“THE CONTAINER AND THE CONTAINED”: FUNCTIONAL PRESERVATION OF HISTORIC FOOD MARKETS A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Gregory Alexander Donofrio January 2009 © 2009 Gregory Alexander Donofrio “THE CONTAINER AND THE CONTAINED”: FUNCTIONAL PRESERVATION OF HISTORIC FOOD MARKETS Gregory Alexander Donofrio, Ph. D. Cornell University 2009 “The Container and the Contained” explores the motivations, meanings, and methods of “functional preservation planning” through a case-study examination of three food market districts: Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington; Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Massachusetts; and Gansevoort Market, in New York, New York. The functional preservation planning of these districts spanned from the postWorld War II era into the present. Expanding upon the conventional objectives of historic preservation in the United States, with its narrow focus on the retention and restoration of architectural features, the goal of functional preservation is to document, protect, and perpetuate both the forms and the functions of historic resources. Interviews and archival research revealed that individuals involved with each market held a range of motivations for pursuing functional preservation planning. They all expressed a general belief that the historic character of cultural resources, however defined, was a manifestation of more than just architectural fabric. It also stems in part from how they are used, and by whom. Those who pursued functional preservation utilized a broad array of methods and tools to bring their plans to fruition, including not only established strategies like historic district designation and design review, but also novel approaches such as the regulation of building uses and oversight of market vendor products and sales techniques. Their efforts are set against the broader background of federal, state, and local market planning ideologies that evolved over the course of the twentieth century. Lastly, sources of data and quantitative methods of measuring the degree of functional preservation planning’s success and failure are proposed. BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH Greg Donofrio was born and raised in Buffalo, New York. He has had a long interest in food, agriculture, and the preservation and interpretation of historic resources. Greg attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York where he received a B.A. in the history of technology in 1998. His undergraduate thesis examined the history and technological evolution of Matthew Vassar’s nineteenth-century brewery. He then enrolled in the graduate program in historic preservation planning at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he examined architectural preservation issues through a range of student and professional projects. His M.A. thesis on the construction of the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York analyzed how its planners interpreted early nineteenth-century agriculture and rural life from a midtwentieth-century perspective. Upon completing his Masters in 2000, Greg accepted a position as a Historic Sites Restoration Coordinator at the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) in Waterford, New York. For the next three years he reviewed construction projects in New York City to ensure their compliance with state and federal historic preservation laws, in addition to helping building owners and architects apply for the federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit. Greg left the SHPO to pursue a doctoral degree at Cornell in the fall of 2003. iii for erin iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Every doctoral student collects a list of debts while researching and writing a dissertation. Mine feels particularly long as a result of selecting a topic that engaged both historical and current issues involving three different case studies located around the United States. I owe many thanks to those who, in different capacities, offered guidance, shared personal recollections, provided access to data, and gave me food, shelter, money, and companionship. Foremost among them are the four members of my doctoral committee: Cornell University professors Michael A. Tomlan, Department of City and Regional Planning, committee chair; Mary N. Woods, Department of Architecture; Jeffery Sobal, Division of Nutritional Sciences; and David Listokin, Professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University. Each made themselves available at a moment’s notice for telephone calls and meetings, and all dedicated significant time to editing the final work. Their connections and recommendations also helped me obtain a tenure-track position at the University of Minnesota teaching heritage preservation in the College of Design, Department of Architecture. I would like to thank David Listokin in particular for braving, on multiple occasions, the long drive to Ithaca from his home in New Jersey, often under inclement weather conditions. Indeed, I chose my advisers wisely, or, in retrospect, perhaps in part they chose me. Either way, I sure hitched my cart to the right team of horses. Along the way I found that those I called upon for help in each city had a slightly different level of receptivity when fielding requests for information from strangers. The public servants, administrators, and other people associated with Pike Place Market I had the pleasure of meeting in Seattle were immediately generous with their time and assistance. Long-time Friends of the Market, Ed Singler and Jerry Thonn, granted me interviews in which they shared their stories of the market v preservation initiative battle, as did LeAnn Loughran and Ken Pritchard. Alf Collins, a member of the Pike Place Market Historical Commission, helped me to understand the regulatory process through which historic uses are preserved in the market. Seattle Deputy City Archivist Anne Frantilla and her staff at the Seattle Municipal Archives facilitated my access to the files, photographs, and sound recordings documenting the history of Pike Place Market, all of which were remarkably well organized. At the Pike Place Market Public Development Authority (PDA), Executive Director Carol Binder granted me a frank and informative interview; James Haydu and Bill Stalder shared PDA statistics on farmer/vendor participation at the market. Karen Gordon, the Seattle Historic Preservation Officer, responded to my emails with answers to questions about local preservation regulations. And Heather McAullife, the Pike Place Market Historical Commission Coordinator, generously shared her historical database of market businesses and also helped make connections to informants who subsequently granted me interviews. I could not have completed the Seattle case study without her assistance. Lastly, my in-laws Todd and Judy Coryell shared their wonderful home in Seattle, and granted me unrestricted access to their pantry and refrigerator. In Boston, I thank the staff and archivists of the Massachusetts Historical Society, especially librarian Peter Drummy. Lisa Starzk unearthed documents at the Boston Athenaeum, as did Nicole DeLaria, the Special Collections Librarian at the Boston Historical Society. Richard Senier shared his memories of being among the first tenants of Faneuil Hall Marketplace after its redevelopment in the 1970s, and his subsequent legal fights with the Rouse Corporation in his capacity as President of the Faneuil Hall Merchants Association. Special thanks go to Hoagy de la Plante and his wife Janice for letting me stay at their condo in Boston, thereby saving me from further nights in that city’s youth hostels. vi Unlike my case studies in Seattle and Boston where the initial thrusts of preservation activity were in the 1960s and 1970s, Gansevoort Market in New York was a moving target where preservation threats and various new development projects seemed to crop up every day, and continue to do so. Frequent interviews and correspondence with preservationists and community activists enabled me to stay abreast of current events. In particular, interviews with Andrew Berman, Executive Director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), and Jo Hamilton, co-chair of the advocacy group Save Gansevoort Market, enabled me to understand what was at stake (steak?) in the preservation of the market’s historic meat-related functions. Melissa Baldock, also of GVSHP, provided me with various Gansevoort reports as well as her fine Masters Thesis that advocated for the retention of the historic uses of Coney Island. Sherida Paulsen, former Chairman of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC), explained the complexities of nominating and regulating the district from the city’s point of view, as did Jay Shockley, the LPC architectural historian who authored the Gansevoort landmark nomination. Marilyn Gelber and Laura Hansen helped me to understand the larger functional preservation context, in both the past and present. Kathy Howe facilitated my access to regulatory documents and National Register Nominations held in the files of the New York State Historic Preservation Office. I am deeply indebted to Randy Mason, Associate Professor of Historic Preservation at the University of Pennsylvania, for helping me to obtain full lending privileges at Penn libraries. Professor Mason sponsored me as a visiting graduate student in his department and happily renewed that sponsorship each year for four years. Penn’s libraries provided terrific resources and a study carrel while away from Cornell. vii Funding for my research was provided in part by the Cornell University Department of City and Regional Planning, a grant from the Clarence S. Stein Institute for Urban & Landscape Studies, and an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. On a more personal level I would like to thank my mother for her support and encouragement, and my father, for instilling in me an appreciation for historic things. Howard Craig has been an important personal advisor, mentor, and help-line operator. Friends Andrew Schwalm, Michael Attie, and Andrew Fearon forced on me much needed diversions from school work, all the while remaining important intellectual sounding boards. Most of all, my wife Erin Coryell, and our family members Stanley, Donald, Hershel, and Sabine for getting me through this dissertation. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Biographical Sketch Dedication Acknowledgements List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations Introduction Chapter One: Literature Review Chapter Two: Introduction to the Case Studies Chapter Three: Functional Obsolescence Chapter Four: Functional Preservation Chapter Five: Functional Preservation Methods Chapter Six: Measuring Functional Preservation Chapter Seven: Conclusion Appendix A: Pike Place Market Historic District Ordinance, 1971 Appendix B: Pike Place Market Historical Guidelines, 1974 References iii iv v x xiii xiv 1 19 36 77 158 232 335 368 379 383 400 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1. Map of the Pike Place Market Historic District 39 Figure 2.2. Opening Day of Pike Place Market, 1907 40 Figure 2.3. Covered Stalls at Pike Place Market, 1911 40 Figure 2.4. Pike Place Market, 1933 43 Figure 2.5. Empty Stalls at Pike Place Market after WWII 46 Figure 2.6. Youth Culture and Pornography near Pike Place Market, 1972 46 Figure 2.7. Pike Plaza Redevelopment Model, 1960s 48 Figure 2.8. Map of Faneuil Hall Market Area Building Uses, 1950 53 Figure 2.9. Quincy Market, 1906 54 Figure 2.10. Downtown Waterfront Faneuil Hall Renewal Site Plan, 1962 58 Figure 2.11. Construction of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway, early 1950s 60 Figure 2.12. Government Center across from Faneuil Hall 60 Figure 2.13. Map of Gansevoort Farmers Market & new West Washington Market 66 Figure 2.14. Gansevoort Farmers Market, 1900 66 Figure 2.15. M. Kraus & Brothers Storefront, 1933 69 Figure 2.16. Map of Gansevoort Market Building Uses, 1960 72 Figure 3.1. “All the World Feeds New York,” 1925 88 Figure 3.2. Food Markets on the Hudson River Shore of Manhattan, 1913 91 Figure 3.3. The Decentralized “Split Markets” of Boston, 1938 93 Figure 3.4. Consumer, Middleman, Producer Cartoon, 1913 95 Figure 3.5. The “New Way” of Terminal Markets Diagram, 1917 98 Figure 3.6. “Model Terminal Market” by George B. Ford, 1913 101 Figure 3.7. Gansevoort Terminal Market by J. G. Glover, 1913 104 Figure 3.8. Methods of Moving Fruits and Vegetables, 1938 115 Figure 3.9. Traffic Congestion as Quincy Market, 1950 116 Figure 3.10. Plan of USDA Recommended Wholesale Market Unit, 1950 119 Figure 3.11. Elevation of USDA Recommended Wholesale Market Unit, 1950 120 Figure 3.12. Wholesale Market Buildings Built to USDA Plans, 1957 121 Figure 3.13. Moving Meat “Across the Sidewalk” in Gansevoort Market, 1962 130 Figure 3.14. Squatters’ Colony in Gansevoort Market, 1933 130 Figure 3.15. Fire Barrel at Night in Washington Market, n.d. 131 Figure 3.16. Modern Chain Store Food Warehouse, late 1950s 136 Figure 3.17. Market Structure under the Chain Store System, 1974 140 Figure 3.18. Plan of “Purely Local” Food Store by Stein and Bauer, 1934 145 Figure 3.19. Greenbelt Towns Local Food Poster, 1936 148 Figure 3.20. Clarence Stein Neighborhood “Community Market,” mid 1950s 148 Figure 4.1. “Pike Place National Park” Cartoon, 1967 165 Figure 4.2. Cleaning Dirt from Radishes at Pike Place Market, 1955 168 Figure 4.3. “Vending of the Vegetable Ceremony” Cartoon, 1967 170 Figure 4.4. Full Service at DeLaurenti’s Grocery, Pike Place Market, 1952 174 Figure 4.5. Elderly Residents of the Leland Hotel, Pike Place Market, 1971 179 Figure 4.6. Mark Tobey, “E Plurbus Unum,” painting, 1942 181 Figure 4.7. Elderly Man at Market, Sketch by Victor Steinbrueck, 1968 181 x Figure 4.8. Elderly Woman at Market, Sketch by Laurie Olin, 1972 183 Figure 4.9. Interior of the Virginia Inn Bar, a “Poor Man’s Social Club,” 1974 183 Figure 4.10. A Man Sleeps in a Pike Place Market Doorway, 1975 185 Figure 4.11. Map of Boston Freedom Trail, 1998 191 Figure 4.12. Demolition for Independence Mall, Philadelphia, n.d. Figure 4.13. Butcher Shops at Faneuil Hall Market, late 19th century 195 195 Figure 4.14. Teterel Shop in Colonial Williamsburg, circa 1935 199 Figure 4.15. Selling Wreaths at Quincy Market, circa 1950 199 Figure 4.16. Prepackaged Meat following WWII, 1948 200 Figure 4.17. BTA Faneuil Hall Marketplace Presentation Materials, n.d. 206 Figure 4.18. BTA Interior Rendering of “New Quincy Market,” n.d. 207 Figure 4.19. BTA Photograph Negative Contact Sheet, n.d. 208 Figure 4.20. Clean Streets and Social Interaction at Quincy Market, n.d. 210 Figure 4.21. Cars and Trucks Packed onto North Market Street, n.d. 210 Figure 4.22. Interior of Quincy Market before Redevelopment, Vegetables, 1972 211 Figure 4.23. Interior of Quincy Market before Redevelopment, Meat, 1972 211 Figure 4.24. Beef Carcasses Hanging over Sidewalk in Gansevoort Market, 1981 220 Figure 4.25. Workers Handling Meat Outside in Gansevoort Market, 2003 220 Figure 4.26. Gansevoort Market Clothing Boutique, circa early 2000s 225 Figure 4.27. Dave’s Veal Signage, Gansevoort Market, 2005 and 2006 226 Figure 4.28. Gap “Rock Color Bus” in Gansevoort Market, 2006 228 Figure 5.1. Award Presentation to Market Competition Winner, n.d. 237 Figure 5.2. Protest Opposing Demolition of Pike Place Market, 1971 243 Figure 5.3. SRO Hotel Room Drawn by Steinbrueck, 1968 243 Figure 5.4. Josseph Mossafer Market Stand Sketch by Steinbrueck, 1968 244 Figure 5.5. Low-Cost Items in the Market Sketch by Olin, 1972 244 Figure 5.6. Concert to Support Preservation of Pike Place Market, 1971 253 Figure 5.7. Pike Place Market “Character Zones,” 1972 256 Figure 5.8. Rehabilitation Cost/Value “Gap” 261 Figure 5.9. Pike Market Child Care, 1976 269 Figure 5.10. Stahl Restoration Proposal for South Market Building, 1968 289 Figure 5.11. Romagnolis Shop for Cheese at Quincy Market, 1977 298 Figure 5.12. Merchandise “Drift” at Quincy Market, 1978 300 Figure 5.13. More Merchandise “Drift” at Quincy Market, 1978 300 Figure 5.14. Gansevoort Market Preservation Protest, 2003 312 Figure 5.15. Gansevoort Market National Register Historic District Map 319 Figure 5.16. Map of the High Line Route 326 Figure 5.17. Rendering of the Standard Hotel by Polshek Partnership, 2006 330 Figure 5.18. Meat Worker in Shadow of Standard Hotel, 2007 330 Figure 6.1. Retail Food Stores by Type of Store in the U.S., 1929-2002 341 Figure 6.2. Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related Products 346 Figure 6.3. Employees of Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related 346 Figure 6.4. Total Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related 348 Figure 6.5. Total Employees of Wholesalers of Groceries and Related 348 Figure 6.6. Number of Establishments in Pike Place Market 355 xi Figure 6.7. 100% Stacked Column Chart of Pike Place Market Business Types Figure 6.8. Percentages of Pike Place Market Businesses by Type of Business Figure 6.9. Number of Farmer/Vendor Permits Issues at Pike Place Market Figure 6.10. Percentage of Faneuil Hall Marketplace Establishments by Type Figure 6.11. Number of Establishments by Type in the Quincy Market Building Figure 6.12. Percentage of Establishments by Type in Gansevoort Market Figure 6.13. Number of Establishments by Type in Gansevoort Market Figure 7.1. Place Pigalle Tavern interior, 1975 Figure 7.2. Place Pigalle Tavern interior sketch by Laurie Olin Figure 7.3. Place Pigalle Restaurant interior, circa 2001 357 358 360 362 362 364 364 373 373 374 xii LIST OF TABLES Table 6.1 Summary of Pop. by Race and Region of City, Charleston, S.C Table 6.2 Retail Food Stores by Type of Store in United States, 1929-2002 338 343 xiii ASPO BRA BTA CDBG CPC DCD FOM GVSHP HUD LPC MHS NHPA NPS NYC EDC NYT PDA RERC SHPO SIC SMA SoHo SRO TRC USDA WPA LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS American Society of Planning Officials Boston Redevelopment Authority Benjamin Thompson Associates Community Development Block Grant New York City Planning Commission City of Seattle Department of Community Development Friends of the Market [Pike Place] Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation United State Department of Housing and Urban Development New York City Landmarks Preservation Commissions Massachusetts Historical Society National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 National Park Service New York City Economic Development Commission New York Times Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Real Estate Research Corporation State Historic Preservation Office Standard Industrial Classification Seattle Municipal Archives South of Houston [New York City] Single Room Occupancy Apartment or Hotel The Rouse Corporation United States Department of Agriculture Works Progress Administration xiv INTRODUCTION “How are we to save a way of life?” asked one man, exasperated by the debate playing out before him at a meeting convened in the summer of 1964 to discuss the future of Seattle’s Pike Place Market. “We are sitting around here trying to preserve a way of life—we have to build this soil.”1 Controversial redevelopment projects pitting advocates for the preservation of historic buildings against proponents of large-scale demolition and urban renewal were common in the 1960s and 1970s. And yet his man’s comments expressed the uniqueness of a debate that was just then getting underway in Seattle. The previous summer a comprehensive plan to renew the Central Business District proposed demolishing the market to make way for parking facilities and an urban expressway. Seattle preservationists wanted to save the market, but not in the way that preservation was practiced at that time with its narrow focus on the retention and restoration of architectural features, an approach that is still largely dominant today. Rather, they wanted to preserve the form and the function of Pike Place Market, which they considered interrelated. For them, the “real historic significance” of the market stemmed from its existence as a “living thing.” But how does one preserve a living thing—a way of life—indefinitely? This dissertation explores the motivations, meanings, and methods of “functional preservation.” Seattle preservationists saw an “elusive” quality, a “genuine character” about their market that they desperately wanted to protect. Fear of losing it compelled them to take actions. Yet they first had to articulate to themselves and to the rest of Seattle exactly what it was about the market’s function that was so important for them to preserve. Ultimately they assembled a compelling 1 Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc, Minutes of Meeting of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, Friends of the Market Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 1 portrait of its non-architectural characteristics that included the market’s merchants, products, shoppers, and area residents. They determined that to preserve these aspects of its historic character it was necessary to protect the market’s function as a downtown nexus of affordable foods, services, and other neccesities for all Seattle residents, especially the low-income community. To implement their particular vision of historic preservation, they then developed a regulatory and management infrustructure to maintain the market’s functions in perpetuity. Some of their strategies, like government oversight of architectural modifications, were pulled directly from the existing toolbox of historic preservation methods; others, like the regulation of uses, vendors, and products are novel and remain largely unexamined by preservation scholars and practitions. Two other case studies explored in this dissertation reveal rationales and strategies for functional preservation different from those observed in Seattle. Advocates working to save Pike Place Market were dimly aware of another urban renewal project across the country that was also attempting to preserve the historic uses of a market. In the early 1970s architects Jane and Benjamin Thompson teamed up with developer James Rouse to rehabilitate Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which reopened to enormous crowds during the summer of the nation’s bicentential. With Rouse’s approval, the Thompsons carefully selected the tenants for the development, most of them small, independent businesses. Fresh food vendors were grouped at the center of the development in the Quincy Market building to reinforce the area’s historical associations with food and to bolster its continued legitimacy as a functioning market. Located elsewhere in the complex were restaurants, bars, and boutiques offering unique, high-quality merchandise. Even though it preserved certain aspects of the area’s historic function as an urban hub of food distribution, some critics felt that a part of the market’s character 2 had been lost. Ada Louise Huxtable, the influential architecture critic for the New York Times, noticed this change and wrote that, You cannot ever really turn back the clock, or have things as they were. The appropriate resolution of the hard realities of necessary change are what preservation is all about. And yet every ‘appropriate’ solution kills the old buildings a little bit at the same time that it keeps them alive—a practical and philosophical paradox.2 It was not the structural modifications to the buildings that most troubled her; yes, they had been atlered, some of them radically so, and she admitted as much. Rather, it was the loss of the “honest shabbiness” of the old Faneuil Hall Marketplace. In its reincarnation it had become “elite, cleaned-up, skillfully merchandized” to appeal to the “affluent and sophisticated public” that she called the “Saturday generation.” It was their money that was needed to support such extensive and costly restoration. The market was now a place to pursue leasure and entertainment—weekend activities for the “Saturday generation”—not a venue for the purchase of life’s more fundamental everyday neccessities. The “practical and philosophical paradox” that Huxtable described remains one the most important and uninvestigated problems of contemporary preservation pratice. If the very act of preservation changes some of the most valued qualities of historic properties, how are we to mitigate this outcome? Functional preservation continues to be a challenge. Activists who tried to retain the meat processors and wholesale distributors in New York City’s Gansevoort Market district know all too well what can happen to the functions of historic places that become chic and trendy. The case study of their efforts illustrates the futility of trying to preserve historic functions using only conventional historic preservation tools like local and national historic district designation. 2 Ada Louise Huxtable, “Why you Always Win and Lose in Urban Renewal,” New York Times, 16 Sept. 1976, p. 106. 3 Drawn there by the gritty industrial character of the area, new businesses began to move into the Gansevoort Market district in the 1990s, displacing long-established meat merchants from a district that was the historic center of the city’s wholesale meat trade. Preservation-minded neighbors were initially alarmed by the physical alterations these new business were making, especially the removal of large metal canopies that projected out from building facades to shelter sidewalks throughout the district. Soon they realized that the district’s rising popularity threatened to also remove the very source of the area’s industrial character—the meat processors and wholesale distributors. Although they successfully managed to nominate the district to the local and nation historic registers, they were unable to preserve its meat-related market functions. Other available zoning and economic development tools that might have helped to preserve the area’s functional characterists could not be combined to create an integrated and effective preservation approach. Although they are referred to here as preservationists, many of the community activists discussed in this dissertation were frustrated to discover that the larger preservation movement did not share their commitment to saving the functional qualities of historic property. In the United States and much of the rest of the world, historic preservation is primarily objects oriented and does not generally consider the uses of property to be in and of themselves historic. Preservationists normally seek to preserve “the physical reality of buildings, structures, objects, and places,” the “artifactual context of our environment.”3 This focus on material culture is deeply rooted in the movement’s history, and is perpetuated through the academic 3 Robert E. Stipe, “Where Do We Go from Here?,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 452. 4 curriculums that train preservation professionals.4 Preservationists see themselves as preserving “tangible culture,” as opposed to “intangible culture” like dance, music, stories and other activities that animate the physical environment. Intangible culture is thought to be the domain of other professional disciplines like anthropology, ethnomusicology, and folklore.5 “Intangible heritage” is now a category of culture officially recognized by the United Nations Economic, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.6 However, as Alan Jabbour argues, the term “intangible culture” masks more than it reveals. Rather than describing any “salient features,” it defines a class of cultural resources in terms of what they are not, that is, tangible. A definition that merely excludes a resource from some other more established category is a form of marginalization. And the notion of tangibility is itself problematic. The market preservationists sought to preserve a broad range of related cultural resources including certain types of foods, classes of people, various activities, and commercial practices. None of these were “intangible” if we define the word as that which is beyond the perception of the senses. On the contrary, market heritage can be seen, touched, heard, and tasted. One might then surmise that “intangible heritage” is ephemeral or subject to change, as opposed to “tangible heritage” that is permanent and fixed. Yet this too is a matter of degree, subject to interpretation.7 Among the maxims of modern preservation practice is that 4 Ibid.; on the “artifact-centered” approach to historic preservation training, see Michael A. Tomlan, “Looking at the World Through Different Glasses: The Development of Preservation Education in the United States,” Historic Preservation Forum (Nov/Dec 1993): 4-12. 5 Alan Jabbour, “Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 441; Richard Longstreth also says preservationists often overlook, or dismiss, the fact that their work deals in both “tangible and intangible realms;” see Richard Longstreth, “Taste versus History,” Historic Preservation Forum (May/June, 1994): 45. 6 UNESCO codified this policy in the 2003 “Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage,” which stated that “the intangible cultural heritage (ICH) – or living heritage – is the mainspring of our cultural diversity and its maintenance a guarantee for continuing creativity.” See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00002. 7 Jabbour, “Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation,” 423-448. 5 even buildings and landscapes change over the years, and that these changes may in themselves become historic over time.8 In addition to being object-oriented, preservationists also tend to be “pastoriented.” They see their profession as “fundamentally historical.”9 Diligent research and documentation of the past uses and users of a property are an integral component of preservation practice. Preservationists do not, however, typically aim to understand or preserve the functions of historic properties in the present.10 This orientation is woven into the administrative structure of preservation laws, which generally state that a property can only be considered “historic” if it is associated with past people, events, or architectural styles. A minimum number of years are required to pass—generally, fifty—between the occurrence of an event or the construction of a building before a determination of its significance can be made. This rift between past and present is thought to act as a “filter” that sorts the truly important historic properties from those which “are of only contemporary, faddish value.”11 Contemporary users of historic properties are typically not seen as participants in an ongoing historic use; rather, “the citizens of the present are viewed almost as bystanders for whom the past is explicated, or as an educative context for which the history is interpreted.”12 The preservation movement is developing an increasingly precise vocabulary to describe historic architectural features and styles. As useful as these have been in 8 See The Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Rehabilitation, numbers 3 and 4. 9 Jabbour, “Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation,” 443; according to Richard Longstreth, “Historicity is what distinguishes preservation from all other pursuits in shaping the environment;” Richard Longstreth, “Taste versus History,” Historic Preservation Forum (May/June, 1994): 45. 10 For example, when preparing an historic structures report, the National Park Service recommends that practitioners provide a “description of original construction, modifications, and uses, based on historical documentation and physical evidence;” observation of current users is not a recommended technique for understanding historical significance; Deborah Slayton, “Preservation Brief 43: The Preparation and Use of Historic Structures Reports,” Technical Preservation Service, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, April, 2005. 11 NR bulletin 22. 12 Jabbour, “Folklife, Intangible Heritage, and the Promise and Perils of Cultural Cooperation,” 443. 6 professional practice and for the dissemination of information to the general public, some argue that stylistic schema and technical lexicon impoverish the study of architecture. They obscure the nuances of history and short-circuit more meaningful discussions of architectural purpose, values, and social context.13 It has even been suggested that those outside the trained preservation community adopt an architectural vocabulary to describe what they want to preserve because there is no sufficient lexicon available to express their more experiential motivations for preservation activity.14 Existing regulatory guidelines and historic preservation standards prioritize functional preservation as the least important consideration. The three primary historic preservation laws in the United States at the federal level—the Antiquities Act of 1906, the Historic Sites Act of 1935, and the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966—all emphasize preservation of the physical qualities of historic resources. The 1966 Act, in part, requires federal agencies to take into account the effects of their undertakings on historic properties. Determinations of effect are made using the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties. While Standard One begins by stating that properties should be used as they were historically, it goes on to say that new uses are appropriate provided they maximize “the retention of distinctive materials, features, spaces, and spatial relationships.” Historic physical attributes are thus seen as more important than historic uses. This artifact-based way of looking at preservation is also common to state and local 13 See for example Richard Longstreth, “The Problem with ‘Style,’” Forum: The Bulletin of the Committee on Preservation (SAH) 6, nos. 1-2 (Dec. 1984): n.p; and Thomas Fisher, In the Scheme of Things: Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000): 107. 14 Robin Datel and Dennis Dingemans, “Environmental Perception, Historic Preservation, and Sense of Place,” in Environmental Perception and Behavior: An Inventory and Prospects, research paper No. 209, edited by Thomas F. Saarinen, David Seamon, and James L. Sell (Chicago: University of Chicago Department of Geography, 1984): 131-144. 7 preservation laws, many of which incorporate the Standards into their regulatory frameworks. Additionally, existing preservation financial incentives may actually undermine the preservation of historic functions. To take maximum advantage of the two most common financial incentives for preservation—tax abatements and tax credits—owners of historic properties are encouraged to make “substantial” capital investments in rehabilitation expenses. These owners are then financially compelled to find uses that produce the maximum return on their investment. If the historic uses of a property do not produce enough revenue, they are often displaced by uses that generate higher economic returns.15 And yet, there is growing acknowledgement within the preservation community of the need for new tools and theories. According to Robert Stipe, “during the last two decades has there been a significant redirection of American preservation to an emerging emphasis on both physical and social community building, and on more inclusive and diverse aspects of history, culture, and heritage.”16 He notes that the 1966 Act and the publication that inspired it, With Heritage So Rich, form the cornerstones of what was then thought of as the “new preservation.” Both documents envisioned preservation going “beyond saving bricks and mortar.” Historic resources were thought to be more than inanimate artifacts that somehow reflect our past; the goal was for them to become a “living part of the present.” 15 Peter Werwath, “Comment on David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr's ‘The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development,’” Housing Policy Debate 9, 3 (1998): 487-495; a coalition of preservation advocates and developers are currently lobbying for a number of amendments to the existing federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (HRTC) program, including the elimination of the “substantial rehabilitation” requirement; see David Listokin, Best Practices for Effecting the Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing, Vol. II, HUD, Sept. 2006. 16 Robert Stipe, “Where Do We Go From Here?,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert Stipe (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 452. 8 A number of scholars have also alluded to functional preservation as an elusive goal, an unmet challenge, of the historic preservation movement. The eminent preservation practitioner and educator James Marston Fitch noted that in certain historic districts, it was desirable to preserve the “physical fabric” as well as the function and indigenous population. He described the challenge metaphorically as an “obligation to intervene to preserve both, the container and the contained.”17 Fitch admired preservation projects that fulfilled this obligation, singling out as examples the “regeneration” of Split by the socialist regime of Yugoslavia, and the rehabilitation of Bologna, Italy’s historic city center carried out under the direction of the communist-controlled municipal government. Urban preservation projects in the United States like Charleston and Savannah were, he thought, less successful with respect to social policy.18 Fitch’s observations raise important questions about the feasibility of functional preservation in the free-market economy of the United States, a country with strong individual property rights. The growing movement to make historic preservation more inclusive with respect to race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation also raises issues that resonate with functional preservation. Properties are now regularly listed on the National Register of Historic Places for their historical association with various racial, ethnic, gay and lesbian constituencies.19 The significance of these sites may not be readily reflected in their architecture; rather, it stems in part from how they are used, and by whom. Ethnic identity was a recognized component of Pike Place Market; some of its oldest 17 James Marston Fitch, Historic Preservation: The Curatorial Management of the Built World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982), 177, 76. 18 Ibid., 65-66. 19 See for example Antoinette J. Lee, “The Social and Ethnic Dimensions of Historic Preservation,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 385-404; and Gail Lee Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” in Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation, edited by Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003): 281-299. 9 businesses were run by Italians. The same man who questioned the feasibility of “preserving a way of life” also wondered: “When these old Europeans disappear, what are we going to do?” Gansevoort Market, according to recent scholarship, was also an important site in the history of radical gay male liberation.20 But this component of its significance has at best been reduced to the footnotes of historic designation reports. According to Robert Stipe, “as time passes and presently obvious ethnic identities are shadowed by the passage of time, the question becomes one of whether the places they inhabit have lost their significance when all that remains is a street pattern and a few old buildings long ago identified as ethnically significant.”21 One early textbook on historic preservation suggested methods for the “cultural preservation” of “ethnic ambiance,” but their effectiveness has never been seriously evaluated.22 Other scholars claim that such tactics preserve only the “symbols of ethnic community,” not their “vitality.” They see ethnic preservation as exploitation, the economicallymotivated manipulation of “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions.”23 Cultural geographer David Lowenthal agrees, noting that preservation turns some buildings into “treasured relics but seldom extends their living virtues,” because “what we save is property and artifacts rather than ideas or culture.”24 Programming old buildings with new uses became an economically viable and increasingly popular downtown development strategy in the 1970s. Adaptive reuse 20 See the discussions of Gansevoort Market in chapters 3 and 6. 21 Robert Stipe raises this point in the conclusions of both A Richer Heritage, page 472, and American Mosaic. 22 Nathan Weinberg, Preservation in American Towns and Cities (Boulder, C.O.: Westview Press, Inc., 1979): 172-147. 23 Irving L. Allen “The Ideology of Dense Neighborhood Redevelopment,” in Gentrification, Displacement and Neighborhood Revitalization edited by J. John Palen and Bruce London (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984): 33; and Joseph M. Conforti, “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions,” Annals of Tourism Research 23, no. 4 (1996): 830-842. 24 David Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985): 406. 10 was thought to be the “clarion call of the new preservation;”25 a number of books on the topic published at this time documented successful case study examples in an effort to disseminate best practices.26 New federal tax incentives helped to level the economic playing field between new construction and historic preservation.27 Historic preservation became seen as a tool to create distinctive and entertaining social and retail environments downtown that could compete for economic activity with the suburbs. According to urban historian Carl Abbot, historic buildings were the backdrop to and infrastructure for the operation of “downtown as theme park.”28 Some preservationists objected to the entertainment and luxury retail uses to which historic buildings were being put. Former Keeper of the National Register William Murtagh coined the term “Boutique Syndrome” to describe the “replacement of [local] service-oriented businesses by specialty shops catering to tourists” of historic districts. The ironic result of adaptive reuse activities according to Murtagh was that urban residents were being forced to shop in suburban malls for the services that no longer existed in their historic neighborhoods while suburbanites flocked downtown to take in the entertainments offered by newly-reprogrammed historic attractions.29 Moreover, some argue that fancy cheese shops and high-end clothing 25 Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Report to the President and the Congress of the United States, (1978): 1. 26 Examples include Gene Bunnell, Built to Last: A Handbook on Recycling Old Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1977); National Trust for Historic Preservation, Economic Benefits of Preserving Old Buildings (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1975); Robert W. Burchell and David Listokin, The Adaptive Reuse Handbook: Procedures to Inventory, Control, Manage, and Reemploy Surplus Municipal Properties (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, 1981); Urban Land Institute, Adaptive Use: Development Economics, Process, and Profiles (Washington, D.C.: ULI, 1978). 27 Federal tax incentives for historic preservation were envisioned in the 1966 Act but did not come to fruition until 1976; they have since gone through a number of revisions; see David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr, “The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 431-478. 28 Carl Abbot, “Five Strategies for Downtown: Policy Discourse and Planning Since 1943,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, edited by Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996). 29 William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, revised edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997): 167, 215; Murtagh does not offer a cure for 11 boutiques undermine or somehow trivialize the “inner history” of certain buildings, especially historic industrial and waterfront neighborhoods—formerly blue-collar, working environments. To balance preservation’s overemphasis on appearances, it has been suggested that preservation commissions issue “Certificates of Reuse” to exercise more control over the new uses of restored historic properties.30 Although examples of functional preservation may be relatively rare, they merit examination for three reasons. First, over the last two decades, historic preservation has become an increasingly well respected and widely utilized economic development tool for municipalities of all sizes. Thus, even nascent trends have the potential for far-reaching impacts. In a 1994 survey of the development approaches pursued in 300 cities, historic preservation was ranked seventh (out of 45) in a list of the most often used revitalization strategies.31 Five years later, a national study of 57 small cities reported that historic preservation was the most widely employed economic development strategy, used by 88% of those cities surveyed; it was more popular than pedestrian improvements (72%) construction of parking facilities (37%) and the development of sports venues (11.5%).32 Policy experts are now recommending preservation for aging cities in need of an economic boost. A report on America’s older industrial cities published by the Brookings Institution recently singled out historic architecture as “vital competitive assets” to be leveraged for Boutique Syndrome; rather, he presents it as one of the pressing problems that preservation will confront in the future. 30 Wayne De La Roche, “Preserving without History,” in Historic Preservation: Forging a New Discipline, edited by Beth Sullebarger (New York: Preservation Alumni, Inc., 1989): 33-39. Peirce F. Lewis argues that adaptive reuse is a poor strategy if our desire is to preserve “cultural memory,” in “The Future of the Past: Our Clouded Vision of Historic Preservation,” in Controversies in Historic Preservation, edited by Pamela Thurber (Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation, 1985). 31 Carolyn Douthat, “Economic Incentives for Historic Preservation in Oakland, California,” Historic Preservation Forum 9, no. 1 (1994): 33–40. 32 Kent A. Robertson, “Can Small-City Downtowns Remain Viable? A National Study of Development Issues and Strategies,” Journal of the American Planning Association 1, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 270184. 12 revitalization; it suggested that the number of National Register-listed historic properties in a city was a positive indicator of its potential for economic recovery.33 As preservation’s role in revitalization becomes more clear, governments at all levels are expanding their preservation infrastructure and nominating more buildings for formal designation as historic resources. Growth at the local level, where preservation protections are strongest, has been dramatic. There are now more that 2000 local historic preservation commissions, up from 250 at the nation’s bicentennial in 1976.34 Over one million properties are currently listed on the National Register of Historic Places and a significant number or new listings are added every year.35 In addition to providing various degrees of protection, historic designation often also confers eligibility for economic incentives. Federal tax incentives for historic preservation first became available in 1976 and, to date, have generated greater than $40 billion in preservation activity.36 Additional subsidies are currently offered by thirty four states and an unknown number of local governments.37 Ongoing research into historic preservation’s economic benefits has helped the movement to shed somewhat its once common reputation for being “anti- development.” Increasingly sophisticated direct and indirect measurements overwhelmingly document that preservation activities such as rehabilitation of historic property, landmark designation, heritage tourism, and museum development are all 33 Jennifer S. Vey, “Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities,” Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, May 2007. 34 David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr, “The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 431-478. Depending upon one’s perspective, “protections” can be seen as restrictions on the use of private property; however, courts have consistently ruled that designation (and regulation) of historic property is legitimate use of the police powers of the state, and thus not an unconstitutional “taking.” See Robin Leichenko, et al., “Historic Preservation and Residential Property Values: An Analysis of Texas Cities,” Urban Studies 38, no. 11 (2001): 1974. 35 More than 40,000 were added in 2005 alone; see “Federal Tax Incentives for Rehabilitating Historic Buildings: Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2006.” 36 Ibid. 37 A list of the tax incentives available in every state is provided in David Listokin, Best Practices for Effecting the Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing, Vol. II, HUD, Sept. 2006. 13 sound investments with substantial economic returns.38 The banking, investment, and real estate communities have taken note. According to Allison Eisenberg’s recent history of downtown marketing, “preservation is no longer seen as an alternative to market-driven development; in fact it now appears to be the enabler of, even the catalyst for, developer profit.”39 According to some critics, preservation has become too profit oriented. They charge that preservation is responsible for gentrification, which is the forced displacement of low and moderate income residents and the businesses that serve them. Gentrification scholars who specifically mention historic preservation programs like historic property designation and financial incentives for rehabilitation contend that the preservation movement lacks commitment to “social responsibility.”40 A number of recent books have reexamined the history of preservation in United States in an effort to document the evolution of the movement’s theories and methods.41 Despite being alluded to by a number of preservationists, functional preservation has received little scholarly attention. The present study is among the first to attempt to understand the motivations and means of functional preservation. Furthermore, while there is growing enthusiasm for the architectural preservation of the “recent past,” there is scant documentation of 38 Listokin, “The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development;” see also Randy Mason, “Economics and Historic Preservation: A Guide and Review of the Literature,” Brookings Institution, Metropolitan Policy Program, Sept. 2005. 39 Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004): 259. 40 Neil Smith, “Comment on David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr’s ‘The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development’: Historic Preservation in a Neoliberal Age.” Housing Policy Debate 9, 3 (1989): 479-485; see also Peter Werwath’s comment in this same issue. A more extensive discussion of preservation and commercial gentrification is offered in chapter two, the literature review. 41 Examples which are discussed in the literature review include James M. Lindgren’s Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995; and Michael Holleran’s Boston's "Changeful Times": Origins of Preservation & Planning in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998). 14 the preservation movement’s own recent past, in particular its history since the passage of the Historic Preservation Act of 1966. The case studies of markets examined in this dissertation are an exploration of preservation initiatives in the second half of the twentieth century. These case studies document ongoing preservation activity to this day. This dissertation contributes to the growing literature about the economics of historic preservation. While not exclusively about gentrification, this study sheds new light on the displacement of businesses and industry by uses that generate greater profits. Sometimes called commercial gentrification, this process is not well understood, in part because it receives far less attention from scholars than does residential gentrification. More specifically, this dissertation explores the extent to which preservationists are able to influence the uses of historic properties with existing tools, which include incentives and restrictions. The information in this dissertation was drawn from a wide variety of sources that were analyzed comparatively using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods. Research progressed through two different stages. The first stage began in the fall of 2003 with an examination of archival resources to document food market planning in the United States over the course of the twentieth century. Sources included site-specific reports prepared by urban planners and the United States Department of Agriculture for towns and cities located throughout the nation, professional planning and engineering journals, and popular literature like newspaper and magazine articles that discussed food accessibility, quality, and cost. The second research phase, which began in the fall of 2006 and continued through the spring of 2008, involved fieldwork in each of the cities where the casestudy markets were located. The goals were to understand why certain preservationists were motivated to save historic market functions, to document the 15 methods they used, and to assess the degrees to which they were successful. The first of these two goals—motivations and methods—were uncovered through semistructured interviews with market preservationists and administrators, as well as research in archives that held personal correspondence, internal memos, and published and unpublished reports. The Seattle Municipal Archives, Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University in New York City were the primary repositories of this information. Local newspapers also closely followed the developments in all three case studies, and these too provided insights into the words and concepts used to invoke the special character of these historic resources. A quantitative approach was used to measure the effectiveness of functional preservation over time. Longitudinal databases of the businesses in each market at various points in time were assembled using cross-reference telephone directories such as the Cole Directory and the Polk Directory. Back-issues of these directories were found in the public libraries in Seattle, Boston, and New York City. Current data about market businesses was obtained using the online-version of the Cole Directory, which was generously made available to me by Cole Information Services of Lincoln, Nebraska. Once the databases were populated with lists of businesses for each market, each business was categorized by the type of goods or services it offered, for example, fresh food, prepared food, or services. The changes over time in the percentages of each business type were then analyzed using basic descriptive statistics and bar charts. Chapter One consists of a review of the literature that this study uses as buildings blocks and also seeks to build upon. The review is divided into three thematic sections: Farmers’ Markets and Public Markets and Their Role in Economic 16 and Social Regeneration; Historic Preservation and Cultural Conservation; and The Economics of Historic Preservation and Gentrification. Chapter Two provides a brief introduction to each of the three case study markets. It is designed to orient the reader to where the markets are located, how they developed physically and functionally over time, and when and why they emerged as the objects of functional preservation planning. The content of this chapter is drawn largely from secondary literature, though it emphasizes to a greater extent than any of these existing sources the types of businesses that occupied each market, the goods that they sold, their organizational structure and the types of business transactions that were conducted. Chapter Three traces the historical development of markets in the twentieth century as a foundation for understanding the challenges to their functional preservation. While the development of markets in the United States has received greater attention from scholars in recent years, their history in the twentieth century remains largely unexplored. At the beginning of the twentieth century, urban public markets and farmers markets were still considered critical components of the larger infrastructure necessary to feed urban residents, as critical to urban health as public water and sewer systems. By mid century, however, they were widely deemed to be structurally antiquated and functionally obsolete. Chapter Four examines the motivations for the functional preservation of each case study site. Preservation begins when people identify an historic resource they consider to be worth saving. The next step is explaining why. Where land and money are limited, as they usually are in urban contexts, the reasons for preservation must be persuasive. They must be compelling to some constituency, powerful decision makers, and those who hold the purses to sources of capital. The features of markets that were considered by some to be most obsolete and disagreeable were precisely the 17 functional characteristics that preservationists identified as rare, endangered, and thus most worthy of saving. Chapter Five discusses the methods of functional preservation employed in each case study. They included advocacy, protest, regulation, different management arrangements and financing strategies. Each had their purposes and limitations; all were used with varying degrees of success. The sixth and final chapter considers one way to measure functional preservation by comparing the types of businesses that existed in a market and the goods they sold changed over time. These are described empirically with descriptive statistics and illustrated with charts. The very notion of “success” is itself open to interpretation. How are we to measure the degrees of functional preservation success or failure? When its only goal is the physical conservation of architecture, the answers may be more readily apparent, though they may still be subject to debate. Does the building appear as it did historically? Does it retain the features considered to be significant? Is the physical fabric original, or the product of restoration? Responses can vary from person to person, contingent upon one’s own subjective judgment of appearance, determination of significance, and criteria for integrity. So too is the case with functional preservation. 18 CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW Farmers’ Markets and Public Markets and Their Role in Economic and Social Regeneration Given that humans have always needed to eat, it is surprising that public markets and farmers markets have had, until very recently, a relatively minor presence in the secondary literature produced over the last roughly twenty-five years by scholars and practitioners working in the fields of architectural history, urban planning, and economic development. Given this absence, it would be tempting to conclude that few cities in the United States had markets, that they were not a prominent feature in the nation’s urban landscape. But this was not the case. A 1918 survey of municipal markets in the 227 U.S. municipalities with populations over 30,000 conducted by the Bureau of the Census identified 237 functioning markets in 128 cities. In 1946, the USDA identified 724 farmers’ produce markets operating across the United States, and as of 2008 there are 4,685.1 Markets and farmers markets were and still are, in fact, a vital component of the nation’s food infrastructure. It has only been within the last ten years that scholars and practitioners have begun to evaluate their past, current, and future significance. Still, large gaps remain in our understanding of their history, functions, and preservation The secondary literature on public markets and farmers markets can be sorted into three thematic categories: history; urban sociology; and economic development 1 Sam L. Rogers, Municipal Markets in Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919); John L. Wann, et. al., Farmers’ Produce Markets in the United States, Part 1: History and Description (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1948); and August 2008 count according to “Number of Farmers Markets Continues to Rise in U.S.”, USDA Program Announcement, Agricultural Marketing Service, 19 Sept. 2008 (viewed online at: http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5072472&acct=frmrdirmkt). 19 and urban food systems planning. Each category is examined with the intent to point out the gaps in our understanding of these markets that this dissertation addresses. A few historians have written on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history of public markets in the United States, analyzing their architecture, historic functions, and role in civic culture and urban food provisioning.2 For the most part, these sources do not address the question: if markets were so vital up until and throughout the 1800s, what happened to the nation’s market infrastructure in the twentieth century? Mayo, in particular suggests that public markets became functionally obsolete and therefore disappeared in the early 1900s as grocery stores and supermarkets became the dominant sources of retail food sales. While this is clearly part of the story, it fails to explain why a good many markets operated continually into the present, such as Pike Place in Seattle, Soulard Market in St. Louis, Reading Terminal in Philadelphia, Findlay Market in Cincinnati, Central Market in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Central Market in Cleveland, and Eastern Market in Detroit among others. As this dissertation documents, Pike Place Market survived and continues to thrive as the result of diligent preservation planning. The preservation of these other markets merit further research. There are, however, a few historians who have tracked the rise, fall, preservation, and, in some cases, redevelopment of specific markets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.3 Shorrett and Morgan’s monograph on Pike Place Market and 2 The best recent examples include Helen Tangires, Public Markets and Civic Culture in NineteenthCentury America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) and her article “Feeding the Cities: Public Markets and Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,” Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration 29 (spring 1997): 19-26. James Mayo’s “The American Public Market,” Journal of Architectural Education 45 (Nov. 1991): 41-57; and his book The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993), which begins with a chapter on public markets. Bryan Clark Green, “The Structure of Civic Exchange: Market Houses in Early Virginia,” in Shaping Communities: Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture, VI, edited by Carter L. Hudgins and Elizabeth Collins Cromley (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997): 189-203. 3 See for example Helen Tangires, “Contested Space: The Life and Death of Center Market,” Washington History 7 (spring-summer 1995): 46-67; Robert A. Sauder, “Municipal Markets in New 20 Quincy Jr.’s book on Faneuil Hall Marketplace are both important foundational building blocks for this dissertation. Neither, however, delves deeply into matters of functional preservation, explaining why preservationists wanted to perpetuate food uses at each market, the methods they used, or the extent to which they were successful over time. Quincy Jr. also essentially relays without any of his own investigation the City of Boston’s official viewpoint that the Faneuil Hall Market area was a dying food district in the 1950s and ‘60s. In fact, as this dissertation documents, it was still a thriving market at which many of its merchants desired to stay. They were forced out by eminent domain, contrary to his assessment that most of them gladly left the area to move to newer, more modern facilities in South Boston and the suburbs. From a broader perspective, to the extent that historians examine markets in the twentieth century at all, they fail to acknowledge the importance of federal policies, the ideologies of the real estate and planning communities, and the larger forces within the food industry. Federal policies and actions, as well as the biases of the urban planning community, stimulated suburbanization and inadvertently undermined the vitality of downtown of commercial cores.4 The role of government backed home mortgages and the influence of the national defense highway system are now generally understood as subsidizing the urban to suburban shift. Systematic federal, state, and local government action to dismantle markets and market districts is less well known. Markets often occupied valuable center-city locations. The streets that surrounded markets were often notoriously congested with trucks and cars. For a Orleans,” Journal of Cultural Geography 2 (Fall-Winter 1981): 82-95; John Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003); and Alice Shorett and Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce ( Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982). 4 Among them, federal interstate highway construction and various federal home loan housing programs, as described in Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). 21 generation of urban and transportation planners that sought to alleviate traffic by building more roads and whose ideas for the future of urban commerce were often based upon suburban concepts, market districts seemed woefully outdated and categorically “blighted.” Also working against markets at this same time was the prevailing wisdom of agricultural economists and government administrators who questioned the utility and practicality of provisioning cities from local and diversified agricultural sources. For them, regionally-specialized monocrop agriculture was the future of world farming.5 Writing from the perspectives of urban sociology, preservation, and urban planning, a number of scholars have roundly criticized festival marketplaces. Because Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the first of the festival marketplaces, it has become the figurative whipping post for their condemnations. They argue that redevelopment planners manipulated historic buildings and functions to create tourist destinations with a false sense of authenticity and a superficial or spurious “sense of place.” They are seen as “endlessly repeated copies… obscuring the city’s actual history.”6 Others find fault with the “illusion of public space” created by the private ownership and strict controls placed upon the user of the festival market environments.7 Originally thought to be a financially advantageous public investment, some urban planners now 5 Gregory Alexander Donofrio, “Feeding the City,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 7, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 30-41; the challenge of maintaining farmer/consumer interaction in a food system increasingly managed by agri-industrial operations is described by Herriet Friedmann, “Change in the International Division of Labor: Agri-food Complexes and Export Agriculture,” in Towards a New Political Economy of Agriculture, edited by William H. Fiedland, et. all. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991): 65-93. 6 Christine M. Boyer, “Cities for Sale: Merchandising History at South Street Seaport,” in Michael Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992). 7 Jon Goss, “Disquiet on the Waterfront: Reflections of Nostalgia and Utopia in the Urban Archetypes of Festival Marketplaces,” Urban Geography 17 (April1-May 16, 1996): 221-247. Sociologist Elijah Anderson, on the other hand, argues that the quasi-public space of Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia, which is not a festival marketplace, is a “Cosmopolitan Canopy” that promotes a unique form of social interaction among different races and classes of shoppers, vendors, and visitors. 22 believe that cities have not reaped an adequate return from festival markets.8 Fueling these criticisms is the reality that the major festival marketplaces developed by Rouse and designed by Benjamin Thompson Associates including Faneuil Hall Marketplace, South Street Seaport in Manhattan, and Harbor Place in Baltimore began with leases to small, independent and locally-owned enterprises. Now, however, they are almost all tenanted by large national or multi-national franchises selling items that are not produced locally.9 Sharon Zukin most forcefully articulates the relationships among preservation, building use, and sense of place when she writes that at Faneuil Hall Marketplace “preservation techniques are completely detached from specific places.” A “visual theme” is used to a replace a “specific social and material context,” which results in “non-place places.”10 These authors either imply or state explicitly that tourist-driven commercialism, national franchises, and the obfuscation of local history were the original goals of Faneuil Hall Marketplace and the festival marketplaces that were later developed in its pattern. While these may all be legitimate criticism of Faneuil Hall Marketplace as it exists today, they do not accurately reflect its planners’ original intentions. At this dissertation demonstrates Faneuil Hall Marketplace devolved to take on these characteristics due to a failure of long-term functional preservation planning. Public markets and farmers markets were slowly rediscovered in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, they are increasingly seen by professional organizations like the 8 Norman Krumholz, “Equitable Approaches to Local Economic Development,” Policy Studies Journal 27, no. 1 (1999): 83-95; David S. Sawicki, “The Festival Marketplace as Public Policy: Guidelines for Future Policy Decisions,” Journal of the American Planning Association 55, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 347-361. 9 John T. Metzger, “The Failure of a Festival Marketplace: South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan,” Planning Perspectives 16 (2001): 25-46; Roberta Grandes Gratz, and Norman Mintz, Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown (New York: Preservation Press, 1998); and Sharon Zukin, Landscapes of Power: From Detroit to Disney World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 10 Zukin, Landscapes of Power, p. 20; for a different perspective about the historical growth and sociology of themed food venues, see Alan Beardsworth and Alan Bryman, “Late Modernity and the Dynamics of Quasification: The Case of the Themed Restaurant,” The Sociological Review 47, no. 2 (May 1999): 228-257. 23 American Planning Association as important engines of economic development and vital components in urban food systems plans. Funding for market improvements is being made available from municipalities and major philanthropic foundations.11 A new generation of market development manuals, such as one co-published by the Urban Land Institute, have emerged to advance this movement.12 The USDA is now keenly interested in the growth of farmers markets. As a sign of its new commitment to them, in July of 2008 it declared August 3-9th to be “National Farmers Market Week,” in recognition of their contribution to urban health, agricultural land preservation, and economic development.13 As their numbers have grown dramatically in recent years, research into markets has spun off into a number of different directions. They are acknowledged as an important component of the larger “food system” and a contribution to public health in particular.14 Their contributions to low-income communities are being investigated,15 as are their significances to rural communities, farm preservation, and “civic agriculture.”16 Just as preservationists began to do thirty years ago, scholars are developing technically-sophisticated measurements of the economic benefits of public 11 See Roberta Deering and Gregory Ptucha, “Super Marketing: Once-Dowdy Public Markets are Taking on New Life,” Planning 53, no. 10 (Oct. 1987): 27-29; on “food-based programs as business incubators,” see Gratz and Mintz, Cities Back from the Edge. 12 For example, Spitzer and Baum, Public Markets and Community Revitalization; Vance Corum, et. al., The New Farmers Market: Farm-Fresh Ideas for Producers, Managers, and Consumers (Auburn, Calif.: New World Publishing, 2001). 13 See www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5070823. 14 Gail Feenstra, “Creating Space for Sustainable Food Systems: Lessons from the Field,” Agriculture and Human Values 19 (2002): 101-104; and Samina Raja, Branden Born, and Jessica Kozlowski Russell, A Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning: Transforming Food Environments, Building Healthy Communities, Planning Advisory Service (PAS) Report Series Number 554 (Chicago: American Planning Association, 2008). 15 PPS, “Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility,” Phase 1 Report: An Overview of Existing Programs and Assessment of Opportunities, PPS in conjunction with Partners for Livable Community, September 2003; PPS, “Public Markets and Community-Based Food Systems: Making them Work in Lower Income Neighborhoods,” PPS, November 2003. 16 Thomas A. Lyson, Civic Agriculture: Reconnecting Farm, Food, and Community (Medford, MA: Tufts University Press, 2004). 24 markets.17 However, this dissertation uncovers a rich irony in this recent resurgence of interest in public markets and farmers markets. The organizations and agencies that now enthusiastically promote them—namely, the United States Department of Agriculture, the American Planning Association, and the Urban Land Institute—were the very institutions who discounted their efficiency, economic relevance, and functional necessity in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. Historic Preservation and Cultural Conservation The literature specifically examining how preservationists in the United States chose what they wish to preserve and the motivations behind these decisions is surprisingly sparse. Existing research indicates that the preservation movement’s objectives and motivations have evolved and expanded over time. Before the Civil War, sites deemed worthy for preservation were those with strong historical associations that could be used to convey lessons of patriotism, teach traditional American values, and foster class identity and cohesion. Later in the 19th and early 20th centuries, aesthetic values of historic resources became increasingly important. Older buildings also became seen as documents that could yield important information about historic construction methods, living conditions, and stylistic typologies. Early twentieth-century preservationists also began to consider the economic potential of heritage tourism.18 Even still, preservation historian Charles Hosmer has noted that 17 For example Daniel Otto and Theresa Varner, “Consumers, Vendors, and the Economic Importance of Iowa Farmers’ Markets: An Economic Impact Survey Analysis,” March 2005, online report viewed on 8 Aug. 2008 at: http://www.agriculture.state.ia.us/pdfs/FarmMarketReportMarch2005.pdf 18 Three books shed new light on the movement’s early history in the U.S. from its beginnings before the Civil War on through to the early twentieth century: Michael Holleran, Boston's "Changeful Times": Origins of Preservation & Planning in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); and two books by James M. Lindgren, Preserving Historic New England: Preservation, Progressivism, and the Remaking of Memory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); and Preserving the Old Dominion: Historic Preservation and Virginia Traditionalism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993). 25 almost every historic site preserved by the movement before World War II ultimately became a local historical museum.19 Research conducted after passage of the NHPA documents an ever broader list of preservation’s rationales including desires to honor the past, improve knowledge of history, retain aesthetic attributes, and generate economic development.20 In the past ten years preservation’s economic benefits have been documented and touted with increasing sophistication and enthusiasm.21 Yet some scholars argue that the existing list of acknowledged preservation benefits fails to capture the full range of motivations among the movement’s participants. They theorize that those who live in or near historic neighborhoods are motivated by “something more personal and experiential, the result of acting and feeling in a place.”22 A small movement arose in the early 1980s to broaden the preservation’s legal protections to include a more diverse spectrum of historic resources, including “cultural resources that have no tangible form.” Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to work with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress to develop recommendations to preserve cultural heritage such as arts, skills, folklife, and folkways that could be integrated into the National Historic Preservation Act, thus giving them similar protections and financial support that exist for historic properties. The report generated as a result of this mandate recommended a number of clear 19 Charles B. Hosmer Jr., Presence of the Past: A History of the Preservation Movement in the United States before Williamsburg (New York, Putnam, 1965): 152. 20 An early example of this type of research is Robin E. Datel, and Dennis J. Dingemans, “Why Places are Preserved: Historic Districts in American and European Cities,” Urban Geography 9, no. 1 (1988): 37-52. 21 See for example Carolyn Douthat, “Economic Incentives for Historic Preservation in Oakland, California,” Historic Preservation Forum 9, no. 1 (1994): 33–40; and Kent A. Robertson, “Can SmallCity Downtowns Remain Viable? A National Study of Development Issues and Strategies,” Journal of the American Planning Association 1, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 270-184. 22 Datel and Dingemans, “Why Places are Preserved: Historic Districts in American and European Cities.” 26 legislative and administrative changes necessary to bring this vision to fruition.23 These recommendations, unfortunately, were never codified into historic preservation law. Although some see positive steps being made toward the integration of cultural conservation and historic preservation at the state level through progressive programs in places like Florida, Texas, California, and Utah, the two disciplines still remain largely separate.24 Non-architectural culture—so called “intangible culture”— still does not receive the same government support and protections given to historic property. As some have noted, the non-architectural manifestations of culture and, in particularly, the historic uses of buildings, are highly fragile, growing increasingly threatened, and lack any protections. The problem may be particularly acute in urban areas. Increasingly land values, rising rents, and planning strategies that fail to take cultural conservation into account have the potential to displace or completely extinguish historically significant neighborhood character and building uses such as the affordable amusements of Coney Island, the ethnic food and drink of Bohemian Hall in Astoria, Queens, or the miles of volumes held at the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan. This dissertation largely updates and confirms these conclusions.25 Recent conferences and publications sponsored by the Getty Conservation Institute encourage preservation professionals to place greater emphasis on “social values,” and warn that economic exigencies may monopolize the discourse surrounding what and why we preserve.26 Such an agenda assumes we have a kit of terms available to discuss and evaluate the social values of preservation. Has the 23 Ormond H. Loomis, coordinator, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States (Washington: Library of Congress, 1983). 24 See for example, Ormond H. Loomis, “Links between Historic Preservation and Folk Cultural Programs,” in The Conservation of Culture: Folklorists and the Public Sector, edited by Burt Feintuch (Lexington, K.Y.: University of Kentucky Press, 1988): 183-195. 25 See Steven J. Zeitlin, “Conserving our Cities’ Endangered Spaces,” in Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage edited by Mary Hufford (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1994): 215228. 26 Marta de la Torre, ed., Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2002). 27 preservation movement developed a universally-understood language to articulate these types of values? This dissertation argues that, for the most part, it has not. Preservationists in all three case studies examined in this dissertation used a wide variety of words and concepts in their attempts to identify and then protect the functional characteristics of their markets. This study finds that while the historic preservation movement is undeniably driven by values that apply to architectural and historical significance, it has a long way to go toward recognizing, evaluating, and then acting upon wider “social values.” The Economics of Historic Preservation and Gentrification A considerable volume of research has been dedicated to the task of quantifying the economic benefits of historic preservation.27 Only a small portion of this literature is directly relevant to the functional preservation of commercial building uses. A separate but related avenue of research seeks to document the adverse effects of historic preservation, often referred to as gentrification and/or displacement.28 According to Listokin and associated colleagues, preservation activities produce significant quantitative benefits, which they have measured using an Input/Output (I/O) model they developed specifically for this task.29 The model measures in detail the direct and indirect economic impacts of historic preservation that stem from four activities: historic rehabilitation, heritage tourism, the operations 27 Reviews of this literature include Randy Mason, Economics of Historic Preservation: A Guide and Review of the Literature (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, September 2005); David Listokin and Michael Lahr, Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research, 1997); and Christopher T. Wonjo, “Historic Preservation and Economic Development,” Journal of Planning Literature 5, 3 (1991): 296-307. 28 To date there is no review of the literature analyzing the relationship between historic preservation and gentrification. 29 The Preservation Economic Impact Model (PEIM) was developed by Rutgers Center for Urban Policy Research (CUPR) for the National Park Service; an extended discussion of its creation and a comparison of it against other available models are contained in Listokin and Lahr, Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation. 28 of historic sites and organizations, and construction activities associated with the National Trust’s Main Street program. Preservation’s economic benefits are, in turn, quantified with respect to four data fields: jobs, income, wealth and taxes. Preservation is shown to create more jobs, generate more wealth, and yield greater state and local taxes than other non-preservation investments like, new building construction, highway construction, and book publishing. Moreover, the model indicates that, at the national level, the greatest economic benefits of historic preservation arise from heritage tourism.30 However, the model only measures the impacts of construction activities. It does not quantify the economic contributions stemming from the operations of businesses located within historic properties, which could include the historically-significant uses of market districts. One critic of Listokin’s work suggests that preservation projects in fact typically only create low paying jobs in retail sales, food service, housekeeping, and building maintenance, as opposed to comparatively better employment opportunities created through large-scale urban renewal developments.31 Other research seeks to quantify the economic impact of historic district designation on property values. The vast majority of this work focuses on singlefamily residential property; most studies indicate that historic designation raises residential property values, and the preservation community generally interprets this as a benefit.32 Much less is known about the economic effects of historic preservation on non-residential property. One small study that examined a handful of small downtown 30 For a review of these benefits on the national level, see David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr, “The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 431. 31 Peter Werwath, “Comment on David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr's ‘The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development,’” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 487-495. 32 A synopsis of research and methods is given in Robin M Leichenko, et al., “Historic Preservation and Residential Property Values: An Analysis of Texas Cities,” Urban Studies 38, no. 11 (2001): 1973. 29 retail stores found that sales increased in the year following rehabilitation of the buildings in which the businesses were located; four out of the five owners attributed this increase to the physical improvements.33 The benefits of historic preservation have been challenged. Some scholars, many of whom are urban geographers and sociologists, call for greater attention to how preservation’s impacts are distributed. They argue that there are negative side effects of historic preservation, seen most acutely in the displacement of low-income residents from neighborhoods where property values are rising.34 Logan and Molotch point to preservation tax incentives, transfer of development rights, and restrictions imposed by historic district designation as important ways that governments redistribute wealth in favor of property owners who, in turn, extract rents from those who are financially less secure.35 Studies examining the potential links between historic preservation and gentrification also tend to focus primarily on residential displacement.36 33 The inability to control for possible confounding variables such as changes in product line, advertising, state of the economy, and existence of neighboring stores are acknowledged as weaknesses; see Brenda R. Spencer, “An Analysis of the Economic Impact of Physical Improvements on Retail Sales,” National Trust for Historic Preservation, Dollars & Sense of Historic Preservation, #12. 34 There are a number of studies that attempt to measure this phenomenon; unfortunately the literature is disjointed—scholars often do not cite prior studies and there is no comprehensive literature review; for a discussion of gentrification studies in general, see Rowland Atkinson, “Introduction: Misunderstood Saviour or Vengeful Wrecker: The Many Meanings and Problems of Gentrification,” Urban Studies 40, no. 12 (Nov. 2003): 2343–2350; the negative side effects of historic preservation are discussed in Werwath, “Comment on David Listokin…;” and Neil Smith, “Comment on David Listokin, Barbara Listokin, and Michael Lahr’s ‘The Contributions of Historic Preservation to Housing and Economic Development’: Historic Preservation in a Neoliberal Age,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1998): 479485. 35 John R. Logan and Harvey L. Molotch, Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987): 175-177. 36 Recent examples include Eric Allison, “Gentrification and Historic Districts: Public Policy Considerations in the Designation of Historic Districts in New York City,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2005; Edward N. Coulson and Robin N. Leichenko, “Historic Preservation and Neighborhood Change” Urban Studies 41, no. 8 (July 2004): 1587-1600; and R. Bures, “Historic Preservation, Gentrification, and Tourism: The Transformation of Charleston, South Carolina” in Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment (New York: Elsevier Press, 2001): 195-210. 30 The preservation community has for a long time acknowledged the problem of gentrification.37 But for the most part, commercial gentrification (the displacement of businesses) has not been construed as part of the problem. The comments and omissions of some authors suggest that the displacement of businesses does not even constitute gentrification. For example, according to James Marston Fitch, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace redevelopment was not an example of gentrification because the market complex never had a residential population; “hence, the process of rehabilitation and restoration involved no displacement of one sector of the population to make way for a wealthier one.”38 More recently, Roberta Gratz wrote an entire chapter on historic preservation and gentrification without ever mentioning how displacement might affect commercial corridors.39 After forty years of research on the topic, there is still disagreement about gentrification’s definition, its causes, its victims and beneficiaries, and, moreover, what should be done about it.40 While not using the word gentrification, other preservationists have briefly noted an undesirable qualitative change in the types of businesses locating in neighborhoods where rehabilitation activity was on the rise; these types of observations seem to have been more prevalent when adaptive reuse was first gaining acceptance in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.41 37 See for example Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, Contributions of Historic Preservation to Urban Revitalization (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979); and William J. Murtagh, “As I See It: Displacement: Challenge for Preservationists/Conservationists,” American Preservation 1, no. 6 (Aug./Sept. 1978): 6-7. 38 James Marston Fitch, Historic Preservation: Curatorial Management of the Built World (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982): photo caption text on page 178. 39 See Gratz, The Living City, 62-81. 40 Atkinson, “Introduction: Misunderstood Saviour or Vengeful Wrecker,” 2344. 41 See for example Weinberg, Preservation in American Towns and Cities; De La Roche, “Preserving without History;” Richard Ernie Reed, Return to the City: How to Restore Old Buildings and Ourselves in America’s Historic Urban Neighborhoods (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1979): 173-175; Larry R. Ford, “Historic Preservation and the Sense of Place,” Growth and Change 5 (April 1974): 33-37; and William J. Murtagh, Keeping Time: The History and Theory of Preservation in America, revised edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1997): 167, 215. 31 Two important studies of New Orleans do suggest that commercial displacement is part of the gentrification process. Gotham offers “tourism gentrification” as a new theoretical insight to explain the “distinctive process” by which entertainment venues owned by global conglomerates, and financially backed by commercial banks and real estate investment trusts (REITs), have displaced localowned enterprises throughout the French Quarter.42 In contrast to others who theorize that changing consumer demand and market forces drive gentrification, he argues that tourism gentrification relies on the intentional production of a market. Aggressive marketing generates the consumption demand that enables “powerful capitalists” to extract maximum profit from their commercial real estate investments. Rising commercial rents directly influence the residential real estate market. The end result is a French Quarter that today is less racially and economically diverse than at any time in its history. According to Sauder and Wilkinson, the Vieux Carré Commission in New Orleans was empowered with the authority to regulate the uses of the district’s historic properties in the interest of preserving the “tout ensemble,” but chose to prioritize “design preservation” instead of “social and functional diversity.”43 Planning consultants hired by the city in the late 1920s recommended a zoning ordinance to “preserve [the] unusual and historic section of predominant residential uses and small businesses.” The Vieux Carré Commission was created in 1936 to preserve the area’s “quaint and distinctive character.” In the 1940s, neighborhood services such as hardware and grocery stores were well distributed throughout the quarter and far outnumbered tourist-oriented gift shops. The racially-diverse, working-class 42 Kevin Fox Gotham, “Tourism Gentrification: The Case of New Orleans’ Vieux Carre (French Quarter),” Urban Studies 42, no. 7 (2005): 1099-1121. 