From 1900 to 1921 Albany, New York was run by a Republican machine embarrassed by an unsightly and unsanitary riverfront. Graft, engineering concerns, state mandates, and intractable railroads shaped an initial plan that was vetoed by the governor. Moving forward from this debacle, the machine hired Arnold Brunner, who developed a plan for Albany in the City Beautiful idiom. When the Democrats took over in 1922, they repudiated aesthetic planning as “chasing rainbows.” However, practical and aesthetic discourses coexisted, serving different audiences and purposes, and each served in different ways to legitimate a vision of comprehensive planning in the early 1920s.
Arnold W.Brunner and Charles Downing Lay, Studies for Albany (Albany, NY, 1914).
2.
Annual Proceedings of Albany's "Common Council" (equivalent to a city council) contain Mayors' messages (which take an expansive tone intended for public audiences) and reports from the city engineer and the public works commissioner, which typically deal with technical, internal matters, and often ask for more resources.
3.
Proceedings of the Common Council, City of Albany for 1924 (Albany, NY, 1925), v.2, 1925, 268, Engineering Report by James Brennan.
4.
Jon A.Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 1840-1917 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press , 2003), 264.
5.
Robert Freestone, "Learning from Planning's Histories," in Robert Freestone, ed., Urban Planning in a Changing World: The Twentieth Century Experience (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2000), 1-19.
6.
For example, William H. Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement ( Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989) and Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States.
7.
For example, Freestone, Urban Planning in a Changing World; Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century ( Oxford: Blackwell, 2002); and Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver, eds., Planning the Twentieth-Century American City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
8.
Robert B.Fairbanks, For the City as a Whole: Planning, Politics, and the Public Interest in Dallas, Texas, 1900-1965 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998).
9.
Susan Klaus , "The City Planning Reports of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr," Journal of the American Planning Association57, No. 4 ( 1991): 456-70.
10.
For example, Bonnie Szczgiel, "`City Beautiful' Revisited: An Analysis of Nineteenth-Century Civic Improvement Efforts," Journal of Urban History29, No. 2 (2003 ): 107-32.
11.
Gilbert Stelter , "Rethinking the Significance of the City Beautiful Idea," in R. Freestone, ed., Urban Planning in a Changing World: the Twentieth Century Experience, 98-117; P. Mackintosh "The Development of Higher Urban Life and the Geographic Imagination: Beauty, Art, and Moral Environmentalist in Toronto, 1900-1920," Journal of Historical Geography31 ( 2005): 688-722.
12.
Peterson, The Birth of City Planning in the United States, 257.
13.
Paul Grondahl , Mayor Erastus Corning: Albany Icon, Albany Enigma (Albany, NYWashingtonPark Press , 1997), 159.
14.
Philip Ethington , The Public City: The Political Construction of Urban Life in San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 21.
15.
James D.Bolin, Bossism and Reform in a Southern City: Lexington, Kentucky, 1880-1940 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2000); Lawrence Larsen and Nancy Hulston, Pendergast! (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997).
16.
Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, 169.
17.
Robert O'Connor, William Barnes , Jr.: A Conservative Encounters the Progressive Era (PhD Dissertation, Department of History, State University of New York, Albany, 1971).
18.
Jim Shaughnessy, Delaware and Hudson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997).
19.
Dwight MacDonald , "Profiles: Neanderthal," New Yorker, June 3, 1933: 20-23.
20.
Charles Mulford Robinson, The Improvement of Towns and Cities: Or, The Practical Basis of Civic Aesthetics (New York: Putnam, 1901); and Modern Civic Art, or The City Made Beautiful (New York, Putnam, 1903 ).
21.
The NY Central took some land and undertook to build a sewer.Years later, City Counsel Andrews was blandly to tell a meeting that it had never worked properly "owing to somebody's mistake, whose is it not necessary to inquire." "Business Men on River Front ," Albany Evening Journal, June 8, 1907.
22.
"Mayor McEwan Explains River Front Improvement," Albany Evening Journal, June 7, 1910.
23.
Eugene J. Johnson, Style Follows Function: Architecture of Marcus T. Reynolds ( Albany: WashingtonPark Press , 1993).
24.
Ibid.; "Marcus Reynolds, Albany Architect," New York Times, March 19, 1937; and Marcus Reynolds, The Housing of the Poor in American Cities (College Park, MD: McGrath Pub. Co., 1969, [c.1893]).
25.
Johnson, Style Follows Function, 113.
26.
Francis Brown , Edmund Niles Huyck: The Story of a Liberal (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1935), 157.
27.
I have been unable to locate a copy of the report.Fortunately, it was discussed in detail in the press and in Brown, Edmund Niles Huyck. I am drawing on these sources.
28.
Johnson, Style Follows Function, 83, indicates that Huyck was also a key broker between the city and the D&H in the final decision to erect the D&H Building .
29.
Albany Chamber of Commerce, Yearbook (Albany, NY, 1912), 25.
30.
"Great Interest in City Planning," Times-Union ( Albany, NY), January 23, 1911.
31.
Johnson, Style Follows Function, 80.
32.
The City Planning Association was later to claim a good part of the credit for bringing Brunner, a claim also made by Mayor McEwan himself.
