 108, 113, 122–127, 135–139, 146–150, 156–159, 167–170, 180–192, 202–204; of advanced gentrification, 10–17, 40–45, 189–197, 198–206; of embryonic gentrification, 7–19, 23, 37–54, 59, 60–71, 78–84, 85–86, 93–100, 105–108, 109–125, 129–140, 145–162, 163–175, 179–197, 198–206; of ­Redevelopment/Renewal, 122–123, 139, 147–159, 180–197, 198–203 Park Slope (New York City), 171 Patchin Place (New York City), 72, 79, 98 patricians, 26, 70, 86, 90–91, 102; on Beacon Hill, 86, 90, 101–102; in Georgetown, 26; in Greenwich Village, 70. See also Brahmins Pearson, Drew, 52 Peets, Elbert, 138 Peets plan, 138 Pennsylvania Station (New York City), 152 Pentagon (Arlington County, Virginia), 121 People’s Institute, 71, 74; and Greenwich Village Improvement Society, 71; and Greenwich Village Rebuilding Corporation, 74 Pepe, Vincent, 71–81; and affordable housing, 81; criticism of, 81; on financial return from Greenwich Village renovation, 77; and New York City zoning, 76; as promoting embryonic gentrification, 77 Perkins, Frances, 61 Perry Street Methodist Church (New York City), 72 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 113–115; Fitler Square gentrification, 115; Rittenhouse

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Square gentrification, 114–115; Society Hill gentrification, 153, 156–159 Philadelphia Orchestra, 114 Phillips Street (Boston), 97 pied-à-terre, 69 Pig and Whistle, 69 Pinckney Street (Boston), 105–113; and ­bohemians, 94–96; and urban decline, 105 Pioneer Square (Seattle), 173 Pirate’s Den, 69 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 145, 185, 187, 209 “The Plan,” 57 police power, 124 Pomander Walk (Washington, D.C.), 59. See also Bell’s Court Portland, Maine, 8, 22, 185, 187 Portland, Oregon, ix, 8, 22, 79, 167, 209 poseurs, 79 postwar baby boom, 30, 32, 160, 216 Potomac River (Washington, D.C.), 37, 60, 133, 136 Preservation magazine, 185 President’s Advisory Committee on Government Housing Policies and Programs, 141–142 President’s Homes Commission, 41 prestige rehabilitation, 114 Primus Avenue (Boston), 111–112 privatization, 32, 219, 221 Proctor, John Clagett, 46 production theory, 29, 217. See also consumption theory; rent gap theory Progressive Citizens Association of Georgetown (PCAG), 34–35, 47–48 projectitis, 134 property tax, 26, 82–83, 92, 103, 111, 130–132, 145, 167, 174, 190 Protestants, 26, 82, 90 Provincetown, Massachusetts, 109 Provincetown Playhouse, 66, 77 Public Housing Administration, 48 Public Housing program, 23, 48, 131–135, 145–147, 164, 174, 190; and slum clearance, 131 Public Works Administration, 40, 130 Pulitzer Prize, 66; to Anthony Lukas, 155; to Edna St. Vincent Millay, 66; to Eugene O’Neill, 66 Pullman Car Company, 31

Queen Anne architecture, 1, 25, 38, 111 quid pro quos, 189 racial discrimination, 43, 58; in housing, 43, 129, 161 racially restrictive covenants, 3, 43, 57; and U.S. Supreme Court decision, 116. See also deed restrictions ragtime music, 117 rebuilding, 114, 132–135, 140–143, 154–162, 163–170, 183, 189; Daniel Burnham on, 134 reclamation, 65, 70, 83, 87, 99, 199 reconditioning, 36–37 reconstruction, 65, 139, 162 recontextualization, 15–16 redevelopment, 9–10, 16–19, 33, 78, 91, 114, 122–123, 132–162, 163–169, 174–175, 179–184, 189–192, 203–204 Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm, 122–123, 139, 147–159, 180–203. See also Urban Redevelopment; Urban Renewal Reed, John, 65–66 regeneration, 108, 147, 172; in Beacon Hill, 93, 100; in Europe, 5, 19; in Greenwich Village, 64 rehabilitation, 5, 10–19, 37–39, 61, 73–81, 98–100, 114–123, 131–162, 163–173, 179–192, 199; in Beacon Hill, 93, 98–100; on Capitol Hill, 120; embryonic gentrification and, 188–191; federal policy on, 142–146; in Georgetown, 38–39; in Greenwich Village, 61, 73–81; resistance to, 137–140. See also disinvestment; remodeling rejuvenation, 15, 68, 93, 139, 172, 197 remodeling, 15, 32–37, 40, 71, 79–80, 171. See also embryonic gentrification; rehabilitation rent gap theory, 7, 15, 124, 200–203; filter theory and, 203. See also consumption theory; production theory Republicans, 10, 163, 165 residential backflow, 83 residential credentialism, 185 restoration, 19, 149–153, 156, 171, 175; on Capitol Hill, 120; in Georgetown, 32–34, 37–39, 46, 57, 139–140; in Greenwich Village, 139; in Society Hill, 156–159; in Vieux Carre, 117