43 Robert A. Sauder and Teresa Wilkinson, “Preservation Planning and Geographic Change in New Orleans’ Vieux Carre,” Urban Geography 10, no. 1 (1988): 41-61. 32 population was displaced by white-collar gentrifiers between 1940 and 1980. During this period the Commission developed a preoccupation with architectural details; “design preservation” was its understanding of the “tout ensemble.” The pursuit of tourist revenue was prioritized over other concerns. A late 1960s study offered recommendations for balancing functional and architectural preservation through “coordinated public and private action;” but ignoring the social aspects, the Commission implemented only the architectural recommendations. Tourist gift shops steadily replaced local services. The authors’ maps of the historic French Market showing the change in uses over time from vendors of food to tourist items are revealing. Eventually, the Commission was empowered with the authority to regulate uses, but by that time hotels, entertainment venues, and gift shops were already well established and the use ordinance was never vigorously enforced. Some prominent scholars suggest not only that preservation leads to gentrification, but that those who are inclined toward preservation actively try to cause gentrification because it creates the types of physical, social, and cultural amenities that they desire. Robert Beauregard implies that preservationists are among the “potential gentrifiers,” that is “the necessary agents and beneficiaries of the gentrification process.” He also notes that governments help to enable and facilitate this process by “labeling” neighborhoods (i.e. formally designating historic districts), which provides preservationists with coveted status markers. Gentrifiers, he says, tend toward conspicuous consumption; they are an “‘up-scale’ class of consumers who frequent restaurants and bars, and generally treat shopping as a social event.” Commercial gentrification fuels more residential gentrification—“the two are mutually supportive.”44 Architectural and retail preferences are similarly linked by 44 Robert A. Beauregard, “Chaos and Complexity of Gentrification,” in Gentrification of the City, edited by Neil Smith and Peter Williams (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986): 44-45, 52. 33 Sharon Zukin who writes that “…gentrifiers know enough to appreciate historic architectural style and imported cheese.” They seek shopping experiences that offer “sensory delights,” especially those enhanced by the “stone and mortar cachet of central urban areas.”45 Japonica Brown-Saracino recently proposed a radically different perspective about gentrification that has significant implications for functional preservation. She theorizes that there are some people who, rather than seeking to displace long-time residents of historic neighborhoods, actively try to preserve their tenure.46 “Social preservation,” in her words, “is the culturally motivated choice of certain people, who tend to be highly educated and residentially mobile, to live in a central city or small town in order to live in authentic social space, embodied by the sustained presence of old timers.” Because long-time residents, or “old timers,” are viewed as the “arbiters of authentic community” social preservationists engage in various efforts to “preserve” their place in the neighborhood. The “practices of social preservation” may share similarities with the actions of those who pursued functional preservation. Social preservationists will engage in political organizing or protest activities that promote affordable housing or that oppose the construction of housing and retail venues for the upper classes. Both residential and retail developments have the potential to be pro-gentrification (or anti-social preservation), as is made clear in a chant used at a Chicago rally: “We don’t want Starbucks or the Gap, low-cost housing is where it’s at!”47 To help keep their proprietors in the community, social 45 Zukin also notes that landmark districts satisfy the gentrifier’s “symbolic quest for authenticity, validation, monumentality, as well as a myth that an historically preserved enclave…represents the real, historical city.” Sharon Zukin, “Socio-Spatial Prototypes of a New Organization of Consumption: The Role of Real Cultural Capital,” Sociology 24, 1, (Feb. 1990): 37-56. 46 Japonica Brown-Saracino, “Social Preservationists and the Quest for Authentic Community,” City and Community 3, no. 2 (June 2004): 135-156. 47 Ironically, Starbucks is one of the few national chains allowed at Pike Place Market because the franchise was founded there in 1971. The Market’s rules, which generally prohibit franchises, make an exception for vendors that started as local, independent, owner-operated businesses and then subsequently go on to open other stores beyond Seattle. 34 preservationists will also go out of their way to patronize businesses that are owned by old-timers. One may, for example, take one’s foreign car to the local “townie garage,” rather than the dealership or a shop that specializes in the repair of imports. 35 CHAPTER 2 INTRODUCTION TO THE CASE STUDIES This chapter provides background information about each of the three case study markets examined in this dissertation: Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington; Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Massachusetts; and Gansevoort Market in New York, New York. It locates each market geographically within each city, briefly describes their architectural development and changing functions over time, and introduces the threats to their preservation. Food markets and food market districts are defined herein very broadly as a physical space in which separate vendors come together to sell or otherwise distribute fresh food and food-related items, as opposed to cooked meals or ready-to-eat food. This definition is broad enough to encompass municipally- or privately-owned public markets, open-air farmers markets, retail markets, wholesale markets and entire market districts comprised of an agglomeration of food-selling businesses that operate from separate privately-owned buildings along public streets. Indeed, the three case study markets examined in this dissertation featured all of these types of markets during at least some points in their long histories. Other scholars define public markets and farmers markets more narrowly, emphasizing the need for public goals, open public access, independent business ownership, and vendors who sell their own locally-produced products.1 At various points in the histories of the case study markets, these considerations were of greater or lesser concern. The objective here is not to dwell on some of the established definitions of markets, but rather to understand why certain preservationists were motivated to preserve the functions of historic 1 On public markets, see for example Theodore Morrow Spitzer, and Hilary Baum, Public Markets and Community Revitalization (Washington, DC: ULI and PPS, 1995): 2; and on farmers markets see Allison Brown, “Counting Farmers Markets,” Geographical Review 91, no. 4 (Oct. 2001): 655-673. 36 markets as they understood them, to document the methods they used, and to assess the degrees to which they were successful. Markets were selected as case studies for a number of reasons. First, markets existed in cities of all types and sizes located throughout the United States. Second, markets also figure prominently in the preservation literature, particularly the subset that considers the role of preservation in commercial rehabilitation and economic development. The case study sites selected for this project were recognized within this literature as historic resources for which the preservation of market uses was considered a goal of the preservation planning process. Third, the historic functions of markets are still relevant and vital in today’s society. Just as they have throughout history, markets continue to provide multiple direct and indirect community benefits such as facilitating accesses to fresh food to inner city locations, providing gathering places for social interaction and local economic exchanges, and contributing to the conservation of regional farmland by giving farmers a place to sell their crops. The original functions of other historic resources types are less sustainable. For example, barring the unlikely reversion to an industrial society from our current informationbased economy, it would be difficult to argue for the functional preservation of steel mills in the United States, despite the fact that they too were a once common building type. The case studies are not a random sample of historic markets. Rather, they were purposefully selected to provide variation with respect to market: age; location within the United States; ownership characteristics; and architectural significance. 37 Pike Place Market, Seattle, Washington The roughly seven-acre Pike Place Market sits on a bluff overlooking Elliott Bay, between the mixed-use neighborhood known as Belltown and the central business district of downtown Seattle. The market district is comprised of a number of separate buildings of different sizes and architectural styles, most of which were built in the first three decades of the twentieth century. Many conform in plan to the irregular shape of lots created by narrow alleys that intersect broader streets at acute and obtuse angles throughout the market (Figure 2.1). Housed within the Market’s many buildings today are a wide variety of independent merchants, the majority of whom sell fresh and prepared foods. There are also those who sell books, antiques, crafts, cookware and other non-edible merchandise, as well as some who provide various services ranging from tattooing to hair cutting, lamp repair to child care. In 2007 the market celebrated its 100th anniversary. It is the most popular tourist attraction in Washington State and is widely considered to be a model for public market administration in the United States. The market began modestly as nothing more than a section of street formally designated by a 1907 Seattle city ordinance as a site for the use of farmers selling their products directly to consumers (Figure 2.2.). At the time, rising food costs were a major municipal concern; it was hoped that bringing consumers and producers together would lower prices by cutting out various food distribution middlemen. Farmers and shoppers responded enthusiastically, but open-air selling was problematic in Seattle’s perennially rainy environment.2 Private investors responded to farmers’ needs. In the fall of 1907 the Goodwin Real Estate Company purchased a section of land on the west side of Pike Place, 2 For an early description of the market, its vendors, and shoppers, see “Seattle’s Public Market,” Municipal Journal 36, no. 20 (14 May 1914): 707. 38 39 Figure 2.1. Map of Pike Place Market Historic District with names of buildings and streets. Dotted line indicates district boundaries. Source: Dept. of Community Development, Seattle, W.A., Pike Place Design Report (Seattle: Dept. of Comm. Dev., 1974): n.p. District boundary, compass arrow, and Elliott Bay label added by author. Figure 2.2. Opening day of Pike Place Market, 1907. Corner of Pike Street and Pike Place looking north on Pike Place. Source: SMA Photograph Collection, PPM Visual Images and Audiotapes, 33280. Figure 2.3. Covered market stalls along Pike Place, circa 1911. Photograph by Webster & Stevens. Source: MOHI Photograph Collection, 1983.10.6868.2 40 which included the Leland Hotel. On the triangular strip of property between Western Avenue and Pike Place, the company immediately built a market structure extending north from the hotel to house about 120 food-related merchants. In a covered arcade between the sidewalk and the front of the market along Pike Place were stalls for roughly 70 farmers (Figure 2.3).3 Other market buildings were developed in quick succession over the next ten years. They included, in 1910, the Sanitary Market, which housed fish, meat, grocery stores, restaurants and other small businesses located in individual stalls; a two-story triangular building adjacent to the Silver Oakum apartment building housed a poultry company, a packing company, and various other grocery stores. In the same year, the Goodwin Real Estate Company, operating through a subsidiary, expanded to the north its market along Pike Place, providing spaces for a florist, fish market, coffee retailer, baker and restaurant. The district pushed up Pike Street toward First Avenue; new buildings were built and existing ones were adapted for market uses. In 1912 the Corner Market opened, followed in 1916 by the Economy Market, an existing building that housed a drugstore, which the Goodwin Company adapted to accommodate an additional 65 market stalls, food shops, and restrooms. The city worked cooperatively with the Goodwin Company to provide market stalls for farmers. Under a lease agreement, private property within the market was used as a public sidewalk, and in return, the market’s owners were allowed to lease stalls located in the middle of the city sidewalk. In the 1920s, the city collaborated 3 Three secondary sources document the history of the market up until and including the preservation initiatives of the 1970s; they are Alice Shorett and Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982): 33; Pike Place Market Historical District National Register of Historic Places Inventory Form, 1972; and Dept. of Community Development, Seattle, W.A., Pike Place Design Report (Seattle: Dept. of Comm. Dev., 1974). The publication by Shorett and Morgan and Pike Place Design Report both contain terrific photographic documentation and a social history of the people and events that influenced the market’s development; the National Register form and the Design Report the offer a more complete chronological account of the construction of each building and their occupants over time. 41 again with the Goodwin Company to provide additional market stalls on Pike Place and in a new Municipal Market Building on Western Avenue, which opened in 1924. It was the last major market building constructed in the Pike Place district for the next half century (Figure 2.4). The Goodwin Company and its representatives managed the family’s private market facilities much like municipally-employed managers of public markets located elsewhere in the country. They settled disputes among tenants, enforcing rules, and regulating weights and measures. According to historians Shorret and Morgan, “Few customers made a distinction between the farmers who rented municipally-owned space and middlemen who leased stalls in privately owned buildings. It is doubtful that many realized the buildings weren’t public property.”4 Cooperation, not only among the various independent merchants, but also between private property owners and city government, was a key to the success of the Pike Place Market district, according to Arthur Goodwin, who in 1929 published an influential book on the establishment and management of Markets: Public and Private.5 In Seattle, he explained, there were seven large private markets, a few smaller markets, and the city’s public market all in one district, which was known as the “public market center. The operators of Seattle’s first public market [Pike Place Market] actually encouraged other market operators to create markets in the district, going on the assumption that a greater number of people would be attracted to the district if it were made a food shopping center than would be attracted if one single market were there.” Speaking from his personal experience in Seattle and his observations of similar arrangements in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California, 4 Ibid., 39. 5 Arthur E. Goodwin, Markets: Public and Private (Seattle: Montgomery Printing Co., 1929). 42 Figure 2.4. Most of the market’s infrastructure had been built by the mid 1920s. This 1933 postcard entitled “Seattle’s World Famous Public Markets” depicts Pike Place looking north from the corner of Pike Street. Photograph by the Scenic Photo Publishing Company, Seattle. Source: SMA Photograph Collection, PPM Visual Images and Audiotapes, 33287. 43 the combination of farmer vending with private enclosed food stores was the “most successful type of retail market that has yet been evolved.”6 For different economic classes at different points in time, the market was also a desirable place to live. Three hotels opened in the neighborhood before the area became a market, and four others were built within the first two decades of the twentieth century. They offered modest but comfortable short- or long-term accommodations for sailors, longshoremen, market farmers, and other “‘average folks’ from the city.” Other public amenities and entertainment venues in and around the market included branches of the post office and Seattle Public Library, a dance hall on the second floor of the Economy Market, and movie theaters across First Avenue.7 Besides those who lived there, the market was always known for attracting a remarkably diverse clientele; an early account described its patrons as “all kinds and classes of people, from the poorest to those who come in their automobiles.”8 The participation of farmers at the market was considered critical to its commercial success and popular appeal. According to Goodwin, no public market could be “considered complete without ‘a farmers’ row.’”9 And yet farmers were also the most difficult component of the market district to maintain over time. Farmer participation at the Seattle market peaked in 1926 and again in 1932, when 627 producers were issued licenses to sell at Pike Place Market. Many were of Japanese descent. Their participation remained relatively strong throughout the depression, but then dropped precipitously after May of 1942 when Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Farmer/seller licenses 6 Ibid., 41-42. 7 Dept. of Community Development, Seattle, W.A., Pike Place Design Report (Seattle: Dept. of Comm. Dev., 1974): n.p. 8 “Seattle’s Public Market,” 707. 9 Goodwin, Markets: Public and Private, 45. 44 fell by more than 60 percent, from 515 in 1939 to 196 in 1943. Greater than a third of the Japanese who were interned never returned to Seattle.10 The market struggled after World War II. In 1949, only 53 farmers received seller’s licenses. Other non-farming fresh food venders continued in business, but the increasing number of unoccupied stalls gave the market an empty appearance (Figure 2.5). In the 1960s, less than a 100 farmers were participating in direct selling at the market.11 Beginning at that time, stalls not occupied by farmers were rented to artisan entrepreneurs who specialized in macramé, beadwork, leather, and other handicrafts. Over time they became part of the market tradition that still continues today. Despite the injection of entrepreneurship provided by the artisans, the area took on a honkytonk atmosphere and developed a reputation as a somewhat seedy, increasingly rundown quarter frequented by the homeless and the seemingly-unemployed youth culture (Figure 2.6). The number of thrift shops and second-hand stores increased. Theaters on First Avenue adjacent to the market began showing pornographic movies. The hotels and rooming houses that had formerly rented rooms to sailors and workmen in the upper floors of market buildings were increasingly occupied by relatively poor senior citizens—most of them single men—on fixed incomes. Business leaders and government officials grew concerned that the market was a blighting influence that threatened to destabilize the central business district and diminish the city’s property tax base. A survey initiated in 1967 examined the physical conditions of a large section of the Seattle waterfront, including Pike Place Market, to assess its potential for urban renewal. Two years later it concluded that the market and its surroundings were blighted; a team of Seattle architects developed an urban renewal plan that proposed demolishing the entire market district for 10 Statistics on the number of licensed farmers come from the National Register Nomination and the book by Shorrett and Morgan, pages 111 and 122. 11 Dept. of Community Development, Seattle, W.A., Pike Place Design Report, n.p. 45 Figure 2.5. Empty stalls at Pike Place Market following WWII. Source: Alice Shorett and Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982): 102. Figure 2.6. Young adults and children sitting outside an adult bookstore on First Avenue directly across the street from Pike Place Market in 1972. The combination of youth culture, pornography, and general physical deterioration in the Market area led some civic and business leaders to conclude that demolishing and redeveloping was the only way to revitalize this important area on the edge of the Central Business District. Source: SMA Photograph Collection, PPM Visual Images and Audiotapes, 35757. 46 redevelopment. In its place, new roadways, a waterside park, and a hotel were planned, as well as retail shops and high-rise apartments catering to middle and uppermiddle class residents, all of which were standard redevelopment strategies of the day (Figure 2.7). The plan was adopted by the City Council in 1969 and in 1972 Seattle entered into a contract with the United States Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) dedicating $7 million in matching funds to the project. Proponents of urban renewal acknowledged that the market was historically significant. They insisted, however, that its significance lay not in the material of its buildings, stalls, and sheds, but rather in its function as a public market, which, they argued, was characterized by the type and variety of foods sold, the manner of their display, and the personalities of the merchants and shoppers. These functional characteristics could be recreated and enhanced, they reasoned, through construction of a new market building.12 Preservationists and market supporters joined forces to oppose the urban renewal plan. Led by Seattle architect Victor Steinbrueck, they argued that the market buildings, their functions, and the racially and economically diverse spectrum of people who shopped and lived there were all historically significant. Taken together, they constituted a unique “way of life” that was impossible to disassociate from its physical context and could therefore not be recreated in new surroundings. Preservationists gained signatures necessary to force the issue to a voter ballot initiative in November 1971. Voters in support of preservation of the market’s form and function outnumbered those who favored the urban renewal plan by a substantial margin. In accordance with this outcome, the 1969 urban renewal plans were revised 12 For a well documented discussion of the various urban renewal plans in the post-WWII era, see Sohyun Park Lee, “Conflicting Elites and Changing Values: Designing Two Historic Districts in Downtown Seattle, 1958-73,” Planning Perspectives 16, n.3 (July 2001): 243-268; and Sohyun Park Lee, “From Redevelopment to Preservation: Downtown Planning in Post-War Seattle,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2001. 47 Figure 2.7. Photograph of a mid-1960s model of the Pike Plaza redevelopment project. The project proposed to demolish the entire market district and replace it with an innercity belt freeway and high-rise buildings containing a mix of office, retail, and housing for middle and upper-middle class residents. Source: Seattle Times Photograph File, 1964. 48 to preserve the seven-acre market district. The revised plans were subsequently reconfirmed for approval by HUD, enabling federal dollars to pay for much of the rehabilitation. As a direct result of the voter initiative, the Pike Place Market was designated by the City of Seattle as a local historic district and a twelve-member Market Historical Commission was formed to ensure the preservation of its “historic uses and design.” The Commission was empowered to regulate not only alterations to the interior and exterior designs of buildings, but also changes in building use and ownership. The selection of individual merchants and the items they are permitted to sell are all subject to formal review by the Commission. In 1973 a group of Seattle citizens formed the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) as a non-profit, public corporation to help balance the social, economic, and physical preservation of the market. Most, but not all, of the buildings within the district are now owned and operated by the quasi-governmental (PDA). The Commission and the PDA are entirely separate organizations. In addition to leasing market facilities to locally-owned and independently-operated businesses, the PDA also owns and manages a substantial number of low-income dwelling units, the preservation of which was also mandated by the 1971 voter initiative. Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston, Massachusetts Faneuil Hall Marketplace is a six-and-a-half acre complex situated in the heart of downtown Boston, adjacent to Government Center, the North End, the waterfront, and Haymarket Square. In its present form, the market complex consists of four separate buildings: Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, and two rows of connected stores known as the North Market Block and the South Market Block. The four are separated by cobble stone streets, which, now closed to vehicular traffic, form a 49 pedestrian mall interspersed with light standards, planters, and benches. Together the buildings form a visually impressive and historically significant urban composition that is widely considered an important contribution to the canon of great American architecture. At the western end of the complex closest to Government Center is the oldest building, Faneuil Hall, a Georgian Revival style brick structure built in 1741 as a mixed-use market to accommodate food stalls on the first floor, and city hall meeting rooms and offices above, a design typology that was common in medieval England and colonial America. To the east sits Quincy Market, a massive, 535-foot long Greek Revival building clad in granite that features a copper dome at its center. Flanking Quincy Market across the cobbled North and South Market Streets are two blocks of attached commercial buildings that form architecturally unified façades, also of granite. All three granite buildings in the “Quincy Market development” were built between 1824 and 1826. Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the most important food distribution district in Boston, until the mid 1960s, when it was redeveloped for urban renewal. In the 1970s, the three granite Quincy Market buildings were adaptively reused in accordance with plans prepared by architects Ben and Jane Thompson for the developer James Rouse. It was the first so-called “festival market,” a financially-successful architectural and business formula Rouse and others subsequently applied elsewhere that combined historic preservation, retail shopping, and entertainment targeted to appeal to middleclass clients. Today, the market’s function is more akin to that of an outdoor shopping mall with many of the same national and international franchises one sees at malls across America. The ground floor of the Quincy Market building operates like a food court; shoppers can eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, or dessert selecting from more than three-dozen take-out restaurant stalls that offer prepared food. There are also a number of sit-down restaurants and bars in the building serving a range of more or less 50 refined dining, some with outdoor seating. In the adjacent granite market blocks are a combination of large retail stores and smaller specialty boutiques that sell clothing, housewares, art, and jewelry, among other things. Faneuil Hall, still owned and managed by the City of Boston, also accommodates a number of small businesses in stall configurations on the first floor and basement levels, although these tend to offer more strictly tourist-related items like post cards, tee-shirts, and other small souvenirs. None of the stores within Faneuil Hall Marketplace today sell any fresh, unprepared food, and yet, for some, it remains a “marketplace.” It is indisputably an immensely popular tourist destination, one that attracts more than 20 million visitors annually. Faneuil Hall Marketplace’s more than 250-year history is remarkably well documented by recent scholarship.13 Only a few points with respect to its twentiethcentury history require further clarification in the context of this dissertation. Scholars tend to address individual components of the market complex in isolation from one another, examining the architectural forms and market functions of, in particular, Faneuil Hall and the 1824-1826 Quincy Market development. They also tend to describe the trade carried on within the market as exclusively wholesale beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing through to the redevelopment in the 1970s. In fact, however, the market district was much larger than just the municipally-owned and -planned market buildings. And the wholesale/retail distinction was not nearly so clear; many firms handled both modes of commerce. Through the first half of the twentieth century, the district was comprised of four operationally-interrelated parts: at the center were the municipally-owned 13 On the details of its construction and 20th-century redevelopment, see John Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003); for a perspective on its relevance to the larger history of public markets in the United States, see Helen Tangires, Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003); sources that offer other social, economic, and architectural analyses are discussed in the literature review. 51 buildings Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market; outside of Quincy Market on the cobbles of South Market Street was an area reserved for use by regional farmers; surrounding the municipal markets were food stores located throughout the privately-owned buildings on North Market, South Market, and other streets beyond to the north and east; and Haymarket Square—the block of Blackstone Street between North and Hanover streets—was used as a weekly open-air market. Taken together, all four areas were known collectively as Faneuil Hall Market, or simply the “market district” of Boston (Figure 2.8.). A number of twentieth-century food distribution planning studies also remain unexamined in the secondary literature. They document the character and intensity of the market’s function. A 1916 Boston City Planning Board study described Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market as the “most successful municipal market in the world.” Together they sheltered a combined total of 164 individual food stalls where some 1,100 “marketmen” were employed.14 Food marketing activities also consumed nearly all of the available private commercial space in the buildings on streets adjacent to the public markets (Figure 2.9). “For blocks about the municipal market” buildings housed the city’s wholesale trade in meat, vegetables, fruit, eggs, and other dry goods and grocery items. There was a mix of business sizes, from the large mid-western meat wholesale firms of Cudahy, Swift & Co. and Armour, to outfits described as “small dealers” in a limited range of food lines. As was the case at the municipal markets, many of these businesses transitioned fluidly between retail and wholesale transactions. Representatives from the Women’s Municipal League found in 1914 that it was common for sales clerks to pay their employers for “the privilege of driving 14 City Planning Board, Boston, Mass., A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, Preliminary Report of the Market Advisory Committee (Boston: City of Boston Printing Dept., 1916): 88. 52 53 Figure 2.8. Map showing the uses of buildings in the Faneuil Hall Market Area in 1950. Source: C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950): facing page 26. The dotted line added by the author surrounds the three Quincy Market buildings that were built in the early 19th century and then redeveloped by the Thompsons and The Rouse Corporation in the mid 1970s. Figure 2.9. Quincy Market, 1906. The photograph is taken from Faneuil Hall looking east down South Market Street toward the waterfront. Quincy Market with its central dome is seen on the left; the South Market Block is seen on the right. From a stereograph post card by H.C. White Co., 1906. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, LC-USZ62-78670. 54 a retail trade” in the goods handled by the firm, provided they did so “after the rush in filling the wholesale orders of the house [was] over for the day.”15 Nearby, Blackstone Street functioned as the “glut market of Boston.” On Saturday afternoons and evenings pushcart peddlers sold the food that market merchants did want to carry over to the next market week because it was too ripe. The Blackstone Market’s “extremely advantageous prices” attracted the “shrewd buyer” and “families of the thrifty class.”16 At mid-twentieth century, the market district occupied approximately 35 acres in which “practically all buildings” held food-related businesses. There were over 300 individual wholesalers of fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products; and approximately 100 wholesale grocers—dealers in imported and domestic grocery specialties, coffee, spices, and “certain other edibles.” Intermingled throughout were restaurants, taverns, and various “stores dealing in crates, boxes, paper, twine, hardware, store fixtures, clothing, and shoes which cater particularly to market men.” Retail consumers continued to be welcome, though in the ten years leading up a 1949 USDA study there was reportedly a “substantial decline” in the number of personal shoppers in the Faneuil Hall Market area. The putative causes were a lack of parking, the decline in population in the vicinity of the market, and competition from supermarkets and other retail food outlets more conveniently located in residential neighborhoods.17 Recent scholarship also suggests that the Faneuil Hall market area began its decline in the early decades of the twentieth century. John Quincy, Jr. says that between the Great Depression and WWII buildings were being “gradually torn down 15 City Planning Board, A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 88. 16 Ibid., and City Planning Board, A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 89. 17 Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. 55 because they were abandoned, or seen as obsolete or as prime targets for arson.”18 Market venders themselves were partly to blame, he says, because they either abandoned the district for other locations “beyond downtown,” or failed to maintain a variety of retail and wholesale goods necessary to “keep business thriving.”19 On the contrary, separate, highly-detailed studies of the market’s physical infrastructure, business occupants, and food commodity flows conducted in 1914, 1938, 1949, and 1962 indicate that, while undeniably old and arguably inefficient, Faneuil Hall Marketplace was certainly not underutilized or heading toward abandonment. The perceived problem was one of over utilization as aging infrastructure was stretched beyond its functional and physical capacity.20 USDA experts concluded that conditions at Boston’s market district demanded substantial improvement; the 1949 and 1962 studies both recommended relocating food distribution activities out of the center of the city, to some more peripheral, industrial location with better access to highways and rail lines. The city agreed. In 1956, the Boston City Planning Board considered the markets deteriorated beyond salvage for any continued use. At the time, total demolition and redevelopment were deemed the only feasible option. The federal urban renewal program offered an obvious source of funding to carry out such an undertaking. Through the end of the 1950s, it looked as though the markets were headed toward demolition.21 A number of individuals intervened to change the trajectory of these plans. One was Edward Logue, who was hired in 1961 as the director of the Boston 18 Quincy, Quincy’s Market, 140. 19 Ibid., 142. 20 City Planning Board, A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston; William C. Crow, Wholesale Markets for Fruits and Vegetables in 40 Cities, circular no. 463 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1938); C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950); and Alden C. Manchester, The Organization of the Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market in Boston, marketing research report no. 515 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1962). 21 Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market, 149, quoting from Boston City Planning Board, Government Center Study: A Preliminary Report, Generalized Land Use Plan, Exhibit D, August 1956. Quincy’s book provides a detailed account of the planning process and political maneuverings during this period. 56 Redevelopment Authority (BRA), an agency established four years earlier to direct the city’s urban renewal undertakings. Logue was intrigued by the history of the markets and was willing to consider their potential for redevelopment. Another market proponent was the eminent Boston historian and preservationist Walter Muir Whitehill. Many acknowledged the architectural significance of the markets, but Whitehill was the first to argue that their continuous function in food distribution enhanced their historical significance. There were others during the 1960s which, through their preparation of architectural and economic feasibility studies, public advocacy, and political maneuvering, were instrumental in demonstrating that the markets could and should be saved.22 For the firms that operated in the Faneuil Hall area, the decade between the mid 1950s and the mid 1960s was one of tremendous uncertainty. Construction and redevelopment closed in on the market district from multiple directions. Planning for Boston’s “Central Artery,” an elevated inner-belt highway, began in 1949; the designs anticipated demolishing the eastern end of the market district. By 1951, highway construction reached the market, forcibly displacing as many as 100 food firms (Figures 2.10 and 2.11). Approximately a third of these went of out business, a third relocated elsewhere in the Faneuil Hall Market district, and a third relocated to new terminal market facilities in South Boston near the intersection of Southampton Street and Massachusetts Avenue in an area that became known as “Newmarket.”23 Built with 22 Men like Frederick Stahl, Roger Webb, and the non-profit organizations Architectural Heritage Foundation and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities all played an important part, which is discussed by Quincy, Jr.’s Quincy’s Market, chapter “Quincy’s Market: Decline and Survival.” 23 There are conflicting accounts of how many firms were displaced by the highway or went out of business, and, of those that remained solvent, where exactly they moved. See “First Large Unit for Boston Market is to be Erected by Meat Packer,” Engineering News Record 148 (29 May 1952): 33; Daniel J. Corcoran, “Trades Color for Efficiency, Faneuil Hall Market Nears End,” Boston Globe, 14 April 1964; and Daniel J. Ahern, and Martin R. Adler, “Progress Report on Food Market Relocation, 57 Including a Recommended Site for a New Food Distribution Center,” unpublished report marked “Internal—Confidential,” Rotch Library, MIT.. 58 Figure 2.10. Downtown Waterfront Faneuil Hall Renewal Plan, Site plan. Source: Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, “Report on the Downtown Waterfront: Faneuil Hall Renewal Plan” (Boston: Waterfront Redevelopment Division, 1962): n.p. the financial assistance of the Massachusetts Market Authority, it followed the site layout, building plans, and location recommendations developed in the 1950s by the USDA.24 Businesses that stayed in the Faneuil Hall Market area through the end of the 1950s also suffered from the loss of customer parking that was consumed in the construction of the highway project.25 New development pressed in from the west too. Demolition of Scollay Square began in 1962 to prepare the ground for the city’s ambitious new Government Center complex (Figure 2.12).26 Although no market firms were directly displaced by its construction, the mere existence of Government Center was a clear signal that the land uses in the market area were changing, and would continue to change in accordance with the city’s new vision of its waterfront. The market was seen an inappropriate neighbor to uses housed in the strikingly modern buildings of what was being called the “New Boston.” Architectural Forum described the scene in 1964 looking from the new city hall toward Faneuil Hall Marketplace as one of “unmistakable blight…in the shape of vacated wharf buildings, traffic congestion, inefficient wholesaling activity, and overall shabbiness.”27 Planning for the relocation of the markets began with a series of meetings and public hearings initiated in the mid 1960s. The reactions of the merchants were mixed. Some of the larger firms welcomed the opportunity to expand their businesses in modern facilities, especially if the government was willing to assist with financing; 24 This location was identified as “Site No. 9,” of which schematic plans, photographs of a scale model, and a description are located in C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass., illustrations b/w 80 and 81, description on 94. Present-day aerial photography indicates that the facilities were constructed in fairly close accordance to the USDA’s plans. 25 LeRoy Atkinson, “What’s all the to-do about Boston’s Historic Faneuil Hall and Market?,” Worcester Sunday Telegram, 2 Dec. 1956, 6, from the Walter Muir Whitehill Papers (hereafter WMWP), Box 2, Folder 13, Boston Athenaeum. 26 On the demolition of Scollay Square and the planning and design work that went into Government Center, see Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, M.A.: Belknap Press, 1968): chapter 9. 27 “The Old Seaport: Planning a Window on the World,” Architectural Forum 120, special issue on Boston (June 1964): 95. 59 Figure 2.11. Construction of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (the Central Artery) approached the east end of the market district in the early 1950s. The South Market Block is seen along the bottom of this circa 1950 photograph. Source: original source unknown; posted online at www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10814. Figure 2.12. Government Center loomed over western end of the market district. Faneuil Hall is seen at the bottom of the photograph at center. Source: original source and date unknown; posted online: www.cyburbia.org/forums/showthread.php?t=10814. 60 smaller, more economically-marginal firms were less enthusiastic, fearing that the move would force them out of business.28 Moving the market was a serious undertaking due to its importance to Boston’s food distribution system. BRA statistics indicated that in 1962 a substantial percentage of all the food traveling through the city funneled into the Faneuil Hall Market area, especially commodities like produce (19%), Poultry (58%), and Butter and Cheese (70%). Moreover, while newer food distribution districts like Newmarket and other facilities in South Boston handled a greater volume of food, Faneuil Hall Market had the greatest concentration of food dealers (43% of city total) and was the second greatest concentration of food-wholesaling employment (38% of city total food wholesale employees).29 Ultimately, Faneuil Hall Market area merchants that were forcibly displaced scattered to various areas throughout the city and surrounding suburbs; food commodity groups (produce, meat, etc.) tended to stick together and relocate as a group to new locations. Most of the produce businesses moved to the New England Produce Center outside of Boston, which was completed in 1968 on land straddling the municipalities of Everett and Chelsea, Massachusetts. Most of the meat merchants moved to Newmarket in South Boston. As it became clear in the late 1960s that at least some of the buildings in the Faneuil Hall Market were to be rehabilitated for continued market uses, firms that still remained were encouraged to stay. About a dozen of them chose to do so.30 28 Anthony J. Yudis, “Atlantic Av. Revamp Boosted, But Small Food Dealers, Fearing Relocation, Balky,” Boston Globe, 16 April 1964; James Breagy, “Relocation Problems Voiced: Faneuil Hall Area Approves Renewal,” Boston Herald, 16 April 1964, np; James Breagy, “Food Men’s Consent Expected for Move from Faneuil Hall,” Boston Herald, 12 April 1964, n.p; all from WMWP, Box 2, Folder 13, Boston Athenaeum. 29 These statistics tend to support the USDA’s findings that the Faneuil Hall Market area was inefficient. Firms located elsewhere moved a greater volume of produce with few employees. 30 There appears to be no detail account of exactly where and when all the Faneuil Hall Market area merchants moved. Piecing together a variety of sources provides at least a partial account. See Amy Louise Powell, “Faneuil Hall Marketplace: A Case Study in Public-Private Joint Ventures in Urban 61 While separate architecture and development teams were preparing proposals to preserve the market and return it to active use, the city began to restore the facades of the North and South Market buildings to their original historic appearances. Boston’s mayor Kevin White secured a $2.1 million Historical Restoration Grant from HUD in 1969 to fund the project. Another three years was consumed in architectural and engineering studies; exterior restoration work finally began in October of 1972. In March of the following year, the Rouse Company was awarded the contract to develop and managed Faneuil Hall Marketplace, which included the Quincy Market Building, and the two blocks of flanking commercial rows along North and South Market Streets; (paradoxically, while the Rouse team chose to brand the development “Faneuil Hall Marketplace,” their project did not include the actual Faneuil Hall, over which the city retained ownership and development control). Benjamin Thompson and Associates were the architects and planners.31 The development concept put together by Rouse and the Thompsons was risky, but it became an instant success with Bostonians and tourists alike. Unable to attract major retailers to an unproven downtown location, the Thompsons convinced Rouse to perpetuate the historic market use of the district by leasing the retail spaces to small, local and independent merchants of food and food-related products.32 The tenant mix, which was so carefully managed when the marketplace was redeveloped in the 1970s, began to change in the 1980. Purveyors of fresh food were gradually replaced by fast food restaurants; locally-owned businesses that sold unique, Redevelopment,” Masters Thesis, MIT, 1979; “Boston: New Terminal is Planned for Fruit and Produce,” NYT, 6 Nov. 1966, p. 193; and C. Maxwell, “Dedicate New 7 Million Dollar Produce Center,” Boston Herald Traveler, 4 Apr. 1968, p. 21. 31 For more details on the construction and development histories see Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market, chapter 8 “Rebuilding the Markets.” 32 On the risk and novelty of the Rouse/Thompson scheme, and its larger significance in the history of post-WWII downtown development, see Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). 62 often hand-crafted items, were supplanted by the types of national franchises that are a familiar fixture of suburban shopping malls across the country, such as Ann Taylor, Coach, and Victoria’s Secret. This transition, which continues today, has been widely criticized in the local press. Faneuil Hall Marketplace is now considered by many native Bostonians to be a “tourist trap,” a venue whose t-shirts, postcards, and fastfood eateries offer few services or amenities to attract those who actually live and work within the city.33 Gansevoort Market, New York, New York Gansevoort Market is roughly nineteen city blocks located on the lower west side of Manhattan, just inland from the Hudson River between the neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Chelsea. It has a distinctive physical presence. Due to a bend in the river, two orthogonal grids with slightly different compass orientations merge within the market, creating a number of non-rectangular blocks and a distinctive triangular area in the middle of the roadway where Gansevoort and Little West 12th streets converge at Ninth Avenue. A few of the streets are unusually wide, and some are still paved with Belgian block. Although there are a variety of different building sizes and shapes, smaller structures of between two and four stories are predominant. Most date from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries; many have metal canopies and wide first-floor openings. The combined effect of low buildings and broad streets give the market district a generally open feeling where large expanses of sky are visible, which is a rare perspective in most of Manhattan. The area has been associated with food marketing for at least 125 years, and possibly even longer. Most recently the market was the center of the New York’s 33 See for example Maria Cramer, “High Rents Squeeze Faneuil Hall Vendors,” Boston Globe, 19 Feb. 2007. The transition in the types of merchants at Faneuil Hall Marketplace will be covered in greater detail in a later chapter on measuring functional preservation. 63 wholesale meat and poultry industry. However, building uses within the district began to change rapidly in the late 1990s. Meat processors and distributors were steadily displaced by up-scale restaurants, designer clothing boutiques, art galleries, and trendy nightclubs that were drawn to the area’s industrial architecture, gritty reputation, and initially low rents. Media attention fueled its popularity. In 2003 the New York Times declared Gansevoort Market Manhattan’s “most chic entertainment district;” Travel & Leisure called it “ultrachic.” An online neighborhood tour of Gansevoort refers to the district as “New York’s most fashionable neighborhood,” a place “chock full of hip restaurants, exclusive clubs.”34 Sarah Jessica Parker’s trend-setting character “Carrie Bradshaw” from HBO’s hit cable television series Sex and the City lived in a fictitious address on Gansevoort Street in the heart of the district, and neighborhood restaurants and bars were featured in the show, which did much to raise the profile of the area. Exclusive, high-end fashion designers like Stella McCartney, Diane von Furstenberg, Carlos Miele, Alexander McQueen, and others now all have storefronts in the Gansevoort area. The boundaries, name, and function of Gansevoort Market have changed a number of times over nearly 175 years of food marketing activity. There may have been a publicly-sanctioned farmers market in the area as early as the 1830s.35 However, food marketing activities were clearly established by the late nineteenth century. In 1878 the New York City Board of Alderman passed a resolution creating 34 Claire Wilson, “Hipsters, Meatpackers and Families, Too,” New York Times, 7 Dec. 2003; Hillary Geronemus. “New York in the Raw: A Neighborhood on the Edge Now Defines the Cutting Edge, Manhattan's Meatpacking District is Raising the Stakes,” Travel and Leisure, April 2004; John Steinberg, “Meatpacking District Walking Tour,” viewed on the website of New York Magazine on June 22, 2007 (www.nymag.com/visitorsguide/neighborhoods/meatpacking.htm). 35 See both I.N. Phelps Stokes, The Iconography of Manhattan Island, vol. III (Union, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 1998): 959; and Ron Lustig, “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan,” Columbia University MA thesis, 1985, p. 10; however, the early history of marketing in the area is murky and authors give contradictory accounts. Neither the National Register of Historic Places nomination nor the New York City Landmarks designation report for Gansevoort Market mention there being a preCivil War market in the neighborhood. 64 the open air “Gansevoort Market” for the exclusive use of regional farmers. The site, a block bounded by Gansevoort, Little West 12th, West and Washington streets, was graded flat and twelve “avenues” each thirty feet wide were created to accommodate as many as 1000 wagons within the market and surrounding streets.36 In 1887 the city built the new West Washington Market on the Hudson River on what was then 13th Avenue, a location just west of the Gansevoort Farmers Market (Figures 2.13 and 2.14).37 The new West Washington Market featured ten, two-story terra cotta and pressed-brick buildings housing 420 market stands, for which there was an immediate high demand.38 The functions of both the West Washington Market and the Gansevoort Farmers Market changed over time. The Gansevoort Farmers Market was used primarily by regional farmers until the middle of the twentieth century, during which time it was also referred to as the “Goose Market,” “Farmers Market,” or simply “Market Stand.” Articles published in the New York Times describe the changing nature and intensity of the business conducted there. In 1883 farmers who were 36 “The New Market Stand: Its Formal Opening Yesterday Afternoon,” New York Times (hereafter NYT), 22 Mar. 1879, p. 3. 37 There were a number of “Washington Markets” in lower Manhattan; the recycling of the name for new facilities at different locations can be confusing and has led to some factual errors in the secondary literature: the new West Washington Market replaced the old West Washington Market that had been built in 1858 and located west of West Street between Dey and Vesey streets (the present location of the World Financial Center, adjacent to Ground Zero). The old West Washington Market was given that name because it was located west of Washington Market, which, built in 1812 (and rebuilt many times thereafter) was one of the city’s main retail public markets. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, various merchants in the fruit, vegetable, cheese, egg, and butter wholesale trade set up shop in the privately-owned buildings in the blocks north of Washington Market. Eventually, this entire area—the city-owned market and the neighboring private facilities located between Greenwich and West streets from Hubert Street to Barclay Streets—was generally called “Washington Market.” Washington Market remained the center of the fruit, produce, cheese, egg, and butter wholesale industry of New York long after West Washington Market was moved north to the Gansevoort Market area; for more information on Washington Market, see Harry G. Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets, Marking Research Report No. 389 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1960). 38 “Ready for Occupancy,” NYT, 10 Nov. 1888, p. 8; Lustig quotes another source indicating that there was “immediate application of 2,800 distributors of meat, garden produce and live poultry,” in “The Gansevoort Market,” 10. 65 Figure 2.13. Map illustrating Gansevoort Market Stand (farmers market) and the West Washington Market. Map Surveyed by G. W. Bromely, 1934. Source: Ron Lustig, “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan,” Masters Thesis, Columbia University, 1985, p. 20. Figure 2.14. Gansevoort Farmers Market, 1900. The buildings in the upper left hand corner of the photograph are part of the new West Washing Market. Source: NYPL, Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s, 724748F. 66 predominantly from Long Island, Staten Island, Queens, Connecticut, and the New York counties just north of the city were charged $.25 a day for the privilege of selling at “Goose Market,” which was “almost entirely” devoted to the sale of produce. Most buyers were licensed vendors and grocers who resold their purchases at other decentralized locations throughout the city. It was also not uncommon to see “housewives who sought to make cheap purchases at retail,” as well as the poor who gleaned damaged or otherwise discarded food.39 This combination of wholesale, commission, and retail trade continued into the beginning of the twentieth century.40 During this time, the storefronts of privately-owned buildings that fronted the Gansevoort Farmers Market were “nearly all occupied by fruit and vegetable dealers.” There were also “several cheap eating houses” patronized by farmers and other men in the vegetable trade.41 Attendance of farmers at Gansevoort Market began to decline in the 1920s as residential and commercial development pushed outward from the city, consuming neighboring agricultural land. As one observer put it, “the raising of potatoes, parsley, beans and beets is being supplanted by the rearing of one and two family dwellings, apartments, schools, fire houses and movie theaters.” Hard-working farmers sold their property for development at “prices that make them gentleman of leisure.”42 39 “Farmers Doing Business: A Morning’s Work in the City’s ‘Goose’ Market,” NYT, 23 Sept. 1883, p. 4. 40 “Health Department’s Good Work of Fruit Inspection,” NYT, 24 May 1903, p. 34; see also “Feeding a Great City,” NYT, 24 June 1900, p. 17. 41 “Farmers Doing Business,” 4. 42 Bertram Reinitz, “Gansevoort Market,” NYT, 9 Jan. 1927, p. XX2. The decline of farmers was confirmed at the time by the agricultural marketing expert Walter P. Hedden who wrote that each year the New York City Department of Markets received fewer requests from farmers for licenses to sell in the pubic markets; a 21% drop between 1925 and 1926 was largely the result of farmers in the vicinity of Long Island and New Jersey who sold their land to development companies for the erection of homes; see Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1929): 12. 67 By the end of the 1920s the NYC Market Bureau was encouraging farmers to go to newer market facilities in the Bronx instead of the Gansevoort Farmers Market.43 In 1938, the city took a portion of the market square to construct a municipally-owned wholesale meat facility, leaving room for only 147 open-air farmer stalls.44 Ten years later, the city officially closed the Gansevoort Market to farmers despite their protests, forcing the 127 growers still visiting the site to use other markets in the Bronx and Brooklyn.45 Meanwhile, the function of the West Washington Market also evolved. When opened in 1887, it featured a mix of wholesalers and retailers selling produce, meats, and other specialty foods. It gradually transitioned to become the center of the wholesale meat and live poultry trade in New York City. By the late 1920s it was described as “devoted almost exclusively to meat and live poultry, though a small amount of dressed poultry, eggs, fruit and vegetables is sold there. Fully two-thirds of the market’s capacity is utilized by the large meat packers….”46 Just as the Gansevoort Farmers Market drew produce wholesalers to the area, the West Washington Market attracted meat, dressed poultry, and game merchants who established businesses in the privately-owned buildings in the adjacent neighborhood, particularly around 14th Street between 9th and 10th avenues (Figure 2.15).47 This expansion of marketing activities into privately-owned facilities was facilitated by the Manhattan Refrigerating Company, which installed a system of 43 “Farmers Protest Market Conditions,” p. 25. 44 “City Urged to Build West Side Market,” NYT, 15 Mar. 1937, p. 39; see also Lee E. Cooper, “New Plants Rise Along Rail Route,” NYT, 4 July 1937, p. 117. 45 “Protest Market Closing: Farmers of Metropolitan Area Make Plea for Gansevoort,” NYT, 9 May 1948, p. 58. The number of farmers thought necessary to constitute a large and healthy farmers market has clearly changed over the years; the 130-120 farmers who came to the Gansevoort Farmers Market at the end of its existence was described as a “limited number of farmers.” To give some perspective, today, the entire NYC Greenmarket program, which is considered enormously successful, supports about 90 farmers who are divided among 44 separate farmers markets across the 5 boroughs. 46 James Sullivan, ed. The History of New York State, book II, chapt. V., pt. IV (New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, Inc., 1927). 47 “Greenwich Village Moving Westward,” NYT, 6 Jan. 1929, p. 224. 68 Figure 2.15. M. Kraus & Brothers storefront at the northeast corner of Little West 12th Street and 10th Avenue, 1933. Source: NYPL, Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s, 711161F. 69 underground pipes to deliver brine for cooling buildings throughout the Gansevoort Market area.48 The West Washington Market had become the largest live poultry market in the world by 1929, but it was also constantly plagued by scandals and corruption. In a step toward the “eradication of the rackets,” the La Guardia administration announced in 1940 its plans to build a new municipally-owned poultry market in Long Island City, Queens, where, it was anticipated, the adjustment of scales and the treatment of birds would be closely supervised by public officials. The facility opened in 1942 and effectively consolidated poultry deliveries that had previously been made at the West Washington Market, the 16th Street rail yards, and fifteen to twenty other locations in the city.49 The remaining meat and produce wholesalers continued to occupy West Washington Market until the late 1940s when the market buildings were torn down to build the “Gansevoort Destructor,” a massive garbage incineration facility. Municipal support for food uses in the Gansevoort Market area still remained strong immediately after World War II. In 1949 Mayor O’Dwyer helped lay the cornerstone of a municipally-financed and -constructed “Gansevoort Meat Center” on city-owned land at the corner of Washington and Little West 12th Street. The site was formerly occupied by the Gansevoort Farmer’s Market; the new building, which replaced ten “dilapidated” brick structures, was “designed along modern lines” to house wholesale meat merchants.50 A few years after its completion, it was fully occupied by thirty-four stores and had a waiting list twenty names long.51 48 For an extensive discussion of the Manhattan Refrigerating Company and the gradual diffusion of market-related functions into private buildings in the Gansevoort Market area, see Jay Shockley, Gansevoort Market Historic District Designation Report, New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, 2003. 49 “Plans are Filed for New Market,” NYT, 13 Nov. 1940, p. 25; “Poultry Terminal in Queens Opened,” NYT, 2 Aug. 1942, p. 11. 50 “Mayor Lays Stone for Meat Center,” NYT, 21 Oct. 1949, p. 48. 51 Peter Kihss, “‘Shocking’ Waste is Found in Upkeep of City’s Property,” NYT, 9 Aug. 1953, p. 1. 70 The city’s support for the Gansevoort Meat Market after World War II was, however, relatively short-lived; pressure in favor of its relocation or substantial reconstruction emerged in the 1960s. In 1962 the Agricultural Marketing Service of the USDA was invited by the Commission of Markets of New York City (in addition to other advisory and business interests) to study how the Gansevoort Market functioned, recommend interventions to increase its efficiency, and outline the benefits to be derived from doing so. The USDA’s report described the “14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry” as “one of the world’s great wholesale meat markets,” comprising an area of about thirty-five acres, or 14 blocks, bounded by 15th St and Horatio, West, Hudson, Ninth, and Eleventh avenues (Figure 2.16). In 1960 it handled over 56 per cent (or 701,549 tons) of the meat consumed in the metropolitan area of New York City.52 Food uses dominated the market neighborhood. Of the 260 facilities being used in the Gansevoort Market area, about 70 per cent, or 178, were occupied by the food industry (140 meat handlers, 20 poultry handlers, and 17 “other” food uses).53 Within this group of “other” food uses were a number of a wholesale fruit and vegetable dealers who specialized in serving lower Manhattan restaurants, hotels, and steamship lines.54 Notwithstanding claims to its greatness, the UDSA also enumerated a number of Gansevoort Market’s “defects.” Facilities throughout the district were “inadequate;” the working conditions were “poor,” “dirty,” and “depressing;” and traffic congestion made efficient operation “impossible.” It recommend relocating the Gansevoort Market meat wholesalers to the New York Terminal Market at Hunts Point in the Bronx, a municipal project completed in 1966 to accommodate merchants 52 Robert L. Holland and Donald A. Bowers, The 14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry in New York City, Marketing Research Report No. 556 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962): 5-8. 53 Ibid, 8. 54 See Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets, 20. 71 Figure 2.16. Map illustrating the uses of buildings in the Gansevoort Market, referred to by the USDA as the “14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry,” in 1960. Source: Robert L. Holland and Donald A. Bowers, The 14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry in New York City, Marketing Research Report No. 556 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962): 9. 72 forcibly relocated from of the Washington Street fruit and vegetable market to make way for urban renewal.55 The comprehensive city-wide Plan for New York City published in 1969 stated that the Gansevoort Meat Market would “eventually be moved, providing an important opportunity for the planning of residential and commercial facilities.”56 Market firms and neighboring Greenwich Village residents strongly opposed the relocation for a number of reasons. Many of the firms had been in operation in the Gansevoort area for generations, and a few of them since the turn of the century. Firms had also recently made substantial capital investments to modernize their facilities to meet the refrigeration and sanitary requirements imposed by the 1967 federal Wholesome Meat Act.57 They argued that any inefficiencies stemming from their outdated physical plants were more than offset by other operational and locational advantages of the Gansevoort Market, which offered close proximity to customers and the security of “familiar ways of doing business.”58 The meat wholesalers and processors were small, highly specialized, interdependent businesses. Because each individual merchant specialized in one particular meat or limited range of meats, and performed only one or a few of the functions in the overall wholesaling process, they depended upon transactions among one another to meet various volumes and types of orders. Moving the market threatened to unsettle these relationships. Also, residential neighbors to the south and east, while forced to suffer the market’s traffic and noise, supported its continued existence; an estimated 10% of the market workforce still lived in the Village as late as the 1970s. Moreover, nearby residents 55 See Herbert Sturz, chairman, City Assistance for Small Manufacturers (New York: Department of City Planning, 1982): 85. 56 New York City Planning Commission, Plan for New York City, A Proposal, Vol. 4: Manhattan (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969): 35. 57 On the requirement of Act and how they effected the operation of the Gansevoort merchants, see “Meat Plants Here Face U.S. Upgrading,” NYT, 6 Mar. 1968, p. 39. 58 Sturz, City Assistance for Small Manufacturers, 85. 73 feared what might be built in place of the market should it be forcibly moved through urban renewal. High-rise public housing projects seemed a likely candidate for what would have been a formerly industrial location which, at that time, was considered largely undesirable due to its proximity to New York’s abandoned and crumbling industrial waterfront.59 City policy changed in response to meat merchant protests. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the market firms still represented a significant industrial workforce (approximately 120 firms with a total of 4,500 employees), and comprised more than half of the city’s total meat wholesalers. The meat firms argued that their Gansevoort operations represented a $2 billion a year business. Weighing these factors, the City Planning Commission reconsidered its previous position and assured the market merchants that they would not be forced out of the Gansevoort area.60 A number of separate studies conducted in the 1970s and 80s all concluded that despite having outdated facilities, Gansevoort’s function as a market remained viable. Some firms moved to new facilities at Hunts Point, but the space they vacated was quickly absorbed by new food-related firms eager to locate in the Gansevoort Market.61 Area firms were known for high quality products and excellent customer service.62 They continued to supply Manhattan hotels, restaurants, and other institutions through the end of the twentieth century. Gansevoort also became known as a destination for alternative nightlife. A number of gay male S&M nightclubs opened there in the mid 1970s. One of them in 59 West Side Highway Project (hereafter WSHP), West Side Highway Project Environmental Impact Statement, (Albany: United States Department of Transportation, 1975): 60; see also WSHP, Preliminary Reports on the Gansevoort 14th Street Meat Market (New York: WSHP, 1972): 10. 60 Ibid. 61 On the movement of meat firms in and out of Gansevoort in the 1970s see WSHP, Preliminary Reports on the Gansevoort 14th Street Meat Market, 45. 62 For a discussion of the types of meat firms and the services they offered see Sturz, City Assistance for Small Manufacturers, 88-100. 74 particular, the “Mineshaft,” has been described as “perhaps the most famous S/M club that ever existed.” A number of authors agree that in addition to being the most sexually extreme of this type of club, the Mineshaft also established an interior design aesthetic and theatrical staging that were later widely copied by more mainstream commercial enterprises catering to both gay and heterosexual clienteles. Clubs located throughout the district are said to have played an important part in the history of gay male liberation. The Mineshaft was permanently closed by the New York City Department of Health in 1985 in response to the growing AIDS crisis.63 Other clubs lingered on until 2003 and the market remained a popular destination for illicit sexual activity; transvestite prostitutes plied their trade in the streets and behind market trucks well into the late 1990s, which perpetuated the area’s reputation as a gritty industrial streetscape considered exciting by some and also vaguely dangerous by others.64 Preservationists initiated two different but related projects in the market area in the late 1990s. One project was the movement to preserve and adaptively reuse the High Line, an abandoned elevated freight track running parallel to 10th Avenue between Gansevoort and 34th Streets.65 The southern portion of the High Line project, all of which is to become a linear park, is scheduled to open in the spring of 2009.66 63 On the historical importance of the Mineshaft and area’s other clubs see Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004); and Charles Kaiser, The Gay Metropolis, 1940-1996 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997); Gansevoort’s gay club scene was depicted as sleazy, predatory, and violent in the 1979 movie “Cruising,” directed by William Friedkin, parts of which were shot on location in Gansevoort Market; it stars Al Pacino as a police officer who goes undercover to infiltrate the gay clubs and catch an S/M serial killer. 64 See Tim Gray, “Bring Back the Beefcake, and Add Some Flowers Too,” The Villager (New York) Vol. 74, no. 11, 14-20 July 2004; and Lincoln Anderson, “Transvestites Becoming Rare in Meat Market,” The Villager 73, issue 11 (16-22 July 2003). 65 A complete account of the Highline preservation effort has yet to be written, in part because the project is still ongoing; but a good partial history can be found in Robert A.M. Stern, New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism between the Bicentennial and the Millennium (New York: Monacelli Press, 2006): 427-431. 66 Lincoln Anderson, “More Projects, Lots More People are Still to Come,” The Villager 77, issue 7 (18-24 July 2007). 75 The other project was the preservation of the Gansevoort Market district itself. In 1999 the advocacy organization Save Gansevoort Market was formed under the auspices of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. Co-chaired by Jo Hamilton, a nearby resident of Greenwich Village, and Florent Morellet, owner of a restaurant on Gansevoort Street, the group campaigned to designate the market as a local city landmark district and explored other strategies for retaining its traditional market activities. The co-chairs were socially and politically well-connected. And the urgency of their mission was underscored by a number of high profile commercial real estate development projects in and adjacent to the district. The construction of the 14story Gansevoort Hotel on Hudson and West 13th Street, which began in early 2003 and opened in the spring of the following year, was viewed by many as an architecturally inappropriate addition to the market and a powerful symbol of the potential for future neighborhood changes. In 2002 the market was named to the Preservation League of New York State’s “Seven to Save” list of endangered historic resources and was determined eligible for Listing on the National Register of Historic Places. The following year the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission declared Gansevoort Market a local landmark district. Still, new stores, restaurants, and uses not traditionally associated with the market continue to press in on the district at a rapid pace. Recent proposals for major new construction include additional hotels and a branch location of the Whiney Museum of American Art, to be located at the southern terminus of the High Line.67 67 Carol Vogel, “Whitney’s Expansion Plans Are Shifting South, to the Meatpacking District,” NYT, 28 Nov. 2006. 76 CHAPTER 3 FUNCTIONAL OBSCOLESCENCE The urban infrastructure of food distribution has changed dramatically throughout U.S. history. While we have always needed to eat, the infrastructure that has enabled us to do so is a curiously unexplored chapter in the history of architecture and urban development in the United States. With some recent notable exceptions, other necessities like transportation, housing, and sanitation, have all received more scholarly attention from urban and architectural historians.1 Scholars agree that up into the early decades of the twentieth century, most municipal governments actively regulated and built the local infrastructure of retail food distribution. This took the form of centrally-located market squares and downtown public market buildings where urban consumers met directly with rural producers of agricultural commodities.2 In the mid to late 1800s, private venues of retail food distribution began to draw customers away from public markets. They began as small, independent grocery stores, some of which eventually evolved into grocery chains linking multiple stores distributed throughout the city under centralized management. The growth of the private food industry and the development and proliferation of the modern supermarket has also received scholarly examination.3 Still undocumented in the secondary literature is what became of the public infrastructure of agricultural distribution as private retail venues became the urban consumer’s predominant source of food. What happened to food markets in the 20th century? 1 See for example Howard Gillette, Jr., and Zane Miller, eds, American Urbanism: A Historiographical Review (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987). 2 Tangires. 3 Mayo, Longstreth. 77 Urban planning, which became a recognized profession in the first two decades of the twentieth century, initially took a strong interest in the issues of food access, the efficiencies of food distribution, and the sources of food production. Their interest in these issues is documented in planning reports, books, and personal correspondence. At some point after World War II, however, food seems to have disappeared from the planning profession’s list of concerns and responsibilities. For a profession that makes strong claims to making comprehensive assessments of and interventions for the basic requirements of life such as housing, transportation, and sanitation, why would a necessity as fundamental as food disappear from the planning movement’s agenda? This chapter explores this transition by examining the changing function of urban food markets, as well as the public and private responses to these changes over the course of the twentieth century. The case study markets in Seattle, New York, and Boston were shaped by a number of national, and to some extent even global, trends in agriculture, transportation, urban growth, and businesses management. When municipalities initially established public markets, much of the food eaten by urban consumers was grown locally and transported from the outskirts of the city by wagons and ships. Advances in railroad and then automotive technology enabled the sources of agricultural production to gradually move farther away from the points of their ultimate consumption. Cities also grew rapidly in population and geographic size in response to both foreign immigration and the migration of people from rural to metropolitan areas. Urban growth and the development of suburbs consumed the agricultural land that had traditionally provided local food supplies and taxed the ability of municipalities to build additional market facilities throughout the expanding metropolis. Public markets initially adapted to these changes by transitioning from sites of retail trade to wholesale distribution. Entire market districts of independent wholesalers occupying private buildings formed in many cities with public markets as 78 their nucleus. They supplied the grocery store trade, restaurants, and other institutional outlets. Private retail businesses also grew in size, geographical distribution, and managerial sophistication. Retail chains comprised of multiple food stores began to establish their own vertically integrated private distribution networks in the early twentieth century. As these related trends each became gradually apparent in the first half of the twentieth century, the appropriate role of government in ensuring the access of its citizen to food was widely debated in professional journals and the popular media. This historical context of food distribution is the basis for understanding the functional preservation of urban market districts. Preserving historic properties is rarely ever easy; successful projects must surmount numerous technical, financial, and political challenges. For most of the twentieth century, old buildings were stigmatized as stylistically outdated, functionally obsolete, or just plain “used,” like so much unwanted second-hand clothing passed down from older siblings. Following World War II, inner city markets and market districts were increasingly seen as operationally inefficient and structurally outdated. Their age and marketing traditions were thought to be liabilities, not assets. To fully appreciate the challenges posed by the functional preservation of markets, one must first understand how and why they were considered functionally obsolete. Markets as a Municipal Service Public food markets were a fixture of American cities from the founding of the colonies to well into the early twentieth century. According to one historian, “nearly every town of any importance had its market place where farmers brought their farm 79 products for sale to, or exchange with, the folks in the city.”4 The construction and regulation of facilities where urban citizens could obtain wholesome and affordable food was considered one of the fundamental responsibilities of local government.5 Income generated by markets in the forms of taxes, tolls, stall rentals, licenses and fines were also an important source of revenue for newly incorporated towns. Thus, in the interests of public health and public revenues, local governments were compelled to ensure that markets were well maintained and well regulated. Buying or selling food outside of the market’s designated boundaries or hours of operation, know as “forestalling,” was strictly prohibited.6 This “municipal monopoly” on food sales began to erode in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The nation’s largest cities were the first to loosen laws restricting food sales to municipal markets. New York City led the way, first enabling butchers to sell outside the market, beginning in 1843. Both consumers and vendors were frustrated by the city’s inability to stay abreast of urban growth by building additional markets. City hall, it seemed, was more interested in funding other public projects like the Croton Waterworks than in expanding its market system. Butchers and other vendors quickly established private shops in the newly deregulated environment.7 Other cities relaxed market regulations, abided a certain number of private food stores, or did both. Boston’s civic leaders recognized as early as the 1850s and ‘60s that the Faneuil Hall markets no longer met the entire city’s retail food needs. While they remained committed to certain public market regulations, they also 4 John L. Wann, et. al., Farmers’ Produce Markets in the United States, Part 1: History and Description (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1948): 3. 5 Helen Tangires, Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003): 3. 6 Ibid, 6-7. 7 Ibid, 71-94. 80 realized that private markets were increasingly necessary retail venues in a rapidly expanding metropolis.8 Some cities eased the transition toward deregulation by permitting private shops only if located at a certain minimum distance from any public city market.9 Although the dates and details varied from place to place, the general trend in the second half of the nineteenth century was toward the privatization of retail food sales. It appeared to many that even if each were located in separate storefronts, butchers, fishmongers, green grocers, and bakeries provided food more conveniently and economically. The end of the twentieth century saw a renewal of interest in public markets at the municipal and federal levels. At least a dozen cities, among them Washington, D.C., and New Orleans, built substantial market houses in the 1870 and ‘80s.10 And, in 1870, Commissioner of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Horace Capron, conducted the first nation-wide study of food marketing and price margins. His report was prophetic in its exposure of emerging trends whose significance would only be fully recognized decades later, in the early twentieth century. Capron established that the way in which markets functioned was related to the population of the cities in which they were located. Cities with populations below 100,000 generally reported no problems supplying their citizens with food; consumers bought directly from producers. Above this threshold, public market systems 8 Ibid, 160-167. For an account of the growth in private grocers and butchers in large cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, see “The Market Systems of the Country, Their Usages and Abuses,” in Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture in the Year 1870 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1871): 241-254. 9 By 1870, Chicago’s common council was licensing private meat and fish shops; see “The Market Systems of the Country,” 245. New Orleans, which maintained the nation’s largest market system with thirty-four public venues, enacted this type of law at the turn of the twentieth century. It restricted private markets and stores to zones at least nine blocks distant from any public market; the law was reportedly strictly enforced until the markets were deregulated and leased to private companies in the 1930s and ‘40s. See Robert A. Sauder, “Municipal Markets in New Orleans,” Journal of Cultural Geography 2 (Fall-Winter 1981): 82-95. 10 Tangires calls this a “rebirth of the municipal market;” see her list of cities and the dates in which they built markets in Public Market and Civic Culture in Nineteenth Century America, 174. 81 appeared to break down, as observed most notably in Boston and New York. In cities of this size the private “corner-grocery system” was rapidly supplanting public market systems; most consumers were obtaining their food “second hand” from retail stores supplied by middlemen. The reasons behind this transition formed the basis of his other important findings. Due in part to oppressive regulations and local mismanagement of market facilities, farmers increasingly found it necessary to dispose of their goods either through commission merchants who sold their food for a percentage of the profits, or through middlemen, who, in turn, resold food to grocery stores, hotels, and other retail outlets. City markets that had originally promoted direct trade between producers and consumers were now increasingly occupied by wholesalers and other middlemen. In itself, Capron considered this unobjectionable, provided the middleman charged a reasonable amount—not more than a 20-percent markup over the price paid to the farmer. The problem was that some were exacting “unrighteous profits” of 100 to 200 percent. Both farmers and consumers were being impoverished through dealings with middlemen who “contribute nothing to the production process.” Middlemen were becoming a functional reality of the food distribution process, but as Capron warned, their importance was growing as the sources of food production moved farther away from the location of its ultimate consumption. Railroads were literally accelerating the process. As Capron measured the spread, “The farmer was once but a day’s drive by horse from the city where his surplus was consumed; now he is five hundred miles away; in another decade he will be a thousand miles away.” As this trend advanced, he predicted that food marketing would evolve into a “special trade” too complex for the average farmer’s time and abilities. “A wise and sagacious government will give its close attention to the solution to this problem,” Capron urged. 82 But his report failed to spark nation-wide market reform. In 1871 Capron resigned as commissioner to become an agricultural advisor to the Japanese government. The USDA went on to pursue its more traditional focus on the problems of agricultural production under commissioners who did not share Capron’s sense of urgency for the emerging challenges of agricultural distribution.11 Not for another forty years would the agency begin to consider marketing part of its responsibility.12 Moreover, probably because it was buried in the USDA’s yearly Report of the Commissioner, Capron’s important findings were never seen by those who, at the time, were most involved in public health and urban food provisioning: the representatives of municipal government. In the early decades of the twentieth century, intensive investigations of urban marketing would rediscover the same issues first recognized by Capron, though, as he predicted, in a more advanced state of development. Markets and the High Cost of Living Markets were again given close scrutiny shortly after 1900 as a result of an international crisis known generally as “The High Cost of Living.” Rising food costs became one of the most pressing urban problems of the early twentieth century. Food prices in the United States climbed steadily through the 1890s and reached a peak in 1917, when it was estimated that between 40 and 60 percent of income was spent on feeding the family. Such hardships made daily headlines in urban newspapers, incited 11 Tangires, Public Market and Civic Culture in Nineteenth Century America, 156. 12 James C. Malin, “The Background of the First Bills to Establish a Bureau of Markets, 1911-12,” Agricultural History 1, no. 3 (July 1932): 107-129; and Harold F. Breimyer, “Fifty Years of Federal Marketing Programs,” Journal of Farm Economics 45, no. 4 (Nov., 1963): 775. 83 violent protests by socialist women in New York City, and attracted the attention of public officials and municipal reformers throughout the nation.13 Cities pursued a range of options in response to the crisis. Frustrated by rapidly rising prices of fresh fruits and vegetables for which middlemen were assumed to be responsible, Seattle designated a section of Pike Place as an open-air farmers market in 1907;14 Spokane did the same the following year. In the years leading up to World War I, dozens of other small to mid-sized cities located throughout the country established municipally-regulated public markets.15 They did so out of a conviction, widely expressed in the popular press, that pubic markets could ameliorate the high cost of living by bringing producers into direct trade with consumers, cutting out middlemen and other agents in the distribution process.16 Larger cities resolved to first study the problem before taking action. According to Housewives League Magazine in 1913, three commissions investigating the high cost of living—in Boston, Philadelphia, and New York—failed to propose a comprehensive solution, but all agreed “that the distribution of food must no longer be left to chance,” or, in other words, the open market.17 That food was growing more expensive was indisputable; the cause of this increase and what to do about it was much less clear. 13 Dana Frank, “Housewives, Socialists, and the Politics of Food: The 1917 New York Cost-of-Living Protests,” Feminist Studies 11, no. 2 (Summer 1985): 256 14 For an excellent historical overview of Pike Place Market, see Alice Shorett and Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982). 15 For a list of cities with municipal markets, and the year in which they were established, see Sam L. Rogers, Municipal Markets in Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000, Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1919). 16 See for example Cyrus C. Miller, “Municipal Markets in Their Relation to the Cost of Living,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 48, no. 137, special issue on “The Cost of Living” (July, 1913): 140-148; and J. W. Sullivan, Markets for the People: The Consumer’s Part (New York: Macmillan Company, 1913). 17 "Where the Problem Lies: Conclusions of Three Commissions Investigating the High Cost of Living," Housewives League Magazine 1, no. 1 (1913): 17-19. 