33.
Arnold Brunner , "Cleveland's Group Plan," Proceedings of the Eighth National Conference on City Planning, Cleveland, 1916. (New York, National Conference on City Planning, 1916): 14-34.
34.
Robert Aitken, R. et al., Arnold W.Brunner and His Work ( New York: American Institute of Architects, 1926).
35.
Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, 83.
36.
"Mustn't Take More of City Hall Park," New York Times, March 13, 1910.
37.
Brunner and Lay are listed as authors on the title page of Studies for Albany as architect and landscape architect, respectively.Lay served later as a consultant to the city in his own right, but his role in the plan seems to have been restricted to park and parkway elements. Brunner seems to have written most and perhaps all of the text of Studies for Albany. In the preface, he uses the first person singular throughout and acknowledges "valuable assistance" from Lay.
38.
"First Hearing on River Front," Times-Union (Albany, NY), June 6, 1912 .
Delaware & Hudson Company (no author named), A Century of Progress: History of the Delaware and Hudson Company, 1823-1923 ( Albany: J. B. Lyon, 1925).
41.
Johnson, Style Follows Function, 89.
42.
Brunner and Lay, Studies for Albany, 39
43.
Peterson, The Birth of City Planning, 190.
44.
Frederick L. Olmsted, Sr., and Calvert Vaux, "Report on the Proposed City Park," Dec. 1, 1868, in S. Schuyler and J. Censer, eds., The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted: Vol. VI The Years of Olmsted, Vaux & Company 1865-1874, 293-301 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).
45.
Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, 5.
46.
Brunner and Lay, Studies for Albany, 74.
47.
"Brunner's Plan to Beautify Albany," Times-Union ( Albany, NY), June 12, 1914.
48.
Mackintosh, " The Development of Higher Urban Life," 690.
49.
Nelson P.Lewis is variously cited, e.g., Proceedings of the Common Council, City of Albany for 1913 (Albany NY, 1914), v.2, 375.
50.
Barbara Hahn , "Union Terminal: Business Clubs, Railroads, and City Planning in Cincinnati, 1880-1933," Journal of Urban History30, No.5 (July 2004): 707-28.
51.
Dennis Keating , Norman Krumholz, and Ann Marie Wieland, "Cleveland's Lakefront: Its Development and Planning," Journal of Planning History4, No. 2 (May 2005): 129-54.
52.
Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement, 2.
53.
Jon C. Teaford , "Finis for Tweed and Steffens: Rewriting the History of Urban Rule," Reviews in American History10, No. 4 (December 1982): 133-49.
54.
Thomas Pegram , "Who's the Boss: Revisiting the History of American Urban Rule," Journal of Urban History28, no. 6 (September 2002): 821-35; Roger Biles, "New Perspectives on Urban Governance and Reform," Journal of Planning History5, No. 1 (February 2006): 65-74.
55.
O'Connor, Ibid, and Johnson, Style Follows Function, are the sources drawn on here. The former provides a comprehensive account Barnes and his machine, and the latter details interactions between Marcus Reynolds and William Barnes, and contains a wealth of information on the D&H building and its history.
56.
Proceedings of the Common Council for 1916, City of Albany ( Albany, NY, 1917), vol. 2, 5.
57.
Jeffrey Brown , "From Traffic Regulation to Limited Ways: The Effort to Build a Science of Transportation Planning," Journal of Planning History5, no. 1 (February 2006): 3-34.
58.
John J.McEneny, Albany: Capital City on the Hudson (Sun Valley , CA: American Historical Press, 1998), 152-3.
59.
Daniel Bluestone , "Detroit's City Beautiful and the Problem of Commerce," Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians47, No. 3 (September 1988): 245-62.
60.
Brunner and Lay, Studies for Albany, 75.
61.
Proceedings of the Common Council for 1921, City of Albany (Albany, NY, 1922), vol. 2, 3.
62.
Proceedings of the Common Council for 1925, City of Albany (Albany, NY, 1926), vol. 2, 294.
63.
Proceedings of the Common Council for 1924, City of Albany (Albany, NY, 1925), vol. 2, 267-68.
64.
Johnson, Style Follows Function; and Diana Waite, ed., Albany Architecture: A Guide to the City ( Albany: Mount Ida Press, 1993).
65.
Johnson, Style Follows Function, 80.
66.
Proceedings of the Common Council for 1927, City of Albany (Albany, NY, 1928), v. 2, 318.
67.
Charles Mulford Robinson, "Improvement in City Life III: Aesthetic Progress," Atlantic Monthly 83, 1899, 525, cited in Mackintosh, " The Development of Higher Urban Life," 688.
68.
This compartmentalization is well illustrated in newspaper reports from the period immediately before the plan was made public. On April 17 and again on May 14, 1914, Times-Union reports show the city engineer holding meetings on mapping and street layouts; Brunner and "beautification" are not mentioned. The "expert planner" and beauty, meanwhile, are invoked on matters concerning park improvement and the waterfront (e.g., May 21).
69.
"City Planning and Zoning," Times-Union, February 17, 1922.
70.
Fairbanks, For the City as a Whole: Planning, Politics, and the Public Interest in Dallas, Texas, 1900-1965.
