Now that Hamlin Park has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places I've decided to do a short series of the history of the neighborhood. This information comes directly from the National Register nomination that Preservation Studios completed. Check back for additional installations in the series in the coming weeks. Stay up to date with all things Hamlin Park by liking the Hamlin Park Historic District on Facebook.
Like many large American
cities, Buffalo’s mid-twentieth century history was significantly influenced by
federal urban renewal programs. The roots of urban renewal in the United States
can be traced back to the nineteenth century, when industrialization and mass
immigration led to the proliferation of overcrowded and unsanitary urban
slums.
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| "Lodgers in a Crowded Bayard Street Tenement--'Five Cents a Spot'" by Jacob Riis |
During the Progressive Era,
reformers began to create social awareness of the poor living conditions of the
impoverished in our urban centers and to call for housing reform. Tenement reform laws and the design and
construction of model tenements were some of the early efforts to ameliorate
these conditions in New York City.
Nevertheless, the small groups of model tenements constructed in the
city between 1855 and 1905 paled in comparison to the fifty thousand
speculative tenements erected in the same period. In the early twentieth century urban planners such as
Grosvenor Atterbury, Clarence Stein and Henry Wright, among others,
experimented with planned communities; however, most were outside the city
limits, in deference to Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City model. Stein and Wright’s Sunnyside Gardens
(1924-28) in Queens was one notable example of a complex that used urban forms,
such as the rowhouse and the city grid, to best advantage. Although Sunnyside was funded by a
limited dividend corporation, it primarily benefitted skilled workers and the
middle class, not the dwellers of substandard tenements.
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| Sunnyside Gardens by Stein & Wright. Image courtesy of City Land NYC |
In 1929, at the height of
the prosperity in this country just prior to the Great Depression, about 50
percent of families were living at minimum subsistence level. According to a period government
inventory of sixty-four cities, only 37.7 percent of the housing was in good
condition and 2.3 percent was unfit for human habitation. The onset of the Depression only made
these conditions worse. Between
1928 and 1933, housing construction fell 95 percent and in 1932 alone, 273,000
homeowners lost their homes to foreclosures.
Prior to the 1930s, the
federal government exercised a limited role in providing for the social welfare
of its citizens and had no role in the debate over housing reform. Nineteenth-century reformers never
considered the possibility that government would play a role in building or
subsidizing housing.
However, the overwhelming need for housing combined with a stagnant
economy and the desperate need to create jobs as a result of the Depression
sparked the federal government’s first efforts to create housing for the urban
poor. Thus, during the
1930s the federal government began passing legislation to encourage private
investment in the construction of housing for low to moderate income
families. The Federal Home Loan
Bank System, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Federal National
Mortgage Association were all established to encourage mortgage credit flows,
aiding in financing construction and purchase of housing for low-income
families. But while these programs
aided middle-class families, they did very little for low-income homeowners, as
the FHA discouraged loans to low priced homes and rental properties. In 1933, the National Industrial
Recovery Act, in an effort to help bring the country out of the Depression,
provided for a federal housing program administered by the housing director of the
federal Public Works Administration (PWA), which sponsored slum-clearance and
the construction and operation of low-rent public housing. Under this program, which had no state
or local participation, the PWA’s own slum clearance and direct build housing
program cleared 10,000 substandard units and provided housing for 22,000
families in thirty cities.
Neither local communities nor members of the real estate industry were
enthusiastic about slum clearance and public housing, but while there were limitations,
the PWA program paved the way for future programs by producing the first
government subsidized housing projects for low-income families.
The U.S. Housing Act of 1937
After the reelection of
Franklin Roosevelt in 1936, Congress passed the Wagner-Steagall low-rent
housing bill, which created the United States Housing Authority and established
a clear federal commitment to providing decent low-cost housing to America’s
poor. The act established a
system for the federal government to provide loans and grants to local agencies
for low-rent public housing.