84 The high cost of living became an urban concern at about the same time that city planning emerged as a professional discipline, one equipped with specialized research tools and methods. Contrary to recent scholarship suggesting that the profession has rarely focused on food-related matters, some of the leading lights of the planning movement during its formative years in the United States expressed a keen interest in public markets and food distribution in general.18 As efficiency superseded beauty as the watchword of city planning, food ranked high on a growing list of urban concerns deemed worthy of the professional planner’s attention. George B. Ford, a luminary of the new efficiency paradigm, tried to “shake the image of planning as mere civic beautification” and urged planners to encompass a broader range of issues. As he explained in “The City Scientific,” his address to the Fifth National Conference on City Planning, the “problems of convenience, of health, and of efficiency” demanded new, more analytically rigorous approaches to the collection and analysis of data. Information on “food supply markets” was fifth in a list of twelve “significant facts” Ford thought should be collected by the “expert city planner.”19 As the nascent profession of city planning struggled to define its aims and methods, a number of Ford’s contemporaries reiterated the importance of food. The development of food markets was one of the most important ways that planners were “improving in a direct and practical way, the living conditions of the whole city.”20 It was within this professional context that New York City initiated a comprehensive study of its food markets in 1912, the first analysis of its kind in the 18 Gregory Alexander Donofrio, “Feeding the City,” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 7, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 30-41. 19 George B. Ford, “The City Scientific,” Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on City Planning…1913 (Boston: National Conference on City Planning, 1913). 20 Frank Koester, Modern City Planning and Maintenance (New York: McBride, Nast and Company, 1914), 217. See also Robert H. Whitten, “The Constitution and Powers of a City Planning Authority,” Proceedings of the Seventh National Conference on City Planning (Boston: National Conference on City Planning, 1915): 135-143; and William A. Magee, “The Organization and Functions of a City Planning Commission,” Proceedings of the Fifth National Conference on City Planning...1913 (Boston: National Conference on City Planning, 1913): 73-85. 85 nation. The findings were published a year later as The Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission of New York City, offering answers to questions that, at the time, were by no means clear: Where does the city’s food come from? How much is produced locally? How is food distributed within the city? Why is the city’s food so expensive? And what can city government do to lessen the burdens of the high cost of living? 21 Borrowing the methods established by New York’s study, other large cities, including Philadelphia, Newark, Boston, and Chicago, initiated similar market investigations in the years leading up to WWI.22 Expert testimony, quantitative analysis, and detailed maps led the New York commission to four main conclusions: New York City was supplied by a global food network; distribution within the city lacked planning and coordination; inefficiencies in handling cost consumers money; and food should be treated as a public service because it is as much a necessity as drinking water, transportation, and sanitation. Authors of market studies in other large cities produced remarkably similar findings. While planners in this period rarely worried about the global reach of the food system, they were frequently awed by its existence. Fresh food arrived in major cities like New York and Boston throughout the year from a startling diversity of places 21 Cyrus Miller, John P. Mitchell, and George McAneny, commissioners, The Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission of New York City (New York: J.J. Little & Ives Co., 1913); Mitchell later became the mayor of New York. Miller and McAneny were the borough presidents of the Bronx and Manhattan, respectively; both maintained longtime interests in food and transportation planning issues. Coincidentally, later in his life McAneny became a leader in the historic preservation movement, first as president of the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, and then as a founding member of the National Council of Historic Sites and Buildings, the forerunner organization to the National Trust for Historic Preservation; see Charles Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 1926-1949 (Charlottesville, V.A.: University Press of Virginia, 1981); and “George McAneny, 83, Dead in Princeton,” New York Times, 30 July 1953, sec. 23, 1 22 City Planning Board, Boston, A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston (Boston: City of Boston Printing Department, 1916); Chicago Municipal Markets Commission, Preliminary Report to the Mayor (Chicago, 1914); National Municipal League, The Relation of the City to Its Food Supply (Philadelphia, 1915); Newark City Plan Commission, Report on Public Markets [prepared by George B. Ford and E. P. Goodrich] (N.p.: N.p., 1912); and E. P. Goodrich and George B. Ford, Report of Suggested Plan of Procedure for City Plan Commission, City of Jersey City, New Jersey (Jersey City: Jersey City Printing Company, 1913). 86 (Figure 3.1). Even relatively low-value commodities like potatoes were brought from as far away as Bermuda, Scotland, Ireland, and Belgium. Advances in transportation technology fulfilled Capron’s earlier predictions. “The development of railroad and steamship,” the New York market commissioners concluded, “has brought the farms of South Carolina and Kansas as near New York City as were those of Long Island and Westchester County one hundred years ago.”23 The Boston Planning Board’s investigation of Faneuil Hall Market concluded that between 60 and 85 percent of the city’s supply of fruits, vegetables, and meats came from sources outside of New England.24 That food came from distant places was accepted as a fact; the diminished importance of more local sources was recognized but not generally thought to be a cause for alarm. Indeed, to some extent, both were interpreted as signs of progress and modernity. Merchants in Boston’s public markets were proud of the fact that they drew supplies from every state in the nation, and from islands beyond its coasts. The availability of diverse items from distant places was interpreted as a sign that the market was operating in the best interests of Boston’s citizens.25 Acceptance of the globalized food system did not mean however that local farmers were entirely cast aside. The problem as it was conceived at the time in New 23 W.G. Rainsford, “Existing Steamship and Railroad Terminals in the City of New York,” in the Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission, 29–39; quote from 11. 24 A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 14 and 63; numerous other studies tried to quantify the percentage of a city’s food that was produced locally versus that which was sent from beyond its immediate hinterland. The Joint Report on Food and Markets, written in part by the Food Supply Committee that Mitchell established when he became mayor, determined that based on “careful investigation…if all the tillable land available for farming purposes, located near enough to New York [City] to be reached by the farmer with his vehicle, were intensively cultivated, it would produce…less than 5 per cent of the entire amount of foodstuffs consumed in New York City.” The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets estimated in the mid-1920s that 60 to 90 percent of the perishables consumed in all of the state’s cities were shipped from “distant points,” despite the obvious fact that most of its urban areas were surrounded by productive farmland. Joint Report on Foods and Markets of Governor Whitman’s Market Commission, Mayor Mitchell’s Food Supply Committee and the Wicks Legislative Committee, transmitted to the Legislature, 3 January 1917, 13; H.E. Crouch, “Developing a New Type of City Market,” Cornell Countryman 24 (March 1927): 161; E.R. McNeil, “The Evolution of the Public Market,” Cornell Countryman 24 (April 1927): 189. 25 Tangires, Public Market and Civic Culture in Nineteenth Century America, 166. 87 Figure 3.1. Planners in the early 20th century were awed by the global reach of the food system. Source: Walter P. Hedden, Port of New York Authority, Papers on Marketing within the Port of New York District, (New York: Port of New York Authority, 1925): 4. 88 York, Boston, and other large cities was how best to accommodate the seasonal contributions of local farmers while at the same time addressing the constant, yearround consumption demands of an expanding urban population. As the Boston Planning Board concluded: It is obvious…that any system which might work admirably for the 20 per cent of the food supply coming from nearby might break down entirely in attempting to handle the 80 per cent of the food supply which by the nature of things must come from a distance and vice versa.26 Accommodating local farmers raised still other regulatory and economic concerns. The primary purpose of a farmers market—at least the one most commonly articulated at the time by their largely city-based constituency—was to bring consumers together with producers in the interests of lowering the food costs of the former and raising the profits of the latter. Ensuring that only bona fide producers sold at farmers markets was therefore paramount.27 “Speculators” who purchased produce and then posed as farmers had long been a problem at Gansevoort Market and others like it, which, by law, specifically designated the use of certain market areas only by local producers. Transgressors drove up stall rental fees and competed for customers.28 But it became increasingly difficult to know who was a legitimate farmer, and by what definition. As expanding metropolises consumed some of the best regional farmland for the erection of single-family houses in the 1920s, it was debated whether a man with only a half-acre of land was a genuine farmer, or merely one of the many 26 A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 21-22; emphasis in the original. 27 Mainstream publications by academic experts continued to promote farmers markets into the 1920s, even as they recognized that most cities were increasingly relying upon “distant sources of food supply;” for a discussion of this and the regulation of farmers markets, see Henry E. Erdman, American Produce Markets (Boston: D.C. Heath and Company, 1928): 226-234. 28 For evidence that this was a persistent problem at the Gansevoort Market, see “Assuming the Guise of Farmers,” NYT, 4 April 1884, p. 3; “Reduction in Market Rents,” NYT, 17 May 1889, p. 8; and “Farmers Protest Market Conditions,” NYT, 28 July 1929, p. 25. 89 speculating “fakers who live off farmers.”29 Lingering doubts were added fuel for those who already argued that Gansevoort Market, and farmers markets in general, while potentially still useful, did not confer enough public benefit to justify “devoting such a valuable piece of property exclusively to this purpose.”30 The lost tax revenue was hard to defend, particularly when one weighed the small and rapidly falling volume of food grown locally against the ever increasing quantity of food received from distant producers. Regardless of whether it came from near or far, the inefficiency of food distribution within the city was a source of consternation and became the primary object of planning reforms. Nearly all who studied the problem agreed that food was expensive not because it traveled so far to get to the city, but rather because it traveled so far within the city. By plotting on detailed maps the locations at which each commodity entered New York City and was subsequently sorted, sold at wholesale, and redistributed for retail trade, the market commission discovered that food moved through the city in redundant and inefficient patterns (Figure 3.2). Among the reasons for this was that many urban public markets, including those in New York and Boston, lacked direct connections to the most significant transportation routes. Gansevoort and West Washington, two of the eight public markets in New York City, illustrated the point. Both markets were only serviced by one railroad line: the New York Central. Food shipped from other railroads had to be brought into the market by truck. And while West Washington Market was located 29 Quote from “Farmers’ Hearing a Series of Tilts,” NYT, 25 Nov. 1922, p. 28; a survey of public markets conducted in 1917 found that farmers were increasing the length of their haul to reach the market, in part due to better transportation, but also due to “the wall of suburban residences…building up about them;” Boston, New York, and Seattle were among 16 cities (out of 61 respondents) indicating that farmers traveled 30 miles or more to reach the market, which was the longest distance reported in the study; see National Municipal League, Public Markets in the United States (Philadelphia: National Municipal League, 1917): 21. 30 Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission, 21. 90 91 Figure 3.2. Food markets on the Hudson River shore of Manhattan. Gansevoort Market is magnified on the right. The triangle labeled “Fruits, Vegetables, Farm Products, etc,” is the Gansevoort Farmers Market. Source: Cyrus C. Miller, chairman, et. al., Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission of New York City (New York: J.J. Little & Ives, 1913): n.p. Gansevoort Market inset added by author. directly on the shore of the Hudson River, it had no facilities for receiving goods by water. Faneuil Hall, likewise, had neither direct access to a railroad line nor to shipping facilities on the waterfront. The 1915 Planning Board study found that Boston, instead of having one port, had three separate ports each served by a different railroad line with no coordinated means of interconnection (Figure 3.3). The result was “an enormous amount of cartage” between terminals and markets, all of which increased the retail price of food.31 This common problem wherein transportation facilities were physically separated from the sites at which food was subsequent distributed and sold became known in the early twentieth century as a “split market.” According to the taxonomy that developed during the period, the first location at which food arrived in a city was known as the “primary market,” where goods were generally delivered in large unit sizes. In New York, for example, food was delivered in bulk to 90 percent of all piers in the city, in addition to the New York Central Railroad terminal. At the primary markets middlemen worked to break bulk, that is, divide shipments arriving in railroad-car and steamship-size loads down to units manageable by horse cart or truck. Specialized middlemen known as jobbers then purchased a number of commodities from the primary markets, sorted them into standard grades and container sizes, and distributed them in small lots to a variety of secondary markets, such as hotels, passenger ships, restaurants, and grocery stores. Often adjacent to the primary markets, middlemen and jobbers set up their own wholesale or “jobbing” markets from which food was subsequently sold to still other agents in the distribution process along its root to the tertiary or retail markets. In effect, this is what happened at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, West Washington Market, and the blocks surrounding the Gansevoort Farmers Market. 31 A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 25-26. 92 Figure 3.3. The “split markets’ of Boston illustrating the separation between railroad and steamship terminals and the Faneuil Hall Market district. Source: William C. Crow, Wholesale Markets for Fruits and Vegetables in 40 Cities, circular no. 463 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1938). 93 Each hand that touched food along what William Cronon described as an “elaborate human network” decreased its quality and increased its cost to the consumer.32 While assessments of markup varied, market reformers estimated that the cost of food increased on average between 70 and 100 percent after it reached the city33 (Figure 3.4). The farmer’s profit was but a small percentage of food’s retail cost.34 Planning was seen as the solution to these problems. Comparing food with other public utilities more commonly considered in comprehensive urban plans justified both the involvement of planning professionals and the need for constructive government intervention. The complexity and waste of urban food distribution was often contrasted with the rational efficiency of municipal water, gas, and sewer service. Sewerage and water service, which the historian Joel Tarr has called the “city’s metabolic system,” were brought under government ownership by most American cities in the middle of the nineteenth century, when large capital requirements and the “inadequacies of private companies” compelled public ownership.35 “The provision of facilities for a flow of fresh and abundant food supplies,” wrote one contributor to the New York Market Commission report, “is as 32 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1991), 264. 33 Based on “many studies,” the National Municipal League estimated the markup to be 100 percent. See Relation of the City to Its Food Supply, 15. The Chicago Municipal Market Commission analyzed the difference in price of “thirteen staple articles” between wholesaler and retailer and determined that the average increase was 72.7 percent. Chicago Municipal Market Commission, Preliminary Report to the Mayor and Aldermen of the City of Chicago by the Commission (Chicago, 1914), 13. The New York Market Commission Report, 15, concluded more generally by saying that “the costs of distribution in the city are greater than the costs of getting goods to the city.…” 34 Farmers also blamed middlemen for high food costs; for the agricultural basis of the high cost of living, see James C. Malin, “The Background of the First Bills to Establish a Bureau of Markets, 191112,” Agricultural History 6, no. 3 (July 1932): 107-129. 35 Joel A. Tarr, “The Evolution of the Urban Infrastructure in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in Perspectives on Urban Infrastructure, Royce Hanson. ed. (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1984), 13. 94 Figure 3.4. Cartoons like this from the Brooklyn Eagle (date unknown) reflected anxiety about the cost of food and the public’s distrust of the food marking system. Source: Housewives League Magazine 1, no. 4 (April 1913): 8. 95 much a municipal problem as supplying the city with water or gas.”36 The comparison of food with water was also a common metaphor used to suggest how food should move toward and throughout cities. Instead of letting “our food supply filter into our cities,” like water percolating up to private wells, it ought to “flow in without obstruction” as it did after completion of the Croton Aqueduct, New York’s monumental early-nineteenth-century public utility project.37 In Boston, a commission on the high cost of living said that the wasteful way food moved through the city resembled a “bucket brigade at a fire,” when what was needed was a “hydrant and a line of hose.”38 The abhorrent waste caused by New York City’s freight transportation network was described by the State’s Commissioner for the Department of Foods and Market as a leaking “drain that surely demands bunghole stoppage.”39 Later on, the influential food market and transportation expert Walter Hedden compared watersheds with “foodsheds” to explain “the flow of foodstuffs to consumer markets.”40 With these precedents and metaphors in mind, planners argued that government control of food distribution was a logical extension of the metabolic systems the city already controlled. 36 Thomas J. Libbin, “Constructive Program for Reduction of Cost of Food Distribution in Large Cities,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 49 (1913): 250. 37 Cyrus C. Miller, “Municipal Markets in Their Relation to the Cost of Living,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 48, no. 137, special issue on “The Cost of Living” (July, 1913): 140-148. 38 Quoted in Chicago Municipal Markets Commission, Preliminary Report to the Mayor, 24. 39 John J Dillon, “Reform of Food Distribution,” Scientific American Supplement 83, no. 2162 (June 9, 1917): 367. 40 Walter P. Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1929): 17. It seems that Hedden probably coined the term “foodshed” as Pothukuchi and Kaufman note in their article "The Food System: A Stranger to the Planning Field,” however, it would be a mistake to conclude that it had the same meaning that it does today. Hedden celebrated monocrop agriculture; connected efficiently by rail, Chicago, California, and Florida were all part of New York City’s “foodshed.” Today, “foodshed” is more commonly used to describe local agriculture; see for example Kloppenburg, et. al., “Coming Into the Foodshed,” Agriculture and Human Values 13:3 (Summer 1996): 33-42. 96 Terminal Market Nearly every planning professional, agricultural expert, and social reformer who studied urban food distribution between 1912 and World War II reached the conclusion that a wholesale “terminal market” was the solution to the inefficiencies of food distribution in large cities. As described in the New York Market Commission report and elsewhere, a terminal market was a modern warehouse and distribution facility optimally located to take advantage of multiple transportation modes: steamship, truck, and, most important, railroad. These elaborate complexes were to be composed of massive refrigerated warehouses, auction floors, offices, loading docks, and railroad sidings. American market reformers looked to European cities for the latest in food terminal construction, especially Munich, Germany; Paris, France; and London, England.41 Centrality, unification, and management were key components of the terminal market concept. Illustrated diagrammatically in the pages of Scientific American in 1917, the “New Way” of food distribution would reduce or entirely eliminate the function of middlemen, physically reuniting the various components of the “split market,” and in the process, freeing the consumer from the economic burdens inflicted by a dysfunctional system42 (Figure 3.5). Farmers would work with “drummers” to assemble perishables at a given location outside the city—the “shipping point market”—where they would be loaded onto a train and shipped directly into the terminal market. Food would then pass along a straight line through the terminal to the retailer before radiating out to consumers. A single terminal market under 41 See for example Eliot Lord, “Wholesale Terminal Markets,” American Architect 112 (4 July 1917): 15-18; Mrs. Elmer [Madeleine] Black, A Terminal Market System, New York’s Most Urgent Need; Some Observations, Comments, and Comparisons of European Markets (New York: Willett Press, 1912); Frank H. Mason, “Markets of Paris,” Municipality [Madison, WI] 12, no. 6 (1912): 150, 152156; and for a bibliography that includes dozens of citations to sources on foreign markets and marketing, see A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 142-170. 42 J. J. Dillon, “Reform of Food Distribution,” Scientific American Supplement 83 (June 9, 1917): 367. 97 Figure 3.5. The “new way” of terminal markets illustrating direct movement of food from shipping point markets to urban terminal markets . Source: John J Dillon, “Reform of Food Distribution,” Scientific American Supplement 83, no. 2162 (June 9, 1917): 367. 98 municipal ownership and management was thought to be a rational, “scientific,” and perhaps even financially lucrative solution compared to the ad-hoc “series of makeshifts” operated by the private food interests.43 A large and efficient terminal market would, in theory, put most retailers in direct contact with the primary market. Even if middlemen were not completely eliminated, their numbers would be diminished and their actions could be more closely monitored at a single municipal complex. Urban planners intuitively grasped the relationship between transportation and food costs. To John Nolen, the most prominent planner of his generation, it seemed “incredible” that American cities had “not made critical examinations of their plans with a view to reducing the cost of distributing food and other supplies.” The “new science” of city planning would address such concerns in the layout and specification of street construction, the location of markets, and the proper coordination between transit lines and residential construction.44 Along with many other progressive reformers, Ford and Nolen were deeply influenced by the work of the efficiency expert Fredrick Winslow Taylor.45 They equated backtracking along distribution routes and inefficient use of transportation technologies with the redundant motions of Taylor’s factory machinists. “With all our talk about efficiency in the modern industrial and commercial world [it is strange that] so little attention has been given to that most vital of all industries, the distribution of food supplies,” wrote Ford. The 43 Quote from Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission, 16; on the municipal desire to capture some of the profits generated by food marketing and distribution, see Tangires, Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth Century America, 198. 44 F. Van Z. Lane and John Nolen, “City Planning and Distribution Costs,” Annals 50 (1913): 240-241. Nolen admired in particular the attention Germans paid to food supply and distribution; see John Nolen, “The Basis of German City Planning Procedure: An Example from Dusseldorf,” Landscape Architecture 2 (October 1911): 52-59. 45 Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1800–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 112; Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890–1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 51. 99 “elimination of unnecessary motions and of trouble” was easily achieved through the construction of modern terminal market facilities, the plans for which he published in Housewives League Magazine46 (Figure 3.6). Ford’s plans raised an important question about the forms and functions of markets: were they an industrial land use best kept isolated from the general public, or were they a civic amenity to which the public should be welcomed? The issue was rarely overtly debated in writing, but it was made clear enough in the drawings and other details that accompanied market plans. Markets were clearly considered a vital public amenity in the 19th century. But the years leading up to World War I were a transitional period. Some planners argued that markets should be moved to industrial areas because they dirtied urban streets and occupied prime downtown locations that would be better utilized in the fulfillment of City Beautiful design schemes.47 Ford’s drawings illustrate an intermediate approach in which a market could be both retail and wholesale, industrial and civic. In section, his market is clearly industrial, with large skylights, and railroad tracks and roadways cutting through the building. In plan, however, the market is surrounded by landscaping and features a Beaux-Artsinspired park at one end. Plans proposed for markets in New York were more unambiguously industrial. The Mayor’s Market Commission recommended that a terminal market be built in each of the city’s five boroughs. This geographical dispersal was proposed not out of a conviction that distribution should be decentralized. On the contrary, a division of wholesale marketing resulted in a “loss in economy;” the “ideal condition” was for wholesale marketing to be all in one place to concentrate the maximum number of sellers and buyers. Rather, it was because politics and waterways divided New York 46 George B. Ford, “The Market of the Near Future: Ideal Plan for a System of Wholesale and Retail City Markets,” Housewives League Magazine 2, no. 3 (1913): 6. 47 Donofrio, “Feeding the City.” 100 Figure 3.6. Section drawing and plan of a “Model Terminal Market” by George B. Ford, at the time working for the New York City architectural firm of George B. Post & Sons. Source: George B. Ford, “The Market of the Near Future: Ideal Plan for a System of Wholesale and Retail City Markets,” Housewives League Magazine 2, no. 3 (1913): 6. 101 into what were in effect five separate major cities.48 Manhattan’s terminal market was proposed as a physical replacement and functional expansion of both the existing Gansevoort Farmers Market and the West Washington Market. In Boston, where the City Planning Board’s food investigation was more an outline for future research than a comprehensive plan of action, locations and layouts for a unified wholesale terminal market were being considered for a number of locations around the heart of the city.49 The location, site plans, and section drawings of the proposed “New Gansevoort Market and Railroad Terminal” are more typical of the prevailing geographic and architectural characteristics of terminal markets designed before World War I. Paid for by a consortium of Gansevoort and West Washington markets businesses, and designed by the New York City architect J. G. Glover,50 the proposal envisioned meeting Manhattan’s current and future food distribution needs. The new terminal market would be located in the vicinity of the existing West Washington and Gansevoort markets on roughly four city blocks of land west of West Street, all of which would be cleared of their existing privately-owned structures to make way for widened roads, a system of railroad spurs, and a multi-building market facility. A central, urban location close to the relevant customer base was considered an asset. With convenient access to the city’s downtown restaurant district and its uptown restaurant, hotel, and residential districts, the Gansevoort area was thought to be endowed with a “special excellence of location.”51 48 Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission, 24. 49 A Summary of the Market Situation in Boston, 50 This is presumably the architect J. Graham Glover who established an office in Brooklyn beginning in 1876 and later practiced with his father John J. Glover under the name John J. Glover and Son; among J. Graham’s commissions were the Clarendon Hotel in Brooklyn and the Empire Hotel in Manhattan; Dennis Steadman Francis, Architects in Practice, New York City, 1840-1900 (N.p.: Committee for the Preservation of Architectural Records, 1979). 51 Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission, description of Gansevoort Terminal Market on pages 5765; quote from page 63. 102 The new market would be massive; containing over 2,100,000 square feet of rentable floor space, it would be far larger than any existing distribution facilities in the city (Figure 3.7.). Five buildings, each between six and seven stories tall and more than four blocks long (nearly 80’ X 1000’), would be interconnected by bridges so that city streets could pass through the complex uninterrupted. Each building was divided vertically into floors for loading platforms, storage, refrigerated storage, and offices. A portion of the basement (described but not illustrated in the plans) would be reserved as a replacement for the Farmers Market, providing the “most modern and sanitary conditions” for producers who, under present conditions, were exposed to the “dust and dirt” of the open air market square. Railroad sidings and roads were threaded throughout the building on multiple levels. At street grade, a loading lock 800’ long would accommodate 275 trucks unloading simultaneously. Ten elevated railroad tracks would service the terminal at the second story level, providing capacity for a total of 270 railroad cars, 150 of which could be unloaded at the same time, some of them from refrigerated cars directly into refrigerated salesrooms and warehouses. Customers and employees of market firms would have easy access to the terminal via the 14th Street and 8th Avenue trolleys as well as a direction connection to the 9th Avenue elevated line.52 There were, however, no parks or other recreational landscape features designed to beautify the surroundings or attract the general public. Schematic plans and what appeared to be broad industry support were not enough to bring the Gansevoort Terminal Market to fruition in the years leading up to WWI. In the mid 1920s, public officials failed to agree upon the one best site for the terminal from two that were under consideration, both separated by only a few blocks 52 Ibid. 103 Figure 3.7. Section drawing and plan of the proposal Gansevoort Terminal Market by architect J. G. Glover. Source: Report of the Mayor’s Market Commission of New York City, facing page 58. 104 in the Gansevoort Market area.53 And by 1930, industry trade groups also could no longer reach a consensus on location.54 Of the terminal markets that were planned for each of New York City’s boroughs in 1913, only two were built: the Bronx Terminal Market, which initially opened in 1925 and was expanded in 1935; and the Brooklyn Terminal Market, which was opened in 1941. Both failed to live up to expectations. As early as 1934 an agricultural economist for the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics reported that the Bronx Terminal Market could not “be classed among the successful.”55 A 1940 USDA study of fruit and vegetable markets in New York reached essentially the same conclusion, but also warned that the Bronx Terminal’s functional shortcoming were no prediction of what might be accomplished by the “right kind of market development.”56 By 1958, total combined produce shipments received at both markets represented less than 2 percent of the city’s total volume, and were rapidly declining.57 Among the primary challenges faced by the Bronx Terminal Market, and other new market developments around the country, was convincing the industry to relocate to new facilities. Those who advocated the construction of new, modern, and efficient food markets underestimated the extent to which urban food distribution had not only physical problems but also social and political dimensions. Middlemen, jobbers, and other members of the private food industry had a financial interest in maintaining the existing distribution system, in spite of (or perhaps because of) its alleged inefficiency. Planners naively believed that scientifically-engineered and municipally-built terminal 53 “Hylan and Miller Clash on Market,” NYT, 9 June 1925, p. 23. 54 “Trade Groups Split on Terminal Plan,” NYT, 21 May 1930, p. 44. 55Caroline B. Sherman, “Terminal Wholesale Produce Markets,” American City 49 (July 1934): 46. 56 William C. Crow, et. al., The Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Markets of New York City (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1940): 13. 57 Alden C. Manchester, The Organization of the New York City Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market, marketing research report no. 542 (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1962): 2. Neither the Bronx nor the Brooklyn terminal markets could pull activity away from Washington Street Market. 105 markets would alter the social dynamics of distribution, minimizing the many hands that touched food on its way from producer to consumer. They seriously underestimated the political economy of the food industry. Powerful business interests rose up to oppose the findings of the New York Market Commission report and the many subsequent studies it inspired.58 Why, asked one incredulous food industry president, would long-established and capital-intensive private markets abandon their existing facilities “to go to these Municipal piles of brick, mortar and steel?”59 From the industry’s perspective, the middleman was essential; his function in the distribution system was efficient and specialized. Planners who concluded otherwise were plainly “ignorant of the business they [were] trying to investigate.”60 Attempts to move markets in other cities reached similar resistance due, according to one expert, to the tendency of “markets to persist in a given location.” In Chicago, a ten-year struggle to relocate the South Water Street Market was ultimately successful only because the city forced the merchants out when it condemned their aging market buildings to expand an important traffic boulevard.61 New York’s inability to reroute food distribution from Washington Market to the newer municipal facilities of the Bronx Terminal Market was a continuing source of frustration. During the depression, the city’s Commissioner of Markets experimented with ways of 58 Victor K. McElheny Jr., Analysis of the Joint Report on Foods and Markets of Governor Whitman’s Market Commission and Others.… (New York: Fruit Auction Company, [1916?]), 9. 59 Ibid., 15; emphasis in the original. 60 Ibid, 29, 30. 61 Erdman, American Produce Markets, 99-101; he mentions six factors that make moving markets difficult: 1) dealers do not know how they will faire in a new location and present customers may find a new location to be inconvenient; 2) there are costs and logistical hassles associated with moving; 3) dealers often disagree among themselves on the choice of a new market location; 4) various factions or “special interests” within the market are adversely or favorably affected by every new market plan, which further complicates decision making; 5) dealers hold different leases at their present locations that end at different times; and 6) any new plans would undoubtedly have to meet the approval of a city planning commission or equivalent agency, which “would involve further difficulties of a political nature.” 106 forcing food deliveries to the Bronx terminal in an attempt to lower food costs by cutting out middlemen.62 Only relatively minor structural improvements, and few new facilities, were carried out for the markets of Boston and New York in the interwar period. During the depression, the WPA provided modest funding to at least twenty-one communities to rehabilitate existing markets or to build new ones.63 New York City did both. The façade of the Washington Market, the city’s largest retail facility, located south of the Gansevoort Market area on the west side of Manhattan, was given an architectural updating; decorative sculptures of pigs, cows, and sheep, along with a “dreary expanse of ornamental glass, iron and terra cotta,” were replaced with a smooth porcelain steel exterior.64 Also with WPA funding, a series of nine enclosed pushcart retail markets were built throughout the city as part of a LaGuardia administration campaign to rid public streets of pushcart vending.65 WPA market improvements in Boston were even more modest by comparison; only Quincy Market received funding: its central dome was structurally reinforced and re-clad in cooper.66 More substantial remodeling, landscaping, and lighting improvements were made to the core buildings 62 “Cut on Food Costs Sought by Morgan,” NYT, 12 Apr. 1937, p. 19. 63 Depression-era food market construction projects are not well documented in the secondary literature on public markets, with a few notable exceptions; for primary source documentation see C. W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown, Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and other Governmental Bodies between the Years 1933 and 1939 with the Assistance of the Public Works Administration (Washington: GPO, 1939); and Public Works Administration, America Builds: The Record of PWA (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1939). 64 “A Landmark has its Face Lifted,” NYT, 12 July 1941, p. 28; see also “$25,934,527 Allotted WPA Here,” NYT, 13 Aug. 1935, p. 2. 65 Daniel Bluestone, “The Pushcart Evil,” in The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940 edited by David Ward and Olivier Zunz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992): 287312. For the WPA connection, which Bluestone does not mention, see “Food Profiteers Barred by Mayor,” NYT, 29 July 1941, p. 17; and “First Ave. Cleared of Pushcart Men,” NYT, 2 Dec. 1938, p. 3. 66 John Quincy, Jr. Quincy’s Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston: Northeaster University Press, 2003): 138. 107 of Seattle’s Pike Place Market toward the end of the 1930s, although apparently with private funds.67 Grand schemes that envisioned modern, centrally-located wholesale food distribution facilities for Boston and New York were shelved as the United States entered World War II. Construction materials necessary for such undertakings were diverted to the war effort. Moreover, the war wreaked havoc on the food supply of the nation and the world at large. The US government had significant difficulties reconciling the nation’s agricultural production with the food needs and desires of its civil population, in addition to the nutritional requirements of its soldiers and wartime allies.68 It was considered a particularly inopportune time to tinker with the nation’s physical plant for food distribution, regardless of how ancient and inefficient it may have been. But in some important ways, the War both highlighted the need for marketing reform and influenced the thinking regarding the ideal physical form of market facilities. Americans were compelled to consider food and its sources in a way that they never had before. The civilian population responded to wild fluctuations in the prices and availability of common commodities such as onions, beef, and wheat both during and immediately after the War with anger and confusion. The federal government tried its best to balance shortages and gluts through rationing and price controls. But in effect, those who previously took food abundance for granted were forced to acknowledge the global interdependence of the food system, one in which a failed wheat harvest in India, as happened in 1946, could influence the price and 67 For a general chronology of construction and improvements in the district, see the Pike Place Market Historical District, National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form, 1972. 68 See Harvey Levenstein’s chapter “Food Shortages for the People of Plenty” in his Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America, revised ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003): 80-100; and Amy Bentley, Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1998). 108 ingredients of bread in the United States.69 Advances in technology and wartime experiences coordinating via radio the movement of large amounts of food and supplies by rail, ship, and most importantly motor trucks also influenced those who thought about the design of food distribution facilities. After World War II, terminal markets were still the most salient market concept, but the designs and proposed locations for such facilities were radically different from those discussed in the years leading up to the first World War. Attacking Distribution Investigations conducted by the USDA in the late 1930s established the post- war market research agenda. One report in particular, a statistical and descriptive review of wholesale fruit and vegetable markets in 40 US cities, summarized the extent to which markets in different locations shared similar structural characteristics widely considered to be problematic. Authored by William C. Crow, a USDA economist whom associates affectionately referred to as “Mr. Produce Market,” the report first established the fact that markets in many major US cities were very old. He singled out Faneuil Hall as a case in point: in operation for roughly 200 years, it was still the most important market in Boston. Major markets elsewhere were similarly “antiquated.” Already by the mid-twentieth century, the French Market in New Orleans was 150 years old; the Pearl Street Market in Cincinnati was nearly as ancient. Both of the primary markets in Philadelphia, and the major market of Norfolk, were nearly 100 years old. Of the 101 markets in 40 cities survey by Crow, only 44 were built in the twenty years preceding 1938, and most of these were 69 Ibid. 109 constructed as railroad produce terminals, which was to say, they were not unified, municipally-owned and managed facilities open to all for free trade.70 The advanced age of market building stock was in itself considered prima facie evidence that the nation’s food distribution system was broken. But recognition of age, and more specifically the passage of time, also enabled Crow to frame market problems in the context of technological change and functional obsolescence. For example, cities were plagued by “split markets” due to the evolution of transportation technology. As Crow explained, wholesale market districts began as outgrowths of older public retail markets. Gradually, markets changed and grew as marketing activities and associated traffic pushed into adjacent streets and existing buildings were crudely adapted for handling fruits and vegetables. “But in only a few cases,” Crow noted, “have the changes been commensurate with the changes in the methods of handling that have occurred in the transition from transportation by boat and horsedrawn vehicles to heavy movement by rail and motortruck.” Trucks coming into common usage to haul food after World War I— some up to 40’ in length—were growing longer than most market streets were wide. And the globalization of the food system exacerbated transportation difficulties. Thus, Crow concluded, “Markets designed to retail small quantities of local produce in an age of comparative selfsufficiency could hardly be expected to be efficient in the wholesale handling of the huge volume of produce needed by a large city” in an age when food came from many states, and from abroad.71 Crow made it clear that, with limited resources, he was only outlining the scope of the problem. His report was cobbled together from the notes of dozens of 70 William C. Crow, Wholesale Markets for Fruits and Vegetables in 40 Cities, circular no. 463 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1938): 1-3. As for Crow’s nickname as “Mr. Produce Market,” see Sydney R. Jumper, “Wholesale Marketing of Fresh Vegetables,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64, no. 3 (Sept. 1974): 389. 71 Crow, Wholesale Markets for Fruits and Vegetables in 40 Cities, 4, 5-6. 110 field representatives, many employed by state marketing bureaus, who supplied him with their best estimates of market data as a “supplementary task” to their primary responsibilities. It would be necessary to conduct more intensive studies of local circumstances before any actual market construction or reorganization was undertaken. He hoped that the near future would bring “more definite studies by competent agencies.”72 Crow was, in effect, making the case for why the USDA should take a greater interest in, and provide enhanced funding for, urban market research. As two USDA bureau chiefs wrote in the introduction to another of Crow’s pre-war market reports, “We shall have to attack distribution as scientifically and as persistently as we have attacked farm production for 75 years.”73 Their call to action was answered shortly after the end of the War. The federal government paid little attention to the problems of food distribution before the early decades of the twentieth century. Feeding the city—the urban endpoint of agricultural production—had been an exclusively local concern before 1900. Horace Capron’s late nineteen-century research was an important exception, but it was more an expression of his personal interests than the institutional policies of the USDA, which held a narrow view of what constituted “agricultural” activities. Generally speaking, problems of transportation, manufacturing, and marketing were considered “commercial issues,” and thus the domain of what was then known as the federal Department of Commerce and Labor. During the nineteenth century, agricultural policy was largely focused on the enhancement of production. The USDA, agricultural colleges and experiment stations, and the agricultural press were all primarily invested in problems of the soil, “in making two blades of grass grow where only one had grown before.” Their staffs and faculties were mostly 72 Ibid, from the acknowledgements facing page 1. 73 William C. Crow, et. al., The Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Markets of New York City (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1940): III. 111 technical and scientific. There were few trained economists or planners and little available data to analyze marketing and distribution.74 The high-cost-of-living crisis drew the attention of higher levels of government to the problems of food distribution. Challenges faced in the distribution of all types of commodities began to receive greater attention in the early twentieth century during a period referred to by some as the “distributive age.”75 The cost of living crisis united farmers and urban consumers together in advocacy for technical assistance in the marketing of food. In response, the Office of Markets was created within the USDA in 1913 and nebulously empowered by congress to "acquire and diffuse” information on marketing.76 In the twenty years that followed, the USDA acted out this mandate by offering research and services intended to make existing markets function more efficiently. It disseminated market supply and sales data through a market news service, assisted in the standardization of food products, enforced trading rules, and conducted health inspections.77 Other federal bureaus also became involved in market data acquisition; in 1918 the Bureau of the Census conducted a comprehensive survey of public markets in all cities having a population over thirty thousand.78 But not until the mid-to-late 1930s did the USDA begin to conduct research exploring strategies and designs to replace existing markets entirely.79 74 James C. Malin, “The Background of the First Bills to Establish a Bureau of Markets, 1911-12,” Agricultural History 6, no. 3 (July 1932): 107-129. 75 Ibid. 76 The Office of Markets was upgraded to Bureau status in 1917 and was later renamed the Bureau of Agricultural Economics; it is now known as the Economic Research Service (ERS); see Harold F. Breimyer, “Fifty Years of Federal Marketing Programs,” Journal of Farm Economics 45, no. 4 (Nov., 1963): 752; and Helen Tangires, “Feeding the Cities: Public Markets and Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era,” Prologue: The Journal of the National Archives 29, no. 1 (Spring 1997); see also her comments on the early state marketing programs in New York and Massachusetts. 77 Breimyer, “Fifty Years of Federal Marketing Programs,” 755. 78 Samuel L. Rogers, Municipal Markets in Cities Having a Population of Over 30,000, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Census (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1918), 9. 79 A table of marketing activities compiled by Breimyer suggests that a 1935 study of Philadelphia’s wholesale food market was the USDA’s first research project of this type; in “Fifty Years of Marketing Programs,” 754. 112 Post-World War II Market Designs The USDA dedicated significantly more resources to market research as a result of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946, which proposed a “scientific approach” to the problems of marketing, transportation and distribution of agricultural products.80 In the ten years that followed, the USDA, working with state and local planning agencies, conducted market studies in nearly fifty cities located throughout the country, including New York and Boston.81 As Crow’s pre-war research indicated, older markets shared a similar set of defects. Conditions documented in Boston and New York were typical of the deficiencies observed elsewhere. Features of markets that were considered problematic by the USDA fell into two broad categories: problems stemming from the structural shortcomings of the individual market buildings; and problems arising from the market’s location, both with respect to neighboring urban land uses, and in relation to major transportation corridors. When planners weighed these shortcomings in the aggregate, they concluded that existing markets facilities were so totally inadequate that they were beyond the point of minor upgrades and even substantial reconstructions at their current locations. Nothing short of complete redevelopment at a new site would suffice to make food distribution more efficient. Six architectural characteristics were identified as flaws common to buildings located in urban market districts built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries throughout the United States, such as Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Gansevoort Market. Buildings were not fireproof; they lacked rear entrances; most lacked a 80 Ibid. 81 It is difficult to know how many markets the USDA studied in total during this period and beyond; for a list of cities in which studies were purportedly conducted, see American Society of Planning Officials, Wholesale Produce Markets, Information Report No. 70 (Chicago: ASPO, 1955): 20; the list was based on letter from William C. Crow; I find no USDA market report for Seattle; see also “Cities Plan Terminal Markets,” Newsweek (22 Dec. 1945) 76-78. 113 loading dock that could accommodate truck deliveries; and nearly all had narrow footprints, fixed internal layouts, and were multi-story in height. The last five of these shortcomings were seen as the most critical because together they contributed to operational inefficiency. Specifically, they required food to be moved horizontally and vertically in small batches by hand, which was not only incredibly labor intensive and therefore expensive, but also anachronistic at a time when automation and mechanization were available to extend the productivity of each unit of labor (Figure 3.8). These five architectural characteristics, in turn, directly affected the way that market buildings were used. Market buildings lacked truck loading docks in part because they were built before the motor age and often adapted from other non-market uses. Most market streets were also too narrow to allow trucks to back up to a building perpendicular to its façade without entirely blocking traffic. As a result, the USDA inspection of Gansevoort Market noted, for example, that workers transferred meat by hand or on small dollies from trucks to store and from store to truck “across the sidewalk;”82 similar conditions existed throughout the Faneuil Hall Marketplace district. Because the businesses located in most downtown market districts were wholesale distributors by the mid-twentieth century, as opposed to retail merchants, they had little need for long-term storage. Vegetables and fruit moved in and out of markets within a day or two on their way to retail outlet. Thus, market sidewalks throughout both districts, and in markets beyond New York and Boston, were commonly used for temporary storage and loading. Many buildings occupied by merchants who dealt in items other than meat, poultry, eggs, and fish lacked any refrigeration at all. The descriptions and photographs included in the USDA’s June 82 Robert L. Holland and Donald A. Bowers, The 14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry in New York City, Marketing Research Report No. 556 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962): 14, 24. 114 Figure 3.8. Food was moved through more modern markets on pallets, large carts, and mechanized tractor technology, as opposed to older markets where men carried bushels of food on their shoulders a few at a time or, at best, on small dollies. Source: Wholesale Markets for Fruits and Vegetables in 40 Cities. 115 1950 study of Faneuill Hall Marketplace vividly document the congestion caused by stacked boxes of produce impeding both pedestrian and vehicular traffic83 (Figure 3.9). Figure 3.9. Traffic congestion like this on South Market Street in front of Quincy Market convinced the USDA that older market districts were inefficient and in need of replacement. Source: C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950): between pages 4 and 5. By the 1950s, the USDA offered a standard set of plans and perspective drawings to illustrate the ideal recommended form and configuration of wholesale market buildings.84 The same drawings, with only minor variations to accommodate 83 C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950): 26-27. Storing food on streets was not unique to this dissertation’s case study markets; it was seen as a pervasive problem. For other examples, see Harry G. Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets (Washington: USDA, 1960); Wholesale produce market facilities for Philadelphia, Pa. (Washington, USDA, 1951); or any number of the dozens of other USDA studies of older markets undertaken following passage of the Agricultural Market Act of 1946. 84 It is difficult to determine exactly when these plans were developed, and by whom (other than generally the USDA). Funding for their research and design was probably provided by the Agricultural 116 different functions, appeared in all of its studies of aging urban markets in the sections of the reports offering solutions to improve facilities. The USDA’s post-World War II designs shared important similarities and differences with proposed market designs developed prior to the previous World War. The schematic plans for the New Gansevoort Terminal Market published in the Mayor’s Market Report are a useful point of comparison. The number of stories is the most obvious difference in the designs of the buildings themselves. The Gansevoort Terminal Market design proposed buildings six and seven stories tall. After World War II, multistory buildings were considered highly undesirable for wholesale distribution and warehousing because they resulted in an improper “relationship between physical facilities and labor.”85 Domestic labor shortages caused by the War led to the development and, in modern facilities, the implementation of labor saving devices in food marketing. These included the palletizing of goods, and the use of motorized forklifts, conveyor belts, and drag lines. According to one expert, a person using these more modern devices could do three to four times the amount of work at half the cost of someone using older methods and equipment. Improving labor efficiency was considered critical if wages of food distribution workers were to keep pace with rising incomes in other sectors of the post-war economy.86 Moreover, “city-style multi-story” buildings were considered difficult to adapt to the labor-saving devices made possible by the “technological revolution” in goods handling.87 As noted in the recommendations for new wholesale food facilities in Boston, “Experience has shown” that movement of food above the Marketing Act of 1946. This in itself would be an interesting story as some of the buildings that were built in accordance with these designs are just now being abandoned for still newer facilities. 85 Crow, The Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Markets of New York City, 50. 86 Joseph F. Herrick, Jr., “The Efficient Use of Labor,” in the USDA’s Yearbook of Agriculture, special edition on marketing (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1954): 369-372. 87 Raymond Vernon, The Changing Economic Function of the Central City (New York: Area Development Committee of the Committee for Economic Development, 1959): 49. 117 first floor increased costs to such an extent that it was “cheaper to rent or buy more first floor space.”88 The relationship between labor and architecture was carefully considered in the designs of market facilities recommended by the USDA following World War II. They were essentially single-story reinforced concrete rectangles featuring 18’ tall ceilings, front and rear loading docks, wide entrances, an office mezzanine, and an open plan free of obstructions, with movable partitions and stairs. Basements were optional, depending upon the food items handled. Portable power conveyors moved foods into, through, and then back out of each building. Market planners reasoned that entrances at both ends of the structure facilitated twice the amount food movement compared to older, land-locked, single-egress buildings common in the inner city (Figures 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12). Both pre-World War I and post-World War II market designs incorporated access for multiple modes of transportation, especially rail and “motortruck” or wagon in the case of the former facilities. In the early decades of the twentieth century, market planners acknowledged the dominance of the railroads and steamships in the shipment of food, but they were also acutely aware of the increasing importance of motorized trucks, especially for more local deliveries.89 By mid century, however, the trajectory of transportation evolution was more difficult to predict. The proportion of food moved by truck, as opposed to rail, rose rapidly during the depression, but then declined significantly during World War II due to parts shortages and the rationing of diesel fuel and tires. After the war, food movement by truck increased again and, by 88 Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass., 142. 89 See Hedden’s comments on the relative importance of transportation modes in the location of terminal facilities in How Great Cities are Fed, 50-54. 118 119 Figure 3.10. Through its reports, the USDA advised replacing multi-story, downtown market facilities in dozens of older cities across the United States; they recommended simpler, single-story facilities. Wholesale market structures built in accordance with these plans were to be joined together in rows of multiple units. Source: C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass. (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1950): between pages 62 and 63. 120 Figure 3.11. USDA elevations of proposed market wholesale facilities illustrating direct truck and rail access to buildings that featured broad canopies, wide doors, and level loading docks, all to facilitate the movement of food by hand trucks and mechanical conveyors. Recommended materials were concrete, steel, and brick. Source: C. J. Otten, et. al., The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass., between pages 62 and 63. 121 Figure. 3.12. Market wholesale produce store units in Jackson, Mississippi built exactly to USDA plans, as seen in these photographs from 1948. Source: Harry G. Clowes, and William C. Crow, Wholesale Food Market Facilities: Types of Ownership and Methods of Financing (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Govt. Print. Off., 1957): 36. 1950, had reached its prewar peak, which in the aggregate was roughly an even split between rail and truck traffic.90 Taking this information into account, when the USDA’s post-war market planners calculated the present and future food needs of large cities like Boston and New York, they assumed that railroads would continue to play a critical roll in the distribution process. Therefore, in the market plans it recommended, both rail and truck access were accommodated at opposite ends of each market building, with loading docks carefully adjusted to conform to the specific physical parameters of each technology. The perceived future importance of railroads was also a key to the USDA’s enduring commitment to the concept of centralized and consolidated, as opposed to decentralized, food distribution facilities. The locations proposed for terminal food markets following World War II were the other significant departure from market plans developed earlier in the century. Around the turn of the century, few questioned the rationale for locating a food terminal squarely within the center city. Gansevoort Market, situated between downtown and midtown Manhattan, was thought to be ideally located. By mid century, however, urban planners considered food distribution to be industrial land use and they increasingly embraced the notion that manufacturing and distribution of all types should be relocated from the city’s center to its edge. Four considerations factored into this way of thinking. First, post-war planners wanted not only ready access to railroads and highways, but also the ability to eliminate “non-market traffic” from food distribution terminals. The idea that markets could coexist with other urban land uses and traffic patterns simply by allowing traffic to pass underneath the 90 Ezekiel Limmer, Transportation of Selected Agricultural Commodities to Leading Markets by Rail and Motortruck, 1939-1950 (United States Department of Agriculture, June 1951); it was also clear from this research that different agricultural commodities could have a radically different proportion of rail to truck distribution; in 1950, for example, 99% of live poultry moved by truck. 122 facility’s buildings, as was proposed for the Gansevoort Terminal market, was no longer deemed practical, or desirable. Second, the price of urban land was a major factor following the Second World War, just as it was prior to the First. The Mayor’s Market Commission report considered the open-air Gansevoort Farmers Market to be a poor use of expensive property, one that produced little taxable return for the city. Instead of relocating the market to an area with lower property values, the solution developed by the food industry and endorsed by the Mayor’s Market Commission was to redevelop essentially the same land, only more intensively through the construction of taller market buildings. The post-war goods handling technologies previously discussed were thought to require single story buildings; facilities therefore had to spread outward, not upward, which foreclosed any prospect of rebuilding markets in their historic locations.91 Third, planners in both eras took into account the physical relationship between markets and their customers. Inner city market locations made sense in the nineteenth century when residential populations clustered tightly around the urban core. The post-World War II suburban housing boom significantly altered this pattern. At mid century, when the USDA recommended potential sites for the relocation of Washington Market and Gansevoort Market, it provided a map illustrating the movement of population in the New York City metropolitan area. A dot indicating the center of the city’s population in 1850 was located in lower Manhattan. Dots illustrating the next hundred years move progressively north and east, across the East River toward Brooklyn, Queens, and the suburbs of Long Island. Similarly, already 91 Just prior to WWII, however, the feasibility of rebuilding markets in center, as opposed to fringe, urban locations was still hotly debated; see for example American Farm Bureau Federation and New York State Farm Bureau Federation, A Brief on the New York Terminal Market (N.p.: N.p., 1941), which discussed the merits of three different proposals for the replacement of NY’s Washington Market, one of which recommended rebuilding on its existing site in lower Manhattan. 123 by 1940, the center of population in Boston was no longer in the historic core at the harbor, where Faneuil Hall Marketplace was located, but rather in the Back Bay, moving closer to the suburbs of Jamaica Plain and Brookline.92 Perhaps even more important than traffic and transportation, population movements and the cost of land, was the fourth reason given for the relocation of markets from city center to edge: the desire to reprogram urban land uses in accordance with what one author described as the “changing economic function of the central city.”93 The USDA’s post-war market planners were not alone in their conviction that older central-city buildings were functionally obsolete. According to urban historian Carl Abbott, between roughly 1955 and 1965, the city planning profession in general conceived of downtown as a “failing business center” threatened by “obsolescence” and in need of drastic interventions to redevelop blighted land.94 After World War II, market districts were widely considered a blighting industrial land use and their proximity to other commercial and residential districts was a source of concern. Moreover, they were frequently located adjacent to “choice properties in the city, often only two or three blocks from high-rental retail and business properties,” noted an advisory brief on wholesale produce markets written by the American Society of Planning Officials (ASPO) to encourage city planners to become more involved in impending market redevelopments: In many cities the central business district is in desperate need of lands in which to expand and develop new retailing and business uses, while only a few blocks away an inefficient produce market occupies decaying buildings and 92 See also Edgar M. Hoover and Raymond Vernon, Anatomy of a Metropolis: The Changing Distribution of People and Jobs within the New York Metropolitan Region (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1962): 80-83. 93 Vernon, The Changing Economic Function of the Central City. 94 Carl Abbott, “Five Strategies for Downtown: Policy Discourse and Planning Since 1943,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, edited by Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1996). 124 draws large numbers of trucks and other vehicles through the alreadycongested heart of the city.95 With these factors in mind, the practitioners of urban renewal cast “covetous glances” toward market districts as so much potential “development land.”96 Downtown development associations and other powerful business interests naturally supported such thinking in the interests of furthering their own pro-growth agendas.97 “Food Slums” While the USDA compiled statistics to carefully calculate the negative economic impacts of outdated market facilities, the popular media conducted its own investigations in the 1950s that amplified these findings and raised still other concerns. A series of exposes published by Redbook Magazine and Reader’s Digest sought to expose market conditions that “No vigorous young American home builder, husband or wife, would tolerate…if he or she knew the facts.”98 Indeed, the public’s ignorance of the prevailing physical conditions and operational practices in older markets throughout the country was considered one of the primary reasons why major redevelopment had failed to get underway by the mid 1950s. USDA market reports cited popular news and magazine articles as evidence of the public’s growing dissatisfaction and alarm.99 Popular magazines that catered to a young and largely suburban readership described markets and their problems in terms that clearly conveyed socially- 95 ASPO, Wholesale Produce Markets, 9. 96 James E. Vance, Jr., The Merchant’s World: The Geography of Wholesaling (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1970): 131. 97 See for example this publication that recommends moving the Washington Street Produce Market and the Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan to enable the expansion of the financial district: Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, Inc., Lower Manhattan: Recommended Land Use, Redevelopment Areas, Traffic Improvements (New York: Downtown Lower Manhattan Association, 1958). 98 Howard Whitman, “Filth in our Food: Our Medieval Market Places Still do Business in Unspeakable Squalor,” Redbook 99, no. 1 (May 1952): 36 99 See ASPO, Wholesale Produce Markets, 14; and Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets, 1 and “Literature Cited,” pages 89-99. 125 conservative, anti-urban biases. While the USDA characterized inner-city markets as “antiquated” and “obsolete,” Redbook and Reader’s Digest went further: markets were “primitive;” they were “hoary with age.” Moreover, they were symbolic of technologically obsolete ways of living and functioning—vestiges of the “gaslight era,” holdovers from “horse-and-buggy days.” A pre- and post-war generational divide was offered as an explanation for the growing intolerance of older markets. Thus, “sequestered in the oldest, least accessible parts of town,” urban wholesale market districts might be familiar to “old timers” but they were unknown to “America’s young adults [living] in fringe residential suburbs.” “A new generation, working hard to keep healthful homes, immaculate kitchens, wholesome tables, would not abide these food slums.” And it was exactly this new generation of suburban residents that Redbook was addressing when it encouraged its readers to think of America’s markets in the context of their own domestic aspirations and ideals: “All young people raising families want clean, immaculate kitchens. Why, then, should the kitchens of our cities be broken-down and filth-ridden?” Such markets had “no place in modern America.”100 Traditional methods of commerce like selling and storing food on sidewalks and streets also conflicted with evolving middle-class norms concerning food safety and preservation. All three case study markets had long histories of open-air selling on streets and in squares, as did most market districts in the United States and abroad. As market districts like Gansevoort and Faneuil Hall Marketplace transitioned functions from retail to wholesale distribution, merchants continued to consider the street and sidewalk part of their market facility (Figure 3.13). Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, however, the propriety of unsheltered commerce was 100 Ibid., and Gaynor Maddox, “Filthy, Inefficient Wholesale Markets Pad Your Food Bill,” Reader’s Digest (Nov. 1956): 181-186; Bill Davidson, “The Shocking Facts about the Fruits and Vegetables you Eat,” Redbook 111, no. 3 (July 1958): 21. 126 increasingly called into question, particularly where food was involved. Purchasing food inside of a controlled architectural environment became the norm as first grocery stores and then supermarkets supplanted public markets and farmers markets. Despite its outdoor, agricultural origins, the thought of storing, buying, and consuming food outside in an urban environment made some uncomfortable. It became associated with lower economic classes and ethnic minorities. The architectural historian Daniel Bluestone notes that motivating various proposals to ban pushcart food vendors from New York City streets between 1900 and the 1930s was a desire to “enforce middleclass patterns of internalized commerce and street decorum.”101 Wholesale food markets faced similar pressures following World War II. The effect of long-term outdoor storage on the quality and safety of food was no doubt a legitimate concern. However, articles in popular magazines of the 1950s suggest that a deeper source of anxiety than food’s exposure to inclement weather was its potential exposure to unsavory human elements more common to public urban, than private suburban, environments. The poor and homeless were specifically imagined as a threat to the wholesomeness of the nation’s food supply. As one author explained with an air of authority and open distain: “Human derelicts always gravitate to the market place. There they get drunk, try to keep warm in doorways, and stave off hunger with stolen fruit and vegetables. Their spew and body wastes contaminate the sidewalk on which merchandise is laid out.” According to an FDA inspector, New York’s markets were “skid row”102 (Figure 3.14). The ASPO called it a “fact” that markets were a known “gathering place for vagrants, and sometimes criminals,” which of course was thought to contribute to their blighting effect on adjacent areas.103 101 Daniel Bluestone, “The Pushcart Evil,” in The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940 edited by David Ward and Olivier Zunz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992): 297. 102 Whitman, “Filth in our Food,” 36 103 ASPO, Wholesale Produce Markets, 14. 127 Redbook endorsed the design of newer distribution facilities that were not bisected by public streets and could therefore exclude unauthorized visitors. They were enclosed by “cyclone fence toped with barbed wire, to keep the drifters out.” In these more modern terminals, food rolled from boxcars and trucks directly into factories and warehouses on mechanical conveyor belts and motorized forklifts “with a minimum of manpower and no contact with the street.”104 Not all magazines and their reporters shared these prejudices; some with more liberal and urban readerships mourned the demise of central-city food wholesale districts. Just before the food merchants were evicted from Washington Market and its buildings were demolished for urban renewal in the mid 1960s, The New Yorker paid loving tribute to this “beautiful and venerable part of New York.” 105 In the entire city, at all times of day and night, and in all seasons of the year, there was no place the magazine liked better. It considered its buildings “beautiful;” its faded signs were “stately.” The late-night bustle of distributors and commission merchants weaving in and out of doorways ferrying vegetable-laden handtrucks was street theater, dramatically illuminated on winter nights by fires in rusting steel barrels around which men huddled to keep warm (Figure 3.15). Where Reader’s Digest and Redbook saw and smelled only filth and decay, The New Yorker marveled at the cleanliness of the shiny, newly washed cobblestones. The smells of the market, it said, were “so strange in New York, where most smells are from something thrown out, burned up, dead, or rotting. These smells—sharp and clean—came from freshness and life.” The colors of produce stacked tall on the sidewalk “gave the place an air of abundance and generosity.”106 By 1968 most of the buildings in the district had been torn down, and 104 Bill Davidson, “The Shocking Facts about the Fruits and Vegetables You Eat,” Redbook 111, no. 3 (July 1958): 24, emphasis added. 105 “Hey, Leach! Driver of Last Horse Truck in the Old Washington Market Area,” The New Yorker 41 (June 19, 1965): 24-7. 106 “Washington Market,” The New Yorker 44 (March 16, 1968): 36-7. 128 many of the merchants were relocated to the city’s new food terminal at Hunts Point, on the edge of the city, in the Bronx. “Super-Market” While municipalities were working with the USDA to relocate and redesign centralized and public wholesale terminal markets, the private supermarket industry pursued its own radically different strategy, which ultimately revolutionized not only the way we shop for groceries in the United States, but also the way that food is distributed. Through personal experience Americans are generally familiar with the first half of this revolution—the supermarket—though many may be surprised by how long ago it began and the extent to which it has consolidated ownership and power within the food industry. The second half of this revolution—decentralized distribution—is intimately tied to the growth of the supermarket industry, but its structure and implications are far less well known to the average consumer. By the mid twentieth century, the supermarket industry had become, in the words of one of its boosters, a “Spectacular Exponent of Mass Distribution,”107 with far-reaching consequences for farmers, consumers, and the environment. For the next three hundred years, they remained mostly small business enterprises that predominantly sold dry goods and specialty food items. In the large and medium-sized cities that actively funded and regulated municipally-owned, retail food venues, grocery stores were considered a supplement to, not a replacement for, public markets. Shoppers increasingly patronized grocery stores because there were so many of them, particularly toward the end of the nineteenth century. Small food shops were well distributed throughout the city, conveniently located, especially in 107 M. M. Zimmerman, Super-Market: Spectacular Exponent of Mass Distribution (New York: Super Market Publishing Co., 1937). 129 Figure 3.13. Workers move carcasses “across the sidewalk” from a truck to a building in the Gansevoort Market district, 1960. Source: Robert L. Holland and Donald A. Bowers, The 14th Street Wholesale Market for Meat and Poultry in New York City, Marketing Research Report No. 556 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1962): 12. Figure 3.14. During the Depression, a squatters’ colony developed in Gansevoort Market in a vacant lot near Washington Street between Little West 12th Street and 13th Street. This man can be seen making use of the cast-off boxes from the Swift Company located in the district. Source: Percy Loomis Sperr, photographer, 1933, NYPL, Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's, 733270F. 130 Figure 3.15. Market workers converse around a fire barrel at night in New York’s Washington Market District. Date unknown. Source: NYPL, Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's, 724194F. 131 rapidly growing, fringe residential areas where municipalities were slow to invest in public market infrastructure.108 Yet, many cities like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, New York, and New Orleans continued to support their public market systems and others like Boston contemplated building new retail public markets into the first few decades of the twentieth century, well past the point at which grocery stores were recognized as a popular and growing trend in food sales. They did so out of a conviction, widely held throughout the progressive era, that municipalities still had a responsibility to provide wholesome low-cost food for their citizens.109 At least until the 1930s, no grocery store could complete with the prices, quality and variety of the fresh vegetables, meat, and fish offered by large public markets.110 The development of grocery store chains in the late nineteenth century began to tilt the balance of retail food sales toward private venues, and hastened the functional transition of some public markets from retail to wholesale trade. In the 1880s, companies like A&P, based in New York, and Kroger, based in Cincinnati, began to build a system of multiple retail venues under single ownership. At the same time, they began to vertically integrate the system of grocery store commodity distribution. Two related advances in business management facilitated this development. First, chains were able to rapidly add stores to their corporate system because the analytical accounting power of centralized management enabled them to closely track consumer spending habits and quickly respond to both desires for new products, and new store locations. They also had the capital resources and internal flexibility necessary to open stores in promising suburban neighborhoods, and to close stores in less profitable areas. Second, chains pioneered a system of distribution in which they purchased in bulk directly from the manufacturers of the commodities they 108 Ibid, 43-76. 109 Tangires, “Feeding the Cities: Public Markets and Municipal Reform in the Progressive Era.” 110 Mayo, The American Grocery Store, 83. 132 sold, and then disseminated these items through their own private network of distribution warehouses. Buying in bulk, amortizing local advertising and insurance costs among multiple stores, and cutting out the numerous middlemen distributors who traditionally supplied the trade, chain stores were able to undercut the prices and profitability of independent grocery stores.111 The vertical integration of chain-store distribution was a gradual evolution and is one that continues to develop. When chains eventually began to stock fruit, produce, and other fresh foods, they gradually integrated the distribution of perishable commodities. They started by essentially absorbing the distribution functions traditionally performed by two types of businesses that were often located in or near the urban market districts. The first were the wholesalers who specialized in one or a few produce commodities in large volume that were purchased from the primarily urban markets. The second were jobbers, who, in turn, purchased a variety of food items from wholesalers, sorted the items, and delivered them to independent grocers and other tertiary outlets. Absorbing these roles, chains purchased in bulk directly from the primarily urban produce markets and established their own state-of-the-art, climate-controlled food distribution warehouses located throughout the city. From there, they did their own sorting, repacking, and distribution to their many retail stores.112 In the interwar period, when chain grocery stores experienced their most explosive growth, they also began to integrate distribution further back toward the sources of agricultural production. In doing so, they started a trend that would 111 Numerous others discuss this historical development, including Mayo’s The American Grocery Store; for an earlier and detailed account from the industry’s perspective, see Godfrey M. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1859-1962 (New York: Chain Store Publishing Company, 1963). 112 The Mayor’s Market Report contains a number of transcribed interviews with grocers, wholesalers and jobbers that provide a fascinating and unique insight into the way food was distributed from Gansevoort and New York’s other markets, just prior to WWI. 133 eventually undermine the functional necessity of centralized urban wholesale distribution terminals. In the early twentieth century, when the terminal market concept evolved, the most efficient path between farmers and consumers was thought to be direct railroad connection from shipping point markets to centralized inner-city markets. The USDA and other government leaders continued to endorse this model well into the mid-twentieth century. The only deviation was that after WWII, sites considered ideal for terminal markets were at the fringes of major cities, rather than in or near the central business district. The grocery chain store industry pursued a different strategy. Instead of purchasing perishable food from the primary markets, as they did prior to World War I, grocery chains began to negotiate bulk purchases directly at the shipping point market, entirely bypassing urban market facilities. Two goals motivated the shift. Chains were sometimes able to obtain lower purchase prices at the shipping point markets. Of equal or greater importance, they also secured advance assurance of supplies and prices, which were critical for planning merchandising programs.113 Initially, chains continued to transport perishables by rail to private warehouses adjacent to inner-city tracks. But advances in motorized transportation technology unhooked the chains from their geographical mooring at the railroad siding. As motorized truck technology advanced after WWI, they increasingly relied upon their own fleet of trucks to move all commodities to their newer decentralized warehouses, which were “strategically located” as nucleuses at the centers of their chain store networks.114 113 See William E. Folz and Alden C. Manchester, Chainstore Merchandising and Procurement Practices: The Changing Retail Market for Fresh Fruits and Vegetables (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1960). 114 Max Zimmerman, The Challenge of Chain Store Distribution (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1931): 248; see also David A. Revzan, Wholesaling in Marketing Organization (New York: Arno Press, 1978, reprint of 1961 edition by John Wiley and Sons): 586. 134 The impact of this development was felt most severely after 1930, when grocery store chains began to evolve into supermarket chains. Supermarkets first appeared in Los Angeles in the late 1920s, the product of experimentation by independent grocery entrepreneurs. They were large, self-service, high-volume, automobile-oriented stores that offered a shopping format that combined under central management the traditionally separate services of a green grocer, baker, butcher, and fish monger.115 Customers appreciated the convenience of the “all-in-one” shopping experience made possible by the combination supermarket; and the rise in personal automobile ownership and home refrigeration technology in the 1920s facilitated less periodic shopping trips in which many groceries were purchased for the entire week all at once. After some initial skepticism, grocery chains got into the supermarket business in the 1930s.116 With expanded produce, meat, and other fresh foods, supermarkets played a greater roll in diverting food shipments away from city terminals toward their own decentralized and private distribution warehouses. Often located in the suburbs, they bore a strong visual resemblance to their contemporary cousins: the corporate office park and shopping mall (Figure 3.16). The USDA was keenly aware of these developments. Crow’s research in the 1930s captured statistics during a transition period that compared the volumes of produce processed through chain store warehouses with those distributed through other urban markets. In Boston, there were three major chain systems that operated a total of 2,000 retail grocery stores and handled just over a third of all fruits and vegetables delivered to the city; chains purchased 45 percent of this food at the local 115 Food manufacturers provided part of the impetus to expand the architectural envelope of the grocery store to accommodate a greater range of new product lines—known as product diversification—and thus more shelf space; see Mayo, The American Grocery Store, 130-133; and Richard Longstreth, The Drive-in, the Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999). 116 Grocery chains initially thought supermarkets were a gimmick and resisted adopting the model; see Mayo, The American Grocery Store, 146-147. 135 Figure 3.16. Nestled into a wooded valley, adjacent to a highway (seen emerging from between the two hills in the background), and surrounded by ample parking lots, the modern food chain warehouse bears a strong visual resemblance to corporate office parks and suburban shopping malls developed during the same period. Exact location of the facility and date of the photograph are unknown (circa late 1950s). Source: Harry G. Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets (Washington: USDA, 1960): 23. 136 markets, and received the rest directly from the shipping point. In New York, eleven chain systems operated a total of nearly 3,500 stores and handled more than a quarter of the city’s fruits and vegetables, about half of which was purchased at the local urban markets. Chains did not yet have as much market share in Seattle, where four corporations operated a total of approximately 110 stores and handled less than a tenth of all fruits and vegetables, roughly 27% of which was purchased in the city. Crow’s numbers also revealed the growing importance of truck transportation in the chain distribution model. Of the fruits and vegetables received directly from the shipping point markets in Boston and New York, roughly half were transported by rail or boat, and half by motorized truck; Seattle chains favored rail and boat transportation, which together accounted for about 70 percent of their total fruit and vegetable shipments. Taking stock of developments in chain store methods through the 1950s, agricultural economists, especially those in academia, began to reevaluate the functional necessity of centralized urban markets both for physical distribution and for price setting. Chains had clearly demonstrated that they could distribute fresh farm commodities more efficiently in bypassing the central markets. Price setting was a separate but related issue. The establishment of prices for commodities was one of the traditional functions of large urban markets. This was particularly true when farmers still grew a wide range of crop breeds and there were no uniform systems of unit sizing or grade qualities. Buyers had to visually inspect products to know the quality of the goods they were getting. So, for example, when New York City contemplated new markets prior to WWI, they designed large centralized facilities to draw together as many buyers and sellers in one place as possible. Prices at that time were determined at markets on the basis of three factors, none of which could be gauged remotely: 1) supply; 2) demand; and 3) quality. 