Jane Jacobs: The street fighter who saved Manhattan

The city of New York has had many powerful and transformative figures since its founding in 1624. Originally a Dutch colonial settlement, New York’s, then called New Amsterdam, first great figure was Peter Stuyvesant. As Holland’s appointed magistrate over New York, Stuyvesant, with signature peg leg, ruled over and expanded Manhattan, eventually building a “wall” on present day “Wall Street” to keep out the Native population.

Perhaps the most influential and important New Yorker of all was DeWitt Clinton, a 10 time mayor and the state’s 6th governor during the early 1800’s. His incredible vision and leadership catapulted New York into the nation’s commercial capital via the development and engineering of the colossal project: The Erie Canal.

In the 20th century no one had a bigger footprint on New York city than Robert Moses: An appointed public works official for almost 4 decades, Moses had virtually unchecked power to physically transform New York via construction and swathing: Building bridges, evaporating neighborhoods, establishing and confiscating public spaces, housing, reconfiguring transportation, etc..

There were many other important and influential figures in NYC history, including the iconic FDR, and Central Park architects and visionaries, Olmstead and Vaux, and firmly cemented in that pantheon is just an average citizen, neither elected nor appointed to a position of power: Jane Jacobs. She did it by virtue of her democratically promised franchise as a mere citizen. She exercised that franchise in a way that few citizens ever feel empowered to approach. All these figures above, except Jacobs, had the full power of an institution and bureaucracy behind them. They were “insiders”, with henchmen to part any waters that needed parting. They were all men, who knew clearly that they only had to appeal to 50% of the population when getting things done.

Jane Jacobs was the most unlikely of heroes in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s in New York. She became engaged with civic activism when she saw that Robert Moses had a masterplan that included the dehumanizing and compromising of Washington Square Park in Lower Manhattan. Her opponent would be the omnipotent bulldog, Robert Moses. He had never lost a civic battle before but he lost this one to Jacobs and her forces. She rallied grassroots civic support to preserve what is an indispensable and historic public space that is in many ways, the heart of the city, the cornerstone of which is the great arch designed by Stanford White which greets all who travel far enough south on 5th avenue. Moses’ proposed highway would have been the end to all of this.

Moses was beaten for the first time but with Jacobs as his opposition, he was going to have to get accustomed to losing. His long held masterplan to clear giant swaths of historic and thriving neighborhoods and replace them with giant highways was soon coming to a final end at the hands of Jacobs. Moses’ one last push was to get approval for, not one, but (3) expressways across Manhattan. Moses was a lover of the automobile, though ironically he never learned to drive himself, and of facilitating their mass movement throughout the city and beyond. These expressways were to be suspended 50 feet high into the air, first over lower Manhattan connecting the Manhattan bridge to the Holland tunnel. It would have cut through Little Italy, Soho, and the east and west villages. In addition, Moses had two more expressways in his plan--one that vaporized 30th street from the East river to the Hudson river and, another, that ran across Harlem at 125th street. Imagine. Philosopher and New Yorker Marshall Berman said it best:

“Manhattan is one of the few parts of America where you can live your whole life without a car; where your daily life can depend on the street and on interacting with other people and on seeing what’s going to happen in ways that you don’t plan.”

It’s not accurate to say that Jane Jacobs saved Manhattan from destruction all by herself but it is accurate to say that without Jacobs at the helm these fights would have been lost. She led and organized the charge, being arrested for allegedly inciting a riot in 1968, almost a rite of passage for anyone pushing back on wrong or unjust public policy. Jacobs wrote "The death and life of American cities" in 1961 in an effort to question thoughtless urban renewal and to uphold the value of organic and historic neighborhoods. She, herself, lived on 555 Hudson street, a Greenwich village neighborhood that would have been eliminated with an Expressway.

“From her window at 555 Hudson street, Jacobs observed what she called “the sidewalk ballet” where the community gathered and connected with one another through active, dense space.”

Jacobs, through extensive and formidable community organizing was able to influence the city council of New York to vote against the expressway project under considerable odds. Robert Moses would never be the same and within the year he would resign his long held position as, de facto, arbiter of all urban and civic projects in New York.

As Village Preservationist founder Andrew Berman wrote in a 2018 article, “Jacob’s writings, force, and principles informed everything from land-use approval processes in cities throughout the world to the shape of new developments, big and small, around the globe.”

Jacobs influence transcended NYC; hers was about a battle of people and neighborhoods vs. mechanisms and highways.

A plaque at 555 Hudson street reads: “The author and urbanist bought this 1842 rowhouse in 1947 and remained until 1968. While here, Jacobs helped lead successful campaigns to ban cars from Washington Square, to defeat Robert Moses’ planned Lower Manhattan Expressway, and to stop his plans for “urban renewal” demolition in the West Village. She wrote “The Death and Life of American cities” while living here”.