RECORD OF TESTIMONY AND STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO 141 



NECESSITY FOR DISTRICTING PLAN 



district plan and produce a profitable investment and .a large return on the 

 original investment. This entire section put under the " C " plan would 

 permit of buildings, practically governed simply by the tenement house 

 law. Rows and rows of solid buildings, occupied by hundreds of families, 

 could be erected upon these lots and throughout the entire neighborhood, 

 and the advantages of the property, as laid out originally, could be destroyed 

 by one or two vandals, who, being the first, might reap a pecuniary advan- 

 tage at the expense of the neighboring owners. This must be stopped and 

 absolutely prevented now. We must not wait until the neighborhood has 

 been spotted with the excrescences that have defaced certain adjacent sec- 

 tions already, and if a person wants to take his property and erect a multi- 

 family house let him do it under the restriction of the amended " E " dis- 

 trict plan, and he can still retain or enhance the value of his property, but 

 do it in a way that will harm no one. No owner in this garden spot need 

 be afraid of accepting this " E " district plan. It only needs a few figures 

 and a little information to prove that property will not deteriorate by this 

 plan. A first-class apartment house, with a fine garden and court space 

 around it, will bring much more, permanently, than buildings with their 

 walls abutting or with little alleyways between and no trees or gardens. 

 All the people in New York have not yet become cliff dwellers, and anvone 

 who has moved to this section from even a three or four-story house in 

 the ordinary old sections of Manhattan or Brooklyn, has immediately real- 

 ized the enormous benefit to health by having windows all around instead 

 of simply front and back. How often do you find people going from these 

 detached houses back to the old style. The move is generally to still more 

 suburban or country life. I do not include in these those individuals who 

 prefer to sleep in a box and spend their time in cabarets and places of amuse- 

 ment, because they are never home makers. I am talking now of the respon- 

 sible citizen, the citizen who wants to rear and bring up properly a family 

 of future citizens, and who takes an interest in the progress and improve- 

 ment of the community generally. 



A large electric sign has just been erected, through the influence of the 

 Flatbush Chamber of Commerce, at Flatbush Avenue and Malbone Street 

 as follows : 



" This is the Entrance to Flatbush — The Garden Spot of the City of 

 Homes." 



How long will the sign mean anything if the majority of the "garden 

 sppt " can be covered with apartment houses under plan " C "? 



Exception may be taken to this district plan because of the exceptional 

 transit facilities, but these facilities are largely provided for through travel 

 from Manhattan to the ocean front, and would not have been provided 

 otherwise, and as industrial or factory development is not included in the 

 Commission's plans in this section, the districting as proposed will accom- 

 modate all the population likely to inhabit same in a healthy and safe manner. 



Statement by S. Adolphus Knopf, M. D.. March 24, 1916 

 Tall buildings 



A tall building, fifteen to twenty stories high, with all the modern im- 

 provements and conveniences and sufficient fire protection, situated on a 

 public square, park or playground, which does not take away the light or 

 air of neighboring buildings, is a monument to man's ingenuity and archi- 