137 Advances in communications technologies and the creation of federal food grades gradually enabled prices to be set at a distance through virtual markets. First the telegraph, then the radio, and then the telephone were used to relay information about supply in agricultural areas, and relative demand in urban areas. The establishment of commodity grades and uniform sizing were among the early tasks of the Office of Markets after it was created within the USDA in 1913. Chains were retail pioneers in the adoption of both.117 Once standard prices and unit volumes were established, it was no longer necessary to visually inspect the goods one was purchasing. In the age of self-service supermarkets, the function of price determination became less important and the need for prepackaging edible products became all the more critical.118 Water was again invoked as a metaphor to explain the idealized movement of commodities in the post-WWII food system, as it had been in the early twentieth century. But by the 1950s, it was said to move differently than it had earlier, when it was funneled into large urban reservoirs: Nowadays the major part to the stream of agricultural commerce flows more directly from producer to consumer. Numerous smaller reservoirs upstream from the central reservoir now take care of most of the floods, and in so doing reduce the size of the job. Less concentration and less dispersion are needed, for much of the water is dispersed before it ever reaches the central reservoirs; the traditional central market structure is giving way to the decentralized market structure of modern times.119 This transition was largely complete by 1974 when geographer Sidney Jumper analyzed the wholesale marketing of fresh vegetables and drew a conceptual model of its structure. Although he was unable to generate a complete list of existing markets 117 See E. T. Grether and David D. Revzan, “What the Chains Did,” in the USDA’s Yearbook of Agriculture, special edition on marketing (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1954): 64-67. 118 Revzan, Wholesaling in Marketing Organization, 583. 119 Geoffrey Shepherd, “Changes in Structure,” in the USDA’s Yearbook of Agriculture, special edition on marketing (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1954): 52-59, quote from 54. 138 or to estimate the proportion of food that moved through private versus public facilities, the patterns of the transactions were clear (Figure 3.17).120 Large growers tended to send their produce directly to chain warehouses. To the extent that large growers used them at all, paper transactions were substituted for physical distribution at the city terminal. Farmers in a Regional City Twentieth century proposals to redesign, relocate, and reorganize inner-city food terminals were essentially ameliorative strategies to mitigate the most glaring urban food distribution bottlenecks. Neither pre- nor post-War market designs challenged the basic structure of the food system or sought to change the trajectory of its development. Those involved at the municipal, state, and federal levels accepted the increasing globalization of the food system, the privatization of retail food commerce, and the diminishing importance of local agriculture in food production. All seemed unavoidable. Their outlook in this regard was analogous to the philosophies of mainstream urban planners during the same time period that accepted the basic structure and continued growth of existing cities and thought that “only incremental, marginal change was possible.”121 After WWI, a new interdisciplinary group of young and idealistic intellectuals calling itself the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) came together to forge a more socially and geographically ambitious approach to planning. They 120 Jumper states that there was no available data on the number of extant markets or the number of markets that went out of use after WWII, and that, due to intense competition, private chain stores would release no operational data on their distribution networks, or even admit that they operated private markets; see Sidney R. Jumper, “Wholesale Marketing of Fresh Vegetables,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64, no. 3 (Sept. 1974): 387-396. 121 On the philosophical differences between mainstream planners and the Regional Planning Association of America, see Peter Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2002): 156-159, quote from 157. 139 Figure 3.17. Marketing structure of fresh vegetables under the chain store system. Large growers bypass the city terminal in favor of the chain store warehouse. Source: Sidney R. Jumper, “Wholesale Marketing of Fresh Vegetables,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 64, no. 3 (Sept. 1974). 140 proposed alternatives to ever-larger, automobile-oriented supermarkets, drew attention to the inefficiency of long-distance food transportation, and questioned the USDA’s support for the industrialization of monocrop agriculture. Their experiences indicate just how difficult it was at the time to propose alternatives to the dominant agriculture and distribution paradigms in the mid-twentieth century. It was pointless to redevelop markets in existing cities, according to the RPAA. Boston, New York, and other large and old metropolitan areas were broken beyond repair; they were “Dinosaur Cities,” choking on the bones of their own technological, structural, and social obsolescence, wrote Clarence Stein in the mid 1920s, one of the group’s most prominent members.122 The inefficiency of urban food distribution vividly illustrated their point. Like the market investigators of the previous decade, RPAA economist Stuart Chase was appalled by the wasteful and redundant movement of food through the nation’s largest cities. Unlike his predecessors whose view of the problem extended only so far as the city’s edge, however, RPAA planners envisioned cities as but one part of a larger region, which Lewis Mumford defined as “being any geographic area that possesses a certain unity of climate, soil, vegetation, industry and culture.”123 Viewed in this larger perspective, the country’s entire food system was grossly inefficient. Regions of food production were located irrespective of processing plants and consumers. Planners could do better. As Chase explained: The regional planning of communities would wipe out uneconomic national marketing, wipe out city congestion and terminal wastes,…eliminate the duplication of milk and other local deliveries, short circuit such uneconomic practices as hauling Pacific apples to New York consumers by encouraging local orchards, develop local forest area and check the haulage of western 122 Clarence Stein, “Dinosaur Cities,” originally published in Survey Graphic 7 (May 1925): 134-138, reprinted in Carl Sussman, ed., Planning the Fourth Migration: The Neglected Vision of the Regional Planning Association of America (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1976). 123 Quoted in Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, 161. 141 timber to eastern mills, locate cotton mills near cotton fields, shoe factories near hide producing areas, steel mills within striking distance of ore beds, food manufacturing plants…near farming belts.124 Expanding on the earlier “garden city” concept of Ebenezer Howard, the RPAA advocated depopulating urban centers and building new “regional cities” carefully sited to take maximum advantage of environmental resources, and permanently bounded from excessive growth by a “greenbelt” of forests, parks, and farmland.125 Stein’s appreciation for the importance of food production and retail distribution to regional planning evolved over time. He and other RPAA members applied their regionalist philosophies to the landmark study prepared by the New York State Commission of Housing and Regional Planning, which began in 1923. Under Stein’s chairmanship the commission was given a broad directive to study housing needs and conditions throughout the state.126 Its recommendations voiced a deep concern with agricultural conditions and the cultural life of rural communities. With the help of RPAA members Benton MacKaye and Henry Wright, in 1926 the commission completed a broad historical analysis of the state’s development patterns, its population movements, and its natural and industrial resources, publishing a series of maps and charts that illustrated improved farm land per capita had decreased steadily since 1850. The result was an alarming imbalance between the state’s agricultural output and its food consumption demands. The commission warned that New York’s agricultural dependence on other states led, in part, to high food prices and low farm land values, which, in turn, contributed to sprawling patterns of suburban housing development. Always concerned with the interplay between 124 Stuart Chase, “Coals to Newcastle,” originally published in The Survey, 54 (1925), reprinted in Sussman, Planning the Fourth Migration, 88. 125 For more on how Howard’s garden city concept influenced the RPAA, see Hall’s Cities of Tomorrow. 126 The commission’s duties are described in State of New York, Report of Commission of Housing and Regional Planning to Governor Alfred E. Smith…December 22, 1923, Legislative Document No.43 (Albany: J.B. Lyon, Printers, 1924): 7 142 planning and the human experience, Stein and the commission also suggested that if “farming zones” could be brought closer to urban consumers, the farmer “would have a better chance at a good living and a full life.”127 Stein next considered the geography and architecture of food shopping, exploring the subject at length with fellow RPAA colleague Catherine Bauer in an article for Architectural Record that discussed the planning of retail facilities for Radburn, New Jersey.128 Motivating their analysis was the belief that retail facilities, like housing and other municipal services, should be planned in advance on the basis of sound data; it was in the interests of both the residential and business communities to do so.129 The operative questions were: how many stores to build, of what kind, and where? To answer the first two of these, Stein and Bauer turned to a novel repository of data that had just recently become available: the U.S. Census of Business, first conducted in 1929, captured detailed statistics on the full range of retail food stores. Using this information, and assuming a “neighborhood unit” population of 10,000 residents, the two projected a need for 26 food stores divided between categories that included grocery stores, meat stores, combination stores, and candy and confectionery stores. The exact distribution among these categories was difficult to determine because, the authors noted, the trend in retail food industry was away from specialty shops and toward larger combination stores and “complete markets.” Regardless of their retail structure, Stein and Bauer were adamant that no home be more than a half mile from a neighborhood shopping center. These “purely local stores” would follow the pattern established by Radburn’s houses and face inward 127 Ibid., 71. 128 Clarence Stein and Catherine Bauer, “Store Buildings and Neighborhood Shopping Centers,” Architectural Record (February 1934): 175-187. 129 Ironically, given current food system planning efforts to increase food access to inner city communities, Stein and Bauer were trying to address the opposite problem: there were too many grocery stories, which contributed to high business failure rates, abandoned property, and neighborhood blight. 143 toward the community park to encourage walking to shopping. Complete with a “terrace café” and children’s play area, Stein and Bauer envisioned shopping facilities that were socially and geographically a “real center of the community” (Figure 3.18). They went so far as to suggest community ownership of commercial land and buildings to ensure the appropriate rent levels needed to preserve the community’s diverse shopping needs. Their designs share an unmistakable similarity to George Ford’s earlier plan for a “Model Terminal Market and its Surroundings” (Figure 3.6); both feature parks, separation of vehicular and pedestrian transportation using overpasses and walkways, and integration of the market into the surrounding streetscape. To be sure, what Stein and Bauer proposed was nothing like the fullyintegrated chain store supermarkets that were just then on the business horizon.130 Some RPAA ideas for local supported agriculture were implemented, albeit with uncertain results, in the Greenbelt Towns built during the 1930s by Rexford Tugwell’s Resettlement Administration, and Tennessee Valley Authority towns like Norris, Tennessee (Figure 3.19). In additional to food supplied by area farms, each household in Norris was provided with an allotment garden so that families could grow their own vegetables. However, these New Deal experiments in local agricultural self-sufficiency were exceptions to the prevailing trends in architectural development and food distribution. In the mid 1950s, Stein began to assemble materials for a book he planned to call “The Regional City,” outlining chapters on “Nature,” “Food,” and “Health” that would integrate his earlier interests in agriculture and community shopping centers. His goal was for regional cities to be reliant upon regional farmers for most, if not all, 130 Plans to develop Radburn as a fully-evolved garden city were stymied by the Great Depression; the portion that was built did include one shopping center, the “Radburn Plaza Building.” According to Ann Satterthwaite, Stein and Bauer’s shopping center research was instrumental in the development of retail facilities for the new towns of the 1930s, including Greenbelt, MD; see her Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001): 48-50. 144 145 Figure 3.18. The “purely local” food store that Stein and Bauer envisioned for the neighborhood units of new towns like Radburn New Jersey. Source: Clarence Stein and Katherine Bauer, “Store Buildings and Neighborhood Shopping Centers,” Architectural Record (February 1934): 175-187. of their food needs. Would that be possible, he wondered, assuming, for example, a regional city located in an area with productive soils, temperate weather, and a relatively long growing season—some place like Pennsylvania or southern New York State?131 He knew that the distribution of agricultural products would be a key component of his regional city concept, and he was well aware of the USDA’s latest research on urban marketing problems, especially at New York City’s Washington Market district.132 Unsure how to plan for the sustainability of local agriculture—and specifically the best ways to connect regional farmers with local consumers—he turned to his friend Benton MacKaye for answers to a series of related questions: In a regional city, how much land should be preserved for agriculture? What legal mechanisms should be used? “Is there really an advantage in having food produced near towns in which they are to be used?” And, was it still practical to promote direct sales between producers and consumers at farmers’ markets?133 MacKaye, at that point famous within planning circles for having created the Appalachian Trail, did not have the answers to these questions but passed them on to associates at the USDA. While waiting for responses, Stein sketched a neighborhood layout that schematically illustrated the importance he placed on community food access; at the very center of his “Super- block Neighborhood” was a large multi-building “Community Market,” just down the 131 Stein framed his initial concept of “Agriculture in a Regional City” in a memo he sent, through a friend, to the USDA; see Clarence S. Stein (hereafter CSS) to Fritz [Frederick] Gutheim, undated [1953?], box 9, folder 33, Clarence S. Stein papers, Collection #3600, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library (hereafter Stein Papers). Frederick Gutheim was himself a noted regional planner, architectural historian, and historic preservationist. 132 See the notes he took on Crow’s 1940 report, The Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Markets of New York City, in “R.C. Wholesale Markets, 29V53,” box 9, folder 38, Stein Papers. 133 CSS to Benton MacKaye, undated [1953?], box 9, folder 33, Stein Papers. As to legal mechanisms for land protection, Stein was interested in learning more about options for municipal ownership, deed restrictions and especially the agricultural zoning created for Los Angeles by its city planning director Charles Bennett, which was designed to protect the citrus farms of the San Fernando Valley. Bennett’s dream of using zoning to protect farmland by channeling post-war GI housing development into medium-density greenbelt nodes ultimately failed, for reasons discussed by Mike Davis in his article “How Eden Lost its Garden,” Perspecta 30, Settlement Patterns (1999): 71-72. 146 walking path from the “Community Building,” a number of parks, and the neighborhood schools (Figure 3. 20). Stein would have searched in vain for the answers to his questions in the USDA’s post-World War II urban market reports. They included little if any information about the state of agriculture in the vicinity of their subject markets and cities. To the extent that local farmers were mentioned at all, it was only generally to note that local food sources were not as important as they were in the distant past, when the urban markets they were now proposing to replace had originally been founded. Because local farmers who brought their own products to the city for sale were considered relatively insignificant, their specific needs were generally not explored. It was simply assumed that increased efficiency would save farmers precious time that was otherwise wasted in the traffic congestion of obsolete urban markets.134 The responses Stein received from the USDA were a resounding indication of just how far his regional city ideas diverged from mainstream agriculture in the midtwentieth century. “I…hope that you will not be too disappointed in some of the answers to your questions,” wrote a director at the US Bureau of Agricultural Economics.135 In sum, they expressed what James C. Scott has called “the catechism of high-modernist agriculture,” an “absolutely hegemonic” paradigm in the United States between 1945 and 1975 that championed the enhanced efficiency of large-scale farming, the importance of mechanization, and the superiority of monocropping over diversified production.136 In the expert opinion of the USDA representatives who 134 See for example the brief discussion of farmers in Clowes, New York City Wholesale Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Markets, 96; and Otten, The Wholesale Produce Markets at Boston, Mass., 133-134. 135 Franklin Thackrey to Frederick Gutheim, forwarded to CSS, 31 July 1953, box 9, folder 38, Stein Papers. 136 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998): 270-271. 147 Figure 3.19. This Suburban Resettlement Administration poster from March 1936 suggests that local farms supplied Greenbelt Markets with fresh produce, such as the Greenbelt, Maryland Cooperative Grocery Store. Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF344-001755-ZB. Figure 3.20. At the center of Stein’s “Super-block Neighborhood” was a large multibuilding “Community Market,” just down the walking path from the “Community Building,” a number of parks, and the neighborhood schools, mid 1950s. Source: Clarence S. Stein Papers, #3600, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, box 9, folder 27 148 responded to Stein, the concept of regionally self-sufficient agriculture was “impractical.” No amount of planning and organization would, for example, enable farmers to grow oranges anywhere near a regional city located in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.137 Furthermore, it was the USDA’s observation that farmers made more money when they specialized in production, sold in large volumes, and distributed through commission agents experienced in the sale of one specific commodity.138 Selling directly to consumers at farmers markets was “justified” only for small farmers who “do not have other employment for their labor.” Mr. Produce Market himself, William C. Crow, wrote Stein explaining that many retail farmers markets had “passed out of existence in recent years with the advent of the supermarket where housewives can obtain a complete line of foods in one place.”139 But, he speculated, perhaps a farmers market located next to a supermarket might “draw some business.” Research compiled in the 1960s and 1970s supported Crow’s general impression of the decline in the importance of farmers who brought their own produce to markets. The volume of produce handled in New York City farmers markets declined sharply in the middle decades of the twentieth century. In 1929, the total volume received at New York’s two farmers markets, Wallabout in Brooklyn and the Gansevoort in Manhattan, was nearly 11,000 carlots;140 after the farmers section of the Bronx Terminal Market opened in 1935, the total for the three markets reached 30,656 carlots in 1936, but then dropped to 19,258 in the following year. During WWII, receipts at all three markets dropped off to 12,000 and declined fairly steadily from there. The Gansevoort Farmers Market was closed in 1948; the remaining farmers, 137 Thackrey, loc. cit. 138 Finner, loc. cit., and Merton S. Parsons to Franklin Thackrey, 7 July 1953, Box 9, folder 38, CSS papers, Collection #3600, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 139 William C. Crow to Franklin Thackrey, forwarded to CSS, box 9, folder 38, Stein Papers. 140 The standard bulk measurement for food during much of the twentieth century was the railroad carlot; farmers markets receipts were converted to carlot estimates for comparison purposes. 149 who protested the closure, were encouraged to go to the Bronx Terminal Market. The Brooklyn Terminal Market replaced the Wallabout Farmers Market in 1948 and by 1957, the total farmers’ receipts at both terminals was 4,410 carlots, which fell to 3,636 the following year. This represented roughly 2% of the 170,000 to 185,000 carlots of fresh fruits and vegetables entering the New York Market at that time.141 Boston-area farmers contributed more to the city’s total food supply, but the downward trend was the same. Between 1928 and 1933, roughly 800 local farmers came to Faneuil Hall Market every day during the growing season, dropping off a yearly total of about 10,000 carlots of produce (nearly 18% of the 56,000 total received from all sources in Boston); by 1958, their numbers had dwindled to between 25 and 50 farmers who contributed about 5,300 carlots (just under 10% of the total receipts of fruits and vegetables in the Boston wholesale market).142 Stein’s ideas were also substantially at odds with the corporate ideology of the supermarket industry. Farmers benefited from chain-store buying practices, according to the supermarket industry. They could negotiate with chains directly at the rural shipping point markets, instead of the more traditional arrangement of contracting with agents to sell their products on a commission basis in the primary urban markets. Chains argued that they also rescued farmers from market gluts by organizing elaborate advertising promotions to liquidate agricultural surpluses that often depressed produce prices as harvest times.143 Stein and Bauer’s concept of “purely local” stores was equally out of sync with the geographical and architectural trajectory of supermarket industry development. Bernard Kane’s comments were probably 141 These statistics are from Alden C. Manchester, The Organization of the New York City Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market, marketing research report no. 542 (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1962): 24. 142 Alden C. Manchester, The Organization of the Wholesale Fruit and Vegetable Market in Boston, marketing research report no. 515 (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1962): 2, 24. 143 For the chain-store industry’s version of how it helped farmers, see Godfrey M. Lebhar, Chain Stores in America, 1859-1962, 3rd ed. (New York: Chain Store Publishing Corporation, 1963): 317-331. 150 representative of the industry’s opinion of the ideas generated by planners. In his chapter on “City Planning and Supermarket Development” Kane wrote that: Urban planners are not always right, despite the aura of tweed and pipe smoke that surrounds them. Amidst their detailed labors they like to dream of grand schemes for the great city, and they sometimes produce recommendations that bear little resemblance to reality. Their concept of a community’s retailing needs is generally not good, especially in terms of store size. Where a single large supermarket in a good location can serve four neighborhoods of a city well, a planner is apt to oppose it because it is contrary to his concept of small, functional neighborhoods. They would rather see a small food store in each neighborhood, serving that area alone. That each of the small stores could not begin to offer the enormous variety and low price of the big supermarket does not occur to him.144 Of course, a small food store located within walking distance of every house was exactly what Stein and Bauer considered ideal. But the supermarket industry developed in the opposite direction. Urban Renewal of Urban Markets Pike Place, Gansevoort, and Faneuil Hall were not the only markets threatened with physical destruction or functional adaptation following WWII. Markets in cities across the country were affected by undertakings financed through various federal urban renewal programs and the Federal-Aid Highway Act. While a complete account of each project is beyond the scope of this dissertation, a brief summary of a few of the more notable ones is instructive on a number of levels. It further illustrates how urban planners could openly acknowledge the historic and economic significance of markets, and just as readily rationalize their destruction in the interests of larger redevelopment schemes. Projects in other cities also illuminate the range of market redevelopment outcomes—from restoration, to adaptation, to total demolition and redevelopment. In the case of the latter, it enables us to explore what became of all 144 Bernard J. Kane, Jr., A Systematic Guide to Supermarket Location Analysis (New York: Fairchild Publications, Inc., 1966): 69. 151 that valuable land occupied by inner-city markets. Lastly, threats to markets in other cities produced a surprisingly wide range of preservation responses. In some cases, the proposed or actual demolition of historic markets energized the preservation community and directly gave rise to non-profit advocacy organizations that are still active today. In others, preservationists actually seemed to have participated in the destruction of markets in the interests of furthering other preservation goals. Savannah, Georgia, is one city in which the preservation community rallied to try and save its city’s historic market. The USDA began its study of Savannah’s City Market in 1948. Its report, issued two years later, listed the same litany of deficiencies observed at inner city markets across the country: traffic congestion was “extreme;” space inside the market was “cramped;” tradition and handling of produce was “inefficient.” As it did in so many other instances, the USDA recommended building a new market.145 Savannah’s elected leadership agreed and swiftly prepared plans to demolish the existing structure to build the “City Market Parking Garage” in its place. Built in 1872 at the intersection of Barnard and St. Julian Street in the heart of downtown, the market was a handsome brick building to which many in Savannah were deeply attached. But community protests failed to derail the demolition, as did a compromise plan to preserve the façade of the market and adapt its first floor for parking. One night before it was town down in 1954, the Savannah Art Club hosted a farewell costume ball within the market to say one last goodbye.146 A number of women in attendance that night got to talking about the need for a preservation advocacy organization to prevent the future loss of additional historic buildings. One year later, seven of them formed the Historic Savannah Foundation, which today is one of the most powerful and progressive preservation advocacy organizations in the 145 Otto Rauchschwalbe, et. al., The Wholesale Market for Fruits, Vegetables, Poultry, and Eggs at Savannah, GA. (Washington, USDA, 1950). 146 Milton Bracker, “Savannah to Lose Old City Market,” NYT, 13 Sept. 1953, p. 114. 152 United States.147 Other cities retained the forms of their historic markets only to see their historic functions lost. The French Market in New Orleans, a city renowned for its preservation activity and advocacy, was stripped of its food retail functions and reprogrammed in the 1970s as tourist venues with small boutiques and restaurants.148 Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Philadelphia all bulldozed markets for massive urban renewal projects that combined housing, high-end retail, and entertainment facilities. Washington’s urban renewal agency demolished the city’s nineteenth-century municipal fish market to clear land for development of a new 13- acre “waterfront wonderland” that was to include hotels, restaurants, theaters, a planetarium, a wax museum, and pedestrian promenade, among other amenities. Even through he implemented the plans that felled the structure to “make way for progress through urban renewal,” the executive director of the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency was painfully aware of the cultural and human costs. He wrote: For many of the fish traders…the market represented the only way of life their families had known for generations: to them, urban renewal represented a ruthless wiping away of a heritage for which there appeared to be no place in a renewed world. And, despite its many drawbacks, the color and drama of the market made it a beloved civic asset to a good number of the people who live in or have occasion to visit the National Capital. 147 On the market’s demolition as the catalyst of future preservation activity in the city, and for testaments to the importance and progressiveness of the Historic Savannah Foundation, see both Lee Adler and Emma Adler, Savannah Renaissance (Charleston, S.C.: Wyrick & Co., 2003): 11; and Robert Hodder, “Savannah’s Changing Past: Historic Preservation Planning and the Social Construction of a Historic Landscape, 1955 to 1985,” in Planning the Twentieth-Century American City, edited by Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996). 148 Preservationists in New Orleans waged a successful campaign to save the French Market from physical destruction by a proposed elevated expressway; see Richard O. Baumbach, Jr. and William Borah, The Second Battle of New Orleans: A History of the Vieux Carre Riverfront-Expressway Controversy (N.p.: University of Alabama Press, 1981); but its historic use was abandoned, as described by Robert A. Sauder, “Municipal Markets in New Orleans,” Journal of Cultural Geography 2 (fall-winter 1981): 82-95. 153 Market tenants and fish-boat owners waged an all-out preservation battle using the television, press, and radio, but ultimately they lost; it was demolished in 1960.149 In the same year, San Francisco’s 8.5 acre produce market was relocated to an industrial district in the southeastern corner of the city. Its former waterfront location just north of Market Street was wiped clean as part of the larger Golden Gateway urban renewal project. Built in its place was a mixed-use, high-rise complex of offices, theaters, restaurants, and shops hailed by the press at the time of its construction as “Rockefeller Center West,” but better known now as Embarcadero Center.150 The loss of Dock Street Market in Philadelphia may be the most significant of the 1960s market demolitions due to its association with the larger Society Hill restoration, considered to be among the most significant preservation projects of the period.151 The existence of the market was long considered an impediment to the preservation of adjacent historic resources. The USDA studied Dock Street Market in 1951 and, after noting the usual list of deficiencies, it recommended its replacement with a modern facility. Among the benefits gained by such a move, the report remarked that demolishing the market would facilitate “the development of the park which is planned to be the center of Philadelphia’s historic shrines.”152 Also conducting its own study that year was the Urban Land Institute (ULI), which reached the same conclusion: food wholesaling was an inappropriate industrial use on such valuable land so close to historic Independence Hall. However, Dock Street continued 149 John Searles, Jr. “Washington Fish Market: Gone but Not Forgotten,” Journal of Housing (Nov. 1960): 395-400, quote from 395; he actually uses the word “painful” to describe his role in market’s destruction. 150 Morris L. Sweet, “History of Municipal Markets has Lessons for Commercial Renewal,” Journal of Housing (June 1961): 241; and “Rockefeller Center West,” Time Magazine, 24 Feb. 1967. 151 See for example Eugenie Birch, "The Planner and the Preservationist: An Uneasy Alliance," Journal of the American Planning Association 50:2 (Spring 1984): 194-207. 152 A. B. Lowstuter, et. al., Wholesale Produce Market Facilities for Philadelphia, PA (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1951): 25. The “park” it referred to was Independence Mall, construction of which began in 1951. 154 to be used as a market for another decade. In the intervening years, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority fleshed out plans for the Washington Square East Urban Renewal Area, also known as Society Hill. The plans were a novelty for the time because instead of proposing wholesale urban demolition and reconstruction, they recommended retaining and restoring the historic eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury houses in the area. The age and architectural significance of each house was carefully surveyed with the cooperation of the Historical Buildings Commission. The problem according to the Society Hill planning documents was existence of uses which were “incompatible with a residential neighborhood,” namely industrial uses, and Dock Street Market in particular. According to one participant in the ULI market study, it was Edmund Bacon, the head of the Philadelphia Planning Commission, who ultimately convinced downtown property owners that Dock Street Market “should be rooted out and moved to the suburbs where it belonged.”153 Of course, the irony of this decision was that Dock Street Market was at least as old, if not older, than the residences that were being designated for restoration in accordance with strict preservation standards and rigorous government oversight. Food marketing began in the area in the 1690s, and yet the commercial buildings on Dock Street were not part of the architectural survey and the preservation community appears not to have opposed their demolition. The market was demolished in late 1959 or 1960. The only trace of it that remains is the distinctive curve of Dock Street, still paved in its original cobblestone, which now provides access to I.M. Pei’s Society Hill Towers, the high-end residential condos that were built in its place.154 153 Leo Adde, Nine Cities: The Anatomy of Downtown Renewal (Washington, D.C.: ULI, 1969): 33. 154 Wright, Andrade & Amenda Architects, Washington Square East Urban Renewal Area Technical Report (N.p.: Redevelopment Authority of Philadelphia, 1959). 155 Conclusion Food distribution was considered a vital public service from the founding of the colonies until World War Two. Well into the 1930s local governments publiclyfinanced and managed wholesale and retail food market facilities in many cities in the United States, just as they did for municipal water and sewer services. The private food industry, however, began to assert its dominance in both distribution and retail sales in the early decades of the twentieth century. Unable to build additional public retail markets during a period of rapid urban expansion and challenged to stay abreast of the growing complexities of global food distribution, most municipalities happily relinquished their monopoly on the local food system. Urban planners developed a keen interest in the problems of wholesale and retail food distribution as their profession coalesced in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Men like George B. Ford and George McAneny advocated for the construction of new, modern terminal markets to geographically unify and organizationally rationalize the chaotic system of urban food shipments and distribution that existed prior to WWI. Some of these plans remained only on paper. Others like the Bronx Terminal Market and the Brooklyn Terminal Market were built at great public expense in the 1930s and ‘40s but never achieved the functional efficiencies that their planners had envisioned. From the 1930s through the 1960s, regional planners Clarence Stein, Catherine Bauer and others argued for the need to integrate food retail stores into the neighborhood planning process. Stein later expanded the conceptual scope and geographic range of these interests in the 1960s exploring the technical feasibility of “regional cities” with area farmland protected by conservation easements from which local farmers would supply urban residents with fresh food at farmers markets. Their ideas for “purely local stores” and community-supported agricultural were roundly 156 criticized from multiple angles. The USDA utterly discounted the economic viability of farmers markets; the supermarket industry dismissed the “grand ideas” of planners whom they perceived to have little practical knowledge of the food industry; and the Urban Land Institute was eager to move urban food markets from their historic locations so that, once demolished, they could be redeveloped for more economicallyintensive land uses. Many of the nation’s oldest market districts that managed to escape demolition in the years before World War II were removed to make way for urban renewal and highway construction funded by the federal government in the 1950s, 1960’s and 1970’s. As this chapter has demonstrated, there were formidable logistical and ideological challenges facing anyone who wanted to preserve the forms and functions of market districts that remained. How were they to convince the decision makers who believed that urban food markets were functionally and physically obsolete that they were, in fact, culturally-significant historic assets? 157 CHAPTER 4 FUNCTIONAL PRESERVATION: WHAT WERE THEY PRESERVING AND WHY? If preservation is thought of as a series of steps in an ongoing process, the beginning is often marked by the formation of an objective. Put simply: what is to be preserved? For many, this question is relatively easy to answer because preservationists often have strong personal attachments to the historic resources they wish to save. They may admire aesthetic attributes, cultural and historical significance, economic potential, or some combination of all three and more. To convey this mission to others—which, when historic resources are threatened is often amplified by a sense of urgency—preservationists must not only explain what they want to save, but also why. Why is a particular historic resource significant, by what standards, and to whom? Why does it merit government-mandated protections and public funding? Why is it better or more valuable than what might potentially be built in its place? This chapter explores the “what” and the “why” of the three preservation case studies considered in this dissertation. Broadly speaking, preservationists in Seattle, Boston, and New York City wanted to preserve food market districts. Their preservation efforts span from roughly the late 1950s through to the present. During this time period, the preservation movement was growing increasingly receptive to recognizing and commemorating more utilitarian types of historic resources—those with local historic and cultural significance, not just aesthetic credentials. Indeed, the “findings and recommendations” of the study that ultimately catalyzed passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA) envisioned inventorying and protecting a wide variety of historic resources: “a colorful marketplace” is specifically 158 mentioned as an example. Yet the case studies in this dissertation sought an objective beyond just saving the architectural envelope. They recognized a historic and cultural significance in the functions of the markets. Why did they feel that this was important? What exactly did they want to preserve? What motivated their actions? Following World War II, the consensus among agricultural experts at the USDA, real estate development practitioners represented by the ULI, and the mainstream planning community represented by the ASPO was that urban food markets suffered incurable defects. Their downtown locations, physical forms, and distributive functions were all obsolete. Storing food outside and moving it from trucks to buildings across the sidewalk were unsanitary practices that were also visually blighting. It was these practices that attracted unsavory, poor, and delinquent human elements. Markets occupied valuable downtown real estate that could be put to higher and better uses. Small-scale, diversified local farming was economically unpractical. Market preservationists were well aware of all these criticisms and more. The arguments made in support of the preservation of each case study market differed to some extent. However, they all in effect turned these criticisms on their heads to argue that these were the very reasons why the markets warranted physical and functional preservation. What others saw as the liabilities of urban markets, preservationists saw as their cultural assets. Throughout this chapter preservation objectives and motivations are described as closely as possible with the spoken and written words used by the preservationists themselves. It will not, however, propose a common language to discuss the functional aspects that preservationists wanted to preserve; nor will it even suggest that this research might become the basis for one. Rather, each case study is dealt with individually in separate sections to compare and contrast the words used to describe functional preservation objectives and rationales at each market. However, 159 all three sections conclude with a subheading entitled “Hopes and Fears,” a common theme that emerged in the course of the research. While preservationists in Seattle, Boston, and New York used different words and concepts to describe their preservation objectives, all of them at some point framed their goals in the context of particular hopes and fears. That is, they either hoped their market would become like some other established place, or they feared that it would become like some other place. Sometimes these places were a specific destination, such as a well-know tourist attraction; at other times the place is more generalized or imagined, like the suburbs. Models to either aspire to or avoid were powerful motivational forces. Pike Place Market “A LIVING THING” IS AN “AN ELUSIVE THING” As formal planning studies were initiated in 1963 to consider redevelopment options for Pike Place Market, preservationists struggled to define exactly what it was about the place that they wanted to save.1 Yes, it was a market with buildings and streetscape and infrastructure, but even preservationists agreed that most of the area’s physical components lacked any significant architectural pedigree. More important to them was that the market was as a site of human activity, personal interest, and economic exchanges. It was a “living thing” in the words of Paul Ashley, who, along with Victor Steinbrueck, became a co-chairman of the advocacy group “Friends of the Market” in 1964.2 Describing the significant attributes of a living thing is no easy task. It became all the more difficult to covey this importance to others because the 1 A detailed analysis of the various Pike Plaza Urban Renewal planning schemes can be found in Sohyun Park Lee, “Conflicting Elites and Changing Values: Designing Two Historic Districts in Downtown Seattle, 1958-73,” Planning Perspectives 16, n.3 (July 2001): 243-268. 2 Emphasis in the original; Paul Ashley’s comments were recorded in the minutes of the Seattle Municipal Art Commission, 17 June 1965, Friends of the Market (hereafter FOM) Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 8. 160 proponents of urban renewal—composed of a downtown coalition of business interests with the support of Seattle city government—recognized themselves that the market was a unique place. They proposed to include a marketplace, albeit reconfigured, in all of the redevelopment schemes that were generated throughout the next roughly ten years.3 The individual buildings were inconsequential, they said; the market was fundamentally “an economic unit, not a physical unit.”4 Preservationists therefore had to articulate not only why marketing activities warranted preservation, but also how an entire constellation of interrelated physical parts formed a culturally significant, symbiotic unit that could not be replicated in new surroundings. Initially they used metaphors and adjectival abstractions to articulate the market’s special features. Natural or ecological metaphors were frequently used to describe the market, its activities, and its human inhabitants. In doing so, preservationists sought to emphasize the interdependence among living things and their unique environments, the intricacies of which were neither completely understood by science nor easily reducible to rational analysis with maps, figures, and survey data. Testifying at an April 1969 Seattle City Council hearing on the proposed Pike Plaza redevelopment, the young landscape architect Laurie Olin described the market as “a complicated animal,” … and like all complicated animals it functions in a very sophisticated way. Not high fashion sophistication but forest floor sophistication. It’s very subtle, very complicated. What we have here can’t be shoehorned into that space [designated for it in the urban renewal plans]. If you talk about color, 3 Proponents of urban renewal like Paul Seibert, the Executive Vice President of the Central Association of Seattle (a group comprised of downtown business leaders) promised that their goal was not to create a “modern supermarket;” rather, he knew that “an atmosphere of an old farmers’ market can exist in modern surroundings,” because he had seen examples of the market “stall concept” recreated in Los Angeles; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. See Bob Lane, “Rebuilding of Pike Market Defended,” Seattle Daily Times, 20 Oct. 1963, p. 21. 4 Economic consultant John W. McMahan speaking at a Seattle City Council hearing on 19 March 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, Seattle Municipal Archives (hereafter SMA), 4601-03, CD 156. 161 character, soul, I don’t care what you talk about, it’s more than physical relationships.5 Richard Haag, another landscape architect who, like Olin, would go on to achieve professional acclaim later in life, noted the fecundity of the market as a “spawning ground for artists and poets,” among them the modernist painter Mark Tobey.6 Seeing the market as a kind of ecosystem resonated with the larger environmental movement taking shape at that time. Seattle was an epicenter of environmental activism. At a conference that took place in the city later that year, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson announced his plans for the world’s first Earth Day festival. The spirit of these environmental times was widely felt among Seattle’s citizens, and not just those like Olin and Haag who were professionally trained in matters of landscape conservation and design. Mrs. Carl Nugent who described herself as a regular market shopper as well as a “concerned wife and mother,” also drew on naturalistic metaphors in her city council comments: I wanted first of all to compare the market with an ecological situation such as a swamp or a forest. If you destroy any of a swamp or a forest then you have ruined the whole thing. In a swamp you have plants, you have animal life, you have minutia such as insects and other small creatures and if you destroy any part of where these people, these little creatures all make their living, then you have ruined the whole thing. If you put a building in a swamp then you can no longer have it any more for species of birds and wildlife. We need to keep the milieu of the public market because if we don’t we’ve lost the whole thing.7 Her words raise another related metaphoric concept invoked throughout the market redevelopment controversy: losing the market was a form of extinction. Plant and animal extinction alarms scientists for a number of pragmatic reasons. Among them, it decreases the biodiversity of an area, which can have serious 5 Laurie Olin speaking at a Seattle City Council hearing on 18 April 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, SMA, 4601-03, CD 180. 6 Richard Haag’s comments recorded in Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc., Minutes of the Meeting of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 1. 7 Mrs. Carl Nugent speaking at a Seattle City Council hearing on 18 April 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, SMA, 4601-03, SMA, CD 179. 162 ripple effects for other species. And it also forever robs humanity of the possible medical and commercial applications that can be extracted from plant and animal life. Preservationists made similar claims for Pike Place Market. In one of his many citycouncil-hearing cross examinations intended to expose how ill-conceived he considered the city’s proposal to “preserve” market activities in a new building, Victor Steinbrueck asked a consultant: “As an economic analyst…what businesses are necessary for the survival of the Market? Could you make a list of the businesses that are essential to the life of the market?” The consultant could not, but feebly offered to provide a list of all the businesses he had interviewed in the course of his analysis.8 Indeed, the “genuine quality of the market [was] the most elusive thing and in the greatest danger of being lost,” according to local architect Fred Bassetti.9 Underscoring the difficulty they faced finding words to describe why the market’s functions were unique, and further extending the extinction metaphor, Bassetti suggested that the Friends of the Market send each member of city council a copy of Jane Jacobs’ book The Death and Life of Great American Cities.10 Friends of the Market Executive Secretary Elizabeth Tanner drove the point home more forcefully in a letter to the editor of the Seattle Daily Times: if the market is lost, she wrote, “a way of life and the insights into it will be lost forever.”11 Ecological arguments made on behalf of Pike Place Market caught the attention of the Seattle Daily Times’ writer and cartoonist Byron Fish, whose work was always sardonic but occasionally also uniquely perceptive. If the Friends wanted 8 Victor Steinbrueck cross-examining economic consultant John W. McMahan at a Seattle City Council hearing on 19 March 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, SMA, 4601-03, CD 156. 9 Fred Bassetti comments recorded in Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc., Minutes of the Meeting of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 1. 10 FOM Executive Committee meeting minutes, 37 March 1969, FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 4. 11 Elizabeth Tanner to Editor, Seattle Daily Times, 31 March 1969, FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 7. 163 to preserve the market, and they thought of it as a kind of natural environment, adding the two together, Fish suggested creating “Pike Place National Park” (Figure 4.1). It was his impression that Congress created the park system to preserve “natural things,” and Pike Place was “man made.” But if man did make the market, then “he must have been guided by nature,” because no human could have designed such a chaotic environment. Thus designated, the Market Park would receive federal funding and have officially-attired guides to interpret its geomorphic history to busloads of tourists.12 Metaphors and abstractions employed by both sides of the controversy failed to convey their intended meanings. As Pike Plaza planning dragged on into the 1970s, the city assembled a design review board to oversee various physical and social requirements in accordance with federal urban renewal guidelines. It was an all-star cast of nationally-renowned professionals that included the landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, the Harvard sociology professor Lee Rainwater, and the preservation planning consultant and educator Carl Feiss. After listening to the City’s and the Friends’ competing visions for saving the market, Eckbo commented that “It’s not at all clear what is to be preserved…buildings, life style, or what.”13 Meanwhile, Steinbrueck carried on a tireless letter-writing campaign, corresponding back and forth with the mayor, the media, and members of city council. Still, the meanings of the messages were being lost in the metaphors. “He really does not know what we stand for,” Steinbrueck wrote of Mayor Wes Uhlman; “he thinks it’s the nostalgia.”14 The mayor steadfastly maintained that Pioneer Square, a downtown district south of Pike Place, was the city’s area for nostalgia-oriented development funded by private enterprise. 12 Byron Fish, “Market would make a Cavernous ‘Park,’” Seattle Daily Times, 14 July 1967, p. 30. 13 “Plaza Planners at Work,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, 27 July 1971. 14 Steinbreuck to Elizabeth Tanner, 4 April 1968, FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 18. 164 Figure 4.1. In the 1960s, preservationists argued that the market was not unlike a natural resource or ecosystem. Writer and cartoonist Byron Fish lampooned such metaphors. Source: Byron Fish, “Market would make a Cavernous ‘Park,’” Seattle Daily Times, 14 July 1967, p. 30. 165 Of Pike Place Uhlman said “I never promised we would preserve every piece of lettuce; I only said we would try to retain the flavor.”15 Preservation advocates shifted strategies in the early 1970s. Their best efforts to amend the project by participating in the public input process designated by urban renewal guidelines achieved only modest compromises. So, as a final stand, in May of 1971 they began to collect the more than 15,000 signatures necessary to place their vision of a preserved Pike Place Market before the Seattle citizenry in a November ballot initiative. The initiative campaign was framed around four principal preservation objectives, which were to retain the market buildings, farmers, independent merchants, and low-income residents and shoppers. “Dirty Stalls Remind Us that Vegetables Come from Dirt” Pike Place Market began as a farmers-only market when it was founded in 1907. Even as other non-farming retailers and service-oriented businesses colonized the area in the following years, farmers remained a core component of the commercial mix. The Friends of the Market (hereafter Friends) considered its history as a “farmer’s market center” to be an integral facet of the market’s value as a “cultural and commercial asset;” therefore, the retention of farmers was specifically mentioned in their mission statement.16 Preserving farmers also tightly dovetailed with the larger environmental movement and the ecological arguments being made on behalf of the market. Haag articulated the connection at a pivotal 1964 meeting of the Allied Arts of Seattle that ultimately led to the formation of the Friends. After identifying himself as “basically a conservationist, primarily of natural things,” Haag went on to explain how the 15 “The Battle in Seattle,” Newsweek, 17 May 1971, p. 4. 16 See “Friends of the Market, Purpose:.., ” undated, in FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 2. 166 environment was “intrinsically woven with human resources,” with both positive and negative repercussions. As an example, he pointed to the nearby Green River Valley where agricultural lands were being rapidly plowed under and subdivided for housing, an act he considered “immoral.” The market represented “the other side of the coin— it is face-to-face relationships.”17 Farmers were the human embodiment of agricultural land preservation. “Dirty stalls remind us that vegetables come from dirt,” wrote biology professor David Sabold in a letter to Carl Feiss encouraging him to come and get to know the market before making any recommendations for the scope of its preservation (Figure 4.2).18 It was hard, however, to ignore both the decline in the number of farmers attending Pike Place Market, and the swift encroachment of development into the agricultural lands surrounding Seattle. Proponents of urban renewal and the local media outlets that backed them repeatedly emphasized this issue: what is the point of a farmers’ market if there are no farmers?19 Most farmers selling fresh produce at Pike Place historically hailed from the agricultural valleys of Kent, Auburn, Georgetown, and South Park. A variety of factors arising in the 1960s led to the erosion of the farming heritage in these areas. They included the damming of the Green River in 1962; the project was intended to help preserve agricultural land from flood damage but had an unintended and, for farmers in the Kent and Auburn valleys, unfortunate consequences. With flood control measures in place, Boeing and other corporations assembled large tracts of farmland for industrial redevelopment. Eager to capitalize on these new sources of tax revenues, local municipalities expanded their boundaries 17 Richard Haag’s comments recorded in Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc., Minutes of the Meeting of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 1. 18 David Sabold to Carl Feiss, 5 March 1971, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, Carl L. Feiss papers, collection 2653, box 30, folder 6. 19 See for example Walt Woodward, “At Last there is a Dialog on the Pike Place Market,” Seattle Times, 14 May 1967. 167 Figure 4.2. Nancy Manzo cleaning dirt from radishes for her family’s produce stand at Pike Place Market, 1955. Farming families like hers represented the one face of a coin, on the other side of which was regional farmland, said conservationist and landscape architect Richard Haag. Source: Seattle Times File, 1955. 168 throughout the Green River Valley, rezoning the land from agricultural to industrial use. Farmers who were unable to pay the increased land taxation found no shortage of willing buyers in the mid-to-late 1960s. Boeing bought land south of Seattle too, in the Duwamish Valley where the farming communities of Georgetown and South Park were located. Contributing to all of these factors—suburbanization, industrialization, and agricultural displacement—was the construction of the “The Seattle Freeway,” now know as Interstate 5, most of which was paid for by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The highway bisected valuable farmland both north and south of Seattle, and, in part, helped advance the suburbanization process. The last section, between Everett and Tacoma, was completed in January of 1967.20 Many believed that it was only a matter of time before “economics” and attrition consumed the last few of the market’s “genuine farmers.” This seemed inevitable and desirable to those who believed that progress was marked by urban growth, expanding tax revenues, and more “efficient” commodity distribution. “You will have to take a sentimental journey to protect the little fellow in his stall,” remarked the president of the Urban Land Institute, who was invited to town to make development recommendations for Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market.21 For cartoonist Byron Fish, the notion of a “sentimental journey” inspired another of his wry commentaries on the market preservation controversy (Figure 4.3). Much like steam train buffs who had assembled the equipment necessary to conduct museum excursion rides, preservation advocates could save the market through a ceremony carried out daily in a “public square reminiscent of Pike Place:” 20 This overview of agricultural land loss is from Alice Shorett’s “Farmers’ Participation at the Pike Place Market: a Brief historical Sketch,” 1971, SMA, VF 121. For dates and other details on the construction of Interstate 5, see “Interstate 5 is completed from Everett to Tacoma on January 31, 1967,” HistoryLink.org, Essay 1354, viewed on 28 April 2008. 21 Walt Woodward, “Advice will Please Some, Anger Some,” Seattle Times, 10 May 1967. 169 Figure 4.3. Byron Fish offered the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that a daily reenactment of vegetable selling could “save” the function of the market. Source: Byron Fish, “Could Ceremony ‘Save’ Market,” Seattle Times, 16 May 1967, p. 7. 170 A ceremony, “the Selling of the Vegetables,” can be carried on in the square daily at 11 a. m., from May 30 to Labor Day and perhaps once a week, on Saturdays, the rest of the year. … At 10 o’clock each morning [a festivalplanning organization] can set up a row of stalls loaded with fresh produce. It also will furnish a cast of sellers, appropriately dressed and trained in their roles. (It would be a good hobby, or part-time job for retired citizens, who would enjoy the activity at little or no pay). From 11 until noon the historic scene would be reenacted on the very site it took place in ancient times, before a crowd of proud residents, tourists and school children on field trips. Best of all, the public can participate by buying the produce.22 Lampooning such as this suggests just how hard it was for market advocates to convey the significance of farming heritage and the need to preserve it. Whereas some read the decline of regional farming as a sign that saving a farmers market was an exercise in futility, preservationists saw a call to action. It meant that farmers markets were rare, and becoming increasingly more so. They thought—erroneously in retrospect—that Pike Place was one of the last, if not the last, farmers retail market in the United States. Steinbrueck and the Friends of the Market were well aware of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, although in the late ‘60s and early 1970s, it was still unclear to the average preservationist in the field exactly how its provisions would be implemented. The objectives, methods, and theoretical boundaries of preservation in the United States were more ambiguous then than they are today with the movement’s clear focus on physical artifacts. At the time of the market controversy, it was still quite reasonable to think that farmers, farmland, and farmers markets were all part of what the Act was designed to protect when it stated that “the historical and cultural foundations of our National should be preserved as a living part of our community life and development….” 22 Byron Fish, “Could Ceremony ‘Save’ Market,” Seattle Times, 16 May 1967, p. 7. 171 The Art of Selling While farmers were seen as a critical component of the market’s history, preservationists were pragmatic enough to consider that, should they fail to continue selling there in the future, Pike Place could still be a great cultural asset. Part of what was thought of as its special character stemmed from the market’s existence as a refuge for small, independent, and often family-run businesses that offered quality and unique products in a full-service retail format. Within the market district these included separate bakeries, fish mongers, butchers, non-farming produce vendors, and all manner of other specialty shops for things like nuts, spices, cooking supplies and implements. Like farmers, these types of businesses were thought of as threatened human and commercial resources. At the time the Pike Plaza urban renewal plans were being developed in the 1960s and 1970s, the nature of the market’s commercial activity, internal organization, and architectural layout were all atypical and increasingly unconventional. Therefore, preservationists considered them uniquely valuable. The post-World War II rise of the supermarket and its eventual domination of food retailing form the backdrop to the preservation response. According to architectural historian Richard Longstreth, the supermarket concept that initially developed in and around Los Angeles in the 1930s was widely disseminated throughout the country by the 1950s. Architecturally, they featured wide open interior volumes that were “neutral in character,” with wide parallel aisles to facilitate swift movement through multi-tiered shelves where customers could inspect and select purchases from open product displays. A novelty in the 1930s, such layouts were the norm by 1950. Moreover, supermarkets pushed self-service retailing to the greatest extent possible; even butcher departments transitioned to self service—the last of the supermarket’s departments to do so—in part, due to war labor shortages. With large 172 stores and low prices, supermarkets depended on a high-volume, low-service economic formula.23 In contrast, Pike Place Market was often described as a rabbit warren of twisting passages through multiple floor levels, a “hodgepodge of open produce stalls, narrow walkways and stairways.” Individual market vendors sold in low volumes with a high level of service (Figure 4.4). Such methods were “antiquated and inefficient in comparison with modern supermarket operations,” according to city documents.24 To preservationists, this was exactly the point! In the words of Joe Sjursen, a self-described “maudlin sentimentalist,” but also a retailing expert as design director for Seattle’s premier department store Frederick and Nelson: “The Market is part of our heritage and anachronism is part of its character.”25 To shop there, one had to interact with the merchants to orchestrate selections; you were forced to navigate tight quarters and brush elbows. In an era of fewer and fewer full-service enterprises, preserving the function of the market was saving a “retailing art form.”26 The experience of shopping at Pike Place market was fundamentally different than shopping at a supermarket. There was less pre-packaging, more fresh foods; less order and predictability, but more spontaneity, diversity, and excitement. One word frequently used to describe the market was “natural,” in the dual senses that not only were some of the foods natural, but also that the market evolved “naturally” over time, as opposed to “artificial” commercial developments conceived all at once.27 According to food historian Warren Belasco, in the context of the 1960s and ‘70s, the 23 Richard Longstreth, The Drive-In, The Supermarket, and the Transformation of Commercial Space in Los Angeles, 1914-1941 (Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press): 78, 111, quote from 163. 24 “Urban Renewal Plan, Pike Plaza,” ND 401, SMA, box 133, folder 5. 25 Sjursen’s comments recorded in Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc., Minutes of the Meeting of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 2, folder 1. 26 Transcript of interview with David Wright, member of Market Historical Commission, 1980, SMA, box 135, folder 2. 27 See for example Bob Lane, “‘Preciousness’ of Pike Market Stressed by Visiting Expert,” Seattle Times, 19 Apr. 1969, p.2. 173 Figure 4.4. Pete DeLaurenti packages dried beans for a customer at DeLaurenti’s Italian Grocery, Pike Place Market, 1952. Source: Seattle Times, courtesy of Joan Paulson. 174 word “natural” was invoked symbolically in opposition to mass production, efficiency, and rationalization. Supermarket names like Safeway, Grand Union, and Giant “honored security, centralization, and homogenization.”28 In contrast, the market sheltered a “fragile kaleidoscope of merchants, mostly foreign born and fiercely independent.” This was its historic character. With “the small merchant gone, the confusion gone,” Pike Place Market would cease to exist even if its buildings remained, according to the Friend’s Executive Secretary Elizabeth Tanner.29 Many others agreed, including one Seattle citizen who, after attending an urban renewal meeting, wrote an editorial to say that: In my humble opinion the Market buildings are nothing. What is something is the Market as an operating, living function. The produce and the fruit and the meat and the fish and the fresh razor clams; the people that sell stuff and see you eye to eye and tell you they picked the celery that morning or got the fish at the dock just an hour ago; the hustle and bustle of the buyers and sellers; the ribbing, the banter; the smell of the bakery and coffee and onions and clams; the cabbage as big as your head and apples that shine. That is the Market. It is vital.30 As many preservationists pointed out, any city could have a modern supermarket, but there was only one Pike Place Market. Tourists were not likely to write home about the former, but many did about the latter.31 “A Place for All People:” Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Age Of the many scholars who have written about the history of Pike Place Market in general, and the urban renewal controversy in particular, none have acknowledged the extent to which the race, ethnicity, class, and age of market shoppers and residents 28 Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 19661988 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989): 40 29 Elizabeth Tanner to Pike Place Redevelopment Project, 21 March 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985 box 1, folder 5. 30 John F. Herman, letter to the editor, “Save Market—Not its Old Buildings,” Seattle Times, 23 April 1968. 31 Delores A. Haugland to Mayor J. D. Braman, 4 Sept. 1964, SMA, box 40, folder 10. 175 were primary considerations in the minds of preservation advocates and urban renewal proponents. Some of the most recent scholarship on the market theorizes that the market controversy was a clash between two groups: business elites who had an economic agenda in the redevelopment of the market; and cultural elites, whose preservation advocacy was motivated by artistic and aesthetic values.32 In fact, the archival record clearly indicates that socio-cultural values and a commitment to social equity were far greater motivating factors for market preservationists than any aesthetic and artistic considerations. They quite literally and sincerely wanted to preserve the low-income people who lived in the market and the low-income people who shopped in the market; to do both, they realized they had to preserve a “low cost market.” Neither side disagreed on a few basic facts regarding the market’s residents and shoppers. A 1968 study found that approximately 440 people resided within the Pike Place Market district. Most were elderly, single men living on small fixed incomes in old hotels converted to Single Room Occupancy (SRO’s). Less than 20% of them were alcoholics (as opposed to the higher rate of alcoholism among the larger community of Seattle’s “skid row” transients with whom they were sometimes associated).33 Most also agreed that the market was patronized by shoppers from a wide breadth of income classes, races, and ethnicities, and that it always had been this way. These facts, however, were based on a mix of observational impressions and quantitative survey data.34 32 See Park Lee, “Conflicting Elites and Changing Values: Designing Two Historic Districts in Downtown Seattle, 1958-73,” 252; and Judy Mattivi Morley, Historic Preservation and the Imagined West: Albuquerque, Denver, & Seattle (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006). 33 Greenleigh Associates, Inc., “A Study of the Residents of the Pike Plaza Redevelopment Project Area,” prepared for City of Seattle, Department of Community Development, Pike Project Office (New York: n.p., 1968). 34 See for example the “Human Inventory” portion of the Dept. of Community Development, Seattle, W.A., Pike Place Design Report (Seattle: Dept. of Comm. Dev., 1974); and the “Urban Renewal Plan, Pike Plaza,” ND 401, SMA, box 133, folder 5; this city-produced urban renewal plan described the market’s patrons as “People of diverse cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds….” 176 The socio-cultural value of these residents is what preservationists and urban renewalists disagreed upon. The city made clear its position on the residential population in public statements and internal memos. From its perspective, the Pike Plaza Urban Renewal project was designed to raise the city’s tax base and stem the exodus of middle-class residents to the suburbs, which was the goal of many urban renewal projects nationwide. As Major J. D. Braman explained to the president of City Council in 1969, the project was “predicated on the redevelopment of this very valuable and vital part of our city to the end that it could act as a stimulus for the return to the city of many people who have fled from the central city to the suburbs and taken with them their contributions, both in brainpower and tax base.” Low income housing was being developed in other areas of the city. To approach the market as “another nostalgic rehabilitation of ancient structures to be used to house low income people,” would, he said, “condemn the central city” as a home for the disadvantaged.35 To make the one class of people feel comfortable in their new highpriced apartments, lower classes of people would need to be removed. Paul Kirk, one of the urban renewal architects explained to Steinbrueck that the city needed to “raise the level of downtown inhabitants.” To do so, it would be necessary to “do away with the nostalgic taverns, hotels, hock shops, etc. in order to develop an environment that Mr. $200-per month [rent] will let his wife walk through at night.”36 Internal memos circulated among city agency in the months leading up to the November, 1971 preservation voter initiative reveal the ruthless tactics used by government employees and the mayor in particular to evict market residents and 35 Mayor Braman to Floyd C. Miller, 13 January 1969, SMA, box 15, folder 7. 36 Steinbrueck quotes this passage from a letter her received from Kirk in Steinbrueck to Elizabeth Tanner and Robert Ashley, 1 March 1968, FOM Files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 16. According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI inflation calculator, $200 in 1968 is roughly equivalent to $1,257 in 2008. Currently (Oct. 2008), luxury studio and one-bedroom apartments in Belltown, just north of Pike Place, rent for between $1,000 and $1,500 per month. 177 besmirch their collective reputations. Three days after an elderly resident of one the market’s SROs complained to local media that he and his neighbors were not adequately consulted on the urban renewal project—which was a requirement of federal funding—the city ordered the fire marshal to visit all the SROs in the market. Two hotels were immediately closed and their residents were evicted. More inspections and closures ensued later in the same month. The city had strong economic motivations for pursing the closures. HUD guidelines stipulated that renewal agencies were only obligated to provide financial relocation assistance to residents who remained in the project area at the time of property acquisition. Thus, the relocation “problem” decreased numerically with every resident eliminated before formal commencement of the project (Figure 4.5). The city also consulted health department records in an attempt to calculate the public service costs of treating patients with venereal diseases and tuberculosis residing in the market’s census tract.37 Though apparently never released to the public, ostensibly these calculations were intended to incite indignation among the taxpaying electorate. If the city saw the market’s population in terms of faceless numbers to be decreased in anticipation of property acquisition, preservationists and those sympathetic to their cause viewed them individually as living cultural assets. But who where they? Where did they come from? And what drew them to Pike Place? Those who worked in and studied the market described two sets of inhabitants who shared similar backgrounds: full-time residents of the SRO’s; and “transients,” some of whom occasionally “flopped” in the low-rent hotels, and others who simply lived on the streets. Cecil Frank, a nurse who worked in the market in the mid-to-late 1970s 37 See the following memos: J. Tiemeyer from Gerry Eppley, RE: Friends of the Market Press Conference this AM, 9 July 1971; J. Tiemeyer to Gerry Eppley, RE: Pike Plaza Hotel Status, 12 July 1971; and Jim Braman, Dir of Comm. Dev to Mayor Wes Uhlman, 29 July 1971; and Lu Haya to Barbara Williams, RE: Police & Health Dept Stats, 21 Sept. 1971; all in SMA, box 135, folder 6. 178 Figure 4.5 Elderly residents of the Leland Hotel, 1971. Note the sign indicating: “This Hotel is Not Closed.” In the summer of 1971, the City of Seattle sought to remove the market’s residents by closing the SROs through aggressive enforcement of fire codes. Source: Photographer Richard Z. Heyza, Seattle Times, 1971. 179 described her mostly male patients as former waiters, cooks, seamen, and lumberers— people who worked with their hands, had tough lives, and had grown old before their time. Seattle’s maritime and nearby agricultural economy had drawn them to the city in general. She referred to them by the acronym “O.P.P.—“Old, Poor, and Proud.”38 Though market preservationists like Steinbrueck, Fred Bassetti and other Friends of the Market did not necessarily know these men by name, this did not diminish the commitment they felt toward their personal welfare or the goals of social justice. Though it may seem paternalistic at best, or patronizing and exploitative at worst, the old timers were considered objects of social and visual interest. Their presence in the market gave it character, continuity, and diversity. Artists like Mark Tobey, who lived in the market in the 1940s, and architect-preservationists like Steinbrueck and Olin all incorporated old people in their visual studies of market life (Figures 4.6, 4.7, and 4.8). Jim King, the building manager of the market’s La Salle Hotel, said that though some of his tenants were “very troubled,” their presence reminded one of the need to be tolerant in a diverse society; moreover, these old people deserved tolerance because, in his words, they were “historic figures.”39 In addition to housing, the market also provided the low-income community with social resources and sources for everyday necessities. Market vendors would, for example, sell one banana if that was all that a shopper could afford; for other needs, there were also second-hand retail shops like the Thrift Council clothing store, and the Salvation Army. For those seeking entertainment and casual social interaction, there were the market’s many taverns. These were described as “the poor man’s clubs” where one could go out for an evening and have two beers and two cups of coffee, 38 Transcript of interview with Cecil Frank, Pike Place Clinic nurse, 19 July 1982, SMA, box 134, folder 16. 39 Transcript of interview with Jim King, La Salle Hotel building manager, n.d., SMA, box 134, folder 21. 180 Figure 4.6. Mark Tobey, “E Plurbus Unum,” tempera on paper mounted on board, 1942. Original in color. Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Mrs. Thomas D. Stimson. The title roughly translates to “out of many states, one,” or out of diversity comes unity. Source: Seattle Art Museum, Tobey’s 80: A Retrospective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970). Figure 4.7. An elderly man resting in Pike Place Market, observing the scene in a sketch by Victor Steinbrueck. Source: Victor Steinbrueck, Market Sketchbook (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968): n.p. 181 watch ballgames on a color television, all for a total of $2.00.40 Dr. James Spradley, professor of anthropology and psychiatry at the University of Washington Medical School, explained to the Seattle City Council the sociological importance of the roughly sixteen bars in and around Pike Place Market: “bars may be a place to drink for you and I but for these men, bars function as churches, social clubs, meeting places, and many other recreational facilities. … These men report that if you want a job you go to the bar, if you want friends you go to the bar….” Taverns met the older and low-income residents’ desire for “social acceptance.” In the market, they had “a kind of ghetto community” that met their “emotional and social needs”41 (Figure 4.9). Preservationists worried about the future of the taverns and thrift shops in the absence of some kind of economic plan to ensure their survival. Their existence seemed especially threatened by later urban renewal plans that sought to broker a compromise by saving core parts of the market but building high-rise luxury apartments around its periphery. If developed, how might that type of housing influence the market’s social mix, Steinbrueck wondered? “Will the negroes still feel good about going there??” And what about other low income shoppers—“Filipinos, etc.”? Naturally, only if the prices were low, he thought. Even still, as he reviewed the architectural plans he wondered, with a higher-class clientele walking about, “what will happen to the old guys? Will they still feel like hanging around? Where does a guy off the waterfront get a beer?”42 Steinbrueck sensed a tightly-orchestrated conspiracy to purge one class of citizens for the benefit of another. The “social mix” was being “wiped out intentionally.” That was a terrible shame, because the market 40 Transcript of interview with Cecil Frank, Pike Place Clinic nurse, 19 July 1982, SMA, box 134, folder 16. 41 Dr. James Spradley speaking at a Seattle City Council hearing on 21 April 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, SMA, 4601-03, CD 187. 42 Underlining and other emphasis in the original, from two letters: Victor Steinbrueck to Elizabeth Tanner and Robert Ashley, 1 March 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 16. 182 Figure 4.8. “A larger group of regular customers to the market are elderly people on fixed or low incomes, many of whom travel by bus like this lady on the left,” wrote Laurie Olin. “Because of the variety and number of amenities, goods and services available in this area, nearly everyone on Skid Road passes through the market at some time during the day.” Source: Laurie Olin, Breath on the Mirror: Seattle’s Skid Road Community (Seattle: n.p., 1972): 22. Figure 4.9. The Virginia Inn, seen in this 1974 interior photograph, was once one of Pike Place Market’s many taverns, often referred to as “poor man’s social clubs.” Source: SMA Photograph Collection, # 33525. 183 was “one place in Seattle where Negroes and all races are truly welcome.”43 It was “for all people,” young and old, as Elizabeth Tanner put it, without “discrimination, even against the middle class shopper.”44 The comments of some suggest the preservation controversy was a clash of lower-class lifestyles and middle-class suburban values that would be exacerbated by the incompatibility of proposed adjacent land uses. Places where you could get a 35 cent meal and a 35 cent flop were at best incongruous neighbors for residents seeking luxury housing and high-class shops. Those who would ostensibly return to the city from the suburbs lacked the sense of “forced tolerance” spoken of by Jim King. Dr. Spradley warned that “deviate behavior” common in and around Pike Place—like sleeping in doorways—was not allowed in the suburbs (Figure 4.10). And thus when you brought a suburban clientele back to the city, Pike Place’s norms of acceptability would necessarily have to change. Its historic character would have to change. Others questioned the presumed superiority of middle-class social values. As one woman wrote of an area on the edge of the market district, “I cannot deplore the winos and the prostitutes on 1st Avenue when I know of real moral decay existing in some middle class societies where Key Clubs are formed to break the monotony of ‘planned recreation.’”45 Architect Bassetti knew that some might think the market’s residents drank too much, or slept too much, or worked too little, but it was a life in an environment adapted to their needs. By his observations, their public lives were filled with more “communication and compassion between people” than middle-class professionals, himself included, could accommodate in their “private world.” As he 43 Victor Steinbrueck to Joe Sjursen, 13 Aug. 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 1, folder 19. 44 44 Elizabeth Tanner to Pike Place Redevelopment Project, 21 March 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985 box 1, folder 5. 45 Emphasis in original, Elizabeth Tanner to Dear Volunteer, 18 Aug. 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985, box 3, folder 8. In this context, a “key club” is a party at which men and women swap wives for sex, otherwise known as “swinging.” 184 Figure 4.10. A man sleeps in a Pike Place Market doorway, 1975. Source: Pike Place Market Visual Images and Audiotapes, SMA Photograph Collection, # 35985. 185 drew the bottom line in a letter to urban renewal architects John Morse and Paul Hayden Kirk: “Once the market is patronized 9/10ths by people like us, it is finished as we now know it.”46 Hopes and Fears: When Seattlites spoke or wrote in opposition to the city’s plans for urban renewal and in favor of preserving the market as it was, they often delivered their comments in the form of a comparison to some other place they had recently been to or read about. More often than not, they feared the market they treasured would become like this other second place, about which they had strong negative impressions. They used these types of oppositional comparisons perhaps because in some ways it was easier for them to describe what they did not like about some other place, than it was to articulate what they thought was so special about Pike Place Market. The negative comparison to the former was a foil in the setup to the positive assessment of the latter. Of all the specific places Seattlites compared unfavorably to Pike Place Market, none were named more frequently than Ghirardelli Square, Cannery Row, and Fisherman’s Wharf, located adjacent to one another along the northern downtown waterfront of San Francisco. Their disdain for these sites is significant because the preservation movement in general lauded them as an unmitigated triumph, the ultimate proof that historic buildings could be profitably rehabilitated for new uses. Ghirardelli Square, a 1.3 acre site comprised of old factory buildings whose last industrial use was to manufacture coffee, liquors, and chocolates, reopened to critical and commercial acclaim in 1964 as a shopping center filled with high-end restaurants, specialty shops, 46 Fred Bassetti to John M. Morse and Paul Hayden Kirk, 6 March 1968, FOM files, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, # 1985 box 1, folder 5. 186 and offices. Seattle preservationists were skeptical. Historian Allison Eisenberg notes that its developers “intentionally eschewed nostalgic approaches” common to other restorations in that period such as gaslight fixtures and other “old-time” architectural embellishments. Instead they drew programming inspiration from the “European tradition” of high-end department stores. They carefully assembled the kind of tenant mix that would appeal to a “different crowd” of people from those traditionally drawn to the city’s existing retail establishments.47 Cannery Row opened shortly afterwards with a similar blend of upscale shops, and together they drew crowds of tourists to Fisherman’s Wharf, where there were still more restaurants, a wax museum, and other tourist attractions. The retail programming and tourist emphasis seemed “artificial” and “exclusive” to Seattle preservationists. One editorial letter entitled “No More Phony Places” submitted by a couple who lived just outside Seattle was particularly revealing. In it they describe at length their recent trip to Fisherman’s Wharf, the “heart” of which they found physically intact, but frustratingly obscured by “flossy flim-flammery.” They observed no “human interaction” or “color and humanity” that could compare to Pike Place. Basically, they stumbled unwittingly into a tourist trap, which was a “gyp and bore” populated by well-dressed vacationers and the “people who prey on them.” Seeking a meal on the dock, they were turned away for lack of reservations. From all this they concluded that, in trying to create a tourist attraction, San Francisco had “emasculated Fisherman’s Wharf.” It was no longer like Pike Place, which the architectural historian Vincent Scully once described as an “authentically tough old market on the bluff.”48 Of their entire experience there, only 47 Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004): 283-292. 48 Emphasis added, Vincent Scully, American Architecture and Urbanism, 2nd ed., (New York, Praeger, 1988): 290. 187 one personal exchange was redeeming: “when a bum asked us for a handout,” they explained, “we were so glad to see an honest human being that my husband was ready to give him more than he asked for.”49 While later developers of historic sites like James Rouse (discussed in the next section) sought to emulate the success of Ghirardelli Square, preservationists in Seattle looked to San Francisco as a model to avoid. Faneuil Hall Marketplace Between the end of World War II and the nation’s bicentennial in 1976, different constituencies made arguments for and against retaining food marketing functions in the Faneuil Hall Market district. Reasons given for preserving or restoring its food uses evolved over this time period. In 1949, a major USDA study recommended relocating food merchants to some place outside the center of downtown Boston. A 1956 Boston City Planning Board study proposed redeveloping the entire market area for private office buildings. The mid-1950s also marked the beginning of a movement to preserve Boston’s colonial history and capitalize on its tourist potential. Faneuil Hall, the “Cradle of Liberty,” was literally and figuratively at the center of these early discussions. Preservationists debated the appropriateness of allowing market functions to continue inside a historic shrine. A small but influential coalition of preservation professionals led by the Boston historian and preservationist Walter Muir Whitehill emphasized the historic value of marketing activities. They advocated against displacing them with tourist-oriented programming. 49 Pat Johnson, letter to editor, “No More Phony Places,” 10 Oct. 1971, publication source unclear, FOM Scrapbook number 7 (1971), Pacific Northwest Scrapbook Collection, University of Washington Special Collections. The Johnson’s letter suggests that for them a “bum” was a sign of authenticity. In a similar vein, sociologist Japonica Brown-Saracino recently theorized in her study of “social preservationists” that “old timers” were “arbiters of authentic community;” see her article “Social Preservationists and the Quest for Authentic Community,” City and Community 3, no. 2 (June 2004): 135-156. 