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resurrection, 47, 70 Revere Street (Boston), 91–98 reverse blockbusting, 57 revolving loan fund, 93, 106, 166–167 Riis, Jacob, 27 Rittenhouse Square (Philadelphia), 114–115, 156 Roaring Twenties, 25, 99 robotics, 194, 201 Rock Creek (Washington, D.C.), 24, 30, 40 Romanesque Revival architecture, 38, 111 rooming houses, 41; in Beacon Hill, 89–93, 100–102, 200; in Georgetown, 27, 41, 112, 200; in Greenwich Village, 112; in Rittenhouse Square, 115. See also lodging houses Roosevelt, Eleanor, 51 Roosevelt, Elliot, 51 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 40, 51 Roosevelt, Theodore, Jr., 27 Rosenberg, Louis, 6. See also Grigsby, William Russell, Bertrand, 66 Russian Tea Room, 69 Saarinen, Eliel, 39, 134 Sacramento, California, 195 Samovar, 69 Sandburg, Carl, 66 San Diego, California, 195 San Francisco, California, 8–9, 173, 195–196 Sanger, Margaret, 66 Savannah, Georgia, 8; embryonic gentrification in, 159, 171–173 Seattle, Washington, 159, 175, 195; embryonic gentrification in, 8–9 Section 312 program, 167 semantic elasticities, 200 semantic transmutation, 16 sentiment, 71, 77, 102–103, 106, 123, 140, 203 Seventh Avenue subway (New York City), 72, 76, 80 sharing economy, 194 Shelley v. Kraemer, 58 Sheridan Square (New York City), 76–80 Sheridan Square Theatre (New York City), 77 Shingle architecture, 38, 111

skyscraper, 61–63, 92 Slime Alley (Boston), 100 slum clearance, 5, 132, 140–143, 154, 162, 166–169, 181, 204 slums, 118, 129, 130–134, 141–146, 162, 166, 181–183, 193, 200, 204; Georgetown, ­27–29, 44, 58, 83. See also blight; ghetto Smith, Clothiel Woodward, 138 Social Register, 92, 102 Society for the Preservation of New En­gland Antiquities (Historic New England), 106 Society for the Preservation of Old Dwelling Houses, 116 Society Hill (Philadelphia), 115, 167; embryonic gentrification in, 145; Urban Renewal in, 154–158 socioeconomic status, 8, 172, 185; and Beacon Hill, 102; and filter theory, 5; and Georgetown, 49–50, 113 South America, 195 South End (Boston), 86–87, 91, 153; embryonic gentrification in, 153–157; housing price appreciation in, 156; lodging house concentration in, 156; Urban Renewal in, 153–157 South End Historical Society, 154–155 southern states, 28, 65, 86; minority outmigration from, 129 South Slope (Boston), 88–105; architecture and topography of, 88, 95; decline of, 90, 93, 98–99; historic district status of, 105; social status of, 89 Southwest Washington, D.C.: decline of, 137–138; and Justement-Smith plan, 138; modernist design for, 139; and Peets plan, 138 spatially referred values, 103–106 speculation, 119, 182 spillover effects: in Foggy Bottom, 120; of the homesteading program, 167; in Oakland, 196; in the West End, 100 spinsters, 115 stables: in Beacon Hill, 90–91, 100; in Georgetown, 27; in Greenwich Village, 70 state register of historic places, 152 Stick architecture, 38, 111 Stickley, Gustav, 100 Stieglitz, Alfred, 66

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St. Louis, Missouri, 159, 186, 195; embryonic gentrification in, 159 St. Paul, Minnesota, 159, 173–175, 195; embryonic gentrification in, 173 struggling metropolitan areas, 195–196. See also interval metropolitan areas substance abuse, 19, 89, 145, 153, 194 suburbanization, 7, 9, 27, 86; minorities and, 164, 191 Sunbelt region, 194, 197; congressional representation in, 194; inequalities of, with Frostbelt region, 197; jobs imbalance in, 201 Tampa, Florida, 195 tax increment financing, 202 tenement, 27–29, 34, 64, 70, 80–81, 90, 96–99 Tennessee Valley Authority, 130 Tent City (Boston), 155 third-wave gentrification, 15, 169, 190 This Old House (television series), 171 Times Square (New York City), 72 Toledo, Ohio, 196 Tomcat Flats (Washington, D.C.), 27 Townsend, Prescott, 95 transgender people, 19, 94. See also LGBT people Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire, 75 Trotsky, Leon, 65 Tydings, Millard, 37 University Place (New York City), 75 upward socioeconomic transition, 8, 14, 50, 179 urban crisis, 9, 48, 172–173, 203–204 urban decline, 4–11, 17, 26, 86–89, 108, 114, 121–125, 143–162, 163–175, 179–197, 198–206; in organic metaphor, 89, 134; and Urban Redevelopment, 134 urban development, 11–14, 18, 164–168, 185–191, 199; as synonym for gentrification, 11 Urban Development Action Grant, 168–169 Urban Homesteading Demonstration, 167 Urban Redevelopment, 9–10, 16–19, 114, 122–123, 132–153, 158–169, 174, 179–184, 189, 192, 203–204; paradigm of, 10, 17–18, 122–123, 134–135, 139, 146–147, 150, 159, 180–184, 189–192, 203–204; and

