84 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



stricted, he will sell the corners for apartment houses, obtaining higher 

 prices, because the surrounding property is built up with a large amount of 

 open space. In one case this practice went so far that the owners of the 

 corner apartment houses claimed that their predecessor in title placed de- 

 tached house restrictions upon the surrounding land for the benefit of the 

 future apartment houses, and that the owners of the private houses could 

 not, on the ground that the character of the locality had changed, build up 

 their land with apartment houses in place of the detached houses. 



Short term private house restrictions have throughout Flatbush and 

 certain portions of Queens been an invitation for the premature building 

 of sporadic apartment houses. In some cases the apartment house has 

 actually been built before the neighborhood had reached an apartment 

 house stage, because the unbuilt-up corners now freed from restrictions 

 offered an opportunity to exploit the detached house locality. Many people 

 will go a long way out into the suburbs to live in an apartment house if 

 they can have the surroundings of detached houses, when they would not 

 go to apartment houses in a locality so far away that was entirely built up 

 with apartment houses. 



Therefore, I say that, on the whole, private restrictions have failed in 

 preserving localities for designed uses during the life of the structures that 

 are erected under those restrictions. Their helpfulness is only temporary. 

 Probably it will be the effect that if no method of municipal restriction is 

 put into force by the city to preserve to some extent what has been accom- 

 plished by private restrictions, the effect of private restrictions, as thus far 

 practiced in parts of the city, will be negligible. 



In general, the main drawback of private restrictions as practiced in 

 this city is that the surroundings of the restricted locality is built up quite 

 regardless of the required growth of the restricted district ; then the edges 

 of the restricted district are gradually hurt and in some cases the restrictions 

 result in a financial loss to those whom they were intended to help. Under 

 the zoning as sought to be done now under charter amendments, entire 

 localities that are suitable for a given use will be appropriately restricted, 

 so that the constant encroachment of unsuitable uses on the edges will lie 

 largely prevented. 



It has come to be the common saying in the four outlying Boroughs of 

 The City of New York that private restrictions do not restrict. To my 

 personal knowledge many Brooklyn and Queens residents have moved out- 

 side of the city, because they say the only protection of their home i> to 

 buy a fair-sized plot of ground outside of the five-cent-fare zone. There 

 is a gradual and constant migration of well-to-do people to counties and 

 states near Greater New York on this account. Some say that a man is 

 a highly speculative person who will build a private house in Greater New 

 York that costs over $30,000. 



Damages against a violator of a covenant are collected by an action at 

 law by the landowner within the restricted district who was injured by the 

 landowner within the district who violated the covenants. These damages 

 are very hard to prove and extremely uncertain. Almost no cases are 

 brought on this ground in the City of New York. The cost of taking such 

 a case into court would, in most instances, exceed the damages that might 

 be collected. There is no machinery for enforcing private restrictions 

 except through the watchfulness of surrounding property owners. The city 

 government gives no help. The only procedure for enforcing such pro- 

 visions is by an appeal to the court on behalf of property owners who 

 consider themselves injured. 