188 These early debates had a profound influence on redevelopment proposals that emerged in the following decade. Food firms operated under threat of relocation throughout the 1950s and their future in the Faneuil Hall district remained unclear for most of the following decade. A Downtown Waterfront Urban Renewal Plan prepared in 1964 by the Boston Redevelopment Authority under the direction of Edward Logue recommended retaining the market buildings but relocating the market wholesalers. Three years later, architect Benjamin Thompson wrote Logue expressing his desire to study the markets to find a feasible architectural and reuse proposal. For Thompson, the district’s past as a site of food marketing, commerce, and political life shaped the outlines of its future rehabilitation, especially in light of increased pedestrian activity projected by adjacent urban renewal undertakings like the new Government Center project. Building on Whitehill’s earlier arguments for the historic traditions of food marketing, Thompson further asserted that food markets were sources of important psychological, emotional, and physical needs too often neglected in urban planning schemes. After he and James Rouse won the contract to develop the Quincy Market buildings, Thompson also began to see food marketing as a valuable component of the team’s commercial concept. “A Lot More to Work with Than Philadelphia” Although the 1949 USDA analysis provided the first major post-war economic justification for relocating food wholesalers from the market district, the issue did not attract the attention of preservationists until the middle of the next decade. Ironically, it was in the name of preservation itself that the food distribution function of Faneuil Hall came under attack. In 1955, the US Congress created the Boston National Historic Sites Commission (hereafter the Boston Commission) to study colonial 189 architecture in the city and surrounding areas and make recommendations for its preservation and interpretation, in partnership with the National Park Service (NPS).50 The Boston Commission was modeled on the Philadelphia National Shrines Park Commission chartered by Congress in 1946, which had, in turn, been patterned on the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial of St. Louis.51 The Boston Commission’s first meetings were consumed by a contentious debate over the preservation of Faneuil Hall, which drew their attention for a number of reasons. It sat roughly at the geographical center of a dozen colonial-era historic sites along a twisting path beginning at Boston Common and ending at Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in the North End. These sites were first conceptually linked together in the form of the Freedom Trail, a tourist-oriented walking route conceived and implemented in the summer of 1951 (Figure 4.11). With modest financial support from the city, the Trail proved immensely popular: by 1953 it was attracting 40,000 people a year, reaping “diamonds for dimes” as its originators predicted.52 Although not formally aligned with one another, at least initially, the popularity of the Freedom Trail compelled the Boston Commission to think not only of preserving the physical fabric of historic colonial structures, but also in terms of other pragmatic issues such 50 There is scant mention of the Boston National Historic Sites Commission in the secondary literature. One exception that mentions it briefly is Bruce Ehrlich and Peter Dreier, “Tourist and the Livable City: The New Boston Discovers the Old Boston,” Revolutionary Ideas in Planning: Proceedings of the 1998 National Planning Conference (N.p., AICP Press, 1998). 51 Charles B. Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age: From Williamsburg to the National Trust, 19261949 (Charlottesville, V.A.: University Press of Virginia, 1981); Hosmer does not mention the Boston commission because it was formed outside the time period considered by his book, but he does include a fairly detailed discussion of the prevailing motivations and preservation philosophies within the Philadelphia National Shrines Park Commission, beginning on page 775. 52 The Freedom Trail was invented by Bill Schofield, an editor and daily columnist for the now-defunct Herald Traveler, and Bob Winn, a member of the Old North Church; quote from Susan Wilson, “History Notebook: Inventing the Freedom Trail,” viewed online at www.thefreedomtrail.org/about/history_notebook.html, on 5 May 2008; see also Thomas H. O’Connor, Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993). 190 191 Figure 4.11. When it was first developed in 1951, Faneuil Hall was roughly at the center of the Freedom Trail from Boston Common to Copp’s Hill Burying Ground in the North End. The Trail was later expanded across the Charles River. Source: Boston National Historic Park, Boston and the American Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Depart. of the Interior, 1998): 78. as interpreting their history, providing adequate visitor parking, and ensuring a positive overall tourist experience. The steady flow of tourists along the Freedom Trail combined with “public criticism” focused the Boston Commission’s attention on Faneuil Hall, specifically the appropriateness of its ongoing use as a food market. There were two opposing points of view on the matter: on the one side, there were those who thought that the market vendors were a disgrace to the “Cradle of Liberty;” and on the other, there were those who argued that market uses were in themselves historically significant and merited preservation. The former point of view was nicely summarized in an editorial submitted by a “Proper Bostonian,” who wrote that food vending made the market a mess with its “Sawdust, grease, tangled lettuce leaves and carrot crates!” “The 40,000 visitors who come every year to pay their respects to what Daniel Webster named the ‘Cradle of Liberty’ must seek out the sense of the honored past amid the smells and disorder of the market stalls. The atmosphere is completely out of harmony!” Furthermore, the writer noted that with the opening of the John F. Fitzgerald Expressway (a.k.a, the Central Artery), parking space had become so limited that most merchants were operating wholesale businesses. The market’s aisles were no longer packed with “hordes of milling retail customers.” The interior of Faneuil Hall would be more appropriate, suggested another writer, if the stalls were restored to more of an eighteenth-century atmosphere, along the lines of the “old-time shops” seen at Sturbridge Village; they could sell “confits, confects, sweetmeats of spiced delights, Indian nectar in lump and lozenge balls and cakes and chocolate sticks, sturdy mustard to put the stomach in Good Temper.”53 53 LeRoy Atkinson, “What’s all the to-do about Boston’s Historic Faneuil Hall and Market?, Worcester Sunday Telegram, 2 Dec. 19565, p.6. 192 The Boston Commission considered these criticisms and suggestions and debated their merits. Would it improve Faneuil Hall “from a historic point of view” if the shops were removed, asked Chairman Mark Bortman? The city’s Superintendent of Buildings thought that it would. The $23,500 a year in rent paid by merchants was of no great consequence to the city, and nor was he concerned that the will of Peter Faneuil mandated that food shops occupy the ground floor of the building in perpetuity. Furthermore, he confirmed that out-of-state cars did have difficulty parking around the market. Bortman was opposed to changing the market into “shops of a country-faire type,” but he was willing to entertain a proposal by the Ancient & Honorable Artillery Company to move their headquarters to the ground floor, seeing as some of their members, perhaps themselves a bit ancient, had great difficulty making the ascent to their historic headquarters in the attic level. Either way, the Superintendent assured the Chairman that the city would gladly cooperate with the Commission and the NPS in making a thorough study of Faneuil Hall’s architectural features.54 Sensitive to criticisms close to home, the Boston Commission also looked enviously upon the advances Philadelphia was making in the restoration and display of its historic shrines. Having read about the Commission in the newspaper, the Honorable James DeNormandie, Massachusetts State Representative of Middlesex County, attended a meeting to ask why Boston was not following what Philadelphia had done to clear the buildings in front of Independence Hall to create a mall. Similar details could be worked out in Boston, he said. The key lesson learned from Philadelphia was to present the project “in big enough terms to catch the average people’s interest”—to produce something with “wide appeal, way beyond the 54 Transcript of the minutes of the ninth meeting of the Boston National Historic Sites Commission (hereafter BNHSC), 17 May 1956, Box 5, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, MS. N-2177. 193 historical aspect.” One idea he suggested was to “tear down the half of Quincy market facing Faneuil Hall and possibly use the remaining half of the building for a museum, setting the colonnades back against the center section, and setting up a park between Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market….” The same kind of clearance could be executed around Old North Church. The Commission should think systematically about the whole string of colonial sites, he advised. Bortman, in turn, assured Representative Normandie that the market area was of “prime importance,” and, given its central location with respect to the Old South Meeting House, the Old Corner Bookstore, the Paul Revere House and other stops along the Freedom Trail, perhaps a tourist visitor’s center was the best use for Faneuil Hall. Moreover, he concluded, Boston had “a lot more to work with than Philadelphia.”55 With proper planning, the Commission could do an even better job showcasing the city’s historic shrines. Demolishing portions of an architecturally distinguished, early-nineteenthcentury building like Quincy Market to create a park-like setting around Faneuil Hall, which dated from the revolutionary era, was common preservation practice in midtwentieth-century America. There was ample precedent at Colonial Williamsburg, where dozens of nineteenth century buildings were cleared in the 1930s to restore eighteenth-century appearances. Three tightly-packed blocks of commercial buildings—some of the most architecturally significant cast-iron structures in Philadelphia—were destroyed to create Independence Mall (Figure 4.12). Even with them gone, the project’s chief historian still complained that urban “intrusions, distraction, and noise” made it difficult to create a proper “historic atmosphere.”56 The Boston Commission’s Congressionally-mandated charge was to study only 55 Transcript of the minutes of the eleventh meeting of the BNHSC, 28 May 1956, Box 5, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, MS. N-2177. 56 Quoted in Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002): 221. 194 Figure 4.12. Independence Hall seen in the background of this photograph after three blocks of buildings were demolished to its north. Source: Charlene Mires, Independence Hall in American Memory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002): 220. Figure 4.13. Butcher shops on the ground floor of Faneuil Hall Market, late 19th century. Photographs of marketing activity on the interior of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market prior to their redevelopments in the mid-1970s are rare. Source: Bostonian Society, Boston Streets photograph collection, ca. 1855-1999, VW0001/#004075. 195 eighteenth-century architecture. Nor did it matter that Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market were “fully occupied by merchants,” as the Commission was well aware. It was assumed they could find accommodations elsewhere, just as businesses in the way of Independence Mall were forced to do. Merchants protested, but as Hosmer wrote of the Philadelphia project, “there was no interest in 1947 in keeping businesses operating inside an area to be designated as a ‘shrine.’”57 Nearly ten years later, the same could be said of at least some preservationists in Boston. “Historical Continuity versus Synthetic Reconstruction” Other highly-respected and well-connected Boston preservationists saw things from an opposing point of view. Walter Muir Whitehill, who followed the debate through the newspapers and commission minutes, acted quickly to mobilize Boston’s most powerful preservation advocates to speak in favor of retaining the Faneuil Hall food merchants.58 Bertram K. Little, the Director of the Society for the Preservation New England Antiquities (SPNEA), appeared as a guest at the next Boston Commission meeting to present alternative approaches to historic preservation. First he addressed the physical planning issues. Historic areas could be preserved without “tearing down and ripping out everything of a later date,” he advised. Furthermore, “prepared malls” were a bad idea in his opinion. Then he shifted his approach to address more philosophically-nuanced issues of preservation and interpretation. He pointed out that Faneuil Hall had always been occupied by merchant stalls; there were eighteen of them there now, but when the market hall was first built, it only housed seven (Figure 4.13). Little reminded the 57 Hosmer, Preservation Comes of Age, 775. 58 Surprisingly, Whitehill was not an original member of the Boston Commission, but rather was later added in 1957 following the death of member Charles H. Watkins, according to “Murphree Named an A.E.C. Adviser” [appointees to other commissions named as well], New York Times, 5 Apr. 1957, p. 12. 196 commission that Charles Bulfinch remodeled and substantially enlarged Faneuil Hall by nearly two times its original size in 1805. “The most difficult thing to clear up in the visitor’s mind is that it is not the original Faneuil Hall,” the building in which the famous pre-Revolutionary meetings were held.59 He was suggesting, in other words, that the merchants and their market activities were more historically reminiscent of the eighteenth century than the building itself. Over the course of the next year, Whitehill drafted a powerful defense of Faneuil Hall’s food merchants, which he later published under the title: “Historical Continuity versus Synthetic Reconstruction.”60 In it he described how the “widespread popular enthusiasm” for historic restorations and reconstruction like those seen at Colonial Williamsburg, Cooperstown, and other outdoor museums were both threatening the integrity of existing historic structures, and giving tourists “a beatific vision of eighteenth-century elegance” filled with so much “‘quaintness’ or ‘cuteness’” (Figure 4.14). As a result, some Boston residents “who should know better” failed to see the true historical significance of the market stalls on the ground floor of Faneuil Hall: The historical continuity of life in Boston is nowhere more genuinely represented than in the stalls of Faneuil Hall market. … At any season the pleasing sight of sides of beef and crates of vegetables being unloaded from trucks reminds the passerby of the vitality of an unbroken tradition that still serves a valued purpose in the present day life of Boston. For those who complained of trash generated by the market, this was a matter of perspective. The markets produced both “delightful as well as distasteful clutter;” during the holidays, “fragrant…piles of spruce trees,” were one of the market’s many 59 Transcript of the minutes of the twelfth meeting of the BNHSC, 8 June 1956, Box 5, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, MS. N-2177. 60 Walter Muir Whitehill, “Historical Continuity versus Synthetic Reconstruction,” in Walter Muir Whitehill: A Record Compiled by His Friends (Minot, M.A.: Anthoensen Press, 1958). 197 delights, a harbinger of changing seasons through changing market products (Figure 4.15). Faneuil Hall needed neither interpretation nor improvement for tourists. Proposals to displace real market merchants in favor of imitation eighteenth-century “shoppes” would only “alienate” the building from its original and ongoing function. For Whitehill, who was beginning to formulate these ideas into a larger philosophy of historic preservation practice, the fight over the market’s uses was a case study in standards and ethics. “There is little intellectual honesty in substituting the imitation of an imitation for what is authentic. The ground floor of Faneuil Hall tells its own story as it stands….”61 Not every historic building needed interpretation by costumed tour guides. The market was a veritable object lesson in food processing where Bostonians could participate in the increasingly rare experience of buying “their victuals straight from the carcass, without the dubious embellishments of cellophane.” As Whitehill surely knew from his own shopping experiences, pre-packaged meat was becoming the norm in the post-World-War-II supermarket (Figure 4.16). Whitehill’s essay became the definitive statement on functional preservation in Boston, as well as an important case study for more generalized standards and ethics he sought to promote nationally among historic preservation practitioners. Undersigned with the endorsements of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the Trustees of SPNEA, it was submitted to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission with the request that in its final report to Congress, it “strongly reaffirm the necessity of maintaining the ground floor of Faneuil Hall as a market….”62 (The final report submitted to Congress by the Boston 61 Ellipsis in the original. 62 “Faneuil Hall and Market: A Statement by the Massachusetts Historical Society addressed to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission,” 14 Nov. 1957, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Box 2, Folder 13, Boston Athenaeum. 198 Figure 4.14. The Teterel Shop on Duke of Glouster Street in Colonial Williamsburg, circa 1935. Walter Muir Whitehill warned against modeling Faneuil Hall’s interior use on the “glittered restorations elsewhere,” like the reconstructed shops of Williamsburg. Source: “Portfolio of Buildings at Colonial Williamsburg,” Architectural Record (Dec. 1935). Figure 4.15. Selling wreaths at Quincy Market, circa 1950. Whitehill wrote that the market’s “fragrant…piles of spruce trees” were one of its many holiday delights. Source: Boston Public Library, image # 02235. 199 Figure 4.16. Prepackaged meat quickly became the norm in supermarkets in the decade immediately following WWII. Source: “Meat Prepackaging—A New Try,” Business Week, 17 Apr. 1948, p. 58. 200 Commission in 1960 is discussed in the next chapter on methods of functional preservation). Later on, in the early 1960s, Whitehill drafted some “Thoughts on Historic Preservation” for the Boston Planning Department as well as the Boston Commission, which he also submitted for publication in the magazine of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.63 In order to maintain historic buildings as resources useful to local residents, as opposed to “something to be gaped at by visitors,” he recommended following eleven basic principles. They opened with: “Whenever possible, perpetuate the use for which the building was intended,” mentioning Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, and Christ Church among his examples. Other standards that touched on the market use controversy included: “5) Do not destroy good buildings of later periods in an effort to emphasize those of earlier date. 9) Eschew the artificially quaint, the cute, and the dinky. Never under any circumstances, use ‘ye’ for ‘the’ or mis-spell words.” And “10) Avoid costumes like the plague. One can never recreate the past; indeed, there is no reason why one would wish to.” The advocacy of Whitehill and other preservationists had an immediate influence on urban renewal planning in the market area. A 1959 Government Center planning report prepared by the firm of Adams, Howard & Greeley wrote favorably of the market’s past, current, and future functions. After consulting with the Boston National Historic Sites Commission, the planners concurred that “Any attempt at restoration which displaced the present [food] retail activities would not only be historically false, and cause economic loss to the city, but would destroy an essential ingredient of the area’s life and character.” Noting that most of the major food wholesalers had already relocated to new facilities in the South Bay, the report went on to indicate that the remaining retail-wholesale food dealers were “logically located 63 Walter Muir Whitehill, “Thoughts on Historic Preservation,” Historic Preservation 13, no. 2 (1961): 66-67. The similarities in order and wording between Whitehill’s “Thoughts” and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards are unmistakable. 201 for their function” and played an important role in serving existing consumers and high-quality restaurants. With the added pedestrian traffic generated by the Government Center, planners envisioned a market district of “unusual intensity” where both tourists and Bostonians of “many classes and interests” would come to shop in and observe the “colorful market activity.” The physical and human infrastructure—buildings and merchants—was already there; the city need only “capitalize” on these assets and further encourage the present activity. In closing, they recommended market activities be preserved through leasing arrangements under the control of a historical agency such as the NPS.64 “Preserving Historic Buildings and Traditions” Changes in Boston’s political and planning leadership shifted the debate about preserving historic functions in the Faneuil Hall Market district in a different direction. In 1960, John F. Collins was elected the city’s mayor and immediately launched an ambitious redevelopment campaign to create a “New Boston.” To bring his visions to fruition, he hired planner Edward Logue, who, in 1961, became the director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). The BRA absorbed the functions of the Boston City Planning Board and was empowered with the administrative tools and legislative mandate to both plan and implement large-scale redevelopment projects.65 Completion of Government Center and redevelopment of the waterfront were Logue and Collins’s top priories; Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market were geographically situated squarely between the two. A series of subsequent planning studies executed under the new administration gradually retreated from the idea of preserving food functions in the market area. The 64 Adams, Howard & Greeley, with consultants, “Government Center—Boston” (Boston: n.p., 1959). 65 See Lawrence W. Kennedy, Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston since 1630 (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992): 171. 202 subtle evolution of the wording and preservation terminology that marks this shift is significant. In 1959, the Adams, Howard & Greeley report—commissioned by a nowdefunct planning board that operated under a previous mayoral administration— strongly and unambiguously endorsed Whitehill’s stance on preserving market functions. The first Faneuil Hall renewal plan prepared for the Collins administration by a team of experts under the direction of planner Kevin Lynch began with similar objectives but arrived at a different set of conclusions. Preservation of the market structures was still a priority; however, the plan proposed to do so by “adapting them to practical contemporary uses, and by continuing or commemorating traditions of early Boston.”66 Lynch and his colleagues quoted Whitehill’s assessment that the market buildings were “perhaps the finest architectural composition of the period,” but they overlooked or ignored his evaluation of their continuing functional significance. On the contrary, they viewed the buildings as “an asset wasting, a liability, a danger.” By their measure, most of the market firms had in fact not moved out to the new food distribution center in South Boston, but rather perhaps as many as 300 still remained in their old locations, “even as obsolescence mounts.” These businesses would have to move. In summarizing this point, the report stated: “rehabilitation…requires the relocation of wholesale food firms both because the buildings are not suitable to the industry and the industry is not suitable to the area.” Logue and the BRA agreed with the conclusions that the historic buildings should be preserved, but it was unclear for what future uses they were being saved. As urban renewal planning and construction proceeded around them, and largely without their consultation, food merchants continued to operate in the market throughout the 1960s. 66 Emphasis added; Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, Waterfront Redevelopment Division, “Report on the Downtown Waterfront—Faneuil Hall Renewal Plan,” (Boston: The Division, 1962): n.p. 203 “Rejoining Historic Form and Function for Public Enjoyment” Just as it was beginning to apply for urban renewal funding from HUD to restore Quincy Market and the flanking rows of granite stores, the BRA was approached by two different development teams offering reuse proposals for the three buildings, both of which were unsolicited. One was submitted by development partners Fredrick Stahl and Roger Webb; the other by the husband and wife team of Benjamin and Jane Thompson, who were later joined by the developer James Rouse. Both teams proposed mixed-use developments that restored the historic buildings and retained food uses, in some form. Eventually, the Thompson/Rouse proposal was ultimately successful.67 The Thompsons saw great aesthetic and functional potential in the market buildings. “New uses will be suggested, with architectural and historical traditions given their proper role,” wrote Ben Thompson in a letter to Logue establishing his intent to study the buildings and offer reuse proposals. But for the Thompsons, it was a matter of restoring, not preserving, market functions. In their eyes, the market was dying, if not already dead. The “answer” to its resuscitation was not in the “retention of dying enterprises,” but rather in new businesses that were “realistic and economically feasible.”68 67 Background information on both development teams is provided in John Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003): chapter 7, “Quincy’s Market: Decline and Survival.” My analysis focuses on the Thompson/Rouse reuse scheme, however, a longer treatment at some point in the future might also consider the Stahl/Webb’s proposals for new uses. The latter assembled an eclectic team of advisors (including Whitehill, James Biddle, the president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and other prominent preservationists); their various and sometimes conflicting ideas on programming the Quincy Market buildings were drawn from positive and negative lessons learned from urban preservation development projects across the country including Ghirardelli Square, Larimer Square in Denver, and Gas Light Square in St. Louis; these ideas are contained within Faneuil Hall Markets Landmark Corporation, Redevelopment of Faneuil Hall Markets (Boston: Faneuil Hall Markets Landmark Corporation, 1970), Boston Public Library, Government Documents, BRA/872/1970 AND 1971. 68 Ben Thompson to Edward Logue, 14 June 1967, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U-497, box FHM 2. 204 Graphic materials included in—and excluded from—one early report, perhaps the first submitted to the BRA by their firm Benjamin Thompson Associates (BTA), subtly reveal their disposition toward the market’s existing human and architectural infrastructure. It begins with a series of closely-cropped, black and white photographs evocative of urban decay and isolation. On one page, a set of broken windows in the upper stories of one of the market buildings is juxtaposed with a photograph of an old man sitting alone on a market stoop, staring off into the distance (Figure 4.17). The following pages unfold with watercolor renderings of Quincy Market’s future exterior and interior. BTA’s interior rendering of Quincy Market’s first floor showed a range of merchant stalls. None were associated with the names of existing businesses but the products offered were clearly indicated: meat, fish, beef, eggs, cheese, and baked goods. Men and women stylishly dressed in colorful late-1960s fashions select purchases at various stalls while market merchants carry on a conversation in the foreground; festive banners stream down from the top of a restored central rotunda (Figure 4.18). The intended message in the contrast of bleak black and white photographs with colorful renderings was clear: BTA proposed to transform a physically blighted and socially moribund district into lively fusion of historic architecture, food, and entertainment, a combination that would later become known as a “festival marketplace.” Photographs not selected for the proposal would have conveyed a different message about the market’s existing viability. A contact sheet of photographic negatives located in the Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers shows other images the team had at its disposal (Figure 4.19). One enlargement left out of the proposal shows two men carrying on a conversation outside the market. One of them, possibly a merchant, holds a broom; the sidewalk around them is free of trash (Figure 4.20). Another enlargement shows parked cars and trucks packed neatly but tightly against 205 206 Figure 4.17. Broken windows in the upper stories of one of the market buildings are juxtaposed with a photograph of an old man sitting alone on a market stoop, starring off into the distance. Source: BTA, “Boston’s Faneuil Hall Markets Area: A redevelopment proposal for a renown historic marketplace that would again make it an important component in Boston’s commercial, social, and recreational life” (N.p: n.p., n.d.), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U497, box 1. Figure 4.18. BTA interior rendering of Quincy Market’s first floor showing merchant stalls offering meat, fish, beef, eggs, cheese, and baked-goods. Source: BTA, “Boston’s Faneuil Hall Markets Area: A redevelopment proposal for a renown historic marketplace that would again make it an important component in Boston’s commercial, social, and recreational life” (N.p: n.p., n.d.), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Hist, Soc., Ms U-497, box 1. 207 208 Figure 4.19. BTA negative contact sheet showing photographs considered for inclusion in their BRA proposal. Enlargements are illustrated in the next two figures. Source: Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Hist, Soc., Ms U-497, box 1 the granite row of commercial buildings of North Market Street (Figure 4.21). Taken together, they suggest more dynamic commercial activity than BTA chose to present. Interior photographs of Quincy Market taken just prior to the commencement of restoration work confirm the existence of active market retail businesses selling produce, cheese, and meat (Figures 4.22 and 4.23). Later, after Thompson/Rouse were awarded the contract to redevelop the Quincy Market buildings, they expressed their desire to retain some of the market’s existing tenants. They picked for retention the businesses they felt were “generally consistent with the historic and planned character of the market.” However, food merchants that carried on a wholesale trade were asked to leave, or to transition to a retail-only business format. Some of those that sold no food at all, such as antique shops, were not extended the offer to stay.69 In contrast, Stahl and Webb’s BRA proposal noted that the merchant tenants of Quincy Market had recently executed substantial interior renovations at their own expense and therefore deserved the right to stay in the building and continue paying their existing modest rents. Their proposal drawings clearly marked the locations of existing market stalls with the name of each existing merchant written directly onto the plans as “evidence of their desire to ‘do everything they can to ensure that the merchants…of Quincy Market stay there.’”70 Ultimately, the Thompsons made a strategic decision to deliver a report that confirmed the BRA’s established position: that the markets were “an asset wasting” in the absence of redevelopment. Their project would restore the “popular functions” for which the area was well known by “rejoining historic form and function for public 69 Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Inc., Roy E Williams to BRA, no date, RE: Faneuil Hall Marketplace/Existing Tenants, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U497, box FHM 6. 70 Joan Sokoloff, “Council Hears Webb Proposal for Faneuil Hall, Boston Ledger, 2 March 1973. 209 Figure 4.20. This photo not chosen for the BTA proposal shows clean streets and marketplace sociability. Source: Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Hist, Soc., Ms U-497, box 1 Figure 4.21. Another photo left out of their report shows cars and trucks packed tightly into the distract along North Market Street. Source: Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Hist, Soc., Ms U-497, box 1 210 Figure 4.22. Interior of Quincy Market, first floor, Oct. 1972. Source: SMA, Pike Place Market Visual Images and Audiotapes, 37496. Figure 4.23. Interior of Quincy Market, first floor, Oct. 1972. Source: SMA, Pike Place Market Visual Images and Audiotapes, 37498. 211 enjoyment.”71 In fact, historic uses were rhetorically emphasized even more than physical preservation. As a press release announced on the eve of the market’s reopening in 1976, “continuation of valid patterns of use, more so than preservation of architecture, is fundamental to all the design concepts for the restoration of the market.”72 Fresh foods were central to the redevelopment concept. Rouse gave the Thompsons total control over retail programming and tenant selection. Their goal was to create a “complete food market” to emphasize the nature of the area as an “everyday place,” where Bostonians would come to buy daily staples and seek emotional fulfillment. It would operate like a traditional public retail market where stalls were rented by independent businesses that maintained a direct relationship between buyer and seller.73 The Thompsons articulated the rationales for this concept as a series of deeplyheld personal and philosophical positions. For both, the market’s restoration was a defense of urbanism, a defiance of “the supermarket syndrome and chain-store credo” of homogenization and nationalized commercialism. Both also emphasized the physiological need for social interaction, stimulation, and amusement, especially in urban contexts.74 Merchants would fulfill this necessity through full-service customer interactions and simple but colorful food displays; because, as Ben Thompson explained in a memo to Rouse’s leasing team, they had already selected the type of 71 Summary of Fact on Proposal for Faneuil Hall Markets by Rouse-Boston, Inc., subsidiary of the Rouse Company (undated), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U-497, box FHM 2. 72 Press release, Faneuil Hall Marketplace, 8 June 1976, John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, Mass Hist. Soc., box 2, folder: “Press Packet, 1976.” 73 Benjamin Thompson, “Notes on the Restoration of Faneuil Hall Marketplace,” Feb. 1974, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U-497, box FHM 4. 74 Benjamin Thompson and Jane McC. Thompson, “Reviving Boston’s Marketplace,” undated typescript, Boston Public Library, Government Documents, BRA/954. 212 people “whose very art is merchandising in a market whose excitement is that art.”75 Quoted elsewhere, Ben Thompson stated a general desire to preserve the multifaceted quality of regions as places with distinct physical settings, identities, and historical continuities. These existed even on a micro-scale within cities as “districts, zones, and enclaves [that] achieve special character often based upon ethnic values and traditions.”76 The market served these goals, too. “With food as a common denominator,” Jane Thompson underscored the market’s function as a “mothering place, welcoming and supportive, a source of sustenance.” Perhaps she had mothers particularly in mind when she wrote that at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, “Shopping for daily necessities, potentially a chore, is elevated to a social pleasure….”77 While they rhetorically stressed food growing, harvests, and abundance, the Thompsons did not emphasize other rules and goals of traditional public markets. Although a “fact sheet” produced by the Rouse Corporation stated that Quincy Market would remain a “Farmer’s Market,” the presence of actual farmers was neither alluded to nor anticipated.78 Likewise, the Thompsons made repeated references to “locally grown foods…available from the countryside,”79 but never mentioned specific agricultural regions or demonstrated any knowledge of the relative vitality of diversified farming in Massachusetts or neighboring states. It remained unclear where the market’s food would come from, or, for that matter, if its sources were really ever 75 Memo from Benjamin Thompson to Roy Williams, Lehr Jackson, and Leasing Team, 28 Oct. 1976, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U-497, box FHM 4. 76 Frederick John Pratson, “Benjamin Thompson: Hell-bent on Staving off Ugliness,” Yankee (Dec. 1976): 72-77, 140-141. 77 Jane Thompson, “Boston’s Faneuil Hall,” Urban Design International 1, no. 1 (Nov./Dec. 1979). 78 Summary of Fact on Proposal for Faneuil Hall Markets by Rouse-Boston, Inc., subsidiary of the Rouse Company (undated), Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Mass. Historical Society, Ms U-497, box FHM 2. 79 Benjamin Thompson and Jane McC. Thompson, “Restoration of Faneuil Hall Marketplace: Comments on Historic, Architectural and Urban Issues,” unpublished typescript, Aug. 1976, Mass Historical Society, John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, Box 1, Clippings, 1990-2002. 213 a priority. The preservation of farming, farmland, and farmers was not a stated goal of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace redevelopment. Hopes and Fears Whitehill and the Thompsons shared similar fears for the market district, just as they shared similar hopes. All expressed a desire to see the market function as a market into the foreseeable future and remain a physically and socially unique place primarily created by and for Bostonians. All agreed that the greatest threat to this outcome was tourism. Whitehill observed corrosive effects on cultural resources wrought by unmanaged tourism. In his words, the tourist trade was “one of the inventions of the Devil, as skillfully disguised as the gifts Mephistopheles offered Faust.” Though he acknowledged in a 1967 essay for the Saturday Evening Post titled “Tourists Stay Home!,” that tourism had rapidly grown to become Massachusetts’s second largest industry, yielding an estimated $1.2 billion dollars in revenues per year, he questioned if all the economic benefits were worth its cultural costs. While a few politicians and “promoters” stood to gain in this business, the negative impacts were borne by local residents forced to suffer as tourists “trample on and deface” neighborhood resources. The examples he gave were all historic museums like Monticello, Mount Vernon, and, closer to home, the sites along the Freedom Trail, a promotional scheme cooked up by those he referred to derisively as “advertising men.” In his analysis, the history and scenery of these sites were being “exploited” to their detriment.80 Jane Thompson shared Whitehill’s general concerns with tourism, but she articulated them with more precision using different points of reference. The Thompsons would never have told tourists to “Stay Home!” On the contrary, they 80 Walter Muir Whitehill, “Tourists Stay Home!,” Saturday Evening Post, 12 Aug. 1967, 8-10. 214 anticipated that perhaps as much as 30% of the marketplace’s shoppers would be tourists, a benchmark extrapolated from Ghirardelli Square attendance statistics. Indeed, in many ways they consciously sought to reproduce the San Francisco landmark’s historic architectural cache, commercial content, and economic success. There were, after all, few other comparable projects to emulate. They also hoped their project would be more of a local gathering place for Bostonians, and in this sense not like Ghirardelli Square, at which, in 1972, 50% of shoppers were tourists during the summer. Faneuil Hall Marketplace proved a far greater success than its architects or developer ever imagined. As Rouse wrote in a memo to his employees in the Fall of 1976, they had all been so “determined not to build a ‘tourist trap,’” that they underestimated tourism’s “huge potential.” 81 Jane Thompson was leery of its effects on the Marketplace’s unique businesses and products. She explained the existence of a “circular dilemma:” the realness of the marketplace with its fresh foods brings locals for daily needs; but tourists are inherently drawn to places where they can observe real life. Gradually, out-of-towners repel locals, businesses evolve to cater to tourists, and the market slips toward the mediocre “mass-produced, coast-to-coast image of a shopping mall.” Eventually even tourists are turned off when they see the same national franchises they know from home. She knew of the “rise and demise” of other “trendy” historic restorations like Chicago’s Old Town and Underground Atlanta. It would, she predicted, “be as hard to maintain the Marketplace as a delightful ‘place’ to go as it was to create it in the first place.”82 81 Quoted in Alison Eisenberg, Downtown American: The History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004): 296. 82 Thompson, “Boston’s Faneuil Hall.” 215 Gansevoort Market Efforts to preserve Gansevoort Market extend back more than forty years into the past, though it is difficult to determine the extent to which saving historic market uses were a factor in this earlier advocacy. When the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission first entertained proposals to nominate the Greenwich Village Historic District in the early 1960s, Jane Jacobs weighed in to recommend boundaries that contained the entire west-side waterfront, including Gansevoort Market: From its beginnings, [the West Village] settlement combined work, residence and transportation….With truly remarkable integrity and fidelity, this historic land use persists today….Visually, too, the Village waterfront shows unique evidences of its unbroken historic continuity….83 With its references to the persistence of historic land uses and “historic continuity,” Jacobs’s letter suggests an appreciation of the cultural significance of market activities and an inclination toward preserving them. Ultimately, however, the Greenwich Village Historic District was designated in 1969 without the waterfront portions. A handful of planning studies prepared between 1970 and the early 1990s examine the Gansevoort Market district and make greater or lesser arguments for its functional preservation. In 1970, a Greenwich Village waterfront development study prepared by Beyer-Blinder Associates briefly described the market’s physical character and functions, only noting with respect to the latter that the City Planning Commission and local community board had assured the market merchants that they would not be forced out of the district.84 With a grant from HUD, the New York Department of City Planning conducted a major study to determine how the city could retain various types of “small manufacturers” using planning tools and financial 83 Jane Jacobs, unpublished letter to James Van Derpool, October 31, 1963, quoted in Ganservoort Market Historic District Nomination Form, prepared by Sue Radmer, Dec. 2006. 84 Beyer-Blinder Associates, “Greenwich Village Waterfront Development Study, Stage One Report,” March 1970. 216 assistance programs. The results, published in 1982, include an entire chapter on New York’s meat markets, with particular emphasis on the Gansevoort district. A sophisticated analysis of Gansevoort’s physical and economic strengths and weaknesses, the primary goal of the report was to retain industrial jobs in New York City; in this respect, the function of Gansevoort Market was considered significant. However, while it provided a brief historical overview of the market, it made neither claims for its cultural significance nor plans for its physical or functional preservation at any specific location.85 Reports prepared between the mid 1980s and the early 1990s contain stronger endorsements for the market’s preservation. Columbia University graduate student Ron Lustig extensively documented the market’s history and offered a proposal for its preservation in his master’s thesis, completed in 1985. The preservation goals he considered included: “restoration of the economic, functional and esthetic values inherent in the area;” and “preservation of a continuum of use and architectural character in response to the process of growth and change.” Lustig provides excellent documentation of market district uses, wrestles with the perceived philosophical dilemma of retaining economically marginal market businesses in the inner city, and even offers novel approaches to historic preservation planning. His rationales for functional preservation are based on the market’s function as an “active and viable” public amenity and the desirability of retaining its “historic links” to the past.86 Columbia University student planning studios examined the West Village Waterfront in 1989 and then again in 1991. The first offers planning recommendations to “insure the integrity” of the meat market, though it is unclear if integrity refers to architecture, 85 City of New York, Department of City Planning, “City Assistance for Small Manufacturers,” March 1982. 86 Ronald Lustig: “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan,” Columbia University Master’s Thesis, May 1985, p. 77. 217 function, or both.87 The second proposes clearer industrial job retention and architectural preservation objectives. The last of its goals and recommendations is to “preserve the gritty, nineteenth-century appearance of the market area for New Yorkers and tourists ‘in the know.’”88 If one draws a tangent between industrial job retention and preservation of “grit,” then presumably the former helps to ensure the latter. None of these student projects identified any advocates or organizations actively working toward preservation of the Gansevoort Market district. “Real Working People Doing Real Working Things” When politically-active, highly-organized, and well-connected advocates for Gansevoort Market did emerge in the late 1990s, they aimed to preserve both historic architecture and market functions. Their desire to do so was motivated by a social and aesthetic synergy between the district’s blue collar, meat-processing laborers and the predominantly utilitarian, low-scale architecture in which they worked. One of the prime-movers in the preservation cause, a woman who had lived on the far west side of Greenwich Village for roughly a decade, described her attachment to the district this way: Whenever you had company you’d kind of walk through the meat market to go to Florent’s [restaurant]. There was something that was gritty and real about it. And it wasn’t sanitized and it wasn’t, you know, pritified; and if there weren’t trees around, then there weren’t trees around. And it wasn’t yuppified. It was like real working people doing real working things on the street for you to experience. And that was something that was really important to me.89 With the increasing domination of New York by white-collar residents and employment opportunities, industrial neighborhoods have become a rare sight, 87 Spring 1989 Planning Studio at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “West Village Waterfront: A Community in Transition,” May 1989. 88 Spring 1991 Urban Planning Studio, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “West Village Waterfront,” Spring 1991. 89 Author interview with informant in New York City who wished to remain anonymous. 218 especially in Manhattan. The architectural critic Paul Goldberger noted Gansevoort’s significance in the context of Manhattan’s other demolished or rapidly fading food districts like Washington Market and the Fulton Fish Market. Gansevoort, he said in the 1980s, “is industry in the midst of the city, more romantic in the fact of its existence than in the specifics of how it looks, but still a special place by any measure.”90 It was among the last places where one could observe industry in action, sometimes right out on the open over sidewalks for anyone to see (Figures 4.24 and 4.25). The Gansevoort preservationists described their fascination with, and desire to save, a kind of industrial performance that took place in an architecturally-unique venue that placed outside observers into a reverse theater-in-the-round, where the stage surrounded the audience. To be in Gansevoort was “to really be in the middle of something. With working class guys…on the street and stuff.” As one preservationist explained, I just thought it was always amazing, and I think that that sort of feeling of life and working, a working city, and in the environment of those low scale buildings where the street, a lot of the streets are very wide cobble stones, the sky was around you, you felt it around you…. So you got this great signage, this urban working environment. And you felt you were part of something that wasn’t New York, it felt like someplace else. And we would bring people over here and they would say: ‘You’re right, it’s different.’91 Whereas mid-twentieth-century inspectors for the USDA were appalled by traditional and putatively unsanitary market practices like cutting, storing, and moving food across 90 14th St.: Photographs by Sy Rubin & Larry Siegel, with an introduction by Paul Goldberger (Providence, R.I.: Matrix Publications, 1981): 14. 91 Author interior with an informant in New York City who wished to remain anonymous. 219 Figure 4.24. On the sidewalks of Gansevoort Market pedestrians once dodged hanging carcasses of beef. Photograph by Sy Rubin, undated. Source: 14th St.: Photographs by Sy Rubin & Larry Siegel (Providence, R.I.: Matrix Publications, 1981): 36. Figure 4.25. Workers handling meat on the sidewalks outside Lamb Unlimited in 2003. Source: Photograph by Brett C Vermilyea, from article by Lincoln Anderson, “Meat Businesses Hang on as Rents Keep Climbing,” The Villager [New York], vol. 72, no. 11, 16-22 July 2003. 220 open sidewalks, preservationists in the late 1990s were delighted by these rare glimpses of food processing. Meat merchants used the streets and sidewalks throughout Gansevoort “as their own personal private property. Day in and day out this market operated just as they pleased.” Thus, being in Gansevoort when meat workers still populated the buildings and streets gave those unfamiliar with this type of environment the excitement that comes from being in a place where one does not quite belong. It was like trespassing while remaining all the while on public property. For some, trespass, danger, and deviant behavior were at the heart of what made Gansevoort a special place. The market district’s reputation for transvestite prostitution, illicit open-air liaisons, and basement-level sex clubs contributed to its reputation as a gritty industrial landscape, a place far outside the mental map of most New Yorkers. For most of the twentieth-century, mainstream society purposefully avoided industrial places because they were perceived to be dirty; they steered clear of red-light districts because they were considered dangerous. These perceptions changed in the mid-to-late 1990s. Grit and danger took on a certain cultural cachet, especially as other areas in New York once also thought of as prurient and gritty, such as Times Square, became sanitized through adaptive reuse and redevelopment.92 Few would advocate for or publicly endorse sex clubs or the preservation of street prostitution. As other scholars have observed, prostitution and “pornography [have] a wide following but no advocates.”93 There was never an organized and 92 When it comes to prostitution, the two areas may, in fact, be related. Prostitutes who were forced out of Times Square during its redevelopment in the 1990s were said to have migrated to Gansevoort Market. See “Streets of Sanctuary Now Harbor Criminals,” New York Times, 6 Aug. 1990, p. B1. On the cultural cachet of grit and danger see Dorita Hannah, “Butcher’s White: Where the Art Market Meets and Meat Market in New York City,” in Eating Architecture edited by Jamie Horwitz and Paulette Singley (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2004): 279-299. 93 Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 1997): 123. 221 publicly-vocal constituency for the preservation of Gansevoort’s more illicit functions. As preservation scholar Gail Dubrow has noted: One can only speculate on the forces that have discouraged gay and lesbian preservationists from organizing to promote the interests of their own communities: a powerful combination of fear, isolation, caution about being pigeonholed, and an alienating ethic of professionalism which shuts its practitioners off from aspects of their own identity….94 And yet there are many who mourn the area’s demise as a “sexual frontier.” According to Patrick Moore, “Gay men have always tended to imbue their sex sites with special powers.” He quotes Laud Humphreys who wrote in Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places that “men seem to acquire stronger sentimental attachments to the buildings in which they meet for sex than to the persons with whom they engage in it.”95 For the certain segment of society that experienced these places, and a much larger group who only heard about them, clubs that occupied space between meat processors in Gansevoort like the Mineshaft, Anvil, and Hellfire are spoken of and written about with the sort of mythical reverence reserved for other more well-known, mainstream landmarks that have since disappeared from New York’s cultural landscape, like Studio 54 and CBGB.96 One need not even have participated in this culture to have nostalgia for it. A young journalist recently wrote wistfully of a childhood experience seeing his “first real-life prostitute” and “first real-life transvestite” on the streets of Gansevoort in the 1980s while his parents hailed a cab after dinner at Florent.97 Sociologist Richard Lloyd uses the term “neo-bohemians” to refer to those who consider urban decay and 94 Gail Lee Dubrow, “Blazing Trails with Pink Triangles and Rainbow Flags,” in Restoring Women’s History through Historic Preservation, edited by Gail Lee Dubrow and Jennifer B. Goodman (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003): 281. 95 See Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004): 19-20. 96 See for example the comments by designer Calvin Klein who compared the Gansevoort clubs and area street prostitution to Studio 54, back in the 1980s when the market “was real downtown,” in Frank Bruni, “Genre-Bending Hangout Takes its Final Bow,” New York Times, 21 May 2008. 97 Nathaniel Rich, “His City, Lost and Found,” New York Times, 3 Feb. 2008. 222 illicit activity like prostitution to be markers to “authentic urbanism.”98 There are a lot of neo-bohemians in New York these days, especially among a younger generation of residents who never lived through the city’s nadir in the 1970s. Those who were drawn to Gansevoort because they saw something gritty, raw, and potentially dangerous went there in search of what they considered to be the last vestiges of the “real downtown” New York, before every inch of Manhattan was made safe for tourists and the uppermiddle-class.99 Gansevoort still had in the 1990s what Times Square lost during that same decade, which Robert A. M. Stern described as “a little sense of threat, excitement, derring-do—a sense of adventure.”100 Hopes and Fears: Gansevoort preservationists feared they would lose what they set out to landmark in the first place—a unique market. Yet it has always been difficult to describe exactly what that was, just as it was hard to pinpoint for market preservationists in Seattle and Boston. It was that “indefinable something…an urban experience.” Those who were most involved in Gansevoort’s preservation worried that the area would lose its history. When pressed to acknowledge that the area’s history will not change, regardless of the new uses it takes on, they explain that Gansevoort’s history “won’t be a part of it, it won’t feel a part of it.” History will cease to be something that operates in the present; it will only exist in the past. The visitor’s experience of the neighborhood will “become about what’s in the windows and what they’re shopping for;” they will no longer “step back and look at the whole 98 Richard Lloyd, Neo-Bohemia: Art and Commerce in the Postindustrial City (New York: Routledge, 2006): 75-78. 99 See for example Adam Gopnik who writes that “for the first time in Manhattan's history, it has no bohemian frontier,” in “Gothamitis,” The New Yorker 82, no. 44, 8 Jan. 2007, pp. 21-22. 100 Quoted in Alexander J. Reichl, Reconstructing Times Square: Politics and Culture in Urban Development (Lawrence, K.S.: University Press of Kansas, 1999): 151. 223 thing and say: this is cool down here. Cool before it got to be trendy and stupid and a joke upon itself.” As more high-fashion boutiques move into the storefronts that were recently occupied by meat-related businesses, some fear Gansevoort is already on the verge of becoming an overly-restored, and partially-sanitized parody of itself (Figures 4.26 and 4.27). Preservationists and other frequent visitors to the Gansevoort area often resort to the same phrase to express their concern for how the market’s functions might evolve: they fear that it will become “like Soho.” Readers of the New York Times over the last roughly fifteen years know how to translate this coded language. Artists colonized the area south of Houston Street, better known as SoHo, beginning in the late 1960s, taking over loft spaces in cast-iron buildings formerly occupied by a variety of industrial users.101 SoHo quickly became the center of the New York City arts community, a reputation it enjoyed into the 1990s. Artists also attracted upper-class residents who wanted to be near the cultural vanguard. To meet this demand, real estate speculators and investors adapted loft buildings into high-rent residences. Eventually, the artists themselves were displaced by the area’s rapid gentrification, leaving only the retail art galleries in which they once displayed their work, a process that preservation scholars have referred to as the “SoHo Syndrome.”102 In the early 1990s and accelerating toward mid decade, major retail franchises like Williams Sonoma, Banana Republic, Armani A/X, Anthropologie, and Dean & Deluca started to displace even the art galleries.103 This transition has led some to bemoan the “malling of lower Broadway,” as a once-unique industrial district that has become 101 For additional information see Sharon Zukin, Loft Living: Culture and Capital in the Urban Fringe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). 102 See Richard Collins, Elizabeth Waters, and A. Bruce Dotson, America’s Downtowns: Growth Politics and Preservation, edited by Constance Beaumont (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1991): 125. 103 Mervyn Rothstein, “What’s Happening in Soho? A Gallery is Leaving and a Chain Store is Replacing a Miniature Mall,” New York Times, 20 Dec. 1995, p. D18. 224 Figure 4.26. Gansevoort preservationists worried that the experience of the market would become dominated by shopping in an atmosphere that parodied the area’s history. Metal pig sculptures were installed around the market within the last few years. Source: photograph by Valmera, found online at: http://s151.photobucket.com/albums/s126/valmera/?action=view¤t=Meatpacki ng_4285.jpg. 225 Figure 4.27. The sign for Dave’s Quality Veal at 425 14th Street has been carefully restored to maintain market appearances, but the storefront now houses a women’s fashion boutique. Source: photographs by author, 2005 and 2006. 226 home to the same retail stores found throughout the country.104 By the late 1990s writers began to decry the “creeping sohoization” into other parts of Manhattan like Gansevoort Market.105 For some, the loss of Gansevoort’s seedy side and the incursion of major retailers were two sides of the same coin. The filmmaker Spike Lee sounded much like one of Lloyd’s neo-bohemians when he recently described the evolution of the meat market with obvious disdain: Before it used to be transvestites and transsexuals on every corner. Now? Forget about it. Gansevoort Street, that whole area — it’s crazy. It’s like everything else in New York. It’s like SoHo and everything else that gets ‘hot.’106 What was “crazy” for Lee and many others who share his views is not the fact that men dressed as women once sold sex on the market’s cobble-stoned streets, but rather that chains like the Gap now park a mobile retail store on 9th Avenue in Gansevoort to sell pastel tee-shirts and socks (Figure 4.28). Conclusion Preservationists in Seattle, Boston, and New York all wanted to preserve some functional aspects of the historic markets with which they were involved. On the most basic level, they wanted the markets to continue to trade in food. But there are a number of important similarities, differences, and ironies that merit further discussion. First, the people who inhabited the markets, either as merchants, residents, farmers, transients, or even prostitutes, were seen as having varying levels of cultural significance to the preservationists involved. At Pike Place and Gansevoort, 104 Elaine Louie, “The Malling of Lower Broadway,” New York Times, 14 Sept. 1995, p. C1. 105 See Molly O’Neill, “For the Adventurous, a Paradise in Hell’s Kitchen,” New York Times, 28 Oct. 1998, p. F1; Randy Kennedy, “Living on the Carving Edge…,” New York Times, 2 Oct. 1997, p. F1; and Joyce Cohen, “Once-Gritty Neighborhood Comes Alive; Some Feel Far West Village Area Could be the Next SoHo,” New York Times, 16 Feb. 1997, p. R5. 106 Bruni, “Genre-Bending Hangout Takes its Final Bow.” 227 Figure 4.28. The Gap’s “Rock Color Bus” parked in Gansevoort Market on 9th Avenue near the corner of 14th Street in the summer of 2006. The Gap does not yet have a storefront location in the district, but other national retailers are beginning to set up shop. In the upper-right-hand corner of the photograph, the former Western Beef building is being renovated for its new tenant, the Apple Computer Store, which opened in late 2007. Source: ©AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews. 228 preservationists sincerely desired to protect the human elements in and around the markets. Those who advocated for retaining Pike Place literally wanted to protect and perpetuate the existence of all of its various human elements because they believed they added to the historic significance and genuine character of the place. At Gansevoort, there was a similar desire to retain the workers who labored in the meatrelated businesses that populated the district. The preservationists did not extend the same level of enthusiasm for the prostitutes who worked the streets (at least not openly), but there were many others who were saddened by their displacement, in part because they felt that prostitutes were quieter and more respectful of the neighborhood than the “bridge and tunnel crowd” of club-goers who replaced them, and in part because they also felt that they added a degree of “realness” to this area of New York that no longer existed elsewhere in the city. In Boston, the situation was different. Although the Thompsons talked about creating a nurturing, humanistic environment that served the physical and emotional needs of downtown residents, the Rouse/Thompson team gave relatively little attention to the existing market merchants, the shoppers who patronized them, or the various people who merely hung around the market. They very deliberately chose not to promote their existence because they wanted to portray the market as a dying district in need of economic resuscitation. This was what the city of Boston, as represented by the BRA, wanted to hear, and this is the message that BTA and TRC chose to deliver. Second, preservationists in all three case studies refused to believe that downtown food markets were a functionally obsolete concept. As supermarkets increasingly abandoned the inner city to find cheaper land in the suburbs to build bigger stores closer to middle-class shoppers, preservationists in Seattle and Boston saw a niche that could be filled in the preservation of downtown food retail. In Gansevoort, while preservationists may have had a lesser awareness of exactly who 229 the meat businesses actually served, they nonetheless believed that industrial activity was a compatible and culturally significant land use in the middle of Manhattan. Third, this chapter raises larger questions about the perceived “appropriate” uses and users of historic buildings, a debate that has thus far not been explored or generally even recognized by the preservation movement. The sections describing “hopes and fears” make this point most forcefully. At Pike Place, preservationists and many within the broader Seattle community looked skeptically upon Ghirardelli Square and the tourists that flocked to patronize its boutiques, restaurants and other attractions. Ever since its adaptive reuse, the popular and scholarly literature about preservation has without exception looked upon Ghirardelli Square as one of the crowning achievements of the “new preservation.” It proved, for the first time, that with the backing of the investment community, historic buildings could be adapted to economically viable uses. In Seattle, however, Ghirardelli Square was the furthest thing from what preservationists perceived as an ideal solution. It was not the physical adaptation of the buildings that they objected to; it was the uses to which they had been put and the out-of-town users who were their intended audience. In a similar vein, members of the Boston Historic Sites Commission considered the market functions of Faneuil Hall to be a disgrace to its existence as a “historic shrine.” The effects of tourism were almost universally feared by preservationists involved with all three case studies. This poses a serious dilemma for today’s preservation practitioners. The economic models developed by Listokin and colleagues at Rutgers in partnership with the NPS demonstrate that heritage tourism produces preservation’s greatest economic benefits. If Jane Thompson is right, and there is a “circular dilemma” in which the “realness” of markets used by locals draws tourists, which then causes the uses of such places to change to cater to out-of-towners 230 such that they eventually become just like everywhere else in the United State, is a heritage tourism really sustainable? A younger generation of preservationists and urban denizens now criticize even SoHo because they perceive its character to have been undermined by excessive commercialism. An older generation of preservationists like the late Margot Gayle, the patron saint of cast iron in New York City, dedicated a significant portion of her career as an activist to ensure that the SoHo historic district was preserved. But has it been preserved if all its storefronts are occupied by national franchises? For at least the last fifteen years it has been fashionable among a certain set of sociologists, architects, planners, and other urban critics to condemn the preservation movement for turning all historic commercial developments into places that look or feel like festival marketplaces. They may have a valid point. “In most American cities,” writes Michael Sorkin, “the ‘historic’ has become the only complicit official urban value. The result is that the preservation of the physical remnants of the historical city has superseded attention to the human ecologies that produced and inhabit them.” Sorkin says his goal is not to “theorize this new city,” only to describe it.107 That is fair enough, but actual practitioners may agree with Ada Louis Huxtable that preservation destroys some values in the process of saving others—and that indeed, as Sorkin says, downtowns have become Variations on a Theme Park and that this is a bad thing108—what are we to do about it? Gansevoort Market is an example. How does one preserve illegal activity, a sense of danger, or even industrial “grit?” 107 Michael Sorkin, ed, Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992): xiv. 108 It should be noted that not everyone agrees that this is a bad thing. Many people delight in the festival marketplaces that Wallace bemoans. And some are even well-respected scholars of urbanism; see for example the “The Best of Both Worlds,” the conclusion to Witold Rybczynski’s City Life (New York: Touchstone Book, 1995). 231 CHAPTER 5 FUNCTIONAL PRESERVATION PLANNING METHODS Having established what they wanted to preserve and why, market advocates next had to formulate strategies for how they were going to bring their visions of preservation to fruition. Preservationists involved with each case study market faced formidable, and to a degree, similar obstacles. As the chapter on functional obsolescence documented, market districts occupied prime downtown real estate that city planners and elected officials wanted to repurpose for other uses that generated higher tax revenues. Processing and distributing food from centralized downtown locations was also at odds with the prevailing post-World War II trends, which favored decentralized suburban distribution centers and privately-owned supermarkets. Market preservation was antithetical to the urban renewal objectives to replace blighted inner-city areas with residential and entertainment opportunities to lure the middle class back downtown. Lastly, the goal of bringing a diverse selection of locally-grown produce to urban consumers that was so central to the Pike Place and Faneuil Hall Marketplace case studies conflicted with the dominant agricultural paradigm of the USDA, which discounted the economic viability of farmers markets and encouraged growers to pursue monocrop production. Market preservationists drew on a diverse range of strategies to surmount these challenges. While the circumstances of each case study market were unique, a number of common functional preservation approaches were utilized. First, because they were often going against the grain of government policies, the preservation community had to build a broad coalition of supporters. Different forms of outreach, advocacy, and protest played an important part in winning the support of elected officials and other urban decision makers. Second, market advocates had to formulate functional 232 preservation plans, which sometimes built upon but often also expanded beyond the more conventional approaches to preserving historic architecture. Economics were a critical consideration. Could the markets support themselves financially and, if not, was there a dependable source of public and private subsidy to make them economically viable? Third and lastly, all historic resources—physical and functional—require careful and constant maintenance. In many respects, managing the functional preservation of each case study site has proven to be the most challenging step in the preservation process. Pike Place Market Outreach, Advocacy, and Protest Some cities have a longer and richer tradition of advocacy and civic participation than others. Those who live in Seattle for any extended period of time learn a popular mnemonic that hints at the extent to which organized advocacy is deeply imbedded in the city’s history and the collective consciousness of its residents: “Jesus Christ Made Seattle Under Protest.” Widely used, and even taught to schoolchildren, it is a memory tool to recall the names and sequence of the twelve streets in the Central Business District; the fist letter in each word corresponds to the beginning letter of six pairs of streets, from south to north: Jefferson, James, Cherry, Columbia, Marion, Madison, Spring, Seneca, University, Union, Pike, Pine. Although the origins of the street mnemonic are obscure, a wide variety of causes have motivated Seattleans to pursue civic engagement and participate in organized, sometimes violent, actions over the years. A short list of some of the more spirited include the labor riots of the early nineteenth century; marches to oppose the Vietnam War, promote civil rights, and halt freeway construction in the 1960s and ‘70s; and, more recently, the violent anti-globalization riots sparked by the World 233 Trade Organization's third Ministerial Conference, which took place in Seattle from November 29 to December 4, 1999.1 The movement to preserve Pike Place Market is part of this long tradition.2 As one scholar recently argued, protests in the 1990s in support of the rights of the homeless and against perceived over-regulation of downtown public space form a continuum of activism inspired by the success of Pike Place Market’s preservation. For a younger generation of Seattle activists, the market story is a protest parable invoked to remind the community that when banded together they can influence the course of public policy and physical planning.3 While the basic outlines of the market story are well-known throughout Seattle, many of the details surrounding the campaign, which has been described as a “people’s victory” for historic preservation, remain undocumented. Moreover, some recent scholarship, because it overlooks important archival material, concludes the market preservation effort was not actually a “people’s victory” at all; on the contrary, some argue that it was a campaign led by a small group of urban “cultural elites” who sought to control the preservation design process, offering few opportunities for community participation.4 In reality, the history of the market preservation protest is far more nuanced, its protagonists were more diverse than has previously been acknowledged, and there 1 “Seattle Residents Stage Protest Against Interstate 5 Freeway on June 5, 1961,” HistoryLink.org Essay 3944; “Turning Point 5: From the Knights of Labor to the WTO,” HistoryLink.org Essay 3017; “Civil Violence in Seattle—A Brief History,” HistoryLink.org Essay 7122; “First Sit-in of the Civil Rights Movement in Seattle Occurs on July 1, 1963,” HistoryLink.org Essay 3161; all accessed on June 12, 2008. 2 Mark Hinshaw says the market demonstrates Seattle’s “fondness for messy democracy,” which is another way of saying spirited public participation; see his book Citistate Seattle: Shaping a Modern Metropolis (Chicago: Planners Press, 1999): 11; also noting Seattle’s “well earned reputation as a city with strong civic activism and wide-open, vigorous politics,” is Richard Collins, et. al., America’s Downtowns: Growth, Politics, and Preservation (Washington, D.C.: Preservation Press, 1991). 3 Timothy A. Gibson, Securing the Spectacular City: The Politics of Revitalization and Homelessness in Downtown Seattle (Lanham, M.D.: Lexington Books, 2004): 126. 3 Sohyun Park Lee, “Conflicting Elites and Changing Values: Designing Two Historic Districts in Downtown Seattle, 1958-73,” Planning Perspectives 16, n.3 (July 2001): 252; and Judy Mattivi Morley, Historic Preservation and the Imagined West: Albuquerque, Denver, & Seattle (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2006). 234 were concerted efforts to build a broad coalition of supporters. Over the course of the decade-long preservation initiative, preservationists implemented a variety of different outreach, advocacy, and protest strategies to build popular and political support for their cause. This section reviews these strategies and the challenges associated with tactics such as grass-roots organizing, dissemination of information and public education, and protest marches. Grass Roots Organizing The Friends of the Market was formed on July 18, 1964 at a champagne breakfast attended by roughly sixty preservation supporters hosted by Allied Arts of Seattle on the balcony of Lowell’s Cafeteria in the heart of the market. Earlier in the summer, Seattle City Councilman Wing Luke discreetly suggested to his friend Bob Ashley that a citizens group was needed to raise awareness of the market’s unique qualities and to create pressure in support of its preservation. The previous November, the Central Association of Seattle published plans in Argus Magazine announcing its intentions to demolish the market and rebuild the waterfront. Luke, who was a fierce proponent of sensible urban renewal, historic preservation, and civil rights, knew that a citizen’s committee appointed by City Council to provide advice on urban renewal was about to formally issue similar recommendations. The Friends returned to Lowell’s in August for its first public meeting. Robert Ashley, a prominent Seattle attorney, and architect Victor Steinbrueck were elected co-chairman of the organization.5 5 The dates of events leading up to the formation of the Friends, as well as some of their early activities, are recorded in a letter to Mr. Ibsen Nelson from unknown, 2 Aug. 1968, “Chronological sequence of events,” FOM files, box 1, folder 1, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. Market preservationists lost a strong political alley when Luke died tragically in 1965 plane crash; see “Luke, Wing (1925-1965),” HistoryLink.org Essay 2047 (accessed 7/12/08). For a longer description of that first meeting and the Friends advocacy techniques see Alice Shorett and 235 The Friend’s advocacy campaign began modestly. In November of 1964 it opened a book stall in the market, which, organized by women volunteers, sold copies of Mark Tobey’s The World of the Market (1964), Steinbrueck’s Seattle Cityscape (1962), recipe and poetry books, market bags, and Friends of the Market buttons. Over the next four years, the Friends experimented with a range of marketimprovement and awareness-raising strategies. Members gave walking tours to school children and community groups, spoke about the market to civic organizations and church groups, and appeared before the planning commission to provide testimony in support of preservation. They joined forces with the Seattle Junior Chamber of Commerce and together planted trees and flowers around the market. They put on market-oriented raffles and competitions (Figure 5.1). They tried to encourage small businesses to move into the market district. They also wrote editorials and letters to anyone they considered potentially sympathetic and influential, including the more left-leaning members of city council.6 Still, the urban renewal plans moved forward. Letter writing and public speaking failed to move the city’s plans toward preservation. As the urban renewal design team unveiled its drawings and models in the spring of 1968—none of which initially spared any part of the market district—it became clearer to the Friends that they needed to widen the breadth of their outreach and intensify the level of their community organizing. Thinking the city would be forced to amend its plans if there was overwhelming community support for preservation, Steinbrueck set a goal to enroll 40,000 people as Friends of the Market. “Our real strength is going to have to come from the people of Seattle—from those who work in the market—shop in the Murray Morgan, The Pike Place Market: People, Politics, and Produce (Seattle: Pacific Search Press, 1982): 126-127. 6 Ibid; see also “Friends of the Market: A Living Historic Preservation Project,” undated, box 1, folder 1; and the many letters to editors and city council members contained in box 1, folder 5, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 236 Figure 5.1. Victor Steinbrueck presents one of his drawings as an award to the winner of a market bag design competition, date unknown. Source: Seattle Times photograph published in Shorett and Morgan, The Pike Place Market, p. 128. 237 market—visit the market and live in the market area,” he wrote. Building the membership would “breathe real life into the situation;” all one had to do to join was pay a nominal $1 membership fee and sign the preservation petition.7 Steinbrueck sought to politicize the market preservation issue not only by broadening the Friends’ membership size, but also by diversifying its ranks. While on a year-long teaching sabbatical in London in 1968, he plotted strategy though a daily exchange of letters with the Friends’ Executive Secretary Elizabeth Tanner, and other leaders of the group. Reading between the lines of their correspondence it is clear that Steinbrueck understood socioeconomic and racial diversity would strengthen the market preservation cause by associating it with the broader movement for civil rights. In this context, it was critical that the Friends “involve the Negro community” because they were one segment of the low-income community which, he thought, would suffer the most if the market was redeveloped for middle-class shoppers and residents.8 Casting the market redevelopment as a racial issue would also help to reframe the urban renewal debate as a matter of social justice, and not merely a disagreement among architects over aesthetics. As Steinbrueck explained: The racial significance of the market has to be stressed more heavily. It is very important in actuality and is a very powerful weapon if we can get it involved. [Blacks] are involved in the market as shoppers, that is certain. Don’t they know what is happening? If the market is changed as proposed they will lose their best shopping place. Only on economics can they be involved, I think. Not on the idealistic basis that I’m always yakking about.9 Yet how to get the black community involved presented its own challenges. Steinbrueck planned to seek the advice of Sam Smith, the first African American 7 Victor Steinbrueck (hereafter VS) to Elizabeth Tanner, 20 May 1968, box 1, folder 18; VS to Elizabeth Tanner, 13 July 1968, box 1, folder 19, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 8 VS to Joe Sjursen, 29 April 1968, box 1, folder 18, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 9 Emphasis in the original; VS to Elizabeth Tanner, 15 March 1968, box 1, folder 16, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 238 member of City Council whose election in November 1967 was said to be a “rebuke of the city's conservative, business-dominated leadership.”10 It was hoped that Smith would be inherently interested in racial issues; Tanner wrote to him warning that if redeveloped as planned, the market would “no longer be the economical, exciting place to shop where the natural intermingling of all races and classes are experienced.”11 Ultimately, the chairman of the Friends wished that “grass roots” involvement would spontaneously evolve on its own from within the black community. While race was indeed a “powerful weapon,” it was one that could go off unpredictably, especially when triggered in the context of economic class. Steinbrueck was caught off guard by one episode in particular that took place at a city council hearing in 1969. The Council held a number of long public meetings that spring to gather citizen input on the Pike Plaza Urban Renewal Plan. Speaking on behalf of the Friends, Steinbruek acted as if he were the market’s defense attorney, calling witnesses to testify in support of preservation, and formally cross examining various experts on the city’s justifications for urban renewal planning. Was it not true, he asked while interrogating the city’s economic consultant, that “The negroes saved the market? In other words, in depression times it was negroes shopping there and it’s my observation that there are [still] a great many blacks that shop in the market.” As Steinbrueck pressed the racial issue, a black woman from the audience—Mrs. Parker—interrupted the proceedings to offer a different perspective: Negroes didn’t save the market. The negroes saved the market for the big shot white people because they ordered [food] over the phone and they had it delivered from the market. And these big shot—I don’t mean big shot, please forgive me—but in these homes, these big society homes the negro was ordering the food from the market and had it sent out from there, to their 10 “Smith, Sam (1922-1995),” HistoryLink.org Essay 63 (accessed 6/16/08). 11 Elizabeth Tanner to Councilman Sam Smith, 25 March 1968, box 1, folder 5, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 239 homes. That’s what saved the market; we spent thousands and thousands of dollars, right. But we didn’t do it. The people with the homes and the people of the big community did it, because we ordered for them.” As the audience packed into the council chambers erupted in applause, Chairman Phyllis Lamphert could be heard faintly in the background thanking Mrs. Parker for her “very interesting comment.”12 Gaining the support of the market merchants and low-income market residents was no easier. At least with merchants, Steinbrueck and other leaders in the Friends knew their names, their family histories, and their reputations around the market. They were easy to talk to, but recruiting them into the Friends and getting them to testify at public meetings or participate in other advocacy activities was difficult. When Steinbrueck attended a meeting of twenty merchants to explain how urban renewal would affect their businesses, he urged them to speak out against the project. All responded that they were too busy with work, and that they were no good at public speaking, anyway.13 Moreover, because the urban renewal plan proposed rebuilding the market in some form, many merchants—perhaps even the majority of them— supported demolition and reconstruction. They considered talk of preserving “atmosphere” to be academic; “Atmosphere doesn’t put money in your pocket,” quipped one elderly merchant.14 Elderly market residents also seemed to have so much to lose; and yet it frustrated Steinbrueck that they too would not speak out against an urban renewal project that specifically called for their displacement. “Can’t someone or two of the SRO residents be found to work with us? They should form their own groups,” he 12 Seattle City Council hearing 19 Mar. 1969, City Council Audio Tapes, Seattle Municipal Archives (hereafter SMA), 4601-03, CD 156. 13 FOM Executive Committee Meeting Minutes, 10 Mar. 1969, box 2, folder 4, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 14 Bill Schear, “Pike Place Market Vendors Cool to Rebuilding Proposal,” Seattle Times, 23 Oct. 1963, 11. 240 wrote. Steinbrueck and Friends of the Market like Fred Bassetti and Elizabeth Tanner knew the old timers who lived in the market and populated its streets only by face, not by name. They derived their only knowledge of them from two sources: the Greenleigh Associates report of 1968, a study of the market area residents prepared for the Seattle Department of Community Development in advance of redevelopment; and You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads by Dr. James Spradley, a book based upon research between 1967 and 1968 on Seattle’s Skid Road community, which included the market. Both indicated why, in fact, SRO residents and neighborhood transients could not be organized, at least in any conventional or professional sense that might have made them advocates for their own selfpreservation. Fiercely independent, they preferred loose affiliations to named organizations; Spradley called them “a world of strangers who are friends.”15 A decade later, after passage of the preservation initiative, a nurse employed by the Pike Place Market Clinic was equally frustrated by her inability to organize the elderly, low-income residents. Once, she tried to throw them a Christmas party and nobody came; eventually she learned the residents basically feared organizations or institutions, of any kind. There could never have been a coalition of these residents to fight urban renewal because, she said, none of them were “joiners;” they enjoyed their accommodations and lived there by choice, but like the market’s merchants, they had led the kind of lives that left no time for after-work activities.16 15 James P. Spradley, You Owe Yourself a Drunk: An Ethnography of Urban Nomads (Prospect Heights, I.L.: Waveland Press, 2000, originally published in 1970): 252. See also Elizabeth Tanner to Joe Sjursen, 13 Aug. 1968, box 1, folder 19, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985; and Greenleigh Associates, Inc., “A Study of the Residents of the Pike Plaza Redevelopment Project Area,” prepared for the City of Seattle, Department of Community Development (New York: n.p., 1968). 16 Transcript of interview with Cecil Frank, Pike Place Clinic nurse, 19 July 1982, SMA, box 134, folder 16. 241 Despite their best efforts, the protest marches that the Friends organized in the spring of 1971 were probably never as racially or demographically diverse as Steinbrueck hoped. It was not for lack of trying. Photographs of the events show mostly young, white women holding signs with slogans like “Our Children Need the Market.” Steinbrueck himself appears to be the oldest face in the crowd (Figure 5.2). The Power of Images Unable to recruit active participation from merchants or residents, Steinbrueck adopted a different strategy: appropriating their names and images, he illustrated their stories through his drawings. In 1968 he published the Market Sketchbook, which was nominally a visual tour of the market district. Though it could easily be mistaken as a mere fundraising tool, the drawings and their captions were Steinbrueck’s attempt to illustrate the vitality and energy of market functions, the personalities and histories of its merchants, and the humble but adequate accommodations of its low-income residents. Whereas Mayor James Braman described the market as “a decadent, somnolent fire trap” with a statistically high incidence of tuberculosis and venereal disease,17 Steinbrueck humanized the market. One of his drawings depicts a worn but tidy SRO unit in an old market hotel accompanied by the caption: “many are surprisingly clean and well-kept according to low-income standards” (Figure 5.3). Merchants unwilling to join the Friends or support preservation were still prominently profiled in the book. For example, the Mossafers family fruit stall, run by “Sephardic Jews, one of the groups that has kept the market going since the beginning.” Steinbrueck’s caption continues: “There are no better fruits or more courtesy and friendliness available anywhere than offered here” (Figure 5.4). While this may have 17 James Braman speaking at the Rotary Club on 14 April, 1968, quoted in Shorett and Morgan, The Pike Place Market, p. 131. 242 Figure 5.2 Protest march opposing the demolition of Pike Place Market; the gentleman in the right foreground holding a sign is Victor Steinbrueck. Photograph by Timothy Eagan for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, filed February 4, 1971. Source: Museum of History & Industry, Seattle, image #: 1986.5.53773.1. Figure 5.3. An SRO hotel room drawn by Victor Steinbrueck. His caption reads in part: “many are surprisingly clean by low-income standards. These hotels provide minimal housekeeping facilities, and their residents are an essential part of the market’s economic base as well as its personality and character.” Source: Victor Steinbrueck, Market Sketchbook (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968): n.p. 243 Figure. 5.4. Even though Josseph Mossafer supported demolishing Pike Place and building a new market, Steinbrueck included the family’s fruit stand on the left side of this drawing. Implying their status as a Seattle institution, he noted in the caption that the Mossofers began selling fruit at the market in 1914. Source: Steinbrueck, Market Sketchbook, n.p. Figure 5.5. Laurie Olin explaining and illustrating how “the market is much more than a series of produce stalls and restaurants. It is a regional, low cost shopping center” that serves a segment of the Seattle population who have limited economic means. Source: Laurie Olin, Breath on the Mirror: Seattle’s Skid Road Community (Seattle: n.p., 1972): 21. 244 been true, the family patriarch Joseph Mossafer, a second-generation fruit and vegetable seller, was on record saying that the market’s buildings were deteriorated, outdated, and in need of total replacement.18 Though it never strictly stated that either the residents or the merchants supported market preservation, the book clearly implied, with or without consent, that their livelihoods and living arrangements were threatened by urban renewal. The Friends considered Steinbrueck’s book a powerful tool for advocacy and public education.19 Following passage of the preservation initiative, Laurie Olin also published a small book of sketches in which he hoped to further convey the “needs and wishes of people who actually live in the city,” especially those who were some combination of poor, homeless, and addicted to alcohol (Figure 5.5). “A Fascinating and Disturbing Puzzle” for Historic Preservation Throughout the decade-long battle against urban renewal, the Friends of the Market used every available form of historic preservation designation to save Pike Place. To their continuing disappointment, existing preservation laws proved ineffective or were easily subverted; and the movement’s national leaders at the time largely misunderstood their vision of preserving buildings together with cultural activities. Ultimately they forged their own unique form of local preservation ordinance using Washington State’s public initiative process.20 One of the first things the Friends did upon becoming an organization was to nominate the market to the Municipal Art Commission’s list of historic sites. A 1961 18 “Pike Place Market Vendors Cool to Rebuilding Proposal.” 