Federal approval was required for sites, plans, costs and rents, and
local authorities oversaw site acquisition, development, administration and
ownership. Although the act
required the building of one unit of housing for every slum dwelling eliminated,
the provisions of the bill only provided for a half billion dollars over a
three-year period, far less than was required to address the housing needs of
the time. The United States
Housing Authority ultimately constructed 370 public housing projects,
accommodating 120,000 families and spending more than $540,000,000.
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These shacks in Atlanta, GA were cleared to make way for the Capital Homes public housing project as part of the 1937 U.S. Housing Act.
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There was another force at
work on urban issues at the beginning of the twentieth century. This group consisted of business
interests, real estate investors, and city politicians who were alarmed over
the decentralization of American cities, as wealthy urban dwellers began to
desert the metropolis for the suburbs.
This flight was associated by urban experts and leaders with the spread
of slums and blight in the downtown areas, thus compromising real estate
values. Concerned over the loss of
tax revenue, members of this groups called for the replacement of obsolete
building stock, the redrawing of street plans, and the promotion of downtown
areas.
Many members of the real
estate industry felt that the solution to deteriorated downtowns, surrounding
industrial buildings, and low-income housing was to replace these run-down
structures with expensive residences and office buildings. As early as the
1930s, the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) looked for urban
redevelopment through private investment rather than public housing
programs. The NAREB called for
cities to acquire properties in blighted areas through eminent domain and sell
them to private developers at below-value prices. The board proposed that the government provide subsidies to
cover the difference between the purchase price and the value after
redevelopment. While several
states complied and passed statutes to encourage urban redevelopment by private
enterprise, the success of these programs was limited due to the lukewarm
response of developers, who believed that they were not lucrative
investments. The reluctance by
developers to invest in slum areas was a continual problem in the history of
urban development.
The Housing Act of 1949
During World War II, housing
was needed in and around newly created war-related industries, and the federal
government issued a substantial number of housing contracts for defense
workers. Low-rent public housing
complexes that were under construction or near completion were converted to
defense housing, more than 625,000 inexpensive or temporary units were built in
the most congested areas, and local housing authorities built numerous units of new housing for
the defense industry.
In 1941 members of the home building industry formed the Home Builders
Emergency Committee so that private industry could participate in the building
campaign. In 1943 home builders
formed the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), which became one of
the country’s most influential lobbies.
As World War II ended, a political battle began in the United States
between liberal housing reformers and members of the real estate community over
federal legislation for urban redevelopment, especially concerning the question
of public housing. In 1944
Senators Robert A. Taft, Allen J. Ellender, and Robert Wagner sponsored federal
legislation that included a provision to assist local agencies in purchasing
and clearing slum properties and selling the cleared land to private developers.
Because of the provision for more public housing, the NAREB joined forces with
the NAHB to fight the bill.
This bill, finally passed in 1949, provided federal aid to localities
specifically for projects that would result in more residential development.
Although not intended to subsidize wholesale rebuilding of aging urban centers,
the Taft-Ellender-Wagner bill, later renamed the US Housing Act of 1949,
recognized slums as a national problem and described two impediments to slum
clearance: cost and lack of housing for displaced families. The cost of the
land, its clearance and redevelopment was frequently more than its value after
its redevelopment as affordable housing.
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| The 1949 Housing Act paved the way for massive "slum clearance" projects to construct new public housing like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis for example. Here it appears shiny and new before everything went to hell. |
Title I of the 1949 housing
act, “Slum Clearance and Redevelopment,” provided a federal financial
assistance program for local communities for clearance, site preparation and
sale of federally and locally approved redevelopment projects. While the act did not specifically join
public housing to urban redevelopment projects, it did make the provision that
for projects to qualify, the site must be “predominantly residential” before or
after redevelopment. Title I
specified that the slum clearance and redevelopment projects had to be locally
planned, managed and serve local needs. Communities had to meet certain
requirements, including a process to provide temporary housing for displaced
families and permanent sound, affordable housing. The 1949 housing act did not achieve its framers’ goals for
clearing slums and providing low-income housing. Only a small percentage of the substandard housing units
were eliminated and redevelopment of these areas into public housing did not
occur, primarily because it was not economically feasible. The areas were
frequently lacking in supporting facilities, such as commercial and
recreational services. And,
although the 1949 law appeared to provide a substantial increase in federal
aid, in reality none of the urban renewal grants between 1949 and 1958 rivaled
the amounts spent on highways, airports or water and sanitation projects.
