APPENDIX V.— SOME RESULTS OF HAPHAZARD DEVELOP- 

 MENT AS RECORDED BY THE CAMERA 



The Commission secured for its record several hundred photographs 

 showing the results of unregulated, haphazard city building. A consider- 

 able number of these photographs are reproduced in the following pages. 

 The subjects were selected and the photographs taken by Benjamin Lorber 

 of the staff of the Committee on the City Plan. They have been edited for 

 this report by Francis P. Schiavone, also of the staff of the Committee. 



The photographs are classified according to their chief features into 

 more than a score of divisions. Certain pictures show typical conditions 

 in residential streets, in business streets and in industrial districts ; here 

 each is unmistakably of one class, an appropriate development free from 

 the unfortunate admixture that characterizes most of the other streets de- 

 picted. 



A series of pictures show the invasion of private house streets by the 

 apartment house. Other pictures show the first or incipient stage of that 

 transformation which in its unregulated ravages has caused such great 

 loss to the city's real estate value, the encroachment of business upon purely 

 residential blocks. Business, however, is not all, for a series of pictures 

 show garages in this stage, another factories, another junk shops. When 

 a business or industry gets a footing, its influence is shown by the conver- 

 sion of nearby residential buildings into a like use. This is usually done 

 not in line with a sane profitable development but as a desperate move by 

 the property owner to avoid total loss. Practical structural difficulties and 

 the lack of funds usually lead to unsightly and inefficient hybrids. 



After such a beginning it is to be expected that one class of use will 

 often oust another entirely, that business will supplant residence and that 

 warehousing and industry will supplant business. This change is not ac- 

 complished easily or quickly because buildings often have a long term of 

 usefulness which, while constantly decreasing, ma)' still be sufficient to dis- 

 courage their demolition. Consequently many streets show factories and 

 tenements side by side, noisy, ill-odorous, overtowering industrial plants 

 that deprive the homes of the poor of the quiet, fresh air, light and safety 

 they so much require. The photographs show factories in private districts 

 as well as among tenements and storage warehouses, lumber and building 

 material yards among both. Most of these photographs show that more 

 regrettable condition — the invasion of residence districts — but a few pictures 

 tell an eloquent story, in crowding " loft-to-let " signs, of the loss that 

 follows when retail and other business has abandoned a district and industry 

 has not yet established itself. 



That garages constitute a great problem is evidenced by the number 

 and character of the photographs showing these buildings in private house 

 districts, among apartment buildings and in the most congested tenement 

 streets. A series show also that stables and horseshoeing shops, while not 

 multiplying so rapidly as garages, are even a greater menace to the health 

 of the communities in which they are established. 



The congestion of street and sidewalk was a condition that could not 

 escape even the most casual camera but often the very intensity of conges- 

 tion made a representative photograph impossible. The series show, how- 

 ever, street and sidewalk crowding and obstruction due to business use 

 where goods are stored on the walks and the loading and unloading of 

 trucks hampers vehicles and pedestrians. Garages, stables and horseshoe- 



