NECESSITY FOR A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF CITY BUILDING 11 



future growth, tend to spread out business and industry, both by limiting 

 the height of buildings and by encouraging the development of commercial 

 and industrial areas in the other boroughs. In this connection, John Kenlon, 

 Chief of the Fire Department, said in his testimony before the Commis- 

 sion : " In the thirty years that I have been connected with the Fire 

 Department, lower Manhattan has changed from a five-story city to a 

 twenty-five-story city. There is great congestion there at the present time ; 

 during the day time it is difficult to move apparatus in response to fire 

 calls in the lower end of Manhattan Island. Increased congestion of 

 people and traffic in this section will cause very serious delays in getting 

 apparatus to work around the scene of a fire. Even at present it is very 

 difficult until the police reserves arrive and establish fire lines at a safe 

 distance from the scene of the fire. The same condition prevails in the 

 uptown section from 23d Street to 45th Street, particularly at certain hours. 

 The men who laid out the old part of the city 250 years ago had very 

 little conception of the conditions that obtain to-day. Those gentlemen 

 could not possibly see the great 10-ton and 15-ton motor trucks running 

 around on our streets. Downtown to-day it is almost impossible to get 

 through the streets ; in ten years from now horses will be a very rare sight 

 on the streets of New York. The small buggy has been superseded by the 

 Packard, which takes four times the space. The streets are too narrow 

 in the lower part of Manhattan to take care of the traffic. It is a serious 

 matter, it requires a great deal of experience, a good hand and strong arm 

 to drive fire apparatus through the streets of lower Manhattan. Any plan 

 that will in a measure prevent the increase of congestion in the central 

 portions ot the city is a plan in the right direction." 



The segregation of residential, business and industrial buildings will 

 also make it easier to provide the fire apparatus in each section suitable 

 for the character and intensity of development in that section. It will make 

 it easier to provide proper safeguards against fire. It will increase the 

 safety and security of the homes of the people. These facts were testified 

 to by Chief Kenlon of the Fire Department and by Edward R. Hardy, 

 Assistant Manager, New York Fire Insurance Exchange. 



Segregation as to use and limitation of height are also essential to the 

 prevention of street accidents. The injury to life and limb from street 

 accidents is enormous and is constantly increasing. In 1915 there were 

 18,139 vehicular accidents in the streets of New York City. Of these 

 608 proved fatal. An orderly plan of building development will reduce 

 such accidents. Street accidents and street congestion are directly related. 

 In so far as the districting plan will tend to reduce congestion it will reduce 

 street accidents. There is also a direct relation between the number of 

 different kinds of traffic using the same street, with its resulting confusion, 

 and the number of street accidents. The segregation of uses with its result- 

 ant segregation of kinds of traffic will have a direct tendency to reduce 

 street accidents. In the residential sections the number of accidents to 