program enactment, 132–134. See also Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm Urban Renewal, 9–11, 15–19, 120–125, 132–162, 163–170, 179–184, 190–192, 204–206; paradigm of, 9, 17–18, 123, 146–147, 158–159, 182–184, 189–192; and program enactment, 142–143. See also Redevelopment/Renewal paradigm U.S. Bureau of the Census, 42, 49–51; 1940 decennial census, 6 U.S. Capitol, 131; and federal building height restrictions, 61 U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 32 U.S. Conference of Mayors, 151 U.S. Congress, 33, 45, 75, 120, 123, 132–134, 140–145, 147–152, 161–169, 175, 191–194, 204–207 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 138, 175, 207; and Community Development Block Grant program, 165–166, 205; and Neighborhood Housing Services program, 167–168; and Section 312 program, 167; and Urban Renewal program, 15–19, 120–125, 132–162, 163–175, 179–192, 204–206 U.S. Department of State, 32, 37, 119–120; new headquarters building, 120 U.S. Federal Housing Administration, 48, 144 U.S. House of Representatives, 58, 175; and gentrification, 175; and Georgetown historic district, 58–59 U.S. Housing Act of 1937, 131 U.S. Housing Act of 1949, 132–133 U.S. Housing and Home Finance Agency, 138 U.S. Housing Authority, 131 U.S. Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, 33; and Georgetown zoning amendment, 33–34 U.S. Supreme Court, 51, 58, 116; decisions of, on racial discrimination, 58, 116; Justice Felix Frankfurter, 51 Vanity Fair magazine, 76 Vermillion Hound, 69 Victorian architecture, 16–18, 38–39, 68, 77, 94, 111–112, 120–121, 136, 184–185, 201 Victrola, 98

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Vietnam War, 24 Vieux Carre (New Orleans), 117–118, 125, 156; ethnic and racial identity of, 117; historic district designation of, 117; prominent authors in, 117 Vieux Carre Society, 117 Villa, Pancho, 65 Village Thrillagers, 77 Virginia Highlands (Atlanta), 173 Vorse, Mary Heaton, 69 voyeurs, 65 Wardman, Harry, 33 Ware, Carolyn: on bohemian attraction to Greenwich Village, 203; early gentrification research by, 109, 199; on gentrification of Greenwich Village, 65, 70–76, 82–84; on immigrant families, 65; on Washington Square, 70 War on Poverty, ix, 161, 163, 193. See also Great Society Washington, D.C.: Capitol Hill, 120–121, 145–148, 152, 186; compared to New York City, 60–61; Foggy Bottom, 119–121, 131, 148; Georgetown, 3, 23–59, 60–71, 83–84, 102–125, 131, 139–140, 146–151, 156, 162, 200; Southwest section of, 137–140 Washington, George, 24 Washington, Martha, 24, 26 Washington Federation of Churches, 29 Washington Mews (New York City), 75 Washington Place (New York City), 75 Washington Square (New York City), 63, 69–70, 72, 75, 76, 78 Washington Square (Philadelphia), 115 Washington Square Association, 74 Washington Square Players, 77 Waverly neighborhood (Baltimore), 132–134

Weller, Charles F., 27–29 Werlein, Elizabeth, 117 West Cedar Street (Boston), 99 West End (Boston), 90–96, 100–101, 106, 153; and Harrison Gray Otis house, 106; Urban Redevelopment in, 153 West End Associates, 93 White House, 141; Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, 152; study of Urban Redevelopment Program, 141 Whitney, Mrs. Harry Payne, 72 Williams, Tennessee, 131 Williams, William Carlos, 66 Wilson, Edmund, 66 Wisconsin Avenue NW (Washington, D.C.), 30–31, 54 Wise, Joseph, 57 Wolfe, Thomas, 121 Woodlawn neighborhood (Chicago), 132–134 Works Progress Administration, 40, 117, 125, 130 World War II, 2–9, 16, 49–50, 69, 84, 107–110, 115–122, 129–131, 148, 199–203 Wright, Richard, 121 write-down prices, 133 Wykoff, J. Bernard, 32–34 Wylie, Elinor, 66 Yankees, 89 Youngstown, Ohio, 195–196 zoning, 6, 33–34, 108–110, 191; in Boston, 93, 103–104, 107, 124; in Charleston, 116–117, 124; inclusionary, 191, 207; in New Orleans, 124; in New York City, 61, 71, 76, 80, 124; in Washington, D.C., 33–34, 43, 124

Dennis E. Gale is Emeritus Professor of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University and has taught in the Urban Studies and Public Policy programs at Stanford University since 2010. He is the author of several books, including Greater New Jersey: Living in the Shadow of Gotham and Understanding Urban Unrest: From Reverend King to Rodney King.