RECORD OF TESTIMONY AND STATEMENTS IN RELATION TO 169 



NECESSITY FOR DISTRICTING PLAN 



Need of protection against reckless building 



An illustration of the evil effect of the failure of the city to protect the 

 owners of property from the erection of improper buildings is found in the 

 territory lying near Broadway between 59th Street and 125th Street, and 

 on West End Avenue, Riverside Drive, and the east and west streets lying 

 between. The Tenement House Law, which limits the height of a building 

 to one and a half times the width of the street, and imposes some slight 

 limitations on the area of ground that may be covered, has been of value, 

 but these limitations are entirely insufficient and have been insufficient so far 

 as tenement houses themselves are concerned. The limitation upon hotels 

 is only a limitation of area, and has proved wholly inadequate. There are 

 today a few apartment hotels in the territory "described which are but 

 twenty-five feet wide and rise to a height of thirteen stories. The intrusion 

 of these wretched buildings has depreciated the value of the neighboring 

 single family dwelling houses, and I am informed that they themselves are 

 regarded as such extra hazardous investments that their value cannot be 

 predicated upon rentals secured while they steal light and air for nine 

 stories of their height. Should these buildings be blanketed by others they 

 would probably, with a reasonable regard to the health of the occupants, be 

 uninhabitable, and it is clear that the same restrictions as to height and pos- 

 sibly more onerous restrictions as to area should apply to hotels as apply 

 to any other buildings for human habitation. A hotel should no more be 

 allowed to steal its neighbors' light and air and street area than any other 

 building. And the same principle applies in this territory as applies in all 

 other sections — that no building should be permitted which would not serve 

 as a suitable type as to height and area for the complete development of the 

 whole district, leaving to all adequate light, air and access, and safety 

 from fire. 



Invasion of private house sections by apartment houses 



Tenement houses, more euphoniously called apartment houses, built to 

 the full limit allowed by law, have intruded into, a territory beautifully de- 

 veloped with single family dwellings at great cost, well constructed, in con- 

 dition to last for a hundred years, and have destroyed their value in large 

 measure. The first tenement house when it can freely steal its light and 

 air is profitable. When it must depend on the light and air it furnishes for 

 itself, on its own lot, it frequently becomes unprofitable. When a wide 

 street is developed from end to end with buildings one hundred and fifty 

 feet high, the buildings on the street to the rear are deprived of light and 

 air to such a degree that they are no longer profitable as a rule and fre- 

 quently must be unhealthful. The servant problem, ever with us, is com- 

 plicated and rendered impossible of decent solution by the fact that in such 

 blocks there is not one single light kitchen — not a kitchen into which a direct 

 ray of sunlight ever enters. 



Fictitious land values 



In the whole territory just described we have cases again of fictitious 

 land values — values predicated upon the possibility of the erection of a 

 twelve-story tenement house that steals light and air as I have shown. 

 When that larceny is prevented profit is not there, and land values prove 

 to have been a mirage. The pathetic instances of single family dwellings 

 sandwiched between buildings of ninety feet and one hundred and fifty 

 feet appeal to one who knows what sacrifice of value has resulted and what 