19 See for example the letter in which Robert Ashley tells VS that the Friends “badly needed” him to finish the Market Sketchbook because it would “make all the difference” in achieving their goals, 3 Apr. 1968, box 1, folder 18, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 20 Washington State’s constitution was amended in 1912 to allow public initiatives and referenda; see HistoryLink.org Essay 7536, accessed 26 June 2008. 245 city ordinance authorized the Commission to prepare a list of Seattle’s historic sites and structures and to “make recommendations” for their preservation.21 In June of 1965, the market was successfully nominated as a “historic site and function.”22 However, the designation carried no weight with the urban renewal design team, even after Steinbrueck brought it to their attention.23 The Friends then looked beyond Seattle for examples of stronger municipal legislation. They reached out to the mayors of Santa Barbara and New Orleans, as well as to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, seeking examples of legal statues for empowering landmarks commissions, or, as Steinbruek often called it a “watch dog committee to insure the Market’s integrity.” The Friends also followed developments in historic preservation policy at the federal level. They were encouraged by passage of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA), which created the National Register of Historic Places as well as a review process that required federal agencies to take historic properties into account when funding or permitting undertakings. Nominating the market to the National Register appeared the perfect strategy to stop the Pike Plaza Urban Renewal Project, an undertaking that was to be substantially funded by federal money from HUD. Steinbrueck and Ashley wrote Seattle’s congressional representative suggesting its nomination before President Johnson had even signed the Act into law.24 With its declaration to protect “the historical and cultural foundations of the Nation…as a living part of our community life and development,” the act promised exactly the type 21 Seattle of City Ordinance Number: 90354; for background on the formation of the Municipal Arts Commissions, which was an outgrowth of Allied Arts of Seattle, see “Allied Arts of Seattle,” HistoryLink.org Essay 2212 (accessed on 6/19/08). 22 Minutes of the Municipal Art Commission, 17 June 1965, box 2, folder 8, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 23 Victor Steinbrueck to Pike Place Redevelopment Project Office, 16 March 1968, box 1, folder 5, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 24 Robert Ashley and Victor Steinbrueck to The Honorable Lloyd Meeds, House of Representatives, 30 Sept. 1966, box 1, folder 4, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985; Lyndon Johnson signed the NHPA into law on Oct. 15, 1966. 246 of preservation that the Friends had been looking for. In response to a newspaper article suggesting preservationists wanted only to embalm the market’s architecture, Elizabeth Tanner shot back an editorial saying that now “historic preservation concerns itself with the activity and culture of people beyond merely saving ‘old appearances.’”25 In accordance with NHPA procedure, Steinbrueck nominated the market to the National Register through Washington State’s Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in July of 1969, one month in advance of City Council’s final approval of the Pike Plaza redevelopment. The Advisory Council endorsed the nomination, forwarded it to the Keep of the Register at the National Park Service. In February 1970, Pike Place Market became the first National Register district in the State of Washington.26 The market’s nomination was a short-lived victory. In response to pressure from the Friends, prior to its final submission to HUD the city agreed to amend the urban renewal plans to preserve the main market building, the immediately adjacent Corner and Economy markets, and the LaSalle and Leland hotels. The Friends were unsatisfied by the compromise. Even with these concessions, they asserted that the urban renewal plan was too vague, its definition of the market too narrow; it neither specified how the market would physically be preserved nor its businesses and residents retained. Moreover, the Friends steadfastly maintained the market to be a much larger geographic unit. The boundaries of the roughly seven acre district Steinbrueck had successful nominated to the National Register encompassed all the 25 Elizabeth Tanner to Editor, Seattle Daily Times, 31 March 1969, box 1, folder 7, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 26 The market nomination process, the subsequent boundary change and the ensuing lawsuit are discussed at length with full citations in Sohyun Park Lee, “From Redevelopment to Preservation: Downtown Planning in Post-War Seattle,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2001, 149155. 247 major market buildings plus the hotels and other commercial properties along First Avenue between Pike and Virginia streets. The Friends thought the preservation of the market’s delicate social ecology depended upon this larger boundary; it was a buffer zone needed in anticipation of future development. Initially, both preservationists and proponents of redevelopment considered the National Register listing a major impediment to the city’s plans for the market. Then, as Sohyun Park Lee documents in her dissertation on post-war preservation planning in Seattle, city agencies, civic and business leaders, property owners and the mayor quickly united to formulate a strategy to subvert the nomination.27 They did not dispute the historical significance of the market or argue the buildings were deteriorated beyond repair; rather, they proposed simply to reduce the boundaries of the district to encompass only the structures the city already pledged to preserve. When asked if this was possible, Keeper of the Register William Murtagh informed the city that district boundaries were determined by the state and they could be amended by the state. The State Advisory Council was invited to Seattle to tour the market and hear a well-rehearsed presentation on the city’s plans for the area’s preservation.28 Among the critical points the city hoped to convey to the council was that its plans for Pike Place were geared toward “tomorrow’s uses rather than yesterday’s uses” so that preservation could be “based upon an economic foundation.”29 The Council was convinced; it agreed to reduce the boundaries to include only the core market buildings, a 1.7 acre district, which Murtagh dutifully approved when the amendment reached the National Park Service. A lawsuit filed by 27 Sohyun Park Lee, “From Redevelopment to Preservation: Downtown Planning in Post-War Seattle,” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Washington, 2001. 28 For the text of the city’s presentation to the Council see “Presentation to the State of Washington Advisory Council on Historic Preservation,” 3 Aug. 1970, SMA, box 140, folder 4. 29 J. P. Willison to Jim Braman and John Spaeth, RE: Meeting on Pike Plaza Historic Boundaries, 3 Aug. 1970, SMA, box 140, folder 4. 248 the Friends of the Market and a coalition of organizations including Allied Arts of Seattle and the Washington Environmental Council failed to reverse the decision.30 Compounding their frustration, national leaders of the preservation movement to whom they turned for help like Carl Feiss seemed unable to grasp the human and cultural components of the Friends’ objectives. One of the framers of the National Historic Preservation Act, Feiss was also a paid consultant on the Pike Place Plaza Design Review Board, an advisory group created by the city to demonstrate its commitment to both preservation and high-quality architecture. It is clear from his written record about Pike Place that for Feiss, the goals of historic preservation were saving architecture and promoting economic development. He admitted to being confused by the significance of the market, a structure that he noted was built in the year he was born. In his opinion it was neither particularly old nor architecturally distinguished. Admittedly, it had “atmosphere,” but he was unsure if it derived from the “strange and quite cumbersome rabbit warren of spaces,” from the merchants themselves, or some combination of the two. In the larger context of Seattle architecture, Feiss implied that the city had other more monumental and stylisticallyimportant buildings worthy of preservation in Pioneer Square, “fine old stone structures of the Richardsonian Romanesque type.” Moreover, like many others, Feiss read the advanced age of its merchants, its dwindling farmers and their disappearing farmland as signs that the market and its traditions would eventually succumb regardless of any intervention. He was unable to imagine a preservation planning process to address these types of non-architectural issues. Adaptive reuse along the lines of Ghirardelli Square was the model of preservation and economic development that seemed most readily applicable and feasible. Pike Place Market, he told 30 Ibid. 249 Steinbreuck, was “a fascinating and disturbing puzzle.”31 Only later would those empowered to preserve the market after passage of the initiative fully realize that the National Historic Preservation Act that Feiss helped write was not “strong regarding physical-cultural restoration;” its only focus was architecture.32 Seeing that the Art Commission’s “historic site and function” designation carried no protections and the National Register listing was so easily undermined by political maneuvering, the Friends had only one more option. They started an initiative campaign to create a local historic district regulated by a commission with special powers to implement their unique vision of physical and functional preservation. Jerry Thonn, an attorney and one of the leaders of the Friends, wrote the ordinance petition together with Steinbrueck, channeling the group’s vision into legal language (Appendix A ).33 It was a hybrid text that drew inspiration from at least two different sources: one was the ordinance for Seattle’s first historic district, Pioneer Square, created in 1970. The Pioneer Square preservation ordinance set the Seattle precedent for architectural design review. It also established a preservation structure that is relatively rare in the United States: as opposed to falling under the jurisdiction of a city-wide historical commission empowered by a more general preservation law, an independent historical preservation board was created for Pioneer Square, which subsequently adopted rules specific to the district.34 The second inspiration was the 31 Carl Feiss, “It’s What’s Inside that Counts,” Preservation News, Sept. 1971, p. 5, 7; see both Feiss’ letter to David Sabold, 19 March 1971, in which he asserts that examples like Ghirardelli Square prove that “personality and character” can be designed into economically successful preservation projects; and his letter to Steinbrueck, 10 Aug. 1971 in the Carl Feiss Papers, Cornell University Archives, Collection 2653, box 30, folder 6. 32 Pike Market Historical Commission minutes of meeting, 2 Dec. 1972, box 1, folder 2, SMA. 33 Some argue that Thon’s significance in the market preservation process has been overshadowed by Steinbrueck; see transcript of interview with David Wright, an architect who was among the first members of the commission, 1980, SMA, box 135, folder 2. In addition to drafting the petition/ordinance, however, Thonn was also instrument in negotiating complicated functional preservation issues in the first few years of the Pike Place Market Historical Commission’s existence. He remains an active member of the Friends. 34 The Seattle City Planning Commission drafted a city-wide preservation ordinance in 1967 that failed to gain approval in its original form. Since the nomination and protection of Pioneer Square was their 250 National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, whose four criteria of significance— association with historic events; association with significant people in history; architectural significance; and ability to yield important information in history— were all incorporated into the initiative ordinance. More novel and far-reaching were the ordinance’s functional preservation provision. In addition to the more standard architectural controls governing modifications of material color, texture, and shape, the ordinance empowered the “Market Historical Commission” with broad latitude to regulate building use. The key passage was the following: The … Commission shall have for its purpose the preservation, restoration, and improvement of buildings and continuance of uses in the Historical District, as in the opinion of the Commission shall be deemed to have architectural, cultural, economic, and historical value as described in [the criteria of significance]. The criteria very clearly prioritized the district’s historic function as: a farmers market; a home for small independent businesses; and a shopping venue for low-income people. With the ordinance in hand, the Friends easily obtained nearly double the 15,000 signatures from registered Seattle voters required to place the initiative on the November, 1971 ballot. Through the summer and into the fall, they turned their attention to drumming up support for the measure by organizing a “Save the Market” principal objective at that time, the most politically-expedient solution was to create a preservation ordinance and board regulating just that district (Seattle City Ordinance Number: 98852). A city-wide Landmarks Preservation Ordinance was passed in 1973, enabling the nomination and regulation of individual landmarks and historic districts (Ordinance Number: 102229); it was repealed in 1976 by an ordinance that created a Landmarks Preservation Board empowered only to designate and regulate historic “objects, sites, improvements and elements” (Ordinance Number: 106348). As a result, each of Seattle’s seven historic districts has been created through passage of a separate ordinance; each has its own independent Historic Preservation Board, or in the case of the Pike Place district a Historic Preservation Commission, that administers review and compliance procedures in accordance with rules that are specific to the individual district. 251 rock concert, distributing “Vote YES” buttons, and holding press conferences for anyone who would listen (Figure 5.6). The city aggressively fought back. Mayor Wes Uhlman suggested a competing initiative, which was approved by city council and placed on the ballot alongside the one written by the Friends. It proposed the creation of a 1.7 acre local landmark district to be regulated by a “design review board” patterned after the one recently-established for Pioneer Square.35 In terms of preservation, it was a significant improvement upon the plans unveiled in the 1960s that proposed total demolition, but its adherence to the preservation status quo of “design review” entirely removed any intentions of functional preservation. Making matters worse, the city’s competing initiate was supported by perhaps as many as half of the market’s merchants as well as the owners of most of the market’s core buildings. The Central Association, Seattle’s elite business organization, hired a public relations consultant and generously funded an organization calling itself “The Committee to Save the Market.” It made it its own buttons, placed advertisements urging voters to “VOTE NO” on the Friends’ petition, and enjoyed the editorial support of both Seattle daily newspapers, the Times and the Post-Intelligencer.36 Faced with two alternative visions of about what to preserve and how to preserve it, Seattle voters chose the Friends’ petition by a considerable margin: 76,369 versus 53,264. To his considerable credit, Mayor Wes Uhlman publicly accepted the defeat and threw the full support of his administration behind the market’s preservation. If the election had proven anything, wrote Director of Community Development James Braman in a memo sent to his staff, it was that the “the voters of 35 See Park Lee, “Conflicting Elites and Changing Values,” 159. 36 Shorett and Morgan, The Pike Place Market, 137. 252 Figure 5.6. Concert to support preservation of Pike Place Market held in Seward Park. Photograph by Tom Barlett for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, filed May 31, 1971. Source: Museum of History & Industry, Seattle, image #: 1986.5.54480.1. 253 Seattle have an affection for the Market and want to see it save substantially as it is today.” He urged them to “work constructively to that end.”37 Functional Preservation Planning The ordinance drafted by Thonn and Steinbrueck described a detailed regulatory framework for reviewing physical modifications within the district, but it only alluded to the rough outlines of a preservation planning process. It clearly established a twelve-member Market Historical Commission composed of two representatives from six different constituencies or professional organizations: the Friends of the Market, Allied Arts, Seattle Chapter of the AIA, market merchants, and historic district residents. It then stated more generally that, with assistance provided by the Department of Community Development (DCD), the Commission would generate plans for the acquisition of the market buildings and the perpetuation of market uses through “public ownership or other means.” Everyone involved realized that the ordinance was just the beginning and that it alone would not preserve the market; regulations were no substitute for planning. The first priority was to formulate quickly a plan satisfying both urban renewal funding guidelines and historic preservation priorities mandated by the ordinance. Throughout 1972 and 1973 DCD worked closely with the commission and held a series of public workshops, the product of which was two reports published in the first half of 1974: a design report and an urban renewal plan. The design report was a research study that documented and enhanced understanding of all facets of the market including its history, form, residents, merchants, and overall patterns of building usage and pedestrian movement. Its photographs, sketches, massing studies, and profile of 37 James Braman, Memo to Department of Community Development Staff, 3 Nov. 1971, SMA, box 135, folder 6. 254 market “character zones” formed the foundation for the planning controls and Historic Commission Guidelines presented in the urban renewal plan (Figure 5.7).38 The urban renewal plan then elaborated on the preservation goals and safeguards articulated in the ordinance and established the design and usage parameters for the entire project area. With respect to functional preservation, its specifications of the following points were most significant: • All real property within the historic district was designated for public acquisition, unless the current owner demonstrated the capacity and willingness to rehabilitate the property in accordance with the plan’s time parameters and preservation design and use standards. Properties acquired by the city were to then be sold to a third party for redevelopment according to the specifications outlined in the plan. • Market Historical Commission approval was required for all preservation proposals and actions. In rendering decisions on specific proposals the commission would consider market area functions and balance of land uses; impact on rent levels, existing tenants, and residents; and ability to implement the undertaking within a timeframe and phasing structure that minimized disruption of market operations. • Historic District Guidelines were established to inform existing and prospective property owners and merchants of the commission’s purpose and specific priorities (Appendix B). • The guidelines established a ranked-list of use priorities for the market that were to be considered when evaluating applications for new businesses or other development undertakings. 38 Seattle Department of Community Development, Pike Place Design Report (N.p., n.p, 1974). 255 256 Figure 5.7. Department of Community Development planners prepared numerous studies in an attempt to understand the market and its functions. The notion that the market had multiple zones with different historic functions or “Character” as this plan depicts, was later codified in the Historical Commissions guidelines. Source: SMA 35721. • Five separate zones were delineated to recognize and preserve differences in historical design, land use, and merchandising techniques within the market. Future developments were expected to conform to the existing character of each zone. The “Historical Preservation Safeguards” prescribed in the plan were intentionally designed to be flexible in their interpretation and application. The guidelines in particular anticipated the commission’s role as a mediator to reconcile the various aspirations of owners and tenants while maintaining the market’s historic physical and functional characteristics. Although not explicitly discussed in the plan itself, the greatest realization that emerged during the planning process was that the intent of the ordinance to preserve market functions, particularly for low-income residents, was fundamentally incompatible with the profit-driven motives of most private development entities. Of all the subjects studied over the two-year planning period, the economic structure of the market was the most technically challenging and thus time consuming issue to resolve. However, the release of urban renewal funding was contingent upon completion and approval of the plan. To expedite the process, the entire question of economic feasibility was deferred for later analysis, to be performed by an independent consultant following approval of the plan. Yet even the most preliminary figures suggested that a public or non-profit ownership and development structure would be necessary to achieve the functional preservation objectives.39 39 See in particular the transcript of interview with Harriet Sherburne, 26 Jan. 1981, SMA, box 135, folder 1. 257 Financing the Rehabilitation while Retaining Market Uses After HUD’s approval of the Pike Place Urban Renewal Plan in 1974 there remained the looming question of how to pay for market’s rehabilitation. The Department of Community Development hired Real Estate Research Corporation based in San Francisco, California to suggest finance strategies that were compatible with the plan’s functional and physical preservation requirements.40 It was a unique assignment compared to the analysis of more conventional real estate investments. RERC carefully considered the functional preservation goals and used creative research strategies in the preparation of its report. It obtained state income tax records and detailed space allocations for every business in the market and sorted the businesses into retail categories.41 Sales per square footage, or “sales productivity,” were calculated for each category. Using rehabilitation estimates supplied by DCD’s Pike Place planning team, RERC then assessed the financial feasibility of the entire market rehabilitation using a discounted cash flow model (i.e. a real estate pro-forma). Their main findings were surprising and encouraging: • Contrary to what most preservationists had assumed, rent subsidies would not be necessary to sustain the existing market businesses. In fact, by RERC’s calculations, most market businesses could afford to pay more than their existing rents. • Annual revenues per square foot for each retail category in the market exceeded the sales productivity of comparable businesses located in the “Far 40 RERC was already a well-respected consulting firm when DCD retained their services, but it attained an even greater reputation in the mid 1970s. In 1974, the same year that it issued its report on Pike Place Market, it also published Costs of Sprawl, a monumental study regarded today as one of the most important contributions to the subject of suburban development. See Robert Bruegmann, Sprawl: A Compact History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005): 122. 41 RERC sorted the market businesses into four retail categories: meat, poultry & fish; fruits & vegetables; retail grocery & miscellaneous; eating & drinking places. Clothing was admittedly a fifth major market category, but most of it was sold at second-hand charitable outlets like the St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Store, which did not have to report taxes and thus there was no income data available for analysis. 258 West” of the United States by a range of 4% to 80% according to statistics compiled by the Urban Land Institute. • When rent was calculated as a percentage of gross revenues, market businesses paid 85% to 235% less for rent than comparable establishments in the Far West.42 These encouraging statistics were tempered, however, by the results of the cash flow analysis and other factors stemming from the unusual nature of the project. According to the RERC report: • Based upon cost and income projections, rehabilitation was financially feasible for some, but not all of the market buildings. The main market buildings generated a positive cash flow, whereas the mixed-use retail and office buildings on First Avenue generated a negative cash flow due to the high rehabilitation costs necessary to bring them up to class-A office standards. • If considered together as one real estate investment, rehabilitation of the entire market was financially feasible when profits and losses were distributed throughout the district as a whole. • The project would be complicated due to the range of government agencies involved, the many requirements imposed by the urban renewal process in general, and the Pike Place Market District Guidelines in particular. 42 I calculated percent differences in sales and rent using data in tables 11.1 and 11.2 of Real Estate Research Corporation, “A Development Management Study for the City of Seattle Department of Community Development Pike Project Office” (San Francisco: RERC, 1974): 14-15. Table 11.2 reports a range of sales and rent figures for each comparable businesses category in the Far West; I calculated an averaged for each range to provide a percent-difference comparison to Pike Place establishments. 259 • The inherent financial and technical complexity of the market rehabilitation made for a risky endeavor from an investor’s point of view. The projected rate of return was most likely insufficient to offset the perceived risks. • Investors were generally skeptical of historic preservation projects because there were so few successful precedents of downtown rehabilitation. Based upon all of these findings, RERC recommended that the city either undertake the rehabilitation itself or in partnership with a quasi-public market development authority that would lease and manage the buildings. A market development authority would have several advantages including: tax exempt status; no concern for profit; ability to offset losses in one area of the market with gains in another; a public mandate and continuing presence necessary to sustain historic market functions; and an ongoing working relationship with public agencies. RERC also specifically suggested using a “gap analysis” technique to plan the financing of the rehabilitation. Gap analysis has since become a well-established and widely-used historic preservation finance technique to estimate the “gap” between the cost of a rehabilitation project and its value as a real estate investment; the gap represents the subsidy needed to make a project financial feasible, taking into account an investor’s required rate of return (Figure 5.8).43 In the 1970s, gap analysis was still a relatively novel technique. DCD’s Pike Project team director Harriet Sherburne described RERC’s recommended approach as “reverse economics.”44 Instead of rehabilitating each building and then finding tenants capable of paying rents to support the debt service and operating costs, Pike 43 See for example Donovan D. Rypkema, Feasibility Assessment Manual for Reusing Historic Buildings (Washington, D.C.: National Trust for Historic Preservation, n.d. [2000s]). 44 Sherburne explained how the gap financing strategy was a key to the market’s rehabilitation; see transcript of interview with Harriet Sherburne. 260 Figure 5.8. When value exceeds costs, as in Project A, private capital will normally undertake the investment without subsidy. When costs exceed value, as in Project B, a gap exists. The gap is equal to the difference between the costs of a project and its value. A subsidy is needed to fill the gap to make the project financially attractive to private investment. Illustration adapted from Donovan D. Rypkema, Feasibility Assessment Manual for Reusing Historic Buildings (N.p.: n.p., n.d.). 261 Place planners began by first considering the historic function of each building and the maximum rents the existing market tenants could reasonably pay and continue to operate a profitable business. From there they established a probable income stream, or net operating income (NOI), for each building that could then be capitalized to arrive at a value for each project. This value figure, in turn, became the basis for determining the level of conventional debt financing. The gap between the debt financing and actual rehabilitation costs would be filled by federal urban renewal funding, contributions from the city, or grants. Because the market had been in existence for seventy years, operating costs such as security and cleaning were already well established and could be inserted into the pro-formas with a reasonable degree of confidence. Prioritizing the uses and working backwards to determine the financing ensured that each discrete rehabilitation project only borrowed the amount of money that could be serviced by the rental income from traditional market businesses. Using this strategy, rents were essentially fixed to preserve the market functions at the beginning of the planning process. Under Sherburne’s leadership, DCD used the gap financing strategy to plan and implement the first major post-initiative undertaking, the rehabilitation of the Corner Market, situated at a high-profile section of the historic district at the intersection of Pike Street and Pike Place. The $600,000 rehabilitation budget was derived from a combination of private financing and an urban renewal grant. Upon completion of construction in 1975, the building was sold to the newly-formed Pike Place Public Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA), which then handled the leasing and operations. The success of the Corner Market project demonstrated the feasibility of the gap financing strategy and added a degree of confidence in the preservation goals and process among urban renewal administrators, Seattle City Council, and the private lending community. 262 Pike Place Public Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA) That some form of “Civic Development Group” should one day own and manage the market was proposed by councilman Wing Luke and supported by Steinbrueck as early as 1964, during the meetings that led up to the formation of the Friends of the Market.45 The desirability of the concept became clearer after passage of the initiative as the urban renewal plans were being amended to preserve the market, and RERC’s report further articulated the benefits to be derived from a quasipublic management and development structure. The PDA was formally charted in 1973 with the purpose of preserving and rehabilitating the historic market district in accordance with the goals of the revised urban renewal plan. It has a twelve-member board of directors, a third of which are drawn from the market community, a third appointed by the Mayor’s office, and a third elected by the board itself. In addition to physical redevelopment and general management of market properties, the PDA has also advanced the preservation goals outlined in the 1971 market preservation initiative by implementing a number of social service and business support programs that could not have been undertaken by the Historical Commission, with its volunteer membership and limited DCD staff support. Over the past thirty-five years, the PDA has drawn on a number of funding sources and used creative financing strategies to achieve its development objectives. Seattle City Council provided startup funding in its first years of existence but before long an arrangement was setup whereby the PDA received direct urban renewal funding by assuming the property management contract for the market. The PDA purchased its first building, the Corner Market, from the city at a price based on the income method of valuation. In 1976, the PDA completed its first rehabilitation on its 45 See the allied arts of Seattle, Inc., Minutes of the Pike Place Steering Committee, 30 July 1964, FOM Files, box 2, folder 1, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Divisions, Accession # 1985. 263 own, the Soames-Dunn Building, the $500,000 financing for which was a combination of an urban renewal grant, a HUD loan, and private financing. Over the following decade it completed eight more major rehabilitations using the same basic gap financing techniques. However, the sources of funding to fill that gap changed in response to the evolution of federal urban development programs. Urban renewal funding was phased out in the late 1970s and replaced by the Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG), which could be used more flexibly for development of both commercial and retail spaces. It helped that one of Washington’s senators, Warren G. Magnuson, was a stalwart supporter of the market restoration. As chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, “Maggy,” as he was affectionately known to his constituents, was able to exercise considerable influence in channeling HUD funding to the market project. As federal sources of funding became scarcer in the 1980s, the PDA used Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credits after they became available in 1981; capital raised through equity syndication to limited partners was used in the rehabilitation of both market buildings and low income housing in the historic district.46 A dozen other building projects that were a mix of either historic rehabilitation or new construction were executed by private developers, the Seattle Housing Authority, or a combination of private-public partnerships. In most of these undertakings the city acquired the buildings or vacant land one parcel at a time as they became available (condemnation was used only once), paying a price based on their highest and best use. It then sold them to either the PDA or private developers using a valuation that reflected the functional and physical preservation encumbrances imposed by the urban renewal plan and historic district ordinance. Federal urban 46 A list of the rehabilitation projects, their owners/developers, and their funding sources in the ten year period between 1975 and 1986 when most of the buildings in the district were redeveloped is available in Seattle Department of Community Development, “A Decade of Change,” pp. 19-20. 264 renewal and CDGB funding enabled the city to write-down the differences between the purchase and sale prices. As an additional preservation safeguard, each time a property was transferred out of city ownership, a restrictive covenant was attached to the deed that further reiterated the authority of the Historical Commission to regulate historic uses and appearances. The PDA continues to preserve historic market uses through rigorous tenant selection and management. When reviewing prospective tenants, the PDA’s leasing team considers a number of internal and external criteria. PDA leases stipulate that all tenants must be owner occupied and the owner has to have a regular presence on site in the market. Chains and franchises are not allowed, unless, like Starbucks and the Sur La Table kitchenware retail store, they started in the market and only later developed additional locations. Also a primary consideration is the Historical Commission’s Guidelines that stipulate the types of businesses allowed to operate in certain market zones (discussed in more detail below). The PDA’s own evaluation criteria include the uniqueness of the products or services being offered by the prospective tenant in the context of comparable goods and services in the Seattle area. Handmade products are prioritized over mass-produced merchandize. The PDA’s charter also emphasizes the provision of services to low income market residents, so businesses or organizations that cater to this community are given special consideration in leasing and rental agreements. RERC’s prediction that financial losses in some areas of the market would need to be offset by gains in others has proven to be true over time. The PDA now owns and manages the majority of the property within the market historic district and is completely self-supporting; it receives no annual funding from the City of Seattle. Its entire operating budget is derived from the rent it receives from its roughly 225 265 commercial tenants, half of which gross less than $150,000 a year.47 Just like at many other retail venues, including major shopping malls, PDA tenants pay the greater of either a negotiated base rent or a percentage of the business’s gross sales. Unlike most other retail property managers, however, to preserve the historic character of the market functions the PDA willingly accepts and endures many tenants who only pay the base rent. In other words, the percentage of their gross sales never exceeds their negotiated base rent, which is often already below-market rate for downtown Seattle. The more economically productive tenants such as the fish merchants, specialty grocery stores, and restaurants subsidize the less profitable business to such an extent that a third of all PDA rent revenues is paid by the top-ten grossing market businesses. Carol Binder, the PDA’s Executive Director since 1999, describes the market’s financial structure as a fragile balance characterized by a “symbiotic” relationship among tenants. Although the details of individual leases are private, the merchants generally understand that some tenants pay more rent per square foot than others and that such arrangements are critical to the market’s overall health. According to Binder, merchants “know the philosophy of the market, and the market has been good enough to them that they accept the philosophy.” Some of the most traditional market businesses are the least profitable. Produce stands, for example, are low margin enterprises that generate small net profits. Yet their existence in the market supplements and diversifies the range of produce offered by the farmer vendors and also enables shoppers to obtain a full line of fresh foods. The produce vendors, together with other low-revenue merchants whose presence endows the market with specialty goods and a unique character, help to drive the consumer traffic that enables a smaller number of high-margin businesses to generate greater sales revenue. 47 The 225 tenants do not include farmers and crafts merchants who rent tables on a daily basis in certain sections of the market. 266 In addition to developing properties and managing tenants, the PDA also incubated and continues to support a number of non-profit social-service providers. Both before and immediately following passage of the preservation initiative, the Friends of the Market believed that in order to the preserve the low-income character of the market, it was necessary to retain a low-income population of downtown residents; they hoped low income shoppers would provide the customer base to support the thrift stores, taverns, and other businesses that sold off-grade products that gave the market the character it had in the 1960s and 1970s. Yet it seems that Steinbrueck in particular, who became a member of the Market Historical Commission following the initiative, thought that it was possible to regulate these types of businesses into existence. Other interested members of the public took it upon themselves to sustain the market’s elderly, low-income residents by developing a range of support services. They turned to the PDA for assistance. In a 1977 a Pike Market Clinic was established by volunteers in one of the market’s former taverns, a space it shared with the Pike Market Senior Center, a separate program started around the same time. It is tempting, in retrospect, to see the growth of these and subsequent programs as the product of a remarkably comprehensive historic preservation plan that integrated physical, functional, and social concerns. In reality, however, the social programs were neither part of the urban renewal plan, nor where they explicitly mentioned in the text of the initiative. They evolved spontaneously over time as the PDA and others gained a greater understanding of the needs of the downtown, low-income population. Under its first director, the PDA collected a range of socioeconomic data to assess these needs and determine the level of existing service. It found that 20,000 people lived downtown in the late 1970s. While nearly 300 doctors maintained offices in the inner city—which the King County Medical Association claimed was the highest 267 concentration in all of Seattle—only two accepted Medicaid patients and perhaps only twenty would take Medicare. These findings clearly established the need for the Market Clinic. Research also concluded that, contrary to popular belief, between 300 and 400 children lived downtown, 90% of them with single parents, and half of them under the poverty level. To meet the childcare needs of market residents, shoppers, and greater downtown community, Pike Market Child Care began in 1976 and was formally organized as the Market Child Care Center in 1982 (Figure 5.9). It offers a sliding fee schedule to accommodate budgets of working parents and single parents. Social services for the low-income community were coordinated and expanded through the Market Foundation, formed in 1982. This independent, private, non-profit organization works with the PDA to “preserve the traditions and diversity” of the market district. In addition to medical, childcare and senior center services, it also operates a downtown food bank, a “Foodlink” program that distributes unsold market produce to other Seattle food banks, and a “Market Fresh” coupon program that the PDA distributes to its low-income market residents. The coupons enable the residents to purchase produce from market vendors, who then redeem them with the PDA for cash. The PDA supports the foundation by providing low-cost office space, donating office management services, and paying the salary of the foundation’s executive director.48 Preserving Farmers at Pike Place Market The 1971 voter initiative that created the Pike Place Market Historical District stressed the educational, economic, and cultural importance of the district as a “center of local farm marketing.” Preservation and promotion of regional farming and market 48 Office of the City Auditor (Seattle), “Management Review of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority,” Dec. 8, 1999, p. 6. 268 Figure 5.9. Pike Market Child Care was established in 1976. The signs the children are holding are hand written on the backs of old “Let’s Keep the Market” posters that the Friends of the Market printed to advertise the 1973 preservation voter initiative. Source: Photograph circa 1976, Pike Place Market Visual Images and Audiotapes, Item #: 37848, SMA. 269 selling were emphasized in sections describing the purpose of the ordinance and the functions of the historical commission that it established and empowered. Meeting such a challenge implied formulating interventions that stretched well beyond the physical boundaries of the market district, and utilizing tools not typically associated with the historic preservation movement. The preservationists who drafted the ordinance knew as well as anyone that the attendance of farmers at the market had declined steadily since at least the conclusion of World War II. Preserving regional farming and marketing at Pike Place was an ambitious goal. Yet preservationists interpreted passage of the initiative as a clear signal from the citizens of Seattle that it was desirable to do so. The question then became: how? A study conducted in 1974 by the Seattle Department of Community Development outlined the scope of the challenge in terms of existing market farmers and larger trends in farming throughout the Puget Sound region. It first documented the historical patterns in farmer participation at the market (the statistics about this are in the next chapter) and then surveyed a sample of the 60 farmers who were issued permits in 1973. It conveyed a bleak prospect for the future of farmers at the market. Among its major findings was that Pike Place Market farmers: • Owned small farms, generally less than five acres, most of which were located within the Seattle City limits and therefore especially threatened by urban develop pressures. • Tended to practice an increasingly rare form of diversified agriculture, growing as many as 15 different crops per season. • Sold a significant portion of their crops to large wholesalers and grocery store chains; few farmers sold their entire yield at the market and most relied on other sources of income to supplement their farm earnings. 270 • On average were 60 years old and had little family help; most of their children had already left the farm and had no interest in the farming lifestyle. The clear post-war trend in the Seattle region, and throughout the nation, was a movement away from diversified market farming toward large-scale, industrial agribusinesses. Puget Sound farmers found themselves squeezed by rapid price inflation for agricultural inputs, equipment, and property taxes. Many funded their retirements by selling their land to larger industrialized farming operations. Motivated by diminishing profit margins and competition from California growers, Seattle-area agribuinsseses expanded their landholding and specialized in single crops to maximize their efficiency and intensity of production. They sold this output to wholesale operations or grocery store chains; many crops were even grown on commission, effectively sold in advance of harvest. There was little hope at that time that such large-scale operations would have any interest in selling produce directly to consumers at Pike Place Market. Faced with the possibility that the last of Pike Place Market’s producer/sellers would retire within a decade with no obvious successors to take their place, the PDA pursued a range of strategies to retain existing market farmers and cultivate new ones. First it sought to publicize the problems faced by the small farmers of King County. The PDA produced a twenty-eight minute documentary film released in 1976—“Last Farmer at the Market.” It achieved its intended goals of raising awareness and mobilizing action. Making of the film brought together for the first time the group of influential agricultural, political, and environmental leaders who, later in the decade, successfully spearheaded passage of a $35 million Farmland Preservation bond initiative. Only the second program of its type in the country—and the first created by 271 a citizen voter initiative—the program enabled the purchase of development rights protecting 13,000 acres of land on over 200 King County farms.49 Subsequent PDA initiatives sought to draw new farmers into the market. In 1977 it created the Bulk Commodities Exchange (BCE), a non-profit producer/consumer wholesale cooperative. Cosponsored by the King County Office of Agriculture and the Seattle Hunger Action Center, the BCE served as direct- marketing channel linking small farmers and local consumers by providing an accessible outlet for bulk sales of fresh produce. It successfully attracted two new groups of producers to the market: farmers who grew too much to dispose of at farmers’ markets, but too little for wholesale houses; and farmers who grew mainly for wholesale, but still need alternative outlets for surplus or off-grade produce. Its customers included Seattle-resident-organized buying clubs, restaurants, and other institutions.50 Because of its non-profit status and financial subsidy, the markup on BCE produce was less than at retail grocery store chains such as Safeway.51 The BCE grew rapidly in the late 1970s and achieved success in drawing new farmers to the market. As the program expanded in size and complexity, however, some customers became frustrated when produce they ordered was unavailable. In 49 Transcript of interview with George Rolf, 1984, SMA, box 134, folder 24; for brief historical overview of the agricultural land preservation in Kind County, see “King County Farmland Preservation Program,” HistoryLink.org Essay 7691 (accessed 6/6/08); Suffolk County, NY on Long Island is credited with passing the nation’s first farmland bond initiative. These and other local and federal farmland initiatives were part of a nation-wide movement to preserve “open space” that began in 1960s and ‘70s; see Stephan J. Schmidt, “The Evolving Relationship Between Open Space Preservation and Local Planning Practice,” Journal of Planning History 7, no. 2 (May 2008): 91-112. 50 United States Office of Technology Assessment, An Assessment of Technology for Local Development (Washington, D.C.: USPGO, 1981): 134-135; and Seattle Department of Community Development, “A Decade of Change: A Final Report on the Preservation and Redevelopment of the Pike Place Market,” Seattle, 1983, p. 48. 51 Don Shakow describes the Bulk Commodities Exchange program, compares the marketing costs and returns of different marketing methods in King County, and analyzes the prices of vegetables at various Seattle outlets including Pike Place Market, supermarkets, and wholesale houses and farm stands; at the time of his study, the Pike Place’s produce prices were lower than supermarkets but higher than those of wholesale houses or farm stands; see Don Shakow, “The Municipal Farmer’s Market as an Urban Service,” Economic Geography 57, no. 1 (Jan. 1981): 68-77. 272 response, the program began to purchase produce in advance and keep an inventory; but ultimately this resulted in produce spoilage, lost revenues, and cash flow problems that brought an end to the program sometime in the mid 1980s.52 The PDA cultivated and supported new farmers through its Farmer Liaison program, started in 1977 to provide a variety of technical assistance and promotional services to attract new growers to the market. These included marketing workshops for inexperienced farmers, local produce promotional campaigns, and an outreach program to support Indochinese refugee farmers. The source of the next generation of market farmers was unclear in 1974, and they ended up coming from an unexpected source: the Southeast Asian country Laos. For more than a decade during the Vietnam War, the CIA secretly recruited the Hmong, a mountain-dwelling ethnic minority, to fight the communist North Vietnamese. When Laos fell to Communism in 1975, the Hmong fled into the jungles and many became refugees in Thailand; some were granted refugee status in the United States (a process that continues today). There are now large concentrations of Hmong in the Minneapolis area, northern California, and the Pacific Northwest. Traditionally an agrarian people, the Hmong have become active participants in area farmers markets wherever they relocate. In the Seattle region they grow flowers and produce on small farms that are often less than a handful of acres. In 2000, approximately half of the producers selling at Pike Place were Hmong.53 A small revolving loan fund was created to help these and other new farmers at Pike Place Market who are unable to get commercial loans buy small equipment and supplies.54 52 The exact date of its demise is unclear; see Office of the City Auditor (Seattle), “Management Review of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority,” Dec. 8, 1999; for a profile one Seattle restaurateur who used the BCE, see Alf Collins, “Rosellini Carries on—and Modifies—The Family Tradition,” Seattle Times, 4 June 1986, p. C1. 53 “Laotian Farmers Bring Color to Crops, Land,” The Columbian (Vancouver, W.A.), 6 Oct. 2000, p. C2. 54 “A Decade of Change,” p. 48. 273 Continual innovation has kept the farmers market a vital component of the Pike Place Market. Two programs were created in 1997 to address the supply of and induce demand for local agricultural products. An “Organic Farmer Day” was established each Wednesday from late June through October to attract new farmers engaged in the rapidly expanding organic agriculture movement; seventeen farmers participated in the first year, twelve of which were new, and two that had not sold at Pike Street Market in a decade. In response to demand from consumers and sellers, the program was expanded the following year to two days a week with the addition of Sunday. Supply and demand for organic products skyrocketed between the late 1990s and the present. PDA Farm Program personnel work with market farmers, including members of the minority Hmong community, to obtain state certification as organic farmers. Washington State ranked third in the nation for the number of USDAaccredited organic agricultural operations in 2005, the most recent date for which data is available.55 The “Market Basket Program,” also begun in 1997, was a form of community supported agriculture (CSA). It shared some similarities to the BCE of the 1970s and 1980s, except that the Market Basket Program was more oriented toward individual retail consumers. As is now commonly done with CSA nationwide, participants purchased shares of the farming harvest before the growing season begins. Farmer and consumer participation in the program grew rapidly and the program was thought to catalyze enhanced market shopping when CSA shareholders picked up their allotment and made additional purchases in the market.56 Like the BCE that preceded it, however, the Market Basket Program experienced difficulty coordinating supply and demand; it was abruptly discontinued, 55 According to data compiled by the USDA’s Economic Research Service; see http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/Organic/ (accessed 9 June 2008). 56 “Management Review of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority,” p. 16-17. 274 with some controversy, in 2007. Interpretations differ about the cause of its demise. Some of the farmer participants felt that it was due to the PDA’s mismanagement. From the PDA’s perspective, however, the program was extremely difficult to coordinate; at its peak, between 25 and 30 farmers supported 750 share-holder customers with basket delivery locations throughout the city, including directly to some home-bound seniors. As the program expanded, Pike Place became more of a distribution hub than a farmers market, according to the PDA’s executive director Carol Binder. Furthermore, while subsidies were planned for the initial years of its operation, the goal was for the CSA program to become financially self-sufficient by the year 2000; but ultimately it never operated without PDA subsidy.57 The history of the PDA’s various farm programs deserve further research in the future because it highlights the difficulties of both sustaining successful programs and constantly reinventing new ones that better address the changing circumstances of producers and consumers. The farmer/vendor component of Pike Place Market has thrived in ways that were hard to imagine in the mid 1970s, but success also breeds its own unique challenges. Among them is Pike Place now has to compete with an everexpanding list of smaller farmers markets located throughout Seattle that provide more convenient access to a wider breadth of residential neighborhoods. When the USDA conducted a nation-wide survey in 1946, Pike Place was one of two retail farmers markets in the state of Washington. The number of farmers markets has grown exponentially over the last twenty years. While there were still only ten farmers markets in the state in 1990, there were over sixty in 1999 and 120 in 2008. Seattle 57 Kathy Mulady, “Market Basket CSA: Pike Place Market Uproots Farmer-Support Program,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 17 Feb. 2007. 275 residents and regional farmers can now choose to buy and sell at ten farmers markets located within the city, including Pike Place.58 Success like this is cause for celebration and concern. On the one hand it means that the number of local farmers is stable or growing, and that Seattleans are forging closer personal and consumer relationships to local agriculture, which were among the central goals of the market preservation initiative. Recent research documents the increasing significance of farmers’ direct and local marketing activities in Washington State. As of 2002, nearly 60% of the state’s vegetable growers used some form of direct marketing like farmers markets or CSAs. A survey of consumers in four Washington Counties that included Seattle (King County) indicated that 43% buy directly from farmers at least once a month.59 Pike Place Market is widely credited with preserving the farmers’ market tradition in the State of Washington, and for encouraging its reestablishment throughout the nation in later decades. On the other hand, it means that consumers no longer need Pike Place Market to participate in CSA or to buy locally-grown produce. They now have other options, and the PDA has to work harder to preserve the market’s historic function as a venue where consumers come to buy directly from producers. 58 John L. Wann, et. al., Farmers’ Produce Markets in the United States (Washington, D.C.: USDA, 1948): 111; on the growth of markets in Washington in the 1990s, see “Management Review of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority,” p. 15; for growth in the number of markets since 2000, see Tan Vinh, “Region to See Bumper Crop of Spreading Farm Markets—2 Dozen and Growing,” Seattle Times, 21 Mar. 2005; Mike Louisell, “WSDA, Washington State University Offer New Tool to Support Farmers Markets,” press release dated 24 Mar. 2008, agr.wa.gov/News/2008/08-10.htm; and Washington State Farmers Markets Association directory, available online at www.wafarmersmarkets.com (both accessed on 9 June 2008). 59 Marcia Ostrom and Raymond Jussaume, Jr., “Assessing the Significance of Direct Farmer-Consumer Linkages as a Change Strategy in Washington State: Civic or Opportunistic,” in Remaking the North American Food System: Strategies for Sustainability, edited by C. Clare Hinrichs and Thomas Lyson (Lincoln, N.E.: University of Nebraska Press, 2007): 235-259. 276 Regulating Uses to Preserve Function: The Market Historical Commission The procedures and methods used by local landmarks commissions to regulate historic architectural design were reasonably well established throughout the country when the market preservation initiative was passed in 1971. Drawing on local and national precedents, the initiative clearly articulated the new Market Historical Commission’s scope and processes for architectural review. However, when it came to regulating historic uses, there were few if any models to follow. The twelvemember commission struggled over a two-year period to draft guidelines to structure the future trajectory of market business development. Although a complete analysis of the commission’s evolving approach to functional preservation is beyond the scope of this study, several observations are worth noting. The minutes of the meetings the Commission held during the period between 1972 and 1973 when the first edition of the guidelines were published contain fascinating insights into the difficulties of regulating uses for the purposes of historic preservation. The market redevelopment controversy and the voter initiative generated a great deal of interest in the market among both consumers and aspiring entrepreneurs. Following passage of the preservation initiative, the commission received a steady stream of applications from existing merchants wishing to modify their spaces and expand their product lines as well as from prospective tenants seeking to establish new market businesses. Two issues consumed the majority of the discussion as the commission vetted the applications: affordability of the proposed goods or services, and the appropriateness of proposed design modifications. It was difficult to reach consensus and form principled decisions on whether or not a business served the needs of the low-income community because there were never any clear definitions or benchmarks of affordability. The commission’s discussion of a few applications illustrates the point. When Ma Bells doughnut shop, 277 a new market business, proposed to sell smoothies, ice cream, and hamburgers for $.95, one of the commissioners asked how these prices compared with the prices of what had previously been sold at that location in the market. The question seemed to suggest that past uses rather literally ought to inform future pricing. Steinbrueck raised another issue; he said he would vote to approve the application, but with “misgivings” because the business seemed to be “a sort of franchise operation.” Some other commissioners agreed that chains and franchises were “destructive to the market” due to their standardized operating procedures and a perceived reputation for poor food quality. However, Joe Desimone, whose family owned and operated a large portion of the market before it was purchased by the city after the initiative, noted that if affordability was a primary concern, then franchises often gave the public “the most for their money.” Furthermore, he pointed out that franchises were not the same as chains; the former were generally locally owned whereas only the latter were centrally owned and managed. Indeed, issues of quality, affordability, and character could conflict with one another, and were often less clear-cut than they appeared on the surface. Other applications were made compatible with the commission’s diffuse affordability standards with only minor modifications. A new store named Sur La Table that proposed to sell kitchen utensils seemed appropriate because it was related to food and cooking. One of the commissioners suggested that a pot exchange would be useful for low-income people. When the prospective owner expressed an interest in the idea, her application was immediately approved. Sur La Table went on to become a highly-successful retail business in the market and beyond; it now has 71 locations in 26 states, although it no longer offers a pot exchange. It was debated whether certain lines of food would always be out of the economic reach of low-income shoppers. Long-time market merchant Joe 278 DeLaurenti, for example, came before the commission seeking approval to expand his grocery store to offer sandwiches, espresso coffee, and a pastry bar, as well as a larger variety of cheeses, meats, and other Italian specialties. The proposal led one commissioner to wonder “if it were possible to have an ethnic grocery that would remain low cost.” All commissioners generally agreed that the market should encourage specialty food items, and yet this led to an inherent conflict: specialty food items were rare by definition; often imported, they were likely to be pricier than more commonly-available goods. DeLaurenti was unapologetic; his store would “not cater to the thrift customer,” he said. After some modifications of the design scheme, his application was approved, in part probably because he was one of the patriarch merchants in the market. Today DeLaurenti Specialty Food and Wine is one of the most famous stores in the Pike Place Market and is probably among the top ten grossing establishments that subsidizes other less profitable businesses. Still more problematic in these early years of commission review were proposals for new businesses that explicitly appeared to cater to a high-class clientele. Interior design intentions were read as a clear indication of class alignment, as was the case with one applicant who wished to open a new “barber shop” in a location where one had previously existed in the market. When they learned that the ratio of customers would be three women for every one man, the commissioners decided that the proposal before them was “more of a hairdressing salon than a barber shop,” which they considered to be a significant change of use. Nevertheless, the applicant went on to describe his proposed design scheme in detail. He “wanted to have decoupage and mirror on one wall; other walls would be painted Jack Frost White. He preferred red velvet for restoring the barber chair, and see-through white drapes …with a brown velvet swag. … [He] mentioned using a shag rug on the floor.” Upon hearing this description one of the Commissioners asked if this type of salon would be “catering to 279 the high income people, rather than the lower-income customer.” The applicant confirmed that he would be bringing his clientele with him. Another commissioner wondered if it might be appropriate to allow a few businesses into the market that appealed to “higher income people.” Apparently not, since the application was denied on voting. It was one thing to offer goods that did “not cater to the thrift customer,” but quite another to offer a service specifically for the upper-middle class and beyond. Moreover, entrepreneurs new to the market lacked the clout of merchants like DeLaurenti. Examples like these underscore the challenges and confusion the young commission faced in trying to regulate market uses, design standards, and affordability considerations. Their decisions became more predictable and less arbitrary after the first market guidelines were issues in 1973. Surprisingly, given how much debate was initially dedicated to affordability, the guidelines’ emphasis on low-income businesses was fairly weak. Goods and services accessible to low-income shoppers were third in a list of four commission priorities. The ranked list of activities to be encouraged in the historic district only referred more generally to uses that “bring together a broad spectrum of people of all backgrounds.” Low-income housing for “the elderly, the transient and the single,” was mentioned more specifically, perhaps out of recognition that there were government programs to fund its creation and maintenance, as opposed to businesses that catered to low-income populations, which the commission eventually may have realized were impossible to regulate into existence. Over time, the PDA and Market Foundation developed housing, services, and support programs to address the needs of the low-income community. Some merchants still help lowincome people, but instead of structuring their entire business model around them, they serve this subset of the market community in more subtle ways, like the high-end 280 French bakery that saves its day-old bread for the elderly residents who live in the apartments above. After the turn of the twenty-first century, the affordability of market goods and services typically was no longer a factor considered by the Market Historical Commission. Its reviews generally involve either architectural compliance or use compliance. Separate subcommittees review these issues independently and then forward their recommendations to the full commission. Economic issues more broadly, however, continue to be a point of occasional conflict between the commission and the market’s management, the PDA. While the commission does not get involved in management issues such as rent levels or the overall economic viability of the market, its decisions have the potential to dramatically influence both. As John Costonis wrote in his classic book Icons and Aliens, the controls imposed by local historic designation are ripe for controversy because they are based upon values that are subject to interpretation and are therefore apt to generate differences of opinion.60 This is not to say that such controls are necessarily arbitrary, unprincipled, or indefensible, but rather to acknowledge that in a regulatory context, difference of opinion have the capacity to create conflict. A tension between the PDA and the Market Historical Commission was noted by one preservation scholar as early as the late 1970s,61 and it still exists today. The current executive director of the PDA Carol Binder says that the balance between preservation and change results in a “constant yin and yang” between the PDA and the commission. Both have the same objective, but in her opinion they approach it in different ways. She thinks the commission seeks to preserve the market the way it was when the initiative was 60 John J. Costonis, Icons and Aliens: Law, Aesthetics, and Environmental Change (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1989). 61 Nathan Weinberg, Preservation in American Towns and Cities (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, Inc., 1979): 205-6. 281 passed, to literally freeze the market as it was in 1971. The PDA, on the other hand, thinks the market is a public resource that must always be changing in response to consumer needs and desires.62 For its part, the commission sees itself as carrying out the mandate that it was given by Seattle voters to preserve the form and uses of the market that were described in the ordinance. It was, after all, the commission and not the PDA that was specifically created by the initiative and entrusted with the market’s preservation. Faneuil Hall Marketplace Outreach, Advocacy, and Protest Historians who have examined Boston city planning in general and Faneuil Hall Marketplace in particular characterize the market redevelopment as a relatively uncontroversial project. They describe how preservationists, led by Walter Muir Whitehill, were able to convince the Boston Redevelopment Agency (BRA) Director Edward Logue that the Quincy Market buildings were architectural significant and thus worthy of preservation and reuse. Convinced by their case, Logue approached the markets as a preservation undertaking. The Thompson and Rouse project became one of the most successful and celebrated examples in the country of the adaptive reuse of historic properties through urban renewal. Because they focus only on the retention of the buildings and largely overlook the merchants and marking activities that were displaced, most see the redevelopment as an unmitigated victory for historic preservation and economic development.63 Those who do consider the merchants 62 Binder interview. The first director of the PDA voiced an almost identical view of the Commission as a conservative regulator preventing the market from being a dynamic enterprise responsive to consumers; see Transcript of interview with George Rolfe, 1981, SMA, box 134, folder 24. 63 See for example Lawrence W. Kennedy’s Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston since 1630 (Amherst, Mass.: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992); Thomas H. O’Connor, Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993); and, writing from the perspectives of contemporary urban planning and economic development, Bernard J. 282 indicate that they too benefited from the redevelopment since the old markets were outdated, inefficient, and poorly located for modern food distribution.64 Actually, there were many who supported functional preservation, arguing that the merchants served a valuable purpose in their present location and were part of Boston’s heritage that was also worth saving. These protests were admittedly not as visible as the ones on behalf of Pike Place in Seattle. Boston market advocacy had a different style. While some merchants seemed glad to take advantage of government support to move to new facilities, there were others who feared for their economic survival and wished to remain in the downtown market district. Their apparent lack of resistance needs to put into context; their relative silence should not be interpreted as consent. As discussed in the preceding chapter, the eminent Boston historian Walter Muir Whitehill ardently supported the functional preservation of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market. Unlike Steinbrueck who used a wide breadth of advocacy techniques in Seattle, Whitehill preferred to exercise influence through his personal connections to powerful people. The approach had worked for him in the past when other historic resources were threatened by urban renewal. O’Connor describes one episode in particular when, upon hearing the Sears Crescent was to be demolished as part of the Government Center project, Whitehill stormed into Logue’s office and convinced him and the other “cigar-chewing ‘pols’ in the old city Hall” to spare the historic structure.65 Whitehill approached advocating for the functional preservation of Faneuil Hall in a similar manner. He privately solicited help from other prominent Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989). 64 See John Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market: A Boston Landmark (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2003). 65 See O’Connor, Building a New Boston, 200-201. 283 preservationists like Bertram Little at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities and the members of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. He and Little explained to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission why the merchants and market uses of Faneuil Hall were as historic as the building itself; and they pleaded with the commission to “strongly reaffirm the necessity of maintaining the ground floor of Faneuil Hall as a market” when it submitted its final report to Congress.66 For reasons that are not clear in the historic record, Whitehill and Little’s recommendation was not followed. The commission’s final report contained a lengthy evaluation of Faneuil Hall’s architectural significance and discussed the many important speeches and meetings that took place in its second-story hall, but the merchants and their marketing activities were barely mentioned at all.67 In his book on the history of Quincy Market, John Quincy, Jr. implies that because no lawsuits were filed against the BRA by either market building owners whose property was seized by eminent domain or food merchants who were forced to relocate, both must have generally consented to the urban renewal project. In fact, for a variety of different reasons, many of the food merchants objected to the relocation. Those who did maintained that, contrary to the USDA’s official position, they were operating efficiently in the older buildings. Moreover, the costs of doing business in the old market were well established; while the USDA and the BRA both offered enticing statistics to estimate the savings to be gained in the move to more efficient facilities, ultimately the operating costs associated with new locations were unknown and difficult to estimate.68 Merchants described as “small and marginal” feared that 66 “Faneuil Hall and Market: A Statement by the Massachusetts Historical Society addressed to the Boston National Historic Sites Commission,” 14 Nov. 1957, Walter Muir Whitehill Papers, Box 2, Folder 13, Boston Athenaeum. 67 See Boston National Historic Sites Commission, Final Report of the Boston National Historic Sites Commission (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1961). 68 James Breagy, “Relocation Problems Voiced: Faneuil Hall Area Approves Renewal,” Boston Herald, 16 April 1964. And according to some accounts, the merchants still enjoyed a strong customer base as 284 the move would run them out of businesses.69 A handful of city councilors opposed the relocation because their constituents worked and shopped in the market and none of the proposed sites for a new market was within the city limits.70 If at least some preservationists, merchants, and politicians opposed displacing the market’s function, then why were there not more organized protests? Some possible explanations are suggested by The Urban Villagers, a classic study whose author Herbert Gans found that there was relatively weak resistance to the destruction of Boston’s West End. Circumstances involving the urban renewal of the West End and the market were similar in number of ways, despite the obvious difference that one was a residential neighborhood and the other was a business district. According to Gans, the residents of the West End never really believed the city would ever demolish their neighborhood because various redevelopment schemes had been discussed but never acted upon for nearly a half century. Working-class West Enders also had trouble understanding and then organizing and responding to the urban renewal process, with its multiple preliminary and final approvals among federal, state, and local officials.71 The same patterned occurred for the market and its merchants. The Boston City Planning Board and the USDA had both recommended its reconstruction or relocation a number of times before, with no visible results. Market merchants were also confronted with what a reporter from the Boston Herald called an late as 1971; see Joan Cook, “Boston’s Market—It’s Traditions Endure,” New York Times, 8 Jun. 1971, p. 44. 69 Anthony J. Yudis, “Atlantic Av. Revamp Boosted, But Small Food Dealers, Fearing Relocation, Balky,” Boston Globe, 16 April 1964. Their concerns were well founded; one of the few studies to examine the issue found that roughly a third of the small businesses forcibly relocated by urban renewal in Providence, R.I. closed after they were displaced; food stores had the highest failure rate (40%). See Basil G. Zimmer, The Effects of Displacement and Relocation on Small Businesses (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1964). 70 Jacques Gordon, “Case Study: Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston,” unpublished typescript, part of a series of case studies of downtown development directed by Professors Bernard J. Frieden and Lynne B. Sagalyn, MIT, January 1984. 71 Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free Press, 1962): 290-291. 285 “avalanche of statistics poured on them by the BRA relocation staff, the Chamber’s Downtown Waterfront Corporation, and particularly by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, documenting that they would be better off in a modern center away from the congestion of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market.” How were working-class merchants to respond to this type of data? They could fight the plan, but as the head of the Boston Grocers Association explained, merchants doubted their efficacy because they had heard so many stories of how property had been taken in urban renewal undertakings elsewhere in Boston.72 Market men who attended public hearings knew that with the mayor and the chamber of commerce supporting redevelopment, the outcome of the public process was “a foregone conclusion.”73 Whitehill never opposed the redevelopment of the granite Quincy Market buildings. In fact, he co-authored a major architectural and feasibility study of the Quincy Market buildings commissioned by the BRA, and he was vice president of the Faneuil Hall Markets Landmark Corporation, one of development teams that submitted proposals to adapt the three buildings into a mixed use commercial center. It recommended in its proposal that the city retain public ownership and management of the central Quincy Market building, maintaining it as “a traditional home for market stalls and retailing of food.” On the second floor they suggested other public amenities such as a daycare center and a branch of the Boston Public Library.74 Ultimately, however, Benjamin and Jane Thompson were the most articulate and convincing advocates for the functional preservation of the central Quincy Market Building. As described in the previous chapter, the husband and wife team proposed 72 James Breagy, “Food Men’s Consent Expected for Move from Faneuil Hall,” Boston Herald, 12 April 1964. 73 Daniel J. Corcoran, “Trades Color for Efficiency, Faneuil Hall Market Nears End,” Boston Globe, 14 April 1964. 74 Faneuil Hall Markets Landmark Corporation, Redevelopment Faneuil Hall Markets (Boston: Faneuil Hall Markets Landmark Corporation, 1970), Boston Public Library Central Branch, Government Documents, BRA/872/1970 AND 1971. 286 retaining the existing market merchants who wished to stay, and supplementing them with other vendors of fresh food. Their connection to James Rouse provided the combination of architectural design, financial equity, and real estate development experience that the BRA felt was necessary to bring the project to fruition. Functional Preservation Planning The functional preservation planning of Faneuil Hall Marketplace was influenced by a number of important design and development concepts that were established by research conducted prior to the selection of a market developer. Before issuing a request for proposals, in 1967 the BRA paid a distinguished team of consultants from Architectural Heritage Incorporated and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities to study the history of the markets, prepare plans and specifications for their restoration, and assess the financial feasibility of the overall project. The research culminated a year later in a five-volume report. Three of the volumes contained drawings, specifications, and cost estimates prepared by architect Frederick Stahl for the restoration of the market buildings to their original early-nineteenth century appearance. Unlike the central market building that had always remained in municipal ownership, the granite rows that fronted onto North and South Market Street were comprised of individual building units that were owned and constructed by private developers in accordance with the design scheme prepared by Alexander Parris that unified the overall appearance of their facades. Over the course of one hundred and fifty years, however, private owners altered the facades of their individual buildings by adding additional floors or by implementing stylistic updates. The elite members of the Boston preservation community—Whitehill among them— felt that these changes undermined the purity of Parris’s composition, the architectural significance of which was thought to derive from its original uniformity. A decision 287 was made to strip off these later additions and restore the buildings back to their original early-nineteenth century appearance, “in a manner consistent with their national historic significance” (Figure 5.10).75 The documentation necessary to execute the restoration was provided in a volume of the report that consisted of a detailed architectural and functional history of the market buildings. It documented a range of past retail and wholesale market uses, but it included no information about the roughly twenty remaining market tenants, the food products they carried, or the customers they served. Taken as a whole, the history volume and the architectural drawings and specifications convey the impression that restoration of the historic buildings was a higher priority than preserving their historic market functions. Financing the Rehabilitation while Retaining Market Uses The most important details for retaining market uses were contained in the volume of the report that dealt with the real estate and marketing, and the development and disposition strategies. Using net rentable square footage calculations provided by Stahl, and applying office and retail rental figures based conservatively on other nearby Boston properties, the authors calculated an approximate value for the entire market rehabilitation project. These numbers, along with a general overview of the project, were then presented at the 1968 annual meeting of the Urban Land Institute (ULI), where a panel of experts provided comments on the marketing and leasing plans. Based upon their analysis and the ULI feedback, the authors made the following conclusions and recommendations: 75 Faneuil Hall Markets Report. 288 289 Figure 5.10. Frederick Stahl’s proposal for the restoration of the South Market Building, 1968. From top to bottom: an existing conditions photograph montage, demolition elevation, and restoration elevation. Heavier texture and line weight are used in the two elevation drawings to indicate the portions of the buildings to be demolished and restored, respectively. Source: John Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market, 173. • It was worth restoring the North and South Market Buildings to their original appearance even though it would cost an extra $600,000 to do so. The aesthetic benefits gained in doing so seemed to outweigh the costs in an overall restoration that was estimated at $10,000,000. • The appraised value for all three buildings was approximately $8,500,000 based upon the capitalization of estimated net rental income. This left a $1,500,000 gap that would have to be filled by some form of public subsidy.76 • Given their proximity to the new government center and other anticipated or recently-completed downtown developments, the market buildings were well positioned for retail and office tenants. The basement and first floor of all three buildings should be rented to retail tenants; all space above the first floor should be rented to office tenants. • Careful selection of diverse and high-quality retail tenants would be very important to the project’s success, a point that was emphasized by the ULI panel. “Boutique retail” and unique restaurants, lounges, and bars were recommended as tenants along with other specialty food stores. • The existing retail food merchants should be retained at their present location in the west end of the Quincy Market Building. New retail food stores should be added to this area to “strengthen the identity of the existing 76 Strangely, when the authors determined that it would cost an additional $600,000 to restore the North and South Market Buildings, it seems they were only referring to the difference in the construction costs between restoration and what they called “simple rehabilitation;” they appeared never to have calculated the opportunity cost of removing the many upper floor additions, which would likely have contained thousands of square feet of space that could have been rented as offices. Their failure to do so is another strong indication of the emphasis that was placed upon architectural restoration. 290 shops.” Rent for retail food stores are set at the upper range of their existing levels.77 • The city should long-term lease, rather than sell, all three buildings at a value that would enable a developer to undertake the substantial rehabilitation necessary to complete the restoration in accordance with the architectural plans. If the project turned out to be profitable, leasing the buildings would give the city a share of the market’s gross revenues. • A Market Historic Commission should be established to safeguard “the values inherent in the form of development and uses under consideration.” To ensure its authority to participate in tenant selection and design decisions, the city should incorporate “strong and lasting lease restrictions.” In sum, the marketing study and disposition strategy concluded that if money could be found to close the gap between project costs and value, the restoration was economically feasible and complemented other downtown planning goals. The BRA decided to pursue the redevelopment. Using the documentation provided in the reports, it applied for a $2.0 million federal historic preservation grant from HUD, a new category of funding made possible by the Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966.78 The BRA received the HUD grant in 1969 and in October of the following year it published a developer’s kit to solicit bids for the project. Progress was stymied 77 The real estate proformas for the Quincy Market Building indicate that the west wing “stays in existing tenancies;” the rents projected for this area were on the high end of the range of rents that were being paid by existing food merchants, but still lower than the rents projected for the east end of the Market Building. This implies that the rents were being fixed for the food merchants at their existing rate (which would be a below-market rate after the rehabilitation) and that this was done to preserve their tenancy, although this motivation is not explicitly described in the narrative section of the report. 78 The 1966 Act amended Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 to enable redevelopment authorities to restore historic structures in urban renewal areas. 291 by a series of false starts over the next four years. The BRA selected a developer in June of 1971, which was ultimately “de-designated” six months later for its failure to meet the scheduled start of construction. Meanwhile, the condition of the market buildings continued to deteriorate and the BRA came under pressure from the mayor and the media to demonstrate progress. In April of 1972 it decided to proceed with the exterior restoration of the North and South Market Buildings using the $2.0 million in HUD funding and the drawings and specifications prepared by architect Frederick Stahl; construction work began in September. Finally, after a series of public hearings to consider competing proposals, The Rouse Company (TRC) was designated the developer of the market in March of 1973. Negotiations over the terms of the lease between TRC and the city concluded the following May.79 The details of the lease TRC negotiated with the city had important implications for the way that historic uses were preserved in the initial redevelopment and the extent to which they were sustained over time to the present. Pursuing the advice given in the disposition strategy report, the City of Boston chose to lease longterm the three Quincy Market buildings. This was a relatively novel strategy at the time. The more conventional approach to urban renewal was to attract developers by selling property at below-market-rate prices as was done in Seattle, for example, where the city sold the Pike Place Market buildings to the PDA and other developers at values that reflected the development restrictions imposed by the historic preservation plan. The challenge for Boston, according to Lynne Sagalyn, was how to price the lease; there was no preexisting formula to follow. Three factors had to be taken into consideration: 1) the city wanted to retain ownership of the property and 79 This timeline is from “Faneuil Hall Marketplace Recent History,” unpublished typescript, Boston Public Library Central Branch, Government Documents, BRA 3308. For a detailed discussion of the various developer proposals and the project delays, see Quincy, Jr., Quincy’s Market, chapters 7 and 8. 