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| Less than 20 years after it was constructed and heralded as a masterpiece of modern architecture, the complex designed by Minoru Yamasaki was leveled. If you haven't seen The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, it's worth a watch for the full story |
While the supply of standard
housing decreased, the demand increased.
The housing situation was compounded after World War II by millions of
returning soldiers, most eager to marry and start new households. Existing urban areas simply lacked
enough housing units of any kind to shelter these new families, leading to a
profound housing shortage, which in part fueled a massive exodus of
middle-class families to burgeoning neighborhoods of single family houses being
constructed outside the city. This
further reduced the economic viability of urban neighborhoods, which now
consisted of people who were poorer and less able to invest in their
neighborhoods.
The Baltimore Plan
During the 1950s, some city
planners and real estate industry organizations believed that rehabilitation
and conservation of neighborhoods could be as effective as slum clearance
projects in bringing life to declining cities. A number of cities experimented
with rehabilitation of existing buildings and preservation of
neighborhoods. Building
repair and rehabilitation, clean-up crusades, and strict enforcement of
building codes became priorities.
This plan had been developed in Baltimore as early as the 1940s. The horrific conditions of Baltimore’s
impoverished neighborhoods were publicized in the 1930s and the city government’s
measures to correct these ills were ineffective. A citizen’s group, the Citizen’s Housing and Planning
Association, called for Baltimore’s government to create an independent department
to make and enforce housing standards and, if necessary, demolish buildings
that could not measure up to the standards. The group also called for a rehabilitation commission, which
would buy and rehabilitate substandard structures and then sell or lease the
structures. In 1947 the city
created a housing court to address only those concerns resulting from
residential code violations. The
so-called “Baltimore Plan,” was touted as a national symbol of how to transform
blighted areas.
At least twelve cities,
including Boston, Detroit, Miami and St. Louis, followed this approach in an
effort to avoid slum clearance. Some cities, including Chicago and Milwaukee,
tried this approach through the initiative of local citizens groups. This
theory of code enforcement and rehabilitation for urban change was expressed by
industry consultant Miles Colean in his 1953 book, Renewing Our Cities. Colean stated that urban problems were
interrelated with economic problems, including decentralization, suburban spread,
downtown congestion, and slums.
Rather than replacing slums with new housing, Colean recommended a more
comprehensive approach, including improving the city’s infrastructure and
schools, aimed at rehabilitating the city as a whole. Colean had a major influence on the phrase of urban renewal
that included code enforcement and rehabilitation. However, the failure to address social issues
completely led to a lack of sustainability for many of the Baltimore Plan
experiments. By 1951, Baltimore’s
own planning commission noted that “relief can be only partial and sometimes
temporary in nature.”
Nevertheless, the holistic “Baltimore Plan” contained the seeds of the
Model Cities Program developed a decade later.
The Housing Act of 1954
In the early 1950s,
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Advisory Committee on Government Housing
Policies and Programs, which introduced the concept of “urban renewal,” drafted
the main tenets of the Housing Act of 1954, which, among other provisions,
expanded the definition of an urban renewal project to include the restoration
of deteriorating structures, as well as projects involving clearance and
redevelopment. The law also
required local agencies to have a ‘workable plan’ to meet overall problems of
slum and blight in order to be eligible for urban renewal grants and loans and
to receive federal assistance on low-rent public housing. The law also offered FHA mortgage
assistance for private developers building residences that helped meet the
goals of urban renewal programs and matching grants to state planning agencies
providing assistance to small cities.
In spite of the hope that
this act would reduce urban problems, there were difficulties from the
outset. First, the programs were
costly and complicated to initiate.
