126 COMMISSION ON BUILDING DISTRICTS 



per foot per minute. One place of tremendous congestion is the approach to 

 the Brooklyn Bridge, another is on Fifth avenue during the lunch hour. 

 I have studied conditions at 23d street and Fifth avenue and 1 can give 

 you statistics on that also. 



A ten-story building one hundred feet deep will have on a strip just 

 one foot wide 1,000 square feet. At 33 1/3 square feet per person, that 

 means a maximum of thirty persons per front foot of street space for a 

 street that is filled with ten-story buildings. Now, at thirty persons per 

 front foot on a basis of sixty persons per minute along a sidewalk, there 

 will be required from 1/6 to 1/2 a minute per person per foot front to 

 carry away the people. An 800-foot block would require from four hun- 

 dred down to one hundred and thirty minutes to empty one side of the 

 street. That means from six hours down to two hours according to the 

 rate at which you figure people to move, assuming all were on the sidewalk. 

 Six hours down to four hours is the time if sidewalks only are used, and 

 four to two if the} - cover the whole street. If, on the other hand, there is a 

 panic, the whole street would be absolutely jammed with people in the 

 majority of streets in lower Manhattan, where I may say 750,000 people 

 from the outside come in every day for business. 



It would seem to me that the Commission would do a service to the 

 community by saying that in case of panic every employee should go toward 

 the waterfront, away from the large buildings — go as directly as possible 

 to those districts where the buildings are lower and not to move through 

 the obvious lines of communication. 



Special conditions such as those on Nassau Street, in which we have 

 very often had fifteen persons per foot width per minute, are exceedingly 

 common. On Fifth Avenue — at the southwest corner below 23rd Street, 

 from twelve-thirty to twelve forty-five on April 29, 1915, there were ten 

 and a half persons per foot width of sidewalk per minute. At that inter- 

 section the heavy stream turns from the west where it varies from seven 

 and a half to nine and nine-tenths, and it went as high as thirteen and a 

 third at one particular point along Fifth Avenue. In 1911 (and conditions 

 have not changed in some ways, and have materially -changed in others), 

 the number of pedestrians varied from 33,000 at 14th Street to 14.000 at 

 23rd Street, 26,000 at 33rd Street, 24,000 at 42nd Street, and then down to 

 2,000 at 78th Street and up again to 18,000 at 116th Street. But you must 

 take into account not alone the people on the street, but the vehicles also. 

 It is the combination, and the pedestrians crossing the street that make for 

 accidents. I could give you statistics on that also. 



Population of Manhattan 



Single block lengths where residences now exist should be restricted 

 for residence use. If the people have to go clear across Manhattan to get 

 from their work to their residence, as they do now across 14th Street, acute 

 congestion occurs steadily. If, however, every third block north and south 

 were made a business block or a manufacturing block, and the intervening 

 two blocks residences, each person could live within two blocks of his work 

 and there would be no such congestion as there is at the present time. I 

 think that would be a very important thing for the good of the com- 

 munity as a whole. I decry any of the talk about loss of population in 

 Manhattan. We have made a special analysis in my office showing the 

 available unbuilt-upon spaces. They would house one and a half million 

 more people, if all vacant spaces were used. By simply tearing down the 

 old two and three story houses and putting up five story tenements you 