292 maintain some control over tenant selection and architectural design; 2) the buildings were being offered in “as is” condition. Only the exteriors of the North and South Market Buildings were being restored with HUD money; the developer would still have to restore their interiors as well as the entire central market building, all in accordance with the established restoration plans; and 3) the city wanted a guaranteed income from the project. The BRA needed to negotiate a politically-defensible lease price, whereas the developer, of course, wanted to maximize the return on its investment.80 After a series of negotiations and renegotiations (after it was discovered that the buildings were more extensively damaged than originally anticipated) the final lease was as follows: • The city and TRC agreed to a 99-year lease; rent was calculated using a twotier payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) formula. TRC was to pay 20% of gross rental income, plus 20% of revenues over $3 million. Gross rental income was defined as all payments made by tenants to the developer for taxes, utilities, and any other expenses. • Anticipating heavy maintenance and security costs, the city agreed to share these expenses by allowing TRC to deduct 33 and 1/3% of the gross revenues from retail subtenants. • The total PILOT for any one year was capped at 25% of the adjusted gross revenue. Adjusted gross revenue was defined as 20% of gross rental income plus 20% of revenues over $3 million, minus the 33 and 1/3% deduction of retail revenues for operating expenses. 80 The lease structure and a fiscal impact assessment of the entire Faneuil Hall Marketplace project are analyzed in Lynne B. Sagalyn, “Measuring Financial Returns when the City Acts as an Investor,” Real Estate Issues, 14, no. 2 (Fall 1989/Winter 1990): 7-15. 293 • The PILOT was capped at $50,000 for the first three years during the time in which construction was taking place and the buildings were only partially occupied by tenants. Full payments began in 1979.81 • TRC agreed to retain all of the existing market food merchants who wished to stay, provided they operated only as retail businesses. These tenants were offered leases for three years at a rental rate equal to $3.00 per square foot, which was roughly the average of their existing rental rates. At the conclusion of the initial three year term, these tenants would have a right of first refusal on a new three year lease at “fair market terms and conditions.”82 • TRC also agreed to the formation of a Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission, effective upon the commencement of the lease, to be composed of the mayor, director of BRA, two people appointed by the mayor, and one person appointed by the lessee. The purpose of commission was to review: proposed uses of the property, including “mix of retail uses;” design controls; promotion and merchandising; terms and conditions of subleases offered to existing tenants; and “any matters which are brought before it pursuant to other functions.”83 Twenty-five food businesses that remained in the Quincy Market Buildings when TRC secured the ground lease were included in the tenant relocation program and invited to reopen after completion of the rehabilitation. Ten of them chose to stay 81 The information in this bullet and the three that precede it are from Sagayln, “Measuring Financial Returns when the City Acts as an Investor.” 82 Indenture of Lease between Boston Redevelopment Authority and Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Inc., 21 Feb. 1975, Massachusetts Historical Society (hereafter MHS), John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, box 1; and Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Inc., Roy E. Williams to BRA, undated, “RE: Faneuil Hall Marketplace/Existing Tenants,” MHS, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Ms U-497, box FHM 6. 83 Indenture of Lease between BRA and FHM, Inc. 294 and take advantage of special three-year lease rates available for returning tenants.84 Other locally-owned fresh food businesses were added to supplement and diversify the product offerings available on the ground floor of Quincy Market. This effectively fulfilled James Rouse’s and Benjamin and Jane Thompson’s collective vision for a complete public food market as the centerpiece of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace development. Special rent and lease structures were designed to preserve the economic viability and character of the new food businesses as well as the other unique retail stores located throughout the North and South Market Buildings. According to TRC, the rent program was to “minimize risk and fixed overhead for small merchants and new enterprises” by utilizing a “‘minimum-plus’ schedule that allows basic rents to start low and gradually increase on a percentage basis as operating profits go up.” Overall, Faneuil Hall Marketplace rents would be lower than those at other new retail buildings located near Government Center. The initial plan was to give each tenant the option to choose one of three rent schemes: 1) a straight percentage of sales w/o any base rent; percentage payments would range from 2% to 10% depending on the nature of the business. 2) a graduated rent over 3 to 4 years giving a business a grace period to become established; graduated rents would range from $4/sqft to $8/sqft. 3) a fixed base rent plus a percentage of income above an established point. Leasing agreements ran forty-four pages in length, specifying and limiting in detail the goods each tenant agree to sell in addition to a pledge to adhere to the project’s rigorous design standards. 84 For the list of pre-rehabilitation Quincy Market tenants who were offered the opportunity to stay, see Faneuil Hall marketplace Inc., “RE: Faneuil Hall Marketplace/Existing Tenants.” 295 On the one hand TRC planned to offer generous rent terms to local businesses; on the other, inflation and the continuing deterioration of the market buildings led to skyrocketing rehabilitation expenses. By 1974, the estimated cost to complete the market rehabilitation had risen to $21 million, more than double the 1968 market report’s initial $10 million projection. Rouse leveraged the entire amount with debt financing. Banks were initially reluctant to loan money to an undertaking that seemed risky on multiple levels. Not only was it a historic preservation project in a downtown location, but the small and mostly local tenants at the heart of the Rouse/Thompson marketplace concept were also unknown to the banking community; many did not even have credit scores. Multimillion-dollar construction loans were (and still are) typically only approved for projects that included one or more nationally-known anchor tenants. After securing $21 million in permanent financing from Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), Rouse persuaded Chase Manhattan Bank of New York to provide 50% of the construction loan. The other half was contributed in smaller portions by a consortium of local Boston banks subject to a number of conditions, one of which was that TRC had to pre-lease 10,000 square feet of space on the second floor of Quincy Market to the Magic Pan Restaurant, a franchise owned by Quaker Oats. While Rouse and the Thompsons were both initially opposed to including franchises in the project, they were forced by necessity to compromise their standards. This was only one of many other compromises in the years ahead. Regulating Uses to Preserve Function Quincy Market was an incredible commercial success when it opened for business in August of 1976. Some 10,000 shoppers were said to visit the market 296 during weekdays, and as many as 100,000 on weekends.85 In reviewing the new attraction, reporters marveled over Ben Thompson’s triumph in having recreated “an authentic food market…satisfying daily needs” of local customers.86 TRC actively promoted the traditional merchants and their fresh foods in its Marketplace Life, a publication combining advertisements and a market business directory in a magazinelike format with recipes and merchant profiles. The second issue featured an article that followed two professional chefs around the market as they checked items off their grocery list. “Could the Romagnolis purchase within the Quincy market everything needed for their menu?” it asked rhetorically. “Would the selection and quality meet their professional standards, and provide the sensuous excitement of remembered excursions?” The answer, of course, was a resounding yes. They found fresh spaghetti, extra dry Parmesan, calves’ liver, zucchini, garlic, tomatoes, coffee, vinegar, and even a new paring knife (Figure 5.11). The selection and quality, they said, were “excellent;” the atmosphere, “magnetic.”87 Behind the scenes, however, Benjamin and Jane Thompson soon began to worry that the market was losing its special character and failing to attract the local consumers they had most wanted to serve. By 1979, the Thompsons were so concerned by changes they observed in the Quincy Market food merchants that they drafted a lengthy memo to TRC describing and illustrating the issues with photographs accompanied by suggestions to address each shortcoming. First, they perceived a troubling “image” problem. Quincy Market was becoming associated with “pizza, piano bars, no-park, push and shove.” The success of fast food and “singles drinking operations” was deterring the attendance of “serious shoppers” seeking groceries. While it was admittedly impossible to regulate 85 Carleton Knight, III, “Restored Market Draws Crowds,” Preservation News (Jan. 1977). 86 Jane Davison, “Bringing Life to Market,” New York Times, 10 Oct. 1976, p. 233. 87 Fanny Hall, “A Morning’s Marketing with the Romagnolis,” Marketplace Life, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1977): 7; from the author’s private collection. 297 Figure 5.11. Franco and Margaret Romagnolis, hosts of the hit television cooking show called “The Romagnolis’ Table,” shop for Parmesan cheese at Doe and Sullivan, one of ten original businesses that came back to Quincy Market after the rehabilitation. Source: Fanny Hall, “A Morning’s Marketing with the Romagnolis,” photograph by Peter Vandermark, Marketplace Life, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 1977): 7. Author’s private collection. 298 tourism, “souvenir-seeking sightseers with limited time and money” were contributing to the “alienation of the local customer.” To address the issue, they suggested downplaying the “Go-Go aspects” of the market and developing promotions and advertising that emphasized “comfortable uncrowded shopping days,” evening hours, and family goods. Second, the quality of goods and services that were supposed to accommodate local shoppers were suffering as a consequence of a “drift” toward quick-sale food items primarily catering to the crowds of tourists. In a series of Polaroid snapshots, the Thompsons illustrated how merchants who were contractually bound to only sell certain fresh, specialty foods were, on their own initiative, diversifying into other ready-to-eat snacks (Figures 5.12 and 5.13). They recommended establishing clearer guidelines specifying precisely what tenants could sell, followed by rigorous enforcement by designating someone to “police” the merchants and implement the standards. Noting that leasing to and management of food vendors was unlike working with boutique retail tenants, they suggested TRC hire someone with the “specialized skills” necessary to understand the fresh-food industry. Third, there was a looming specter of “homogenization” raised by franchise businesses. Franchises worked their way into Faneuil Hall Marketplace in one of two ways. Some of the secondary literature maintains the marketplace, initially at least, was filled with independent Boston merchants, not the “moneyed chains that dominated suburban malls.88 Its planners and promoters surely sought to convey this impression, but in reality chains were part of the commercial mix from the very beginning. There was the previously mentioned Magic Pan, a result of a compromise TRC made with its lenders. Quincy Market also opened with the Proud Popover, another franchise owned by Quaker Oats, and General Nutrition Center (GNC), a 88 See for example, Frieden and Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc., 6. 299 Figure 5.12. Benjamin and Jane Thompson’s documentation of “merchandise drift” at Quincy Market. The hand-written note under the second photograph reads: “Jennetta’s where did Pasta go?” Originally a purveyor of Italian groceries including fresh pasta, Jennetta’s is pictured here selling take-out foods. Source: “Guiding the Future of Faneuil Hall Marketplace,” memo to TRC from Ben and Jane Thompson, 5 Dec. 1978, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, MHS, Ms U-497, Box FHM 4. Figure 5.13. More merchandise drift. Here Dembro’s Meats and Fruits, one of the original Quincy Market merchants who agreed stay and reopen after the rehabilitation is seen selling prepared mixed-fruit cups for take-out. The note reads: “Dembo [sic] Meats sustained on fruits.” Source: “Guiding the Future of Faneuil Hall Marketplace.” 300 natural-food chain store that already had more than 1,000 outlets by the early 1980s. When the North and South Market Buildings opened in 1978 and 1979 they included the national clothing retailers Ann Taylor and The Limited. The Marketplace had no rules baring their entry, but James Rouse wanted to limit their exposure. As he wrote in an internal memo to his staff, “An occasional Ann Taylor is okay, but, as a whole…Faneuil Hall is a marketplace—we cannot let it slip into being a shopping center.”89 As Ben and Jane Thompson looked further down the time horizon, they worried that inexperienced merchants struggling to establish themselves would “get displaced under pressures for financial performance,” particularly as large chains made “strong bids” for the “prime location” that the marketplace was quickly becoming. Then there was the second way that franchises became a part of the marketplace in its early years: fueled by the success of the market itself, stores “serialized” themselves with new branches, often in other The Rouse Corporation (TRC) developments located elsewhere in the country. Examples of stores that started in Faneuil Hall Marketplace and then went on to become national franchises include Crate & Barrel, Au Bon Pain, and Crabtree & Evelyn. Pike Place Market in Seattle dealt with the same issue. Whereas its Historical Commission and PDA saw the market as an incubator of entrepreneurship and allowed merchants to grow beyond Pike Place to establish branches—globally, in the case of Starbucks—the Thompsons wanted TRC to regulate “direct spin offs” by demanding stores use different names and identifications in new locations. They further suggested TRC establish “an unbending policy” against chains in the marketplace. 89 Intra-Office memo from James Rouse to K. Aubrey Gorman, et. al., 13 Sept. 1976, MHS, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Ms U-497, FHM box 4. 301 In closing, the Thompsons alluded to the commitments TRC made to the city of Boston to preserve the physical and functional character of the markets. As its lease with the city specifically stated: Lessor and Lessee acknowledge that the present and historic character of the use of the street floor of the Quincy Market Building is as a meat, cheese and produce market with related market uses. Lessee shall not use or permit the use of any portion of said floor for any purpose other than as a meat, cheese and produce market or for related market use of the same general character. The sale of food for on-premises consumption shall be permitted to the extent that such sale does not affect the general character of the street floor. … Lessee shall submit any proposed changes in the general character of the street floor of Quincy Market Building to the Commission for its review and approval or disapproval, and no such changes shall be made without the approval of the Commission.90 “Thus continuity of policy and leadership” they advised, would be essential in honoring their very long lease. Though unstated in their memo to TRC, underlying the Thompsons’ concerns with the growth of franchises and the “drift” of fresh provision merchants to fast food was TRC’s rent structure and the skyrocketing charges for taxes and common area maintenance that the company passed on to its tenants. The initial plan to offer leases on a range of financial terms that charged tenants varying percentages of their gross income depending upon the type of businesses they operated would have benefited the low-margin food merchants. Pike Place effectively balanced food merchant diversity in this way. However, when leases were ultimately issued at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, all tenants were charged a standard $10 per square foot base rent plus 5% of their gross sales, with the exception of the original returning merchants who were offered special three-year terms. They were also assessed a $5 per square foot operating charge for real estate taxes, heating and cooling, fire prevention, electricity, 90 Indenture of Lease between BRA and FHM, Inc. 302 sewer, trash, and common area maintenance. By the early 1980s, the base rent had quadrupled to $40 per square foot and the operating expenses had grown more than fivefold to $27.37 per square foot.91 Fresh food vendors struggled to keep up with the escalating charges. Lenny Dembro, who the Thompsons singled out for “drift” in their memo to TRC, watched each day as throngs of tourists passed by his stall in the late 1970s on their way to fast food vendors to buy pizza and cokes, ice cream and cookies. He had to get in on the action; most shoppers seemed uninterested in groceries and his high-end meats and fruits were not paying the rent. TRC’s own internal research verified his perceptions: the meat, cheese, and produce shops were serving no more than 10% of marketplace shoppers.92 One day when he received a large load of ripe pineapples, Dembro decided to try cutting them up in spears and selling them on paper plates. They sold out immediately. The next day he speared them together with other fruits to make fruit kabobs. Again, by adding value he was able to gross far more than when he sold the fruit as unprepared units. Other merchants quickly followed suit. Mort Berenson, another original merchant from the pre-rehabilitation days, could not sell enough goose pate and game fowl from his “Prime Shop” stall to pay his rent either. So he added a steam table and began selling roast beef sandwiches, barbequed chicken, and Italian sausage on a stick. A green grocer began selling prepared salads on the side.93 Instead of enforcing more rigorous guidelines as the Thompsons’ had recommended, TRC instead amended individual leases to allow fresh food merchants to sell prepared meals. It was a tacit acknowledgement that there was no other 91 A number of sources document these figures; see for example Gordon, “Case Study: Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Boston,” p. 55; John Hubner, “All that Glitters in Not Gold: How Rouse Rakes it in at Faneuil Hall Marketplace,” The Real Paper (Boston), 31 March 1979. 92 “Faneuil Hall Marketplace Research Summary,” 11/28/1978, MHS, Benjamin and Jane Thompson Papers, Ms U-497, box FHM 5. 93 Hubner, “All that Glitters in Not Gold;” “Boston’s Bartholomew Fair,” Time Magazine 4 Sept. 1978, p. 48. 303 financial way for these merchants to stay in business given the rent and operating expenses that TRC was charging. In the late 1970s TRC hoped to attract more local shoppers with its new “Uncommon Marketplace” advertising campaign design to promote the markets as a resource for more than just fast food. For while at least merchants like Berenson offered both prepared food as well as the occasional uncooked porch chop to the increasingly rare shoppers who came to the Marketplace for groceries. Still, the gradual transition from fresh to prepared food continued unabated. By the late 1980s, reporters began referring to Quincy Market as “fast food alley.”94 Some of the original food merchants like “The Produce House” were still there in name by the early 1990s, but at that point they made most of their money selling things like baked potatoes stuffed with cheese and vegetables.95 Had it ever been convened, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission might have held TRC to its commitment to the city to preserve functionally the main floor of Quincy Market as place for fresh meat, cheese, bread, and produce by stabilizing the rents of merchants who sold them. The commission and its requirements were never implemented and, for a time, they were largely forgotten. Because the marketplace was such a tremendous success from the beginning, the city deferred to TRC’s expertise in marketing and tenant selection. However, Jane Thompson remained convinced, long after her direct involvement with the marketplace was over, that their failure to form the commission was a terrible oversight. When she wrote the director of the BRA in the mid 1990s insisting it instate the commission and begin taking a more direct role in managing tenant mix and other economic issues, one of the mayor’s representatives responded to say that the city saw no need to get involved.96 94 Gail Perrin, “Second Helpings,” Boston Globe, 23 Nov. 1987, p. 61. 95 Sheryl Julian, “To Market, To Market,” Boston Globe, 17 July 1991, p. 65. 96 See both Jane Thompson to Marisa Lago, Director of the BRA (CC: Mayor Tom Menino), 14 Nov. 1995; and Antonia M. Pollak, Office of the Major, to Jane Thompson, 16 April 1996, MHS, John Quincy, Research Materials on Quincy Market, box 1. 304 One of the consequences of cities like Boston becoming more entrepreneurial in their approach to public-private real estate developments is that they have also become more profit-minded in the management of their investments. Among the possible reasons the BRA was inclined to look the other way as TRC blatantly violated the terms of its Faneuil Hall Marketplace lease is that the city had a financial stake in the profits generated by tenant rents and gross revenues. The PILOT it negotiated with TRC was directly related to the profitability of the marketplace. TRC wrung staggering profits out of the project; sales per square foot in Quincy Market were well beyond the income generated by the most profitable suburban shopping malls.97 And while Sagalyn has argued that, in hindsight, Boston might have brokered a more lucrative agreement for itself, over the years the marketplace deal still compares favorably to the taxes Boston would have collected from other comparable developments.98 The direct, indirect, and induced economic benefits of tourism generated by the Marketplace are an even greater fiscal consideration. While some Bostonians, the media, and other critics continue to grouse that the marketplace has become little more than a mall, it remains an extraordinarily popular tourist attraction. In May, 2008, Forbes Traveler rated it the fourth most visited tourist site in the United States; with twenty million annual visitors, Faneuil Hall Marketplace ranked below the National Mall and memorial parks of Washington, D.C. (24 million), but well above Disney World (17.1 million), Disney Land (14.9 million), and Universal Studios (6.2 million).99 97 Frieden and Sagalyn, Downtown, Inc., 7. 98 Sagalyn, “Measuring Financial Returns when the City Acts as an Investor.” 99 Rob Baedeker, “America’s Twenty-Five Most Visited Tourist Sites,” ForbesTraveler.com, 5 May 2008. 305 Even with these measures of success, there are still periodic calls for finally forming the Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission, now sometimes referred to as a “watchdog group” or an “advisory committee.” In 2004 TRC sold its marketplace lease to General Growth Properties, the second-largest mall operator in the country. General Growth has continued to implement the basic management strategies established by TRC: charging ever higher rents to nationally or internally-based chains that demand larger and larger retail spaces. As of 2006, there were a total of only 82 stores in the entire three-building Marketplace, down from its 1979 peak of 172; more than half of the total square footage is leased to national chains. Some food and retail tenants pay as much as $150 a square foot for rent. Faced with these statistics, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino requested meetings with Growth Management in 2006 and threatened to audit the city’s lease agreement with the company. At the same time, the BRA’s director voiced his opinion that it was finally time to form an advisory committee.100 Menino had looked into the possibility of forming a commission more than a decade before, when TRC still held the lease, but nothing ever came of it.101 After a number of meetings with Growth Management in 2006 and 2007, the city canceled its plans for an audit and again, the Marketplace Commission was never formed.102 To date, the issue remains unresolved. Most of the concerns over the marketplace voiced through the local media involve the issue of large franchises displacing small, locally-owned businesses. The earlier transition from fresh food to fast food at Quincy Market is not part of this discussion. Perhaps that battle was lost too long ago for most local observers to even remember that it was once an issue. More readily apparent is an irony brought about 100 Jenn Ableson, “City Seeks Return to Roots for Faneuil Hall Marketplace,” Boston Globe, 30 Apr. 2006, p. A1. 101 Chris Reidy, “Menino to Look into Faneuil Hall Dispute,” Boston Globe, 12 Sept. 1994, p. 14. 102 Maria Cramer, “High Rents Squeeze Faneuil Hall Vendors,” Boston Globe, 19 Feb. 2007, p. 1B. 306 by the national surge in interest for local agricultural products over the last five to ten years. As in Seattle, Bostonians are eagerly seeking out farmers markets to shop for produce that they value for its freshness, for its connection to the local economy, and for the personal interactions they experience when they buy directly from producers. In 2000 a non-profit group called Friends of the Boston Public Market joined forces with the Massachusetts Department of Food and Agriculture to undertake a study to determine the feasibility of establishing a year-round indoor public market somewhere in the downtown waterfront area.103 No one mentioned Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Gansevoort Market Outreach, Advocacy, and Protest Gansevoort Market differs from the other two case studies in several important respects. Unlike in Seattle and Boston, Gansevoort Market was not threatened by a major urban-renewal-type redevelopment, at least during the period of the most intense preservation interest from the late 1990s to the present. There was also never a comprehensive government-sponsored preservation planning initiative in the way that there was for Pike Place Market and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Lastly, while it grew out of publicly-owned market facilities, most of the buildings in the Gansevoort Market District were privately owned throughout history and remain so today. Planners, preservationists, and developers have therefore not been able to exercise the same level of centralized control over Gansevoort as they had at the other two markets. Yet despite these differences, outreach, advocacy, and protest have been, and continue to be, instrumental tools in Gansevoort’s ongoing preservation. Gansevoort may not have been threatened by one monumental undertaking but, beginning in the late 1990s, preservationists perceived the district to be on the precipice of enormous 103 Gloria Negri, “Talking of a Boston Market,” Boston Globe, 25 Oct. 2000, p. B4. 307 and irreversible changes. They have fought a series of battles to preserve historic functional and physical attributes. Convincing planners and policymakers that Gansevoort Market was in fact a historic resource was the first challenge confronted in the process of its preservation. The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) has been notoriously reluctant to designate historic industrial architecture. Thus, despite their existence in every borough of the city, industrial zones are underrepresented in the list of designated New York City landmark districts. There have been some notable exceptions, like SoHo in Manhattan, which was designated in 1973. Even its nomination was a struggle, and may have only come much later were it not for the combined support of artists that were beginning to convert the buildings to loft apartments, and the Friends of Cast Iron Architecture advocacy group led by the indefatigable historian Margot Gale who made a strong case for the buildings’ architectural and engineering significance.104 Gansevoort also lacked the architectural pedigree and monumentality of SoHo. Many LPC commissioners and staff members doubted it was worthy of landmark status; two LPC commission chairs refused to even consider its nomination.105 Winning local designation for Gansevoort Market was an uphill battle. Luckily, New York City has a famously active and, when necessary, vocal preservation community. Alarmed by architectural modifications being made to the market buildings by private owners, the advocacy organization Save Gansevoort Market was formed in 1999 under the auspices of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP). Co-chaired by Jo Hamilton, a nearby resident of 104 Diane Maddex, “It’s No Longer ‘So What?’ in SoHo,” Preservation News, no. 10 (Oct. 1970). 105 Author interview with Jay Shockley, LPC Research Department staff, 15 Sept. 2006. 308 Greenwich Village, and Florent Morellet, owner of Florent Restaurant on Gansevoort Street, the group aggressively lobbied for: • Local historic district designation to preserve the built character of the neighborhood; • denial of applications to build residential buildings in the district; • the New York City Planning Commission and Department of Business Services to formulate measures to ensure that Gansevoort Market’s unique mix of businesses can remain in the area; • listing of the area on the National Register of Historic Places, which would provide tax incentives and grants to property owners seeking to maintain or restore their historic properties.106 Hamilton described their advocacy as the “ultimate marketing scheme.” The objective was to brand the Market as a product, and then convince people through tours, historical research, and other promotions that they “couldn’t live without it.”107 Eventually, it worked. The Save Gansevoort Market cause gained significant momentum in 2002 when the Preservation League of New York State named the Market in its annual “Seven to Save” list of the State’s most threatened historic resources. Also in the same year the New York State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) declared the market eligible for the National Register of Historic Places, which is the first step in the formal listing process at the national level. Yet progress toward listing the market as a local landmark was slow. LPC held its first hearing to consider the nomination in March of 2003, but there little or no follow up over the next four months. While LPC was internally debating the 106 www.gvshp.org/gans7tosave.htm, viewed on August 7, 2008. 107 Author interview with Jo Hamilton, 14 Sept. 2005. 309 nomination, Preservationists were growing increasingly concerned with real estate development proposals in the district that were working their way through the city’s environmental review and planning process. To goad the agency into action, Save Gansevoort Market organized a postcard and letter-writing campaign. With the support of the League and other local New York City preservation groups such as the Municipal Arts Society and the Historic Districts Council, they were quickly able to generate more than 5,000 letters to urging city officials to designate the market.108 Their efforts were finally rewarded when LPC formally nominated Gansevoort Market Historic District in September, 2003, which was then subsequently approved by New York City Council in December.109 Although the advocacy work done by Hamilton and Morellet was no doubt critical to the success of the Gansevoort nomination, others emphasize the significance of GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman’s professional connections to New York’s openly-gay political community. Gay and lesbian politicians hold important positions in the Greenwich Village, Gansevoort, and Chelsea neighborhoods. While Hamilton and Morellet worked behind the scenes to organize market tours, raise money, and coordinate other advocacy initiatives, it was Berman who was most often in the spotlight speaking on behalf of the market at public hearing, press conferences, and in the media. Before joining GVSHP, Berman was State Senator Tom Duane’s Chief of Staff. In addition to Duane, State Assemblymember Deborah Glick and City Councilmember (later Speaker of the Council) Christine Quinn together formed a bloc of politicians who strongly supported Gansevoort’s landmarking and, in general, made 108 Albert Amateau, “Haste is Urged in Creation of Historic District,” The Villager (New York), vol. 73, no. 11, 16-22 July 2003. 109 “Gansevoort Historic District gets Final Approval from City,” The Villager, vol. 73, no. 33, 17-23 Dec. 2003. 310 historic preservation one of their highest priorities.110 All of them attended the LPC’s Gansevoort Market hearing, together with about 100 of their constituents who supported designation. It was precisely this type of pressure that was needed to compel LPC to reluctantly landmark its first industrial district in thirty years. The continuing support of these politicians was also instrumental in Save Gansevoort Market’s opposition to development proposals along the fringes of the market district. Just as LPC was beginning to consider the Gansevoort nomination, landlord Jerry Romanoff and developer Stephen Touhey unveiled plans to build a 32story luxury residential tower at 848 Washington Street, to be designed by the prominent French architect Jean Nouvel. The building was designed both to straddle and incorporate a portion of the High Line. To construct a residential building in Gansevoort Market, which is zoned for industrial uses, they needed a variance from the New York City Board of Standards and Appeals. Zoning played a greater role in the Gansevoort case study than it does in the other two, and is described in greater detail in the following section. Save Gansevoort Market formed an informal spin-off organization to protest the variance, called the M1-5 Coalition (named after the market’s prevailing industrial zoning classification). The coalition consisted of bar and club owners, preservationists, Greenwich Village residents and meat businesses and their associated union, the United Federation of Commercial Laborers (UFCL) Local 342. Standing together at a press conference to oppose the hotel project, their appearance alone projected a visually striking statement of class diversity that was somewhat unusual for a preservation protest (Figure 5.14). They opposed the project from both physical 110 Author interview with Jay Shockley. Support from Quinn, who was a member of the Council’s Landmarks Subcommittee at the time of the nomination, was particularly critical to securing City Council’s final approval; see Albert Amateau, “Council Subcommittee, Property Owners Challenge Market District,” The Villager, vol. 73, no. 31, 3-9 Dec. 2003. 311 Figure 5.14. Meatpackers, preservationists, and politicians hold a joint press conference at 848 Washington Street on October 14th, 2003 to fight a proposed 450 foot tall residential hotel to be located just outside the Gansevoort Market landmark district. From left to right: members of UFCL Local 342; Andrew Berman, E.D. GVSHP, State Senator Thomas Duane; Congressmember Jerrold Nadler; City Councilmember Christine Quinn; and Assemblymember Deborah Glick. Source: Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation website, (www.gvshp.org/ganshi-risepress.htm), viewed on August 6, 2008. 312 and functional preservation grounds. The 450 foot tall tower was, Berman argued, clearly out of scale with the mainly four and five story structures that characterized the historic districts. Bar owners and meatpackers agued that residential buildings would inevitably lead to the displacement of traditional market uses and the eventual rezoning of the entire area.111 Who would want to live in a high-priced building if the sidewalks of the surrounding neighborhood ran red with the blood of meat cuttings, and the noxious fumes and rumbling noise of diesel refrigerator trucks wafted up into their windows? The coalition successfully defeated Toughey’s tower proposal not once, but twice: the first time when it was proposed as an entirely residential project, and the second time when he resubmitted it as a combination 49% residential and 51% longterm occupancy hotel. The developer argued that because hotels are permitted “as of right” in industrial districts, the combination scheme satisfied the letter of the zoning rule. The ZBA disagreed and refused to grant any variance. However, victory in these battles to preserve industrial zoning in the market was short lived. Although Touhey eventually dropped his option to develop the 848 Washington site, Andre Balazs, a far more experienced developer, quickly stepped up to propose a twelvestory luxury hotel at the same site, to be designed by the Polshek Partnership. After a number of design revisions, the hotel tower increased in height to 18 stories and 337 rooms; erected on pillars to straddle the High Line, it will include a beer garden, a pool, and two restaurants, all set to open in late December, 2008. Preservationists tried to stop this project, and they continue to fight other developments that threaten to undermine Gansevoort’s meat market uses. Their actions are best understood in the context of functional preservation planning. 111 Albert Amateau, “Meat Market Hotel Tower is Branded a Trojan Horse,” The Villager, vol. 73, no. 24, 15-21 Oct. 2003. 313 Functional Preservation Planning Gansevoort’s preservation advocates pursued three strategies to physically and functionally preserve the market. First, they had hoped that New York City’s historic preservation laws would help them save both the market’s functions and its historic architecture. They were disappointed to find that the city’s preservation laws were designed only to address architectural design and had no authority to protect historic functions.112 Second, they explored the feasibility of using other zoning tools, in particular special district designation, to restrict certain land uses and create incentives to perpetuate traditional market functions. The City Planning Commission declined to pursue this option, insisting that historic district designation would best serve the goals the preservations had described. Third, preservationists examined the possibility of strengthening the general character of the marketplace interactions by relocating the New York City flower market to Gansevoort from its historic location in Chelsea. None of these strategies successfully fulfilled both their physical and functional preservation objectives. Ultimately, while creative strategies could have been formulated to preserve meat market functions in Gansevoort, the city of New York may have chosen not to pursue them because it would have been contrary to its financial interests to do so. Ironically, two other arts and preservation projects that the city and preservationists strongly supported—the construction of a new Whitney Museum and the adaptive reuse of the High Line—contributed to the gradual displacement of market merchants. 112 The clear separation that exists between the responsibilities of LPC to control building appearance, and the CPC to establish zoning matters such as height, bulk, and use was the result of one of the last revisions to the New York City landmarks legislation before it was enacted into law; some think this separation contributed to the success of the law because it avoids conflicts that might have resulted from overlapping bureaucratic responsibilities. See Eric Allison, “Historic Preservation in a Development-Dominated City—The Passage of New York City's Landmark Preservation Legislation,” Journal of Urban History 22, no. 3 (Mar. 1996): 350-376. 314 Local Landmark Designation Shortly after LPC designated Gansevoort Market, Andrew Berman made public statements that seemed to suggest that he believed designating the neighborhood a local landmark would help preserve the neighborhood’s functions. “Using historic preservation as a way of maintaining a working industrial neighborhood,” he was quoted as saying, “that is somewhat unique. Usually, the two don’t go hand and hand. Usually, you are giving up on an industry staying there, or just focusing on industry and not trying to keep buildings.”113 An experienced preservationist like Berman knew that the New York City Landmarks Law offered no control over specific building uses. For Hamilton and Morellet, on the other hand, it involved a legitimate learning curve to reach this conclusion. Hamilton describes her initial meetings with LPC at which she and Morellet talked about the significance of the markets, “what markets and bustling activity and commerce mean…when you have goods coming in and goods coming out.” It was the market activity that for them, and many other preservationists, contributed to what they described as Gansevoort’s unique “sense of place.” LPC, for its part, saw Gansevoort as a preservation “nightmare,” according to Hamilton. It was unclear how they would regulate design in an industrial neighborhood where most of the buildings were stylistically indistinct and, more problematically, were products of serial alterations. Many of the buildings had once been four-story, nineteenth-century tenements that were then later cut down to two stories to accommodate meat market uses. Other formerly residential buildings had had their windows bricked in when they were adapted for use as cold storage warehouses. Exactly what physical features would be preserved, and from what period of significance? To LPC, it seemed that the Gansevoort preservationists wanted to use the landmark designation process to 113 Tatsha Robertson, “NYC Meat District Preserved in Time,” Boston Globe, 20 Jan. 2004. 315 preserve functions and to stop new development. It suggested they talk to the City Planning Commission (CPC). Still, Gansevoort preservationists wanted landmark protection for the market’s buildings even if it only accomplished one-half of their physical and functional preservation goals. In order to do so they had to change their strategy and cautiously select the words they used in discussions with LPC. As Hamilton explains, “we were very careful when we were talking about landmarking to be talking about buildings, even though this whole sense of place argument is starting to come out and this is what the whole preservation movement is really interested in; we weren’t using it with the Landmarks Commission because we were afraid they were going to say you can’t landmark sense of place.”114 Instead of documenting the current activities and the extant industry at the heart of their fascination with the area, they realized that they had to frame the market’s significance in terms of its historic architecture: when were the buildings built, who were their architects, what are their distinguishing physical attributes, however plain they may be? Zoning in Gansevoort and the Far West Side Maintaining Gansevoort Market’s M1-5 zoning designation has for long time been considered the most effective strategy for preserving its historical functions. From the 1970s through the early 1990s, the greatest outside threat to the survival of Gansevoort’s food merchants was perceived to be the conversion of industrial buildings to residential lofts.115 These fears have been fed by the rezoning of other industrial neighborhoods surrounding Gansevoort over the last thirty-five years. First, 114 Author interview with Jo Hamilton, 14 Sept. 2005. 115 See for example Spring 1991 Urban Planning Studio, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, “West Village Waterfront,” Spring 1991; and Ronald Lustig: “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan,” Columbia University Master’s Thesis, May 1985. 316 there was the loft conversion of SoHo to the south, which began illegally in the 1960s and was then formally permitted by the Zoning Resolution of 1971 that allowed mixed industrial uses together with artist live/work space. Industrial zoning in neighboring sections of NoHo (North of Houston Street) and TriBeCa (the Triangle Below Canal Street) were similarly relaxed to allow legal loft conversions beginning in 1976.116 More recently, an M1-5 district on the western edge of Chelsea, to the north of Gansevoort, was rezoned in 1999 to allow for new residential development in an area considered by CPC to be underutilized industrial land. The trajectory of west Manhattan zoning amendments from industrial to mixed and residential uses appeared to be clear; Gansevoort seemed ripe for similar conversion. The majority of Gansevoort Market is zoned M1-5, a designation used for loft districts, usually in the Central Business District (CBD) of Manhattan. Although they are technically described as “high-performance light manufacturing and commercial areas,” M1-5 zones permit a wide variety of industrial and non industrial uses such as knitting mills, printing plants, and wholesale service facilities, as well as retail stores, restaurants, offices, hotels, private art galleries and, by special permit, community facilities. Residential uses are generally excluded.117 There are also special land use designations and additional zoning restrictions at two locations within the market that relate to its functional preservation. The former site of the Gansevoort Farmers Market, which is now partially occupied by the city-owned Gansevoort Market Meat Center, is protected by its designation as an 116 As an additional financial incentive, some of these conversions were able to take advantage of the city’s J-51 property tax abatement program for the substantial rehabilitation of residential buildings. See Herbert Sturz, chairman, City Assistance for Small Manufacturers (New York: Department of City Planning, 1982): 132-139. 117 Unless one of three conditions is met: 1) the residence predates the zoning and is thus a legal “nonconforming use;” 2) building owners are allowed a small residential unit; 3) variances for residential uses can be granted by the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) when the owner documents an economic hardship. For a more detailed discussion of the Market’s zoning, see City Planning Commission, Calendar No. 16, 5 Nov. 2003, N 040122 HKM, available online at: (home2.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/cpc/040122.pdf), accessed on Aug. 10, 2008. 317 agricultural market in accordance with the New York State Agriculture and Market Law. The site received this designation by the New York City Board of Estimate in 1887; the current meatpacking and processing functions are qualifying uses for this protection.118 Also, an entire block of buildings on the south side of Gansevoort Street between Greenwich Street and Washington Street was, until recently, subject to a restrictive declaration that specifically limited their use to only meat-related businesses. The declaration was placed upon the buildings in 1984 as mitigation for an industrial-to-residential conversion of the Manhattan Refrigerator Company Building located directly across Gansevoort Street from the Gansevoort Market Meat Center (Figure 5.15). To undertake the project, the Rockrose Development Corporation needed to have the site rezoned from its industrial M1-5 designation to allow for residential and commercial use. There was strong community opposition to the proposed rezoning, and the project’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) concluded that the residential conversion would have an adverse impact on the meat- related businesses occupying other neighboring Rockrose properties. To mitigate these impacts, Rockrose agreed to the restrictive declaration limiting their Gansevoort Street properties to use by meat-related firms, which took the form of a covenant running with the land.119 CPC and community concerns that adjacent development, while not directly displacing meat business, would still adversely impact the market’s 118 New York City Environmental Quality Review, Draft Environmental Assessment Statement for the Whitney Museum of American Art Project, CEQR #07SBS021M, 19 Dec. 2007 (hereafter Whitney CEQR); also filed under New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Project Review #: 06PR06634. 119 See the original Restrictive Declaration by the Landmark Restoration Company (Rockrose Devel. Corp.), 13 Apr. 1984, available through the NYC Office of the City Register online ACRIS system (www.nyc.gov/html/dof/html/jump/acris.shtml) by searching block 643, lots 49, 43, and 54; as well as the NYS Supreme Court Decision Gansevoort Street LLC and Michael Wu against the City Planning Commission of the City of New York and The City Council of The City of New York, 24 Jan. 2008, provided to the author by New York Times journalist Andrew Rice. For a description of the Rockrose Manhattan Refrigerator Company Building rehabilitation see Stern, et. al., New York 2000, p. 356. 318 Figure 5.15. The dashed line around the Gansevoort Market Meat Center is protected by the New York State Agricultural Marketing Act. The dotted line surrounding buildings on the south side of Gansevoort Street between Washington Street and Greenwich Street were until recently subject to a restrictive declaration limiting their use to meat-related businesses. The Manhattan Refrigerating Company Building is located on the south side of Gansevoort Street across from the Meat Center. The solid line indicates the boundaries of the Gansevoort Market National Register Historic District. Source: Sandborn Map with additions by author. 319 function and thus required mitigation is significant in relationship to more recent rezoning proposals described below. Save Gansevoort Market co-chair Jo Hamilton approached CPC to discuss other ways that zoning might be used to help preserve the market’s traditional functions. In the course of multiple interactions she found that CPC was equally uninterested in becoming directly involved in the preservation of the meat market. While its chairman Amanda Burden enthusiastically endorsed the area’s physical preservation, and was willing to support a landmarks nomination, there was no interest in formulating more creative measures. Vishaan Chakrabarti, who was at the time director of the CPC’s Manhattan Office, explained to Hamilton that his agency only had control over zoning, and zoning was a “blunt instrument.” Beyond its broad use designations and general stipulations governing the height, bulk, and setback of new construction, zoning could do nothing to preserve a specific use, historic or otherwise. Hamilton had hoped CPC would consider designating Gansevoort Market a “Special District,” an idea that was first proposed by a Columbia University historic preservation student in the mid 1980s.120 Created by amending the city’s zoning ordinance, special districts implement regulations and/or incentives that are tailored to a particular area to achieve specific goals. The first use of them in the nation in 1967 is also probably the most well known: to preserve existing theaters and to subsidize the construction of new ones in New York City’s 42nd Street Theater District. The special theater district allowed developers to use the usual transfers of development rights for landmarked properties. Additionally, a “Theater Retention Bonus” enabled transfers to non-contiguous “receiving sites” with an allowance for additional floor area provided a covenant was placed on the “development sending” building requiring 120 See Lustig “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan,” 1985. 320 the preservation of theater use.121 That program has generally been considered a success. Special districts have since been used throughout New York City with the intent to preserve a variety of existing uses in certain neighborhoods. In the 1970s in particular, they were used to protect or enhance uses considered historically and cultural significant, such as in Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Yorkville-East 86th Street District.122 Although their site-specific nature makes them similar in some respects to landmark district designation, special districts are generally designed to address non-architectural issues, or issues for which architecture and use are interrelated; their effectiveness as an architectural and functional preservation tool has not been widely studied.123 CPC could have tailored a Gansevoort Market Special District with incentives for developers to preserve space for meat businesses but it was unwilling to do so for reasons stemming from other proposals discussed below. Save Gansevoort Market’s last major initiative to preserve the area’s traditional functions was the “Market Blooms Project,” which explored the feasibility of moving the New York City Flower Market from its historic home in Chelsea to Gansevoort. Preservationists reasoned that with meat businesses dwindling from the area, the introduction of new wholesale uses would help to preserve and enhance Gansevoort’s market character. Meat businesses and flower businesses had similar needs, such as a central business district location with wide streets and ample truck 121 Todd W. Bressi, ed., Planning and Zoning New York City: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1993): 74. 122 On Little Italy see Joseph M. Conforti, “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions,” Annals of Tourism Research 23, no. 4 (1996): 830-842; on East 86th Street see Alexander Garvin, The American City: What Works, What Doesn’t, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002): 25; on Chinatown see Richard F. Babcock and Wendy U. Larsen, Special Districts: The Ultimate in Neighborhood Zoning (Cambridge, Mass.: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 1990): 90. 123 See Babcock and Larsen, Special Districts, 3; Conforti: “Ghettos as Tourism Attractions;” Ann Satterthwaite, “Methods of Planning for the Protection and Enhancement of Historic Waterfronts,” in Selected Papers: Conference on Conserving the Historic and Cultural Landscape, Denver, Colorado, May 2-3, 1975 (Washington, DC: Preservation Press, 1975); one exception is Emily Goldman, “Dusting off the Deeds: Land Use Control for Sunnyside Gardens (1924-2007),” MA Thesis, Cornell University, 2007. 321 parking, and similar ways of doing business, like appropriating the sidewalk for display and storage. The relocation plan had the support of a broad coalition of stakeholders including Gansevoort meat businesses, the Flower Market Association of New York, and local elected officials. Although the Flower Market’s existing location was in itself historic, it had been looking to relocate for at least a decade. The New York Flower Market started in early 19th century as growers began informally gathering outside at the western end of 34th Street in Manhattan. By the 1890s, the market had moved into buildings between West 28th and West 26th Streets near Sixth Avenue, where it thrived for roughly a century. However, flower market merchants experienced rapidly escalating rents and increased traffic congestion in the wake of the 1995 rezoning of their stretch of Sixth Avenue from industrial to residential use.124 Analysis of flower market facility needs and available space in Gansevoort concluded that the relocation was both technically and financially feasible. Executing the proposal would, however, have required significant support from both the state and the city, which owned the two most favorable sites for the new market. One of the sites was the southern portion of the city-owned Gansevoort Farmers Market Site adjacent to the Meat Center building.125 Even though it appeared feasible and there was widespread enthusiasm for the project, relocation plans ultimately fizzled out for a variety of reasons. According to Hamilton, the city was unwilling to put its political capital behind the project. It had been working with the Flower Market merchants for several decades to try and find them a new home and after numerous false starts, the city doubted the group had the internal organization necessary to implement a major 124 Washington Square Partners, et. al., “Gansevoort Flower Market Feasibility Study,” Nov. 2004, provided to the author by the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. 125 Ibid. 322 undertaking.126 Moreover, unbeknownst to the Gansevoort preservationists, the city was already in the midst of negotiations with another party interested in developing the same site adjacent to the Gansevoort Meat Center building. Preserving Market Uses in the Face of Alternative Development Proposals Two related development proposals for Gansevoort Market lay behind the city’s reluctance to support the flower market relocation and the CPC’s disinterest in creating special district zoning for the neighborhood. One was for a major art museum at the southern terminus of the High Line. The other was the adaptive reuse of the High Line itself. Both are in development in 2008 and together they have a significant potential to threaten the continued existence of the meat businesses that remain in Gansevoort Market. The Dia Art Foundation announced its intentions in May of 2005 to build a new museum connected to the southern foot of High Line at the corner of Washington and Gansevoort streets. In stark contrast to their reception of the flower market proposal, the Bloomberg administration and city’s Economic Development Corporation both strongly supported the museum’s plans. Moreover, preservationists and many meat market businesses also endorsed the concept, even though it would require taking a portion of the city-owned block that was preserved for market uses under the State Agriculture and Market Law—the same site proposed for the flower market relocation.127 Dia said it was drawn to Gansevoort by its industrial grit and that it wanted to preserve, rather than displace, the meat market uses as part of its museum project. The initial concept was for the Dia building to join the High Line at 126 Author interview with Jo Hamilton, 19 Oct. 2006. 127 See in particular Andrew Berman’s letter to Marc Ricks, Senior Policy Analyst, Office of the Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Rebuilding, 5 May 2005, New York State Office of Historic Preservation. 323 the second-story level with meat businesses occupying new space beneath the museum. Even if the project did incorporate new space for meat businesses, Tom Ventrone, an owner of London Meats in the adjacent Gansevoort Meat Market Building, was among those who feared that lifting the agricultural restriction would set a precedent that would one day enable the city to repurpose the entire market site.128 This turned out to be a prescient observation. For internal reasons, Dia abandoned its plans for the Gansevoort site in October, 2006 and the Whitney Museum of Art immediately stepped in to take its place.129 While it was also drawn to the area for its industrial character, unlike the Dia, the Whitney has no plans to include meat businesses in its new museum, which is being designed by star-architect Renzo Piano.130 As of 2008, the project was working its way through the New York City planning review process. A Draft Environmental Assessment Statement (DEAS) notes the undertaking will directly displace three active meatpacking businesses and eliminate one temporarily-vacant meatpacking facility, demolish two existing market buildings, and de-designate a portion of the protected market site. However, using a very narrow interpretation of the City Environmental Review Technical Manual, it concludes that the project will not have a “marked effect on neighborhood character and would not have a negative effect on the meatpacking industry as a whole.”131 The effect is determined insignificant because 128 Lincoln Anderson, “Meatpackers Scramble for Last Scraps of the Market,” The Villager, vol. 75, no. 8, 13-20 July 2005; Carol Vogel, “Dia Art Foundation Plans an Upscale Move,” New York Times, 9 May 2005. 129 Carol Vogel, “Dia Art Foundation Calls Off Museum Project,” New York Times, 25 Oct. 2006; Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Uptown or Downtown? The Whitney’s Identity Crisis,” New York Times, 2 Nov. 2006. 130 Nicolai Ouroussoff, “Whitney’s Downtown Sanctuary,” New York Times, 1 May 2008. 131 Whitney CEQR, p. C-1, emphasis added. The project is located within the boundaries of the Gansevoort Market National Register District; the New York SHPO wanted to designate as “contributing to the district” one of the two structures the Whitney proposes to demolish—a Neoclassical-Style pumping station now known as the “Premier Veal Building”—but, anticipating this project, it was told not to do so by the politically-appointed director of the agency, according to a source at the NY SHPO who wished to remain anonymous. 324 the loss of these three businesses is considered in the context of all 294 meat and poultry wholesale businesses located throughout the entire city, rather than the more appropriate context of those still operating in the Gansevoort Market (which will be examined in the next chapter). The differences in findings between the 1984 Manhattan Refrigerating Company Building EIS and the Whitney DEAS are striking. The former project, while not even directly displacing any meat businesses was considered an adverse impact; the restrictive declaration was placed on Rockrose’s Gansevoort Street properties to preserve the southern boundary of the meat market. In contrast, the Whitney DEAS finds that directly displacing meat businesses and eliminating a protected marketing area is insignificant because it merely continues a preexisting trend in the decline of industrial jobs in the area and the rise of “upscale” retail, restaurant, and hotel establishments.132 A finding of No Adverse Impact means that there will be no mitigation to help preserve meat-market functions. Strangely, Gansevoort’s preservationists are not opposed to the project. The second major undertaking currently taking shape in the market helps to explain why. For nearly a decade, the High Line has been one of the most prominent preservation and adaptive reuse projects in New York City and, arguably, the entire nation. The first section from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street is on schedule to open at the end of 2008. When complete, the High Line will form an elevated ribbon of public parkland connecting Gansevoort Market to Chelsea and the Hudson Yards at 30th Street (Figure 5.16). Save Gansevoort Market worked closely with the Friends of the High Line, the non-profit preservation organization that formed in 1999 to advocate for the adaptive reuse of the one-and-a-half-mile-long elevated rail structure that was decommissioned 132 Whitney CEQRA, pp. C-6, and B-4. 325 326 Figure 5.16. When complete, the High Line—the black curving line on this map—will form an elevated ribbon park connecting Gansevoort Market to Chelsea and the 30th Street Rail Yards beyond. Source: Development Districts Map, Friends of the High Line website: (www.thehighline.org/images/maps/map_districts.pdf) accessed on 10 August 16, 2008; north arrow added by author. in 1980 and left to decay.133 Supporting each other made sense, because the High Line was built in part to service the Gansevoort Market, and the two organizations were working to preserve resources that shared a similar historical context. Each testified in support of the other’s projects. To limited extent, they shared some of the same financial contributors. For example, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg hosted fundraisers for the flower market feasibility study in 2004 and the Diller-Von Furstenberg Family Foundation donated $5 million to the High Line restoration in 2006.134 But there is also an unmistakable asymmetry between the two groups in terms of organizational capacity, funding, and institutional support. The Bloomberg Administration, the CPC, and the NYC EDC made the adaptive reuse of the High Line one of their top priorities; elected officials and city economic development leadership see it as the key component to the revitalization of the far West Side. Cultivated by a staff of more than a dozen, the friends have an enviably long list of powerful political supporters and wealthy financial contributors, among them the Hollywood actors Edward Norton and Kevin Bacon, and the Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian Robert Caro. The Friends of the High Line also support the Whitney’s Gansevoort project and, in turn, the museum plans to dedicate a significant portion of its ground floor to High Line administrative offices and support services. Thus, even if the Gansevoort preservationists were inclined to protest the Whitney project, it would likely lead to a falling out with a number of their most important constituents. The adaptive reuse of the High Line will also undermine the functional preservation of Gansevoort Market more directly. One of the greatest forces 133 For a brief historical overview of the High Line and the formation of the Friends of the High Line see Stern, New York 2000, pp. 427-431. 134 See both Lincoln Anderson, “Furstenberg has Designs of Meat Market Building,” The Villager, vol. 73, no. 52, 28 Apr.-4 May 2004; and “Mayor Bloomberg and Friends of the High Line Host Rail Lifting Ceremony,” Office of the Mayor Press Release number PR-108-06, 10 Apr. 2006, available online at nyc.gov, accessed Aug. 16, 2008. 327 displacing meat businesses from the market has been the rising cost of rent. While comprehensive rental data is difficult to obtain, meat businesses owners report that their rents in privately-owned buildings have increased 500% or more over the last decade. Of course, rents were driven up by the infusion of restaurants, nightclubs, and boutiques that came to area well before the adaptive reuse of the High Line was certain. Still, the High Line was also effectively “sold” to the Bloomberg Administration and other politicians on the basis of its ability to catalyze adjacent development that would return real estate tax revenues to the city that far outweighed its 50% contribution to the costs of construction.135 Recent reports suggest that the “Economic Impact of Re-Use” conducted in 2002 was conservative in its projections. Dozens of luxury housing projects have been announced in the wake of the rezoning of Chelsea finalized in the summer of 2005 and the unveiling of the reuse plans of the High Line. The elevated park and the development that it is catalyzing will dramatically reshape the character of the far West Side of lower-Manhattan. As one reporter commented, The heady grit-and-glamour cocktail that New Yorkers so love about the meatpacking district is about to expand northward—although perhaps with more glamour than grit in the final equation—as the city's major developers snatch up any and all available parcels along the High Line and start work on a planned 5,500 units of housing, all but 1,100 of them for the fabulously wellheeled.136 Without commercial rent control, which does not currently exist in any U.S. city but which cultural conservationists have argued could help save endangered historic 135 For projections of the economic benefits it will induce, see Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alschuler, Inc., et. al, “The High Line: The Feasibility and Economic Impact of Re-Use,” (New York: Hamilton, Rabinovitz & Alshuler, Inc., 26 Dec. 2002). 136 Claire Wilson, “Turning the High Line Into…the High Life,” New York Times, 18 Dec. 2005; see also C. J. Hughes, “Galleries and High-Line Views,” New York Times, 6 Jan. 2008. 328 functions, Meatpacking firms have little hope of matching the rents paid by the galleries, retail stores, restaurants and clubs that will cater to these new residents.137 High rise developments along the High Line have also come to the Gansevoort Market. The site on Washington Street where preservationists and meatpackers joined forces to stop the construction of a residential tower 2003 was purchased by another developer to build the Standard Hotel. An “as-of-right” project under the areas existing M1-5 zoning, the 337-room hotel designed by Polshek Partnership straddles the High Line and is set to open in the winter of 2008 (Figure 5.17). Lacking any industrial equivalent of the “right to farm” laws that protect farmers from complaints by nearby residents, meat workers fear that occupants of the high-end hotel will be offended by their presence in the neighborhood and that their objections will ultimately lead to their displacement (Figure 5.18). Conclusion The strategies, laws, and economic incentives available to preserve historic resources have evolved since the turn of the twentieth century.138 Preservationists in Seattle, Boston, and New York City experimented with a range of strategies to perpetuate the forms and functions of historic market districts, including advocacy, protest, landmark designation, and economic planning that incorporated public/private partnerships. As previously noted, the existing kit of historic preservation tools is primarily oriented toward preserving the appearance of old buildings and landscapes. Maintaining the functions of historic markets was always the most difficult 137 On commercial rent control as a strategy for cultural conservation see Steven J. Zeitlin, “Conserving our Cities’ Endangered Spaces,” in Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage edited by Mary Hufford (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1994); for an historical overview of commercial rent control in NYC see Zukin, Loft Living. 138 See Thompson Mayes, “Preservation Law and Public Policy,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Robert E. Stipe (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003): 157-184. 329 Figure 5.17. A rendering of the Standard Hotel designed by Polshek Partnership straddles the High Line on Washington Street near the corner of 13th Street. Source: Polshek Partnership, published in Nicolai Ouroussoff, “On the High Line, Solitude is Pretty Crowded,” New York Times, 24 Dec. 2006. Figure 5.18. Meat workers continue to occupy buildings in the Gansevoort Market District as the Standard Hotel rises behind them in the summer of 2007. Source: photograph by Jeremiah Moss, vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com. 330 challenge, and there were few preservation-specific tools available to apply to this goal. A few points about preserving historic functions are worth noting in conclusion. First is the uniqueness of the Pike Place Market preservation process and the regulatory framework that emerged out of the 1971 voter initiative. Not all states have a voter-initiated referendum process that was used so skillfully by Steinbreuck and his colleagues. The success of the ballot initiative gave the market preservationists a strong mandate to craft a powerful and comprehensive regulatory framework that is still being used to balance the variety of vendors in Pike Place Market, and the types of goods and services that they offer. Timing was also a factor with respect to the availability of public funding. The Pike Place Market preservation planning and implementation process benefited enormously from the funds available through the federal Urban Renewal program and later government sources like Urban Development Action Grants. Functional preservation initiatives begun later, such as Gansevoort Market, had fewer sources of government money to draw upon. Second, all three case studies highlight the role of politics and political capital in historic preservation. After the Seattle voter initiative, Pike Place Market preservationists enjoyed tremendous local and state political support. Likewise, once the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) made the decision to preserve the architecture of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace complex, it quickly let contracts to restore the building facades and negotiated with a private developer to complete the interiors and lease and manage the properties. New York City preservationists also made skillful use of political connections in their campaign to win local landmark designation for Gansevoort Market. Sustaining the political power to preserve the functions of Gansevoort Market and Faneuil Hall Marketplace was more difficult. This can clearly be seen in New 331 York City’s willingness to amend the agricultural use deed restrictions at the former site of the Gansevoort Farmers Market in order to build a branch of the Whitney Museum of Art. It is also evident in the City of Boston’s repeated inaction with respect to implementation of the Faneuil Hall Marketplace Commission, which was described in The Rouse Corporation’s 99-year Marketplace lease with the BRA.139 The functional preservation planning and implementation challenges described in this chapter underscore the need for both new tools and the modification of existing tools. Briefly, modification and enhanced utilization of existing preservation tools to facilitate functional preservation might include: • Amending the federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit program in accordance with the recommendations proposed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.140 Eliminating the “substantial rehabilitation” requirement and easing the restrictions that pertain to use of the tax credits by non-profit organizations would be most useful. Enhancing the tax credit from the existing 20% rate to 25% or 30% for certified rehabilitations that preserve historic functions might also be helpful. • Greater and more flexible use of local historic preservation property tax abatements is another approach. Eliminating the need for property owners to substantially rehabilitate their building before receiving tax abatement may help to increase utilization of these incentives. Programs like California’s Mills Act, which assesses local property value based on capitalized income, 139 The use of deed restrictions to preserve historic functions is itself an interesting subject that deserves attention from future scholars. Though not discussed extensively in this dissertation, in addition to the Gansevoort Market deed restrictions, the will of Peter Faneuil stated specifically that the ground floor of Faneuil Hall was to stay in market use in perpetuity. Still owned by the City of Boston, and managed in partnership with the National Park Service, it is now almost entirely a gift shop for tourist souvenirs. 140 For details see David Listokin, Best Practices for Effecting the Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing, Vol. II, HUD, Sept. 2006. 332 rather than market value, may also release building owners from the pressure they often feel to find higher-paying tenants.141 • Transfer of development rights (TDR) is one of the oldest preservation financial incentives, and it too might be modified to facilitate functional preservation if building owners were enabled to transfer the economic potential to a second site, from one at which an historic use is being perpetuated.142 New tools to encourage functional preservation are also needed. Two ideas borrowed from affordable housing and agricultural land preservation include: • A “Right to Urban Industry” law similar to the “Right to Farm” laws that exist in many rural areas in the United States.143 A law such as this might have given the Gansevoort Market meat workers a degree of protection as hotel and other residential development threatened to displace industry in the market neighborhood. • Commercial rent control similar to what now exists in some cities in the United States in the form of residential rent control. As with its residential counterpart, commercial rent control would only enable building owners to gradually raise rents on space occupied by untenured operators of historic businesses.144 141 On the Mills Act, see Carolyn Douthat and Elizabeth Morton, Preservation and Property Taxes: Capitalizing on Historic Resources with the Mills Act, 2nd ed. / rev. by Michael Buhler (Oakland, C.A..: California Preservation Foundation, 1997). 142 On the TDRs see John J. Costonis, Space Adrift: Saving Urban Landmarks through the Chicago Plan (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1974). 143 See both Owen J. Furuseth and Mark B. Lapping, eds, Contested Countryside: The Rural Urban Fringe in North America (Ashgate, 1999); and Furuseth and Lapping, eds, Big Places, Big Plans (Ashgate, 2004). 144 On commercial rent control as a strategy for cultural conservation see Steven J. Zeitlin, “Conserving our Cities’ Endangered Spaces,” in Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage edited by Mary Hufford (Urbana, I.L.: University of Illinois Press, 1994); for an historical overview of commercial rent control in NYC see Zukin, Loft Living. 333 Preservationists in Seattle, Boston, and New York City did the best they could to preserve historic market functions with the tools available to them. Their degree of success or failure is open to interpretation. The next chapter offers one method for measuring functional preservation. 334 CHAPTER 6 MEASURING FUNCTIONAL PRESERVATION Because functional preservation is a relatively rare form of historic preservation or cultural conservation, to date there are no established methods or metrics for evaluating the effectiveness of its planning interventions. Other more recognized forms of historic preservation have formal measurements of success. The efficacy of architectural preservation, which aims to maintain the design features and historic materials of the built environment, may be gauged through the many components assembled in historic structures reports.1 These include historic photographs, archival documentation, on-site investigations, and the laboratory analysis of architectural materials, all of which can help determine the degree to which a building maintains its “integrity,” or has changed over time. Preservation undertakings with microeconomic goals use different data to calculate success, such as an investor’s “return on equity.” Over the last decade, scholars have made increasingly accurate quantitative measurements of preservation’s success in terms of generating macroeconomic benefits in the forms of taxes, wealth, and job creation. All of these types of measurements are applicable to the case studies examined in this dissertation, to the extent that the preservationists involved wanted to preserve market architecture and uses, ensure economic viability, and generate other broad positive outcomes for their host cities. None of these established methods in themselves measure functional preservation. This chapter proposes one method for measuring functional preservation using a quantitative assessment of changes over time in the types of businesses located in the 1 Deborah Slayton, “Preservation Brief 43: The Preparation and Use of Historic Structures Reports,” Technical Preservation Service, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, April, 2005. 335 three case-study markets. It begins with a discussion of methods and data sources other scholars have used to evaluate another type of functional preservation: the retention of socioeconomic and racial diversity of residents in historic districts, which are better known as gentrification studies.2 Because market preservationists wanted to preserve specific types of businesses that were historically associated with a particular geographic area, their efforts can be thought of as attempts to prevent commercial gentrification. This chapter will show that the data that scholars use to measure residential gentrification is not suitable for analysis of commercial gentrification, which helps to explain why studies of this nature are so rare. Therefore, a variety of alternative data sources were mined for each market and the challenges posed by them are described. Lastly, the chapter concludes with a discussion of the limitations associated with both the data employed in this analysis, and the quantitative method used to measure functional preservation. Gentrification: A Measurement of Functional Preservation Over the last thirty years scholars from a diverse range of backgrounds including urban sociology, geography, and city planning have studied the relationship between historic preservation and gentrification.3 This section takes a closer look at the methods and data sources used to study the extent or progression of gentrification. 2 Refer to Cohen’s Butchers Hill article in support of retaining diversity is a type of historic preservation. 3 Examples include Eric Allison, “Gentrification and Historic Districts: Public Policy Considerations in the Designation of Historic Districts in New York City,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2005; James Cohen, “Combining Historic Preservation and Income Class Integration: A Case Study of the Butchers Hill Neighborhood of Baltimore,” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 3 (1989): 663-697; Edward N. Coulson, and Robin N. Leichenko, “Historic Preservation and Neighborhood Change,” Urban Studies 41, no. 8 (July 2004): 1587-1600; Peter Thomas Rohrback, “The Poignant Dilemma of Spontaneous Restoration,” Historic Preservation 22, no. 4 (Oct.-Dec. 1970): 4-10; Donovan Rypkema, “The Oversimplification of Gentrification,” Forum Journal 18, no. 4 (summer 2004); Michael D. Newson, “Blacks and Historic Preservation,” Law and Contemporary Problems 36 (Summer 1971): 423-432; John Foley, and Mickey Lauria, “Historic Preservation in New Orleans French Quarter: Unresolved Racial Tensions,” in Knights and Castles: Minorities and Urban Regeneration (Burlington, C.T.: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003): 67-89. 336 Most studies of this nature utilize the decennial U.S. Census of Population and Housing, which offers a longitudinal source of data whose variables, definitions, and geographic boundaries remain relatively consistent over time. Furthermore, the “census block”—the smallest geographic entity available in the published version of the Census of Population and Housing—enables analysis of fairly small areas that can also be aggregated together to examine larger and yet tightly-defined neighborhoods and districts. Regina Bures’s 2001 study in which she argues that historic preservation and tourism led to the gentrification of Charleston, South Caroline is a good example of this type of research.4 Drawing on population census block data she was able to document the increasing racial segregation of the neighborhood south of Calhoun Street, which became a local historic district, and the neighborhood north of Calhoun Street, which never received historic status. Between 1920 and 1990, the percentage of black residents north of Calhoun increased while the percentage of whites decreased. South of Calhoun, in the historic district, the situation was reversed: white residents increased and black residents decreased (Table 6.1). Whether the relationship between variables—race and historic designation—is causative or merely correlative is not resolved, but the point is that the availability of the population data enables Bures to make the argument that the two are related. She goes on to also argue, however, that tourism shaped the commercial character of Charleston, and on this point the data is far less convincing. Aside from noting construction of a visitor’s center, a luxury hotel, and a shopping mall, she is unable to document any other tourist-related changes in the types of businesses in the downtown commercial district. 4 Regina M. Bures, “Historic Preservation, Gentrification, and Tourism: The Transformation of Charleston, South Carolina,” in Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment, vol. 6, edited by Kevin Fox Gotham (New York: JAI, 2001): 195-209. 337 Table 6.1. Summary of Population by Race and Region of City, Charleston, S.C. Note: The area south of Calhoun Street is a local historic district whereas the area north of Calhoun is not. Source: Regina M. Bures, “Historic Preservation, Gentrification, and Tourism: The Transformation of Charleston, South Carolina,” in Critical Perspectives on Urban Redevelopment, vol. 6, edited by Kevin Fox Gotham (New York: JAI, 2001): 195-209. 338 The reason for this is that although a U.S. Economic Census (called the Census of Business prior to 1977) has existed in its modern form since 1930, it lacks the geographic specificity of the Census of Population and Housing.5 If there were longitudinal data on retail businesses and services at the block level, Bures might have been able to demonstrate that commercial establishments in downtown Charleston changed over time from businesses that served the needs of local residents, like food stores and laundromats, to antique shops and gift boutiques, which arguably cater to tourists. For most of its existence, counties were the smallest geographic entities for which the Census of Businesses published detailed statistics. Only summary data on the total number of business establishments, sales, and employees are provided for cities, and only for those with a certain population threshold, which has changed over the years (it was 5000 or more inhabitants in 1954, for example). The published editions of the Census of Business have no equivalent of the smaller geographic entities such as the tract or block that are available in the Census of Population and Housing. Without this type of detailed data, the academic and professional community have only been able to make vague observational impressions of commercial district change, which often sound like social pathologies of historic preservation: the “boutique syndrome,” and “Soho syndrome,” for example. Changes in the Food System as seen through the Census The more macro perspective offered by the Censuses of Business and Economics do, however, offers valuable insights into the changes over time in the way that food has been distributed and retailed at the national and counties levels. Analysis 5 For a detailed history of the Economic Census see “Historical Development of the Economic Census of the United States,” Appendix B of History of the 1997 Economic Census, July 2000, available online at: www.census.gov/prod/ec97/pol00-hec.pdf. 339 of this data frames a larger context in which the challenges faced in the preservation of the case study markets can be understood. Retail Trade Market preservationists in Seattle and Boston wanted to preserve small, independent stores that that sold fresh, unpackaged food in a full-service retail format. They were swimming against the tide of nationwide changes in the food retail sector. Statistics from the Census of Retail Trade, a subset of the Censuses of Business and Economics, vividly illustrate the rapid rise of the grocery store and the attendant decline in stand-alone meat, seafood, and fruit and vegetable markets in the middle decades of the twentieth century (Figure 6.1). The number of grocery stores steadily increased until the mid 1950s, while the number of meat, seafood, and fruit and vegetable markets declined, although not as quickly as one might imagine. The reason for their gradual decline is that before World War II, the average square footage of grocery stores in the United States was still relatively small. While the census does not record the physical size of business establishments, industry statistics indicate that grocery stores in the 1930s averaged only 6,400 square feet, into which was packed mostly dry goods, boxed and canned items, and a limited volume of fresh vegetables, fruits, and meats. These small stores fit easily into the footprint of downtown building lots and were well distributed throughout most American cities.6 By 1956 when the number of grocery stores reached their peak, however, the average square footage of stores had more than doubled to 18,000 square feet.7 Fruit and produce sections grew larger and grocery stores even began to offer pre-packaged meat in the self-service format. Unlike their smaller predecessors, post-World War I 6 As reported in James M. Mayo, The American Grocery Store: The Business Evolution of an Architectural Space (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993). 7 Ibid. 340 300,000 250,000 200,000 Grocery Stores Meat Markets Fruit & Vegetable Markets Fish & Seafood Markets Number of Stores 150,000 100,000 50,000 0 1929 1939 1948 1958 1967 1977 1987 1997 2002 Figure 6.1. Retail Food Stores by Type of Store in the U.S., 1929-2002. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Retail Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Retail Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. 341 stores were most often built in the suburbs to which their target market of middle-class shoppers was rapidly moving at that time. In the suburbs it was also easier for grocery store corporations to find large, undeveloped parcels of land to construct their buildings and requisite parking. It was at this point in the post-war era that standalone meat, seafood, and fruit and vegetable markets began their precipitous decline. Unfortunately, between 1967 and 1987, the census did not enumerate meat and fish and seafood markets separately, but rather grouped them together; this in itself was symptomatic of the decline in these retail industries (Table 6.2).8 When the census resumed enumerating these business types separately in 1997, the trajectory in their decline became clear: the number of meat, fish and seafood, and fruit and vegetable markets were a third or less of their last counts in 1958. That market preservationists in Boston and Seattle saw these trends unfolding helps to explain their desire to preserve market functions; they saw them as threatened historic resources. In Seattle in particular, Steinbrueck and the other market advocates worried about how the redevelopment of Pike Place would affect the food access of low-income residents who lived in and around the Central Business District. Most of these shoppers walked to the market or took public transportation. Between 1958 and 2002, the total number of grocery stores continued to decline, but the size of each store and the distances between them increased.9 Throughout this time, the expectation has been that shoppers would drive to the grocery store, but what about those without the means to do so? Steinbruck was a remarkably prescient preservationist. Urban access 8 The census used to categorize industries according to the U.S. Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system that was first developed in the 1930s. The SIC was revised periodically, adding categories in response to new industries and deleting or combining categories for declining industries. Meat markets were combined with fish and seafood markets in 1967, 1977, and 1987. In 1997 the SIC system was replaced by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS), which introduced new industry classifications and restored old classifications that were combined in earlier SIC revisions. Under the NAICS separate counts of meat markets and fish and seafood markets were made available again. 9 Mayo, The American Grocery Store. 342 Table 6.2. Retail Food Stores by Type of Store in the United States, 1929-2002. 1 The 1929, 1939, and 1948 Census of Business included two categories for grocery stores: grocery stores with fresh meat; and grocery stores without fresh meat. The counts given in this table for those years are for grocery stores with fresh meat. 2 Between 1967 and 1987 Meat Markets and Fish and Seafood Markets were not enumerated separately. 3 The SIC was replaced by the NAICS beginning in 1997; see Census Figures Notes. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Retail Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Retail Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. 