Читать книгу Sunnyside Gardens - Jeffrey A. Kroessler - Страница 24

Architect Robert A. M. Stern has called Forest Hills Gardens the “most complex and finely articulated” expression of the railroad suburb, “both a pinnacle and an end.”¹¹ The Russell Sage Foundation Homes Company began building this gracious community in 1909, utilizing the talents of architect Grosvenor Atterbury and the Olmsted Brothers (as Frederick Law Olmsted’s landscaping firm was known after his death). The site was adjacent to the new electrified main line of the Long Island Railroad running into Pennsylvania Station. Mrs. Russell Sage admired the English garden cities and hoped to incorporate their most attractive features in a new community constructed at no greater cost than less attractive housing developments planted on a repetitive grid. In the earliest promotional pamphlet, company president Robert W. de Forest elucidated the social, economic, educational, and aesthetic qualities of the undertaking: “Mrs. Russell Sage, and those whom she has associated with her in the foundation, have been profoundly impressed with the need of better and more attractive housing facilities in the suburbs for persons of modest means who could pay from twenty-five dollars a month upward in the purchase of a home. They have thought that homes could be supplied like those in the garden cities of England, with some greenery and flowers around them, with accessible playgrounds and recreation facilities, and at no appreciably greater cost than is now paid for the same roof room in bare streets. They have abhorred the constant repetition of the rectangular block in suburban localities where land contours invite other street lines. They have thought, too, that buildings of tasteful design, constructed of brick, cement or other permanent material, even though of somewhat greater initial cost, were really more economical in their durability and lesser repair bills than the repulsive, cheaply built structures which are too often the type of New York’s outlying districts. They have hoped that people of moderate income and good taste, who appreciate sympathetic surroundings, but are tied close to the city by the nature of their occupation, might find some country air and country life within striking distance of the active centers of New York.”¹²

The Sage Foundation sought to create a living example of an ideal suburb, but central as this educational aspect was to the plan, the company remained “a business investment conducted on strictly business principles for a fair profit.” While a reform enterprise, it was hardly a philanthropic one; still, profits would be limited to 5 percent, “far less,” according to a contemporary real estate journal, “than that aimed at by the average tract or subdivision developer.” This difference represented what the foundation was “willing to expend out of its own pocket in giving the home owner surroundings and advantages which cannot be obtained where the developer takes the higher profit.”¹³

Because the Sage Foundation expressed such lofty ideals, it is often mistakenly assumed that the original intention was to build affordable, high-quality housing for working-class families. In his introduction to Clarence S. Stein’s Toward New Towns for America, Mumford repeated this misconception, stating that Forest Hills was “meant to serve as a working-class community, but destined by the very generosity of its housing to become an entirely middle-class, indeed upper middle class, community.” Housing reformer Louis H. Pink, who was appointed to the state’s Board of Housing by Governor Al Smith in 1926, was even more bluntly critical. He called the Sage Foundation’s effort “a tragic failure,” as it offered extravagant design but nothing for the workingman.¹⁴

From the very start of construction, it was clear that the homes would be priced far above what families of modest means could afford. Proximity to the city pushed land values so high as to render one-family detached homes on generous lots affordable only to upper-middle-class families. The mandated open space and the quality of construction also dictated the final cost. In the “Declaration of Restrictions” published in 1913, the company stipulated that “no dwelling houses shall be erected or maintained which shall cost less than the amounts to be specified by the Homes Company in the several deeds.” The same restrictions also barred buildings or rows longer than 250 feet, a restriction aimed at eliminating deadening blocks of tenements and row houses. As de Forest explained, “The Sage Foundation has not forgotten the laboring man. It may be ready to announce something for his benefit later on, but the cost of the land at Forest Hills Gardens, and the character of its surroundings, preclude provision there for the day laborer.” All plans and designs pointed to the exclusive nature of this suburb. It was never intended to be a model for multi-class communities. In contrast with other suburban places, the Sage Foundation built and retained possession of the streets, public spaces, and lighting, and then assessed maintenance charges on all property owners. To achieve its end, the company established an exclusive and completely private enclave.¹⁵

The Olmsted plan simply delights. According to Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., the goal was to respond to the topography rather than imposing a street grid that would obliterate it. “The monotony of endless, straight, windswept thoroughfares which represent the New York conception of streets will give place to short, quiet, self-contained and garden-like neighborhoods,” he wrote. In fact, Forest Hills Gardens was the first violation of the street grid in Queens, and perhaps the entire city.¹⁶ Its once innovative features—the curving, tree-lined streets, the homes set back on lawns, uniform architectural scale and language—are now so common as to have become “an ever-present suburban cliché,” in the words of Alexander Garvin. But that in no way diminishes the effect at Forest Hills Gardens, where “one wanders along the curving roads, never sure where they will end, constantly surprised and entertained by some aspect of the design.”¹⁷

Mackwood Road, Forest Hills Gardens, circa 1915. (Courtesy of the Queens Borough Public Library, Archives, Illustrations Collection.)

The reform aspect was thus limited to the design; the company did not aspire to social engineering. The subsequent construction of thousands of working-class homes and apartments in Queens shows that the Sage Foundation could have attempted such a housing venture, but the result would not have been the ideal realized in Forest Hills Gardens.

As a financial undertaking, however, Forest Hills Gardens was a failure. The Sage Foundation terminated their involvement in 1922, having accumulated losses totaling $360,800. Speaking for the foundation, Clarence Perry explained, “The cost of preparing the land, grading, electrical conduits, sewer systems, street lighting, paving, and landscaping, while contributing greatly to the attractiveness of the development, was nevertheless unpredictably high.”¹⁸ Responsibility for completing the garden suburb and enforcing the design standards fell to the Forest Hills Gardens Corporation, an organization of property owners that persists into the present.