RECORD OF TESTIMONY AND STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO 111 



NECESSITY FOR DISTRICTING PLAN 



As time progressed new loft buildings were erected east and west of 

 Fifth Avenue in the side streets and by 1910 the section lying between 14th 

 and 23d Streets was practically given over to cloak and suit manufacturing. 

 Because of street congestion on the part of employees and the consequent 

 absence of shoppers and loss of business and for other reasons outlined 

 below, due to the presence of factories, the retail stores were forced to 

 move. The offices in that district became equally undesirable and cloak- 

 making was really the only industry or business which flourished there at 

 this time. After 1910 the gradual march northward began. The cloak and 

 suit manufacturers crept up to 25th, 26th and 27th Streets and by 1914 

 their northern limit was 32d Street. During the last two years they have 

 kept on going up and up, until to-day some of them are located as far north 

 as 38th Street. Even above this point and for a half mile or so there have 

 of late become located many wholesale jewelry manufacturers employing 

 hundreds of persons. 



Arguments in favor of the limitation of the use of buildings for factory purposes 

 in the Fifth avenue district. Sidewalk and street congestion caused by 

 employees 



Between the hours of 11.30 A. M. and 2 P. M. the sidewalks on Fifth 

 Avenue become thoroughly congested with multitudes of employees from 

 the factories in the side streets up to 34th Street. In some places there are 

 merely groups of four, six, eight or twenty men standing on the sidewalk 

 and the roadway debating in strange tongues conditions of labor and other 

 kindred subjects and stopping the free movement of the pedestrians along 

 the sidewalks. At other places, notably between 27th and 33d Streets, the 

 crowds marching four abreast north and four abreast south at a snail's 

 pace are so dense that it is impossible to walk on the sidewalk unless one is 

 prepared to shove and fight one's way through crowds. As many as 1,500 

 people have been counted on one block congregated on the sidewalks. 

 Almost touching each other front and back they usually move at the rate 

 of about one mile an hour or less up and down in stretches of from four to 

 six blocks, and continually stop to exchange greetings with their friends. 

 The Police Department finds it extremely difficult to keep them moving 

 even at such a slow rate of speed. It becomes utterly impossible for any- 

 body to enter a store or a building, where these crowds block the sidewalks, 

 with any kind of physical comfort, and these conditions are particularly 

 unpleasant for women, who constitute the great majority of shoppers. It 

 naturally follows that customers will not trade in the stores so obstructed. 

 Under such conditions the value of the property for business purposes is 

 slowly but surely reduced and the tenant is forced to move. 



In addition to the above described discomfort caused by these crowds 

 it has become customary on the part of the clothing manufacturers to use ' 

 the streets as an employment office. It is a frequent occurrence that during 

 the hours of the greatest congestion a foreman will run out and ask for a 

 number of workers. In the slack season hundreds of them promptly 

 organize a rush into the building carrying everything and everybody who 

 happens to be on the sidewalk with them into the building. 



If it is realized that, according to the census of the State Labor Depart- 

 ment, nearly 4,300 people are employed in one particular block in the lower 

 part of the district and that practically all of them are men who come out 

 during the noon hour for fresh air, a smoke and a meeting with their 

 friends, it can vividly be pictured how the sidewalks look. Some photo- 

 graphs furnished by the Fifth Avenue Association to the Commission por- 