343 to fresh food is fast becoming one of the most pressing concerns for those who are trying to integrate public health and city planning.10 Some of these trends may be reversing themselves. Of particular note is the slight increase from 1997 to 2002 in the number of meat, fish and seafood, and fruit and vegetable markets. The reasons for this are unclear, but possible speculations include the increasing interest over the last roughly ten years in inner-city living among those in the middle class and above. Inner cities have been notoriously underserved by the grocery store and supermarket industry since WWII and, as a result, smaller, independent food markets may be filling this niche in light of new consumer demand. However, recent reporting also indicates that the supermarket industry is beginning to reevaluate its inner-city position by developing smaller stores—a return to its earlier roots. Even the concept names of these new smallerformat outlets are suggestively historical: one major retailer refers to them as “Marketside” stores.11 Future economic censuses may shed additional insights on this trend. Wholesale Trade Also relevant to the Gansevoort and Boston case studies are the geographic and employment trends of the wholesale food industry since World War II. Market preservationists in New York wanted to retain wholesale meat businesses in their historic location in Gansevoort Market, and Walter Whitehill advocated retaining wholesale food merchants in the Faneuil Hall Market district. Due to the way the 10 Bill Dunkley, et. al., “Accessibility versus Scale: Examining the Tradeoffs in Grocery Stores,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 23 (2004): 387-401; Samina Raja, Branden Born, and Jessica Kozlowski Russell, A Guide to Community and Regional Food Planning: Transforming Food Environments, Building Healthy Communities, Planning Advisory Service (PAS) Report Series Number 554 (Chicago: American Planning Association, 2008). 11 Andrew Martin, “Miles of Aisles for Milk? Not Here,” New York Times, 8 Sept. 2008. 344 Censuses of Business and Economics are organized at the county level, the statistical trends are clearest in New York. Manhattan was historically the center of the wholesale food industry in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth. In the decades following the last world war, however, urban planners and other government decision makers made a concerted effort to relocate all industrial activities including wholesale food processing and distributing from the middle of the city, Manhattan (New York County), to the periphery in the “outer boroughs” of Queens, Brooklyn (Kings County), Bronx, and Staten Island (Richmond County). This coordinated exiling of industry from the inner city was, according to Robert Fishman, anticipated by the Regional Plan of New York and Its Environs (1929-1931) but was largely implemented in the decades bracketing the mid-twentieth century.12 The number of wholesale food establishments located in Manhattan dropped steadily throughout the second half of the twentieth century while the number of establishments in the outer boroughs expanded and contracted as the industry as a whole reshuffled its geographic distribution (Figure 6.2). The relative importance of all of the outer boroughs in food distribution increased as Manhattan’s locational dominance waned. The number of employees of wholesale establishments conveys the geographical shift with greater clarity (Figure 6.3). Manhattan’s decline as a hub of wholesale distribution is still obvious, but the nearly equal growth in food wholesale employment in the Bronx, Queens, and Kings County is clearer. New York City food wholesaling is no longer as centralized as it was in the first half of the twentieth century. The outer boroughs are now each separate, smaller centers of wholesale food processing and distribution. 12 Robert Fishman, “The Regional Plan and the Transformation of the Industrial Metropolis,” in The Landscape of Modernity: Essays on New York City, 1900-1940 edited by David Ward and Olivier Zunz (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992): 106-125. 345 Number of Establishments 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 New York Kings Bronx Queens Richmond 500 0 1948 1958 1967 1977 1987 1997 2002 Figure 6.2. Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related Products by Location in New York City, 1948-2002. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Wholesale Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Wholesale Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. Number of Employees 25000 20000 15000 10000 New York Kings Bronx Queens Richmond 5000 0 1948 1958 1967 1977 1987 1997 2002 Figure 6.3. Employees of Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related Products by Location in New York City, 1948-2002. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Wholesale Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Wholesale Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. 346 Census data also illuminates the decline in both the total number of wholesale food establishments (Figure 6.4) and the number of wholesale food employees (Figure 6.5). As discussed in Chapter Three, labor-saving technologies like forklifts, singlestory factories, and palletizing of goods that were implemented after World War II greatly enhanced the productivity of each unit of labor, which had the effect of decreasing the total number of workers needed in processing and distribution. Also since the end of the last World War, consolidation of businesses into ever larger corporations has been the predominant trend in almost every facet of the food industry. Measuring Functional Preservation: Sources and Methods A variety of different data sources were used to measure the long-term effectiveness of functional preservation strategies at each of the case study markets. While the sources of data varied slightly among the case studies, the basic methods were the same. The strategy was to reconstruct the business history of each market beginning with the present and then selecting a number of time intervals in the past. Though it sounds deceptively simple, determining the exact businesses that occupied a given geographic area at some point in the past is surprisingly difficult. The data is as challenging to find as it is to subsequently refine. Once a database was constructed for each market, the number and percentages of businesses by type of businesses were calculated for each year and then compared across years to assess how the commercial characters of the markets changed over time. The functional preservation objectives and methods varied from market to market, and this is reflected in the analysis in the number of business categories, or variables, that were measured. 347 Total Wholesale Establishments 5000 4500 4000 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 1000 500 0 1948 1958 1967 1977 1987 1997 2002 Figure 6.4. Total Wholesale Establishments of Groceries and Related Products in New York City, 1948-2002. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Retail Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Retail Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. Total Number of Wholesale Employees 40000 35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000 5000 0 1948 1958 1967 1977 1987 1997 2002 Figure 6.5. Total Employees of Wholesalers of Groceries and Related Products in New York City, 1948-2002. Sources: U.S. Census of Business, Retail Trade, 1929, 1939, 1948, 1958, 1967; U.S. Economic Census, Retail Trade, 1977, 1987, 1997, 2002. 348 Data Sources Most of the data used in this study comes from two sources: current and historic market directories; and current and past cross-reference telephone directories, also know as “crisscross directories.” Both Pike Place Market and Faneuil Hall Marketplace publish directories of the businesses currently operating in the markets, which are also available online. Faneuil Hall Marketplace also periodically published business directories following its reopening in 1976, which, while difficult to find, provide solid documentation of past market uses. Additionally, longitudinal data about the number of farmer/vendor permits issued at Pike Place Market was obtained from archival sources and representatives of the market Preservation Development Authority (PDA). Cross-reference telephone directories organize residential and business listing in three different formats: alphabetically by name, like most conventional directories; numerically by telephone number, which enables users to “reverse look-up” the entity associated with a specific number; and geographically by street address. While residential and businesses listing are intermingled (as opposed to separate “while pages” residential and “yellow pages” business volumes), most cross-reference directories provide a symbol to differentiate between the two types of listings. Using the geographic format it was therefore possible to generate a database of businesses by street address in each of the three markets. The availability of older, back-issue cross-reference directories is an important resource. Directories that formatted listings by name and by street address were once quite common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when cities were relatively small and publishers could go door to door collecting the relevant information. Most publishers, however, found this method to be no longer practical when urban populations reached a certain threshold. Generally this was at some point toward the 349 end of the nineteenth century, after which publishers continued only the more common alphabetized name format. After World War II, Jack Cole, an I.B.M. sales representative, realized that new computer technology could be used to create a database of telephone listings that was easily capable of cross-referencing. He published his first Cole Directory for the city of Dallas, Texas in 1947.13 Cole Information Services published directories for other major cities in the United States in the decades that followed. New editions were published every year for the cities that were covered. Other firms followed suit and published similar versions, like Polk City Directories, which were also used for this study. In the 1990s, Cole Information Services transitioned to a subscription-based, on-line database platform in lieu of the published volumes, which were bulky, expensive to produce, and had a very limited circulation. Generally, academic libraries do not subscribe to either the print or online versions of cross-reference directories. Now, printed back issues can only be found at major public libraries. Lastly, the depth of data detail and the number of separate years for which data was analyzed varies for each case study. Pike Place Market had the most detail and years, followed by Gansevoort Market, and Faneuil Hall Marketplace. This was a function of both the availability of existing data sources and a limited time frame to sort and refine the available data. Refining the Data After the database for each market was populated with a list of establishments for various years, the next step was to determine as closely as possible the type of commerce in which each entity was engaged. If they were a retail establishment, what did they sell? If they were service oriented, what services did they offer? If they 13 Margalit Fox, “Jack Cole, Creator of People Locator, Dead at 87,” New York Times, 7 Aug. 2007. 350 manufactured, processed, or distributed goods, with what industrial category were they associated? The degree of difficulty in answering these questions depended on several factors, including the original source of data. Past and current directories for Faneuil Hall Marketplace and Pike Place Market generally categorize businesses by the goods or services that they offer, such as clothing, prepared meals, or fresh meats, for example. The online subscription-based Cole database service offered a number of different data fields not available in the print editions. Among them is the numeric Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC) associated with each businesses listing, which Cole derives from the headings of yellow page listings. Once the SIC Code was known, it was translated into a series of dummy variables corresponding to various market or non-market uses. Unfortunately, while Cole collected the SIC variable for at least the past twenty-five years, it initially did so only for its own internal marketing purposes and only made it available to the public when their system was offered online. Cole only retains the most current version of its database; “outdated” digital information is discarded.14 Thus, the most difficult businesses to categorize were the portions of the market databases recorded from the printed back issues of the Cole and Polk directories. All that was available from these sources was the name of the business, its address, and telephone number. Often, the nature of the commerce can easily be inferred from the name of the business. For example, General Meat Corporation, Victory Veal, and A&K Boneless Beef that occupied adjacent facilities in 1971 on Washington Street in Gansevoort Market all dealt in some facet of meat processing or distribution. The names of other businesses, like Debragga & Spitzer located in 14 Author email correspondence with Steve Fillingsness of Cole Information Services, 29 Feb. 2008. 351 Gansevoort in 1971, or A-All Shop located in Pike Place Market in 1977, reveal little in themselves about the type of commerce to which they are attached. With only a name to go by, other information sources were consulted to classify the ambiguous businesses. Three sources were most useful: • Google internet search engine. Businesses and clues about their trade surfaced in unexpected places on the internet, especially those with unique names and unusual spellings. Examples include loan documents made public by the U.S. Small Business Administration. A surprising number of food-related businesses were involved in some form of litigation, the verdicts of which are also often available online. Lastly, some firms were still in business years later, and had simply moved from their prior market locations. • Newspaper archives. Online, word-searchable newspaper archives available for the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Seattle Times Union often yielded articles, obituaries, wedding announcements, and advertisements that provided details needed for classification. • Credit Rating Services. Larger, more heavily-capitalized establishments often appear in online business directories and credit rating agencies such as Hoovers Business Directory and Dunn & Bradstreet’s Million Dollar Database. These subscription services are commonly available through universities that have business schools; however, like the Cole Directory, they only maintain the most current information. Printed back-issues of D&B’s Million Dollar Directory and Half Million Dollar Directory were useful for identifying defunct establishments. Smaller businesses like most of those in Pike Place Market and the ones that initially populated Faneuil Hall Marketplace were often too small to have had credit ratings and are therefore not mentioned in these more mainstream sources. Ultimately, a certain percentage of businesses could not be identified using any of these sources and are designated “unknown” in the market databases. Methods for Pike Place Market Of the three case studies examined, Pike Place Market was the focus of the most ambitious functional preservation goals and it was subjected to the most refined 352 and diversified functional preservation strategies. The goal of the Pike Place Market analysis was to assess the degree to which the function of the market has been preserved, as defined by the functional preservation priorities established by the 1971 preservation initiative and subsequent Market Guidelines. As articulated in the most recent edition of the Pike Place Market Guidelines, the use priorities are: • Food-Related Uses (a) First priority for sale of locally grown or harvested fresh produce, meat, fish and poultry. (b) Second priority for sale of fresh produce, meat, fish and poultry that is not locally grown or harvested. (c) Third priority for sale of food items such as bakery goods, dairy products, delicatessen and grocery items, particularly items sold in bulk or needing further preparation. (d) Fourth priority for sale of food-related items, such as garden supplies or food preparation supplies. (e) Fifth priority for food and beverage businesses offering on-premise dining (f) All other food-related uses. • Housing (a) Affordable housing for low-income and elderly residents. (b) All other housing. • Social Services • Retail Uses (a) First priority for sale of used goods, affordable daily necessities, or repair services, particularly for District residents and low-income shoppers. (b) Second priority for sale of flowers and plants. (c) Third priority for sale of seller-made arts and crafts items. (d) Fourth priority for sale of hard to find goods such as seasonal, ethnic or those not readily found in the greater Seattle area. (e) All other retail uses. • Other Uses (a) Performing arts and cinema. (b) Personal, professional or informational services. (c) All other uses. Due to the limitations and longitudinal nature of the data, all sixteen of these use categories could not be analyzed with the methods employed in this study. For example, it is impossible to know, especially for the earlier years in the database, if fresh food vendors sold locally-grown and -harvested goods, or products that were 353 imported from outside the Seattle area. Also difficult to determine is whether businesses serving prepared food offered on-premise dining or were only take-out establishments. Thus, some of these narrowly defined categories had to be collapsed into a smaller number of more broadly defined categories. The Pike Place Market business listings were ultimately coded into the following twelve categories: 1. Fresh Foods 2. Value-Added Foods 3. Food Related Items 4. Prepared Foods, Restaurants, Bars, Saloons 5. Housing 6. Social Services 7. Used Goods and Repair Services 8. Flowers and Plants 9. All Other Retail 10. Performing Arts and Cinema 11. Professional Services 12. All Other Uses Lastly, although housing was coded into the database, a decision was made not to include it as part of the analysis because the business listings alone gave no indication of the number of housing units available or the nature of the rental arrangements, whether hourly, nightly, long-term, SRO, or something else entirely. Categories with only a few business entries were eliminated from some of the charts that follow to improve their legibility. Results for Pike Place Market The analysis of the business data reveals important trends in terms of the number of overall establishments and the distribution of businesses among use categories. Pike Place Market began with less than a hundred businesses in 1907, its first year as designated marketplace (Figure 6.6). It then grew rapidly though the teens and 1920s as more establishments set up shop in the district. The number of businesses then dropped precipitously by 1946 as some shopkeepers were involved in 354 355 Figure 6.6 Number of Establishments in Pike Place Market Grouped by Type of Business, 1907-2007. the war effort and those of Japanese descent were forced into internment camps beginning in 1942. Although the number of businesses recovered slightly by 1967, it is easy to understand why, in the midst of the preservation controversy, the market seemed moribund to those who remembered the intensity of its use prior to the war. By 1987, however, the effectiveness of the PDA’s management since the mid 1970s is evident in the number of establishments in the market, which nearly reached the volume seen in 1927. Maximizing the amount of net rentable square footage was among the primarily goals of the physical rehabilitation work that was undertaken following the 1971 voter preservation initiative. The results of this work were obvious by 2007. Under the PDA’s management, the number of market businesses was more than double the count measured in 1967. Clear patterns over the years in the distribution of businesses within use categories are also evident. The percentage of establishments that sold fresh food from storefront addresses was quite low in the market’s first year (Figures 6.7 and 6.8). This is almost certainly because the majority of food trade was conducted by farmers who sold directly to consumers off the backs of their wagons or from temporary tables. Professional services and other forms of retail, most of which were industrial in nature, dominated the area at that time. For the years analyzed in this study, fresh food and value added food establishments peaked in 1927, when together they amounted to two-thirds of all market businesses. The percentage of fresh food dropped every year thereafter. Other categories have always been marginal in terms of the market’s overall commercial composition. These include stores selling food related items and flowers and plants, as well as organizations or businesses offering performing arts and cinema. The relative lack of plant and flower stores is explained by the profusion of farmer/vendors selling these items, as discussed below. While never dominant, the relative spike in 1967 of stores selling second-hand goods or 356 357 Figure 6.7. 100% Stacked Column Chart of Pike Place Market Business Types, 1907 to 2007. 358 Figure 6.8. Percentages of Pike Place Market Businesses by Type of Business, 1907 to 2007. establishments offering repair services helps to explain why market preservationist felt so strongly about retaining and promoting this category; it was never as prevalent in the years before or after. The most significant trends that have developed since the voter initiative include the rise in the percentage of non-food related retail stores, restaurants and bars, and professional services. Data about the number of farmer/vendor permits issued over the years confirms written accounts of the market’s history (Figure 6.9). More than six-hundred farmers came to Pike Place in the 1920s and 1930s, but then dropped rapidly during WWII, again, due to the fact that many were engaged in the war effort and Japanese farmers were forcibly interned. As with the number of businesses, it is understandable why opponents of preservation argued in the 1960s and 1970s that Pike Place was only nominally a farmers market, compared to its pre-war heydays. PDA programs to attract more farmers to the market since the mid-1970s have been successful by some frames of reference. While the market attracts a small fraction of the farmers it did in the early twentieth century, farmer participation has in many years been more than double what it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Overall, the data about both businesses and farmer/vendors can be interpreted to conclude that the functional preservation strategies implemented in the 1970s have been a success. The distribution of market businesses among categories has unquestionably changed over time (as seen clearest in Figure 9), but it is important to note that there are still some businesses in each of the categories that existed at the time of the voter initiative. The steady decline in the percentage of fresh foods and value-added foods since 1927 does, however, suggest an alarming trajectory. This relative decline, particularly in the later years, can be partially explained by the dramatic increase in the total number of market tenants, which has had the statistical effect of depressing the percentage of some food categories. Still, it cannot be denied 359 Number of Farmer/Vendor Permits 1925 1929 1933 1937 1941 1945 1949 1953 1957 1961 1965 1969 1973 1977 1981 1985 1989 1993 1997 2001 2005 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 Figure 6.9. Number of Farmer/Vendor Permits Issues at Pike Place Market, 1907 to 2007. Portions where lines do not connect between dots indicate years for which no data is available. Sources: See Pike Place Development Authority, and “Farmers at the Pike Place Market—Numerical Record” by Pat Fukada, 1971, part of “Farmers’ Participation at the Pike Place Market: a Brief historical Sketch,” 1971, SMA, VF 121. 360 that the number of fresh food establishments have declined over the last forty years. The decline in the number of used goods and repair services over the same time period is also clear. However, while not evident from the statistics, a portion of the lowincome population that these stores used to cater to are now served by the market’s social service providers, which have increased since the 1960s. Methods for Faneuil Hall Marketplace The functional preservation goals and strategies for Faneuil Hall Marketplace were never articulated as clearly or developed to the extent that they were at Pike Place Market. Ben and Jane Thompson, and the various representatives of The Rouse Corporation described wanting to preserve (or restore, as the case may have been) the Quincy Market building to a fully-functioning, “traditional” public market with fresh and value-added foods, and food related items. As they envisioned it in the 1970s, Quincy Market was supposed to enable a householder to do his or her daily or weekly grocery shopping. Thus, the analysis of Quincy Market has been structured to measure the number and percentages of businesses within five categories: 1. Fresh Foods and Perishable Agricultural Products 2. Value-Added Foods 3. Restaurants, Bars, Cafes, Take-Out Food 4. Food-Related Retail 5. All Other Retail Results for Quincy Market Building at Faneuil Hall Marketplace While data was only readily available for two years, 1978 and 2007, the trends in the market’s evolution are stark. First, the number of businesses housed within the Quincy Market building has declined by 27% over the course of nearly thirty years. Moreover, two categories have completely disappeared from the market: food related retail and, most notably, fresh foods (Figures 6.10 and 6.11). Restaurants, cafes, bars, 361 Number of Establishments 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 1978 2008 Fresh Food & Perish. Agr. Prods. Value Added Foods Food Related Retail Rest./Prepared Food/Bar & Café All Other Retail Figure 6.10. Percentage of Faneuil Hall Marketplace Establishments by Type in the Quincy Market Building, 1978 and 2008. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1978 2008 All Other Retail Rest./Prepared Food/Bar & Café Food Related Retail Value Added Foods Fresh Food & Perish. Agr. Prods. Figure 6.11. Number of Establishments by Type in the Quincy Market Building at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, 1978 and 2008. 362 and take-out food stands now dominate the commercial mix (73%) with value added foods (17%) and all other retail (10%) rounding out the remainder of the establishments. Given these statistical findings, the functional preservation of the Quincy Market food component of Faneuil Hall Marketplace has been a failure, gauged by the functional goals established by Ben and Jane Thompson. Shoppers can no longer buy at Quincy Market the raw ingredients necessary to cook a meal. Methods for Gansevoort Market The functional preservation goals at Gansevoort Market were perhaps even more ambiguous than at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Though they specifically expressed the desirability of retaining meat-related businesses, preservationists involved in the New York case study more generally wanted to preserve “market activity.” Therefore, three years of Gansevoort data was sorted into the following three categories: 1. Market-Use 2. Food-Related or Market Support 3. Non-Market Use Results for Gansevoort Market The overall trends in the business evolution of Gansevoort Market are also quite clear. Market uses and food-related or market support uses declined markedly between 1971 and 2000, and then again between 2000 and 2007 (Figures 6.12 and 6.13). The total number of businesses within the market has also fluctuated, increasing dramatically between 1971 and 2000, and then declining between 2000 and 2007. However, the overall number of businesses in 2000 and 2007 may be somewhat misleading due to residential development along the southern edge of the market. 363 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% 1971 2000 Unknown Non-Market Use Food Related or Market Support Market Use 2008 Figure 6.12. Percentage of Establishments by Type in Gansevoort Market, 1971, 2000, 2008. Number of Establishments 450 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 1971 2000 Market Use Food Related or Market Support Non-Market Use Unknown 2008 Figure 6.13. Number of Establishments by Type in Gansevoort Market, 1971, 2000, 2008. 364 Data in these years included many businesses listings that consisted of personal names that were likely associated with a residential address—such as writers, artists, and accountants that registered with the telephone company as a businesses, but were not enterprises in the more traditional sense of the market, with a physical plant or storefront. The functional preservation of Gansevoort Market has not been a resounding success. While it is true that most of the decline in the number of market-related uses occurred before formal commencement of preservation activities around the year 2000, it is also appears that the preservation response has failed to stop or reverse the loss of market uses from the district. Limitations This analysis of functional preservation based on descriptive statistics of businesses listings has a number of obvious limitations. It is difficult to know if all of the businesses within each market were accounted for in the sources examined in this study. Some businesses, such as many of those at Pike Place, may have been too small to merit a directory entry. In other instances, the directory listings may overestimate the number of enterprises, as may have been the case in the later years of Gansevoort Market. Categorizing of businesses during the coding process may have been inaccurate. This was particularly true of the Pike Place case study, in which more than 1,200 businesses that occupied space in the market over a century were included in the analysis. There was often a fine line between businesses that could have been categorized as either “professional services” or “all other uses.” Future researchers with better sources or methods may be able to categorize the businesses with a higher degree of accuracy. 365 There are also clear limitations as to what this analysis can tell us about the markets and their businesses. Directory listings in themselves provide no clues as to the square footage that each business occupied or the volume of trade they handled. It may be possible, therefore, that while the number of produce vendors has declined at Pike Place over the last forty years, those that remain may each do a higher volume of businesses than their predecessors. This analysis is also open to philosophical or theoretical criticisms. Preservationists at each case study spoke of the need to preserve both the physical and the functional characteristics of their respective markets because they were inextricably intertwined. Yet this study only attempted to measure the latter. One may also question the wisdom of using a statistical measure of business listings to gauge functions, especially when preservationists spoke of wanting to preserve “color,” “character,” “activity,” and “sense of place.” Interviews with market users and visitors may have better captured these more impressionistic, qualitative measures. Lastly, one’s sense of whether a historic function has been preserved may be intensely personal and inherently subjective. For every person who believes that Pike Place, or Faneuil Hall, or Gansevoort Market is a uniquely interesting destination, there is likely another who believes that each is a tourist trap, a commercial destination fundamentally no different than a regular shopping mall or grocery store. For example, when asked if she thought the historic functions of Pike Place Market had been preserved, Executive Director of the PDA Carol Binder instantly responded: “yes.” When asked how she knew this to be the case, Ms. Binder invoked Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous 1964 description of the threshold of obscenity: “I know it when I see it,” she said. “Just walk around and look for yourself.” 366 CONCLUSION Values, both personal and collective, are the motivating forces driving historic preservation. They influence what is chosen for preservation and why it is chosen. Gazing into the preservation movement’s past, building architecture and artifacts were traditionally what were deemed most valuable for preservation. The case studies examined in this dissertation were exceptions to this general trend. Looking ahead, however, the values of building functions loom ever larger on the horizon. As this conclusion will argue through a number of examples, the functional preservation of historic resources beyond just food markets is already emerging as an important challenge for the larger preservation movement. Values are also temporal and subject to change over time. Chapter Three revealed that urban public markets that were highly valued up until the early twentieth century as municipal services for feeding the city were seen as functionally obsolete by the 1950s. Their contributions to public health, community cohesion, agricultural diversity and land preservation were discounted by a number of powerful organizations and agencies including the Urban Land Institute, the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Society of Planning Officials. These groups individually determined that there were more socially valuable and economically productive uses for urban land; that farmers made more money and generated greater productivity when they cultivated monocrops and sold their goods on national and international markets; and that modern, suburban supermarkets and distributional terminals were more efficient than older urban infrastructures. They reached these conclusions using what Allen Schick called “value-concealing techniques” such as statistics, engineering assessments, and economic margin studies that made it easy for those who wield power to forget that the numbers represented the 367 work of people, and that plans based upon them directly affected human lives.1 It was assumed that the private market would continue to provide food to urban consumers, even the poorest and most disenfranchised among them. The market advocates who experimented with functional preservation as described in Chapter Four passionately asserted a different set of values. They maintained that farmers markets had a direct connection to environmental conservation. They argued that the people who worked in markets held valuable, well-paying jobs and those who merely hung around market districts contributed to urban cultural diversity and were potent reminders of the need for tolerance and compassion in a pluralistic society. Most of all, they reasoned that urban market districts, and indeed, much of the remaining infrastructure of downtowns, were not functionally obsolete. Rather, what these urban areas needed was the backing of an organized constituency to become the objects of careful long-term planning. Chapter Five revealed that protest, advocacy, financial analysis, and long-term planning were all components of functional preservation. Each of these components was critical in their own way, yet, functional preservation at all three markets was not equally successful. Pike Place Market benefited from a rare combination of inspired leadership, public support, a referendum process that articulated a remarkably strong preservation mandate, and a quasi-governmental ownership structure that was able to balance private entrepreneurship with public benefits At the conclusion of this study it is reasonable to ask: is functional preservation planning possible? Does it work? The limitations of the quantitative methods of measuring functional preservation were discussed in Chapter Six. Notwithstanding 1 Allen Schick, “The Trauma of Politics: Public Administration in the Sixties,” in American Public Administration: Past, Present, Future, edited by Frederick C. Mosher (N.p.: University of Alabama Press, 1975): 154. 368 these caveats it can at least be said that functional preservation planning has been more successful at one of the case studies than it has been at the other two. Measured by the goals set out for them by their preservationists in the 1960s and 1970s, Pike Place is clearly the most successful example of functional preservation out of the three case studies examined in this dissertation. Farmers still bring their crops to the market to sell directly to local consumers. Fresh foods and ingredients of all kinds are made available in a full-service sales format from dozens of merchants whose businesses are independent and locally owned. Hundreds of low-income residents still live within the market district, housed within affordable units owned and managed by the PDA. The Market Foundation provides other community support services in the forms of the Market Clinic, Senior Center, Food Bank, and Childcare and Preschool. To the extent that private market businesses no longer specifically cater to a low-income clientele as they once did in the 1960s and 1970s, the Market Foundation has stepped in to fill the gaps using philanthropic sources of capital. One of the other goals of this study was to convey the motivations and aspirations of functional preservation as expressed in the words and concepts used by the preservationists themselves, and it seems appropriate to consider whether they thought their efforts had been successful. In each case study, the leaders of the market functional preservation movements—Victor Steinbrueck at Pike Place, Benjamin Thompson at Faneuil Hall Marketplace, and Jo Hamilton at Gansevoort Market—all considered their efforts to have been complete failures. Not surprisingly, their disappointments had little or nothing to do with architectural changes over time. They were troubled by the functional changes to the markets as a whole—the new uses that had come to occupy the buildings. Beyond even this, they expressed the most anger, frustration, and honest despair over the types of people who now came to the markets. 369 As Pike Place Market neared the end of its rehabilitation in 1978, Steinbrueck walked among the crowds and thought to himself that the shoppers he observed did not look like people from Seattle. Rather, “the people looked and sounded like they were from California and New York and Montana and Cleveland.” More problematically, these apparent tourists were not buying any of the farmers’ vegetables. They were merely asking the names of certain produce, saying things like “Well, we grow bigger ones back where I come from.” He claimed to overhear one comment that must have hit him like a bat to the knees: a man leaned over to his wife and said, “It’s just like Fisherman’s Wharf, ain’t it?”2 This must have been a devastating comparison for someone who fought so hard to avoid emulating that very place. Benjamin Thompson at age 76 took his last trip to Faneuil Hall Marketplace by ambulance in 1995 to tour his creation by wheelchair. A major stroke the previous year left him substantially paralyzed. As he wheeled across the cobblestones he was struck by the presence of the Disney Store, which he thought was “too bad, because it's strictly tourist” and that was not what he and his wife Jane originally had in mind. They had “wanted Boston voters and taxpayers, people who were part of the community, Red Sox and Celtics fans.” As a former business partner explained, Ben Thompson was a renowned architect, but not in the “classic sense” like I. M. Pei and others who were known for their “formal architecure.” For Thompson, it was “all about lifestyle."3 Ultimately, he failed to preserve a lifestyle at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. On a warm and sunny September day in 2006 Jo Hamilton sat at the lunch counter of Florent and talked about the rapid changes in the Gansevoort District, who 2 Victor Steinbrueck, “Fisherman’s Wharf North,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 3 Aug. 1978, B3. 3 Jack Thomas, “That’s Not My Faneuil Hall; Architect Ben Thompson Laments the Malling of his Landmark—and America,” Boston Globe, “Living” section, p. 69. 370 was behind them, and what it mean for its future. Less than half a block away workmen were just beginning to prepare the foundation for the 500-foot tall Standard Hotel. She marveled over how promoters were now giving bus tours of the district and she expressed disgust at how the market was being “marketed.” Not long before, marketing along these streets meant the sale of beef, veal, pork, and chicken. Now marketing in the district was all about “how cool can cool be and can you get Paris Hilton to show up and if you give away enough rum, everyone who’s cool will come to be seen.” “It’s all bullshit,” she said; “it’s all about commercialism.” It was hard for her to blame people for wanting to make money, but none of these promoters knew “what the soul is over here.” It was clearly painful for her to lose planning control of something that once seemed fragile and valuable, something she felt was once unique in all of New York. “I’ve watched tour buses go by,” she said. “I guess this is the new meat market…” Nightclubs, boutiques, tourists, and fashion shoots, “it’s not what I saved this for.”4 Some of the individuals discussed in this dissertation may simply have had goals that reached beyond the feasibility of functional preservation, and certainly well beyond this study’s capacity to measure with a statistical methodology. Ada Louise Huxtable said you “can’t turn back the clock,” just as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway famously informed an incredulous Jay Gatsby, “You can’t repeat the past.” It may be that a fine line separates the work of functional preservation from expressions of unbridled nostalgia, however sincere. The evolution of one of Pike Place’s “working man’s social clubs” is a good example. Place Pigalle was among Pike Place Market’s most famous taverns (Figure 7.1). A newspaper article written in the midst of the market preservation controversy 4 Jo Hamilton interview with author, 14 September 2006. 371 described it as “a dank, paint-chipped cubbyhole hidden on the southwest perch of the market.” It was a “mixed-metaphor of humanity” in which …narrow booths and rag-tag stools host the same melting-pot crowd that tramps past the green-and-white arcades just out its wooden doors; a polyglot of cheap old lady’s velvet, the blue jeans of protest, flared pinstripes of mod and charcoal gray of establishment, forming, finally, that more-perfect union. Two black men, seated in a middle booth, sip from stubbies and munch baloney sandwiches from waxed paper wrappings.5 Laurie Olin sketched a scene of its interior in 1972 that could have easily illustrated this account (Figure 7.2). He described it as “one of the few places in Seattle where elderly women can drink, even alone.” Merchant seaman “retired and active” also relaxed there.6 When interviewed for this study in 2006, Jerry Thonn and Ed Singler, two of the market’s most important preservation advocates, wistfully remembered that in the bathroom, there was once a whole in the floor through which far below you could see cars passing along Western Avenue.7 Nominally, Place Pigalle still exists, though it is now an unabashedly upscale affair, one of the more expensive restaurants in all of Seattle (Figure 7.3) It is in the same location and some of its architectural features like the bar are still there, but it no longer serves baloney sandwiches. The menu now features dishes like Manchego Rabbit Roulade ($28), Duck a la Chinoise ($26), and Washington Tenderloin ($37), which are served on tables with crisp white linens. Gone are the tavern’s chipped paint, rag-tag stools, and, one suspects, the socio-economic diversity that it once supported. Highlighting these architectural changes and the prices now charged for dinner is not a criticism of its current owners or the choices they have made to survive in Seattle’s very competitive restaurant scene. As PDA director Carol Binder noted in 5 Rick Anderson, “The World of the Market…and Urban Renewal,” Seattle Post Intelligencer, 21 Dec. 1970, p. 3. A “stubby” is a short, roughly 6oz beer bottle that was more popular in the 1960s and ‘70s than it is today. 6 Laurie Olin, Breath on the Mirror: Seattle’s Skid Road Community (Seattle: n.p., 1972): 41. 7 Author interview with Jerry Thonn and Ed Singler, 15 Nov. 2006. 372 Figure 7.1. Place Pigalle Tavern interior, 1975. Source: SMA, Pike Place Market Visual Images and Audiotapes, 34868. Figure 7.2. Place Pigalle Tavern interior sketch by Laurie Olin. Source: Laurie Olin, Breath on the Mirror: Seattle’s Skid Road Community (Seattle: n.p., 1972): 40. 373 Figure 7.3. Place Pigalle Restaurant interior, circa 2001. Source: www.savvydiner.com. 374 Chapter Five, rents from the market’s successful restaurants help subsidize the functionally historic but less profitable enterprises like the produce merchants. Short of government ownership and curatorial management of its interior, it is hard to image any regulatory framework that could have preserved Place Pigalle’s honky-tonk atmosphere. Even still, how would you preserve its human element—merchant seaman, elderly women drinking alone? Perhaps oral histories, photographs, and drawings are the only way. Still, functional preservation has an increasingly important role to play in the larger preservation movement. With mounting enthusiasm for saving modernist architecture—buildings whose forms were said to be so intimately related to their functions—preservation of function will become more of an issue in the future. One prominent example is the debate that erupted in 2001 over the preservation of Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. No one proposed tearing down the building. No one seriously questioned its architectural merit. Rather, preservation advocates were incensed that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was considering plans to alter the building’s historic function as a flight terminal. Even if preserved in form, according to some preservationists adaptively reusing the building for something other than its original function—a restaurant, conference center, or museum were proposed as new uses— would destroy its historic integrity. The novelty of this reasoning did not go unnoticed. According to David Dunlap, an architecture reporter for the New York Times, “When preservationists urge that a building's intent and function be safeguarded along with its physical shell…one can safely say that a corner has been turned.”8 Architects for the Port Authority pursuasively argued that updating the 8 David W. Dunlap, “Planning a Nest of Concrete for a Landmark of Flight,” New York Times, 14 August 2001, B6. 375 building to meet twenty-first-century baggage and security requirements would have neccessitated substantial alterations to Saarinen’s iconic interior.9 A new use, they reasoned, would require less physical modifications than would continuing the historic use as a flight terminal, the validity of which became even more apparent after the terrorist attacts of September 11, 2001 underscored the need for enhanced airport security screening. There was, therefore, a compelling preservation rationale for substituting the terminal’s flight-related functions for a new use. Still, some preservationists maintained that to do so would clip the winged building’s literal and symbolic connection to flight. “Only the expression would remain, not the content.”10 As the United States continues to deindustrialize and manufacturing jobs are outsourced overseas, functional preservation will become a growing challenge. Elsewhere in New York City, there is already a movement afoot within the fashion industry to “Save the Garment District.”11 Much like the Gansevoort Market and the Flower Market, rising rents are pushing the Garment District out its historic location on the west side of Manhattan where it has been the home of New York City fashion design and manufacturing since the early twentieth century. Unlike the meat market’s association with industrial “grit” and blue-collar labor, the Garment District has a very different set of associations. Will the fashion industry’s ties to celebrity and style translate into the kind of political capital necessary to ensure its functional preservation? The nation is widely perceived to be suffering from an “epidemic of obesity,” and this too has relevance to functional preservation, though of a more subtle variety. 9 David W. Dunlap, “Unusual Planning Duel over Kennedy Terminal,” New York Times, 28 Nov. 2002, 3. 10 Suzanne Stephens, “TWA's Fight for Flight: What Preserves a Landmark Most?,” Architectural Record 198, no. 11 (Nov. 2001): 63-66. 11 The movement is documented on a number of fashion-related blogs; see for example: fashionindie.com/events/2007/08/16/sign-the-petition-save-the-garment-district/. 376 Cities and towns across the country are beginning to enact planning codes that ban “formula retail” establishments. Many of these laws, such as one in Los Angeles, are based on the premise that by banning fast food restaurants, communities are in fact preserving space required for development of more sustainable and healthy food sources.12 Other communities build upon this rationale by adding a cultural component. In the Elmwood Commercial Districts of Berkeley, California, “quick service restaurants” are limited by a quota system designed to “preserve the shopping area that serves the surrounding community and the character of the neighborhood.” In a similar vein, Solvang, California, a small village of just over 5,000 residents known for its Danish heritage, bans formula restaurants, also to “protect its unique character.”13 By banning chain stores and restaurants, these communities hope to not only create a healthier food environment, but also to sustain an economic climate in which locally-owned and distinctive businesses can continue to flourish. Advocates for these types of restrictions are just now gathering examples of these codes and have not yet begun to evaluate their effectiveness. There are already historic preservation organizations that have functional preservation at the core of their mission. Partners for Sacred Places, a national, nondenominational, not-for-profit organization works with owners of religious properties to help them preserve their historic houses of worship. The steady decline of participation in organized religion since the 1950s has led to an increase in the abandonment or critical decay of architecturally-significant churches, meetinghouses, and synagogues across the United States, especially in urban areas.14 While saving 12 See for example, Jan C. Perry, “Fast-food Freeze is a Good Choice for South Los Angeles,” Los Angeles Times, 4 Aug. 2008. 13 Julie Samia Mair, et. al., “The City Planner’s Guide to the Obesity Epidemic: Zoning and Fast Food,” Oct. 2005. 14 On the decline of religious participation in the United States, see Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival and American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000): 64-72. 377 great architecture is among its goals, Partners takes a more people-centered approach than most other historic preservation organizations. Partners eschews solutions that adapt churches to nightclubs or high-end condos because it believes that the value of religious architecture stems from the ways that congregations use their buildings as the infrastructure for the delivery of vital community programs and services like soup kitchens, preschools, job training, and many more.15 Partners therefore works with religious groups to build their organizational capacity and teach them sound building stewardship practices so that they may continue to provide these community services. Other architecture-minded advocacy organizations would be wise to take note. This function-first approach to preservation draws in a larger constituency and financial base than those who are solely interested in aesthetics. James Marston Fitch, William Murtagh, and Robert Stipe were right in that functional preservation is an emerging challenge for the larger historic preservation movement. Future scholars and practitioners should examine these and other functional preservation case studies that are already bubbling or are just beginning to simmer. They can be found in all parts of the country and are not only limited to food and markets. 15 On the critical need for the preservation of religious architecture and the role that these buildings play in communities across the U.S., see Diane Cohen and A. Robert Jaeger, Sacred Places at Risk (Philadelphia, Partners for Sacred Places, 1998). 378 APPENDIX A PIKE PLACE MARKET HISTORICAL DISTRICT ORDINANCE Initiative Petition No. 270105 Ordinance No. 100475 Proclamation No. 271529 dated December 1, 1971 AN ORDINANCE to preserve, improve, and restore the Pike Place Markets, creating the Pike Place Market Historical District, prohibiting alteration, demolition, construction, reconstruction, restoration, remodeling or modification of structures therein without a certificate of approval, establishing an Historical Preservation Commission, and providing for administration and enforcement. BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY OF SEATTLE AS FOLLOWS: Section 1. Purpose. In order to promote the educational, cultural, farming, marketing, other economic resources, and the general welfare; and to assure the harmonious, orderly, and efficient growth and development of the municipality, it is deemed essential by the people of the City of Seattle that the cultural, economic, and historical qualities relating to the Pike Place Markets and the surrounding area and an harmonious outward appearance and market uses which preserve property values and attracts residents and tourists be preserved and encouraged; some of the qualities being: the continued existence and preservation of historical areas and buildings; continued construction and use of buildings for market activities, especially on street levels; and a general harmony as to style, form, color, proportion, texture, material, occupancy and use between existing buildings and new construction. Section 2. Historical District. There is hereby created a Pike Place Market Historical District (hereafter called Historical District) whose physical boundaries are illustrated on a map hereto attached as Exhibit “A” which is hereby made a part of this ordinance. Section 3. Responsible Agency. There is hereby created a Market Historical Commission (hereafter called “Commission”) appointed by the Mayor with the consent of a majority of the City Council and to be composed of two representatives each from the Friends of the Market, Inc., Allied Arts of Seattle, Inc., and the Seattle Chapter of the American Institute of Architects; and two owners of property within the Historical District, two merchants of the markets, and two residents of the Historical District. The Mayor shall make his appointments of the representatives of Friends of the Market, Allied Arts, and the Seattle Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, from a list of four nominees submitted by each of the said organizations. The members shall serve three year terms with the terms of the first Commission to be staggered. The said Commission shall have for its purpose the preservation, restoration, and improvement 379 of such buildings and continuance of uses in the Historical District as in the opinion of the Commission shall be deemed to have architectural, cultural, economic, and historical value as described in Section 4, and which buildings should be preserved for the benefit of the people of Seattle. The Commission shall also make rules, regulations, and guidelines according to the criteria as contained in this ordinance for the guidance of property owners within the Historical District. The Commission shall also develop plans for the acquisition and perpetuation of the Pike Place Markets and of market activities through either public ownership of other means and shall make recommendations to the City Council from time to time concerning their progress. Staff assistance and other services shall be provided by the Department of Community Development to the Commission as requested. Section 4. Criteria. In carrying out its function, the Commission shall consider the purposes of this Ordinance as outlined in the Ordinance and the nature, function, and history of the District as described herein. a. The Historical District has played and continues to play a significant role in the development of Seattle and the Puget Sound Region since the inception of the public market in 1907. It has served as the center of local farm marketing, and other marketing businesses through varied economic times. It is significant in the culture of the region drawing together a broad spectrum of people from all ethnic, national, economic, and social backgrounds as a prototype of truly cosmopolitan urban life. It promotes local farming while making available local produce to shoppers and others. The District provides considerable housing for a community of low-income residents who are part of the life and color of the market. It has achieved world-wide fame as an uniquely American market and serves as the source of inspiration for markets elsewhere. b. The Historical District is associated with the lives of many Seattle and Puget Sound region families and persons as farmers, merchants, and shoppers through marketing activities. It is an outstanding example of small independent businesses operating in the best tradition of American enterprise. c. The buildings with their marketing activities and residential uses combine to form a distinctive area focusing on the central market buildings which although humble and anonymous in character are an example of intriguing, dramatic architectural space servicing and adjusting to the varied and varying characteristic marketing activities. The central building spaces are particularly unique in form and character having grown to their present form through years of anonymous and functional creation to conform to the changing market activities always serving low-income consumers along with other special needs of the public. The District possesses integrity of location, original construction, use, and of feeling and association. 380 d. The preservation of the Historical District will yield information of educational significance regarding our culture and our ecology as well as retaining its color, attraction, and interest for the City. Preservation of the District will retain a characteristic environment of a period of Seattle’s history while continuing a vital cultural and economic aspect of the City. Section 5. Commission Procedure. The Commission shall adopt rules and regulations for its own government, not inconsistent with the provisions of this or any other ordinance of the City of Seattle. Meetings of the Commission shall be open to the public and shall be held at the call of the chairman and at such other times as the Commission shall be open to the public and shall be held at the call of the chairman and at the call of the chairman and at such other times at the Commission may determine. All official meetings of the Commission shall keep minutes of its proceedings, showing the action of the Commission upon each question, and shall keep records of its proceedings and other official actions taken by it, all of which shall be immediately filed in the Office of Community Development and shall be a public record. All actions of the Commission shall be by resolution which shall include the reasons for each decision. A majority vote shall be necessary to decide in favor of an applicant on any matter upon which it is required to render a decision under this ordinance. Section 6. Approval of Changes to Buildings, Structures and Other Visible Elements within the Historical District. No structure or part thereof shall be erected, altered, extended, or reconstructed; no structure or lot shall be used or occupied except pursuant to a Certificate of Approval authorized by the Commission. However, no regulation nor any amendment thereof shall apply to existing buildings or structure, or of land to the extent to which it is used at the time of the adoption of such regulation or amendment or any existing division of land, except that such regulation or amendment may regulate non-use or a non-conforming use so as not to unduly prolong the life thereof. Applications for permits involving structures or sites within the Historical District shall be forwarded immediately by the Superintendent of Buildings to the Commission for review. The Commission shall review and make recommendations regarding appropriateness of each proposed change or addition and a Certificate of Approval shall be issued by the Commission as hereinafter provided. The Commission, in considering the appropriateness of any alterations, demolition, new construction, reconstruction, restoration, remodeling, or other modification of any building shall refer to the purpose of this ordinance and shall consider among other things the historical and architectural value and significance, architectural style, the general design, arrangement, texture, material, occupancy and use, and color of the building or structure in question or its appurtenant fixtures, including signs, the relationship of such features to similar features of the other buildings within the Historical District and the position of such building or structure in relation to the street, public way, or semi-public way and to other buildings and structures. The Commission shall also make no recommendations or requirements except for the purpose of preventing developments inconsistent with the criteria of this ordinance. 381 Where modification of the appearance of a structure within the Historical District does not require a building or demolition permit, notice of such intention shall nonetheless be filed with the Superintendent of Buildings, who shall notify the Commission. The Commission shall consider add approve or disapprove applications for a Certificate of Approval as contemplated herein not later than 30 days after receipt of any such application, and a public hearing shall be held on each such application, If after such hearing and upon review of the Commission it determines that the proposed changes are consistent with the Criteria for Historic Preservation as set forth in Section 4, the Commission shall issue the Certificate of Approval at this time and after such a decision, the Superintendent of Buildings is then authorized to issue a permit. In the event of a determination to deny a Certificate of Approval the owner may request a hearing from the City Council within a period of 20 days for the purpose of appealing the Commission’s decision. The Council shall then hold a public hearing to determine the appropriateness of the Commission’s decision taking into consideration the criteria of Section 4 herein. At the end of this time, the Council shall deny the appeal unless it finds that owing to special conditions pertaining to the owner’s specific piece of property, the full denial will cause undue and unnecessary hardship, in which case the Certificate of Approval shall be issued notwithstanding such prior determination. Section 7. Enforcement. The provisions of this ordinance shall be enforced by the Superintendent of Buildings. Section 8. Penalty for Violations. Anyone failing to comply with any provisions of this ordinance shall upon conviction thereof be subject to the penalties as provided by the laws of the City of Seattle for failure to obtain a use permit from the Superintendent of Buildings. Section 9. Severability. If any section, paragraph, subdivision, clause, phrase or provision of this title shall be adjudged to be invalid or held unconstitutional, the same shall not affect the validity of this title as a whole or any part of provision thereof other than the part so decided to be invalid or unconstitutional. 382 APPENDIX B PIKE PLACE MARKET HISTORICAL GUIDELINES [NOTE: This document was scanned from the Seattle Department of Community Development, Urban Renewal Plan published April 1974, and was subsequently transformed into text using optical character recognition software. The formatting seen here closely mimics the formatting of the original document. These Guidelines were accepted 12/19/1973, adopted 1/23/1974] INTRODUCTION Seattle’s Pike Place Market is the last farmer’s market in the United States which has not been modernized and, therefore, to a large degree it is unspoiled. It was established by ordinance in 1907. In the 1920’s and ‘30’s when many farmers grew their produce closer to Seattle there were more farmers’ stalls than there are now. But loss of some of these stalls has been made up by a greater variety of other vendors and retail outlets. In November of 1971 the people of Seattle, by initiative measure at the municipal general election, voted to preserve the character and flavor of this market for all time. Specifically, they established a seven-acre Pike Place Market Historical District to be administered by a twelve-citizen Commission with the aid and cooperation of the City’s Department of Community Development. The Pike Place Market Historical District Ordinance is the vehicle for preservation of the Market as a community and regional asset. It provides the means for control of changes and modifications in the Pike Place Market Historical District. These guidelines, issued pursuant to Ordinance 100475, are to help preserve and improve the District, and are designed to be sensitive to its unique characteristics. The Guidelines are to be interpreted liberally; they should not prevent spontaneous development nor force unecononic uses or changes. The Guidelines should stimulate harmonious and orderly development, while allowing gradual adjustment to varying and changing Market activities. The Guidelines are updated from time to time. The most recent edition is to be used. THE ORDINANCE AND THE GUIDELINES The Ordinance is the basic law. The Guidelines always speak within the terms of the Ordinance which provides that “the Commission . . . shall make rules, regulations and guidelines according to the criteria . . . in this ordinance for the guidance of property owners within the historical district.” The Guidelines are, therefore, based upon and drawn from the text of the Ordinance. As such they are intended to be of value to Market District property owners, merchants, tenants, residents, government agencies and the general public. 383 THE COMM ISSION AND THE GUIDE LINES The responsibility and the authority of the Commission lies in two general areas: First, the Commission is to promote, preserve and perpetuate the cultural, economic and historical qualities of the District; second, the Commission is to pass on all applications for building permits and Certificates of Approval involving demolishing, building, renovating, altering, modifying, changing, improving and even painting, as well as changes in use within the seven-acre District. The Commission is not the final authority on these matters: Section Six of the Ordinance specifically provides that if the Commission denies to an owner or merchant a Certificate of Approval for whatever he/she desires to do, the applicant may request a City Council hearing. Therefore, the City Council becomes the final authority on appeal. In short, the Commission stands with one foot in the past and one foot in the future, charged with preserving the special quality of the Market, and with planning for the future, preserving and upgrading structures, and dealing with all of the aspirations, desires and proposals of the many owners and tenants within the District. HOW TO USE THE GUIDELINES These Guidelines are intended to be helpful to property owners or merchants who wish to alter the physical appearance or the use of spaces within the District. They stress flexibility, and their meaning necessarily depends on interpretation. The Guidelines are legally binding only within the text of the governing Ordinance. Within the District it is generally better to preserve than to repair, better to repair than to restore, better to restore than to construct. Whatever is proposed must tend to maintain the character of the Market. The key document is the Certificate of Approval. How it is obtained is outlined in Section Six of the Ordinance and is detailed in the brochure titled PROCEDURES. GUIDELINES APPLICABLE TO THE ENTIRE HISTORIC DISTRICT I. Priority of Uses A. The citizens of Seattle and the Commission desire to maintain and perpetuate the character of the Market, responding to the changing needs of the community and, thus, retaining certain elements while absorbing new ones. Therefore, certain paramount uses which the Commission will always consider in looking at any application are: 1. The Market is a place for the farmer to sell his produce. 2. The Market is a place for the sale of every kind of food product. 384 3. The Market is a place where citizens in the low and moderate income groups can find food, goods and services, and residences. 4. The Market is and will always be a place with the flavor of a widely varied shopping area. B. These uses and activities will therefore be encouraged in the District: 1. The sale of fresh fruit, produce, flowers and plants sold by local growers. 2. The sale of meat, fish, poultry and groceries. 3. Food and beverage service facilities such as restaurants and cafes. 4. Activities which bring together a broad spectrum of people of all backgrounds. 5. Activities which enrich the quality of life and broaden one’s experience and understanding. 6. Activities which attract the casual shopper, whether resident or visitor. 7. Activities which encourage maintenance of housing, particularly for the low income, the elderly, the transient and the single. 8. Activities which involve small and independent businesses, rather than franchises or chain stores. 9. Activities which involve personal or professional services to a wide variety of users. 10. Activities which offer hard-to-find goods, whether seasonal, ethnic, or for any reason not readily found in the greater Seattle area. 11. Activities which could be described as educational or cultural. 12. Activities which cater particularly to the pedestrian. 13. Activities which offer goods for sale in a natural state as distinguished from a pre-packaged state. 14. Activities which may involve light manufacturing by processes which are themselves visible and interesting. 385 15. Activities which involve person-to-person sales. 16. Activities which offer visual appeal by reason of interesting and attractive color and form. 17. Activities related to historical Market uses or activities. C. In light of the above, the Commission will encourage: 1. Public amenities such as restrooms, walks, sitting areas, viewpoints and picnic areas in appropriate locations. 2. Market-related uses, which tend to attract people, in all street level and ramp-level pedestrian spaces. 3. Adequate parking at levels and places which will not replace or work against one and two above. 4. Limitation of maximum commercial area of any one business to 6,000 square feet unless there are most exceptional circumstances. II. CHANGES IN PROPERTIES AND STRUCTURES OR NEW STRUCTURES Changes and modifications in the District should occur within the following framework of rules and priorities adopted by the Commission. These rules and priorities change from time to time. The latest edition of these Guidelines is to be used. A. Changes should maintain the character of the Market. This may be achieved by assuring that any repair or new construction fit the general requirements and the special characteristics of each area or zone in the Market District. New buildings must relate in material, scale and form to surrounding structures. Contemporary design which is harmonious with the surrounding environment in the District in terms of scale, materials and color may be acceptable. Buildings and facades should be brick, stone or concrete, with an approved surface treatment. Materials such as these with an inherent color are preferred since painting is not necessary. In all design there should be emphasis upon the quality of detail and spacial form: In benches, ceilings, windows, columns, eaves, lighting signing, stalls, etc. Buildings and the spaces between should relate easily and openly to the external public areas. Building facades should have a greater proportion of 386 voids than solids on pedestrian levels. B. If it is proposed to raze a building, to build a new one or in any way to remodel one, Commission approval is required as is a permit from the Building Department. Projects in the Market District may require a building permit when the same project would not require one in another part of the city. In short, in the Historical District, before changes can be made or work started (1) an application for a permit must be filed with the Building Department, (2) a Certificate of Approval must be obtained from the Commission, and (3) a permit must be issued by the Building Department, in that order. C. Specifics applicable throughout the Historic District 1. Signs Sign applications will be evaluated according to the overall impact, size, shape, texture, lettering style, method of attachment, color, and lighting in relation to use, the building and street where the sign will be located, and the relation of the sign to other signs and other buildings in the vicinity. Adherence to or enhancement of sight lines both parallel and perpendicular to the sidewalks will be considered. The primary reference will be to the average pedestrian’s eye-level view, although views into or down the street from adjacent buildings will be an integral feature of any review. Generally, single faced, flat-surfaced, painted signs are preferred. Extruded aluminum or plastic signs may not be appropriate. Projecting, double-faced or three-dimensional signs may be allowed if they are integrated into the arcades and do not destroy sight lines. Symbolic three-dimensional signs such as a shaving mug, barber pole, pawn shop symbol, or other symbols illustrating the product being sold on the premises, are acceptable provided they meet other sign guidelines. When possible, signs should reflect the character and the use within the structure. Generally, off-premise signs are prohibited except where areas have been reserved for groups of signs or for signs which identify the Market District as a whole. Signs that flash, blink, revolve or are otherwise in motion or appear to be in motion, or signs that vary in intensity are not permitted. Sign lighting should be subdued, incandescent, and front-lit from the exterior rather than back-lit of the fluorescent type. Temporary signs of whatever material are subject to the control of the Commission. 387 2. Sounds The babble of sounds which characterizes the Market is an important part of the Market. Public, electronic amplification of sound is not permitted except under special circumstances. 3. Exterior Form The scale of all structures, in relationship to other structures and spaces, is important. The scale should be smaller (two or three stories) on Pike Place, larger for First Avenue and Western Avenue. Some variation in heights in the District contributes to the variety and complexity of the environmental experience, and is encouraged. The use of alleys for service and public oriented activities is encouraged. The Commission is aware of the problems of the physically handicapped and will discourage barrier architecture which tends to keep the physically infirm from many of the interesting areas of the Market. The development of terraces, viewpoints, and public roof spaces which take advantage of the sunshine and views is encouraged. III. ZONES Within the Historic District there are groups of uses, activities, building types and marketing styles. The District has been divided into five zones, as shown on the maps, which recognize the differences in the various parts of the Market and establish standards for future changes, or isolate special concerns in each zone. A. Zone I — Both sides of Pike Street, the entire west side of Pike Place, the east side of Pike Place south of Pine Street, and the alley from Pike Place to Pine Street. This zone is characterized by open shopping stalls, free pedestrian movement, a linear row of connected spaces, and the prominence of merchandise rather than buildings, walls, signs or marketing decor. PHYSICAL FEATURES 1. Permanent Elements a. Exterior building surfaces above the first story level and the primary architectural elements below the marquee — columns, arches, rails, decorated 388 ceilings, etc. Buildings should be a backdrop to the Market activities. New building or physical change will be evaluated for the effect on the whole zone. The integrity of a building or series of buildings should be respected. b. The Main Market signs These should be carefully maintained. c. The Main Arcade interiors These should be meticulously maintained. d. Lights which illuminate the interior public way. The bulbs should be incandescent, and the fixtures should be maintained or replaced with similar or identical ones. e. Floor pavement and sidewalks. Where possible the same material should be used throughout this zone. 2. Pedestrian/Customer Elements a. Awnings — sunshades. Awnings or sunshades should be of translucent cloth and the same color or pair of colors on any one building. b. Arcade shop lighting. The incandescent fixtures should be maintained. The lights should be of uniform wattage. c. Street lighting. One type will be used throughout the District. d. Street furniture. Public seating is needed, particularly on the island sidewalk of Pike Street. Covered seating along the arcade should be provided without impeding pedestrian movement. 389 Trash receptacles should be provided throughout this zone. e. Walls and ceilings that are visible along the arcades. Wall and ceiling colors should be light. f. Trees, plants and flowers. Potted trees, plants, and flowers are acceptable but should not impede pedestrian traffic. 3. Merchant Related Elements a. Merchandising techniques. Face-to-face transactions between the buyer and the seller are essential in experiencing the Market. Display methods or sales practices that lessen or eliminate the personal services by the merchant are undesirable. Spaces open to the arcades or public ways are much preferable to shops with closed fronts. In all cases, merchandise should be easily visible from the main pedestrian ways. b. Individual shop decor. Store decor should complement, not compete with the store products. The use of unfinished wood, rough wood or shingles ordinarily will not be permitted. c. Signs. Signs should be simple, clear and direct. Painted signs are preferred. Backlit fluorescent signs are not permitted, but neon may be acceptable. One of the many standard lettering styles should be used. Signs should not hide or obscure the architectural elements of the building. Exterior signs should be flat against the building, painted on it, or hung from the underside of marquees, perpendicular to the sidewalk. Signs attached to the edge of marquees should not extend above the marquees’ upper edges. Stationary sandwich boards are not allowed on city streets or sidewalks. Where permitted in the Market, they should not impede pedestrian 390 movement. d. Display cases. Display structures must not diminish the open feeling along the arcades, nor should they interfere with views into, through, or out of the Market. e. Security devices. Off-hour night security doors, gates and covers should be finished and unobtrusive. f. Color. Brighter colors will be allowed for some signs, trim, and display shelves than will be allowed for walls, ceilings, etc. Generally, interior colors that are not visible from the pedestrian ways are at the discretion of the individual merchants. However, no fluorescent paint colors will be permitted. g. Interior shop lights. High stalls and enclosed shops or restaurants might be allowed to use some fluorescent lights if the lights are thoroughly concealed and if incandescent spectrum tubes are used. Special consideration will be given to the lighting requirements of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. B. Zone II — Both sides of Pine and Stewart Streets, the south side of Virginia Street, the east side of Pike Place north of Pine Street, and the alley running from Pine to Virginia Streets. This area is characterized by a greater proportion of enclosed shops and stores. Pedestrian sight of, access to, and movement through this zone is critical to the success of individual merchants. 1. Permanent Elements a. Exterior building surfaces and architectural elements — columns, rails, arches, and marquees. The main architectural elements must not be altered or disguised. Buildings as a whole will be seen as the significant architectural elements. 391 Marquees should be restored and maintained. The undersides should be a neutral and reflective color. Edges may be of a contrasting color, consistent on each building. b. Sidewalks Sidewalks should be of the same material throughout this zone. 2. Pedestrian/Customer Elements a. Awnings — sunshades Awnings or sunshades should be of translucent cloth and the same or pair of colors on any one building. b. Marquee lights Lights along the underside of the marquees should be incandescent and of uniform wattage. The fixtures should be the same throughout any one building. c. Street furniture. Some public seats should be provided in this zone. Trash receptacles should be provided throughout this zone. d. Trees, plants and flowers Potted trees, plants, and flowers are acceptable but should not impede pedestrian traffic. 3. Merchant Related Elements a. Store fronts Store fronts should be as open as possible to reveal the prominently displayed merchandise. Stores with closed fronts should have glass fronts or other visually penetrable openings so that the activity inside is obvious to the passerby. Store fronts should be brick, stucco, concrete or stone where glass isn’t used. Wood fronts should be painted neutral colors. The trim color or pair of colors may be contrasting. Unfinished wood, rough wood, or shingles 392 are not acceptable. b. Merchandising techniques Face-to-face transactions between the buyer and the seller are essential in experiencing the Market. Display methods or sales practices that lessen or eliminate personal services by the merchant are undesirable. c. Individual decor. Store decor should complement, not compete with store products. Greater variety and individuality than in Zone I may be expressed in the closed-front shops in this zone. d. Signs Signs should be simple, clear and direct. Painted signs are preferred. Backlit fluorescent signs are not permitted, but neon may be acceptable. One of the many standard lettering styles should be used. Signs should not hide or obscure the architectural elements of the building. Exterior signs should be flat against the building, painted on it, or hung from the underside of the marquee, perpendicular to the sidewalk. Signs attached to the edge of the marquee should not extend above the marquee’s upper edge. Stationary sandwich boards are not allowed on city streets or sidewalks. Where permitted in the Market, they should not impede pedestrian movement. e. Interior shop lights. Incandescent lights are preferred. Other types will be considered. C. Zone III. — Lower Pike Street, Post Avenue, and the landscaped court containing the stair from Western Avenue to Post Avenue. This area is underdeveloped and could support more intensive kinds of use. 1. Permanent Elements a. Exterior building surfaces and architectural elements — simple masonry facades on Post Avenue, the tunnel connection between lower Pike and 393 Post Avenue, the cobblestone paving of Post Avenue. The main architectural elements must not be altered or disguised. Unpainted brick or masonry should not be painted. b. Sidewalks and streets. Streets in this zone should be of one material, preferable cobblestone. 2. Pedestrian/Customer Elements a. Awnings — sunshades. Awnings or sunshades should be of translucent cloth and the same color or pair of colors on any one building. b. Street lighting. One type will be used throughout the District. c. Street furniture. Public seating is needed in this zone, particularly in the landscaped court. Trash receptacles should be provided throughout this zone. d. Trees, plants and flowers. Well maintained plants and flowers are acceptable along Lower Pike Street and Post Avenue. In the court area, the plantings should be maintained and improved. 3. Merchant Related Elements a. Store fronts. Store fronts should be as open as possible to reveal the prominently displayed merchandise. Stores with closed fronts should have glass fronts or other visually penetrable openings so that the activity inside is obvious to the passerby. Store fronts in this zone may be painted brighter colors than in Zones I and II if painting is required. Unpainted brick, stone, stucco, or concrete is preferred. 394 Unfinished wood, rough wood, or shingles are not acceptable. b. Restaurant, tavern and bar fronts. Restaurants, taverns and bars in this zone are allowed to have brighter or bolder facades than in other zones. More prominent lighting is allowed. The preferred exterior materials are brick, concrete, stucco, or stone. If wood is used, it should be finished. The use of glass is encouraged. c. Merchandising techniques. Face-to-face transactions between the buyer and the seller are essential in experiencing the Market. Display methods or practices that lessen or eliminate the personal services by the merchant are undesirable. Restaurants are encouraged to provide service at counters or tables on the sidewalk or street. d. Signs. Signs should be simple, clear and direct. Painted signs are preferred. Backlit fluorescent signs are not permitted, but neon may be acceptable. One of the many standard lettering styles should be used. Signs should not hide or obscure the architectural elements of the building. Signs should be flat against the building or painted on it. Signs hung perpendicular to facades will be considered along Post Avenue. e. Shop interiors. Merchants have more latitude in this zone in the interiors than in other zones. Nevertheless, fluorescent colors will not be permitted. f. Lighting. Incandescent lighting is preferred. D. Zone IV — The enclosed building spaces below Pike Place. This is a continuous, complex, multi-leveled system within a single space. Merchant- related structures should complement this characteristic and encourage pedestrian flow. 1. Permanent Elements. 395 a. Ramps, stairs, passages, exposed pipes, columns, and west windows. The numerous options for entering the lower levels must be preserved, including the ramps and stairs down from the Main Market arcade, the ramps and stairs up from Western Avenue, and the ramp from Flower Row. The complex of electrical conduit and plumbing pipes must remain exposed. The metal clad timber columns should be left free standing. Walls should not be built onto or around them. Signs should not cover them. Ceilings, walls and other structural partitions should be uniformly finished, preferably with light colored paint. Shops should maximize the views to the west. b. Lighting. Lighting should be incandescent. Existing fluorescent lighting should he phased out. c. Flooring. Flooring should be the same throughout the zone. 2. Merchant Related Elements. a. Merchandising techniques. Face-to-face transactions between the buyer and the seller are essential in experiencing the Market. Display methods or sales practices that lessen or eliminate the personal services by the merchant are undesirable. Spaces open to the walkways are much preferable to shops with closed fronts. If a shop must have a closed front, the merchandise should be visible from the outside. b. Security doors. Security or night doors should be visually penetrable and of the same type throughout this zone. Partitions should not be higher than 9’- 0”. 396 c. Individual decor. As in Zone I, predominately displayed merchandise should provide the color and the interest. Ceiling and wall colors should be light and generally should not incorporate such special effects as flocked wall paper, spangles or glittered plaster. Shop front treatments including but not limited to pseudo-Mansard roofs, chalet motifs, or shingles will not be permitted. d. Signs. Signs should be simple, clear, and direct. Painted signs are preferred. One of the many standard lettering styles should be used. Signs should not hide or obscure the architectural elements of the building. e. Display cases. Display structures must not diminish the open feeling along the lower level. They should not interfere with views through the zone or to the west. f. Color. Brighter colors may be used for some signs, trim and display shelves. Generally, colors that are not visible from the pedestrian ways are at the discretion of the individual merchant. Nevertheless, no fluorescent paint colors will be permitted. g. Shop lights. Incandescent lights are preferred. E. Zone V — The west side of First Avenue from Virginia Street south to 1425 First Avenue. This is a transition zone from downtown to the Market. Opportunities should be provided for pedestrians to enter the Market at various points within the blocks. 1. Permanent Elements. 397 a. The building exteriors, including marquees, arches, cornices, windows, doors, and columns. The exteriors of historic buildings should be carefully restored and maintained. Other buildings should relate to the historic ones in terms of scale, proportion of openings, materials and color. b. Sidewalks. Sidewalks should be of the same material throughout this zone. 2. Pedestrian/Customer Elements. a. Awnings — sunshades. Awnings and sunshades should be of translucent cloth, and of the same material and color or pair of colors on any one building. b. Trees, plants, and flowers. Potted trees, plants, and flowers are acceptable but should not impede pedestrian traffic. 3. Merchant Related Elements a. Store fronts. Store fronts should be open where practicable. Stores with closed fronts should use enough glass so that the activity inside the store is obvious to the passerby. Store fronts should not depart from he character of the building facade of which they are a part. The trim color or pair of colors could be contrasting. Unfinished wood, rough wood, or shingles are not permitted. b. Individual decor. The interior furnishing of closed-front shops in this zone are at the discretion of the shop owner, with the following qualification: displays, objects, or signs on the inside of buildings, where such are directed to attract the attention of passersby through the windows, are under the jurisdiction of the Commission. 398 c. Merchandising techniques. Face-to-face transactions between the buyer and the seller are essential in experiencing the Market. Display methods or sales practices that lessen or eliminate the personal services by the merchant are undesirable. d. Signs. Signs should be simple, clear, and direct. Painted signs are preferred. Some use of backlit fluorescent signs may be permitted. Careful use of neon may be acceptable. One of the many standard lettering styles should be used. Signs must not hide or obscure the architectural elements of the building. Signs should be flat against the building or painted on it without defacing it. Signs should be few and not large. Stationary sandwich boards are not allowed in this zone. 399 Archival Sources REFERENCES Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY City of New York, Department of City Planning. “City Assistance for Small Manufacturers.” [New York], Dept. of City Planning, March 1982. Lustig, Ronald. “The Gansevoort Market: A Preservation Plan.” Columbia University Master’s Thesis, May 1985. Spring 1989 Planning Studio at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “West Village Waterfront: A Community in Transition.” May 1989. Spring 1991 Urban Planning Studio, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. “West Village Waterfront.” Spring 1991. Boston Athenaeum, Boston, MA Walter Muir Whitehill Papers. Boston Historical Society, Boston, MA Photograph Collection. 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