Interest by developers never materialized to build or rehabilitate in
slum areas and builders found that the provisions for loans hindered
projects. Even after Congress
loosened loan terms, builders encountered difficulties obtaining land from
government agencies. As of 1960,
only 15,550 residences were built under Section 221 by developers and 1,500
under Section 220.
Code enforcement was not strengthened; local authorities continued to be
lax and the federal government did not compel them to comply. Funds continued to be supplied to local
governments for urban renewal projects without effective code enforcement. Citizen group efforts to implement code
enforcement disintegrated by the end of the 1950s. Despite being encouraged to undertake comprehensive
planning, most cities continued to proceed on a project by project basis. By 1959, the federal government began
to offer planning assistance to any city willing to design a comprehensive
Community Renewal Program, which would analyze the redevelopment and housing
needs, inventory existing resources, and prioritize needs and resources.
Urban Renewal and the 1960s
A shift in emphasis from
requiring projects to be ‘predominantly residential’ to allowing an increasing
percentage to be non-residential between the 1949 act and the 1954 act gave
local governments an incentive to apply for federal funding to build
non-housing projects. The 10
percent exception allowed in the 1954 act was increased to 20 percent in 1959,
30 percent in 1961, and 35 percent in 1965. Consequently, cities took this provision as license to
demolish thousands of homes and build highways, civic centers, and other
projects. Between 1958 and 1963,
federal urban renewal programs finally began to have a much greater effect on
American cities – especially in comparison to the earlier period, when they
primarily targeted housing projects.
By the early 1960s, cities were experimenting
with a wide variety of different options in an effort to reverse urban decline,
taking full advantage of the federal funding to create everything from downtown
government centers and plazas to sprawling industrial parks. In cities across the country, some of
the grandest and most optimistic schemes were proposed during this period. Many of them shared common
characteristics, such as focusing on marginal areas adjacent to central
business districts, targeting waterfront areas, and being conceptualized as
multi-purpose projects that combined building types such as housing, hotels,
entertainment, offices, and government centers. At the same time complaints and protests about the
justice and economic feasibility of urban renewal projects that involved
demolition and displacement and redevelopment of neighborhoods of low and
moderate income housing with unaffordable alternatives began to be heard across
the country.
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| After the dense Italian neighborhood of Dante Place was cleared, the Marine Drive apartments were erected in its place on Buffalo's waterfront. Image courtesy of WNY Heritage Press |
In 1965 the Department of
Housing and Urban Development Act was passed, creating the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD), an agency with cabinet status that
replaced the Housing and Home Finance Agency, the previous administrative
agency for urban renewal. The
first major legislation passed under HUD was the Demonstration Cities and
Metropolitan Development Act of 1966 (Model Cities Act). Incorporating some of the theories embodied
in the Baltimore plan, the model cities act was an attempt to create and
administer an integrated program of social services and citizen
participation. In response
to criticism from groups that felt that their communities had been taken from
them, the Model Cities program required a considerable amount of public
participation in the decision making process. The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968 combined
the Model Cities Act with legislation for new housing as well as the community
development tools to make social and economic change more effective. In addition to the loans and grants for
programs authorized under the Model Cities Act, the 1968 act adopted a target
of 26 million new or rehabilitated homes to be built between 1968 and 1978; six
million of them were designated for low and moderate income occupants.
In spite of the good
intentions and various innovative methods of urban reformers, government
officials, and business interests, by the 1970s, urban renewal had become
synonymous with the demolition of low-income inner city housing and the
displacement of its residents.
Given the disproportionate numbers of minority groups affected by these
projects, critics of the program called it racist. By 1974 the program had become so unpopular that Congress
ended it as a federal program. Not
only had urban renewal failed to solve the problems of slum housing that had
inspired it, it also failed to solve the problems of aging city centers, many
of which continued to be plagued by the migration of businesses and commercial
enterprises, lack of new construction starts and job opportunities, decaying
infrastructure, loss of interest in downtown areas, and crime.
Portions of this section of the National Register nomination were written by several historic preservation officers at the State Historic Preservation Office. You can check out the previous pieces in the series here: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, & Part VI
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