The Urbanologist

Banned in Boston: the 20th Century Edition

Thu, 24 May 2012 16:49:02 -0400

I have started writing for the online edition of Boston Magazine, and here’s my first piece for the site: a inside look into the books and such that were “banned in Boston” back in the early 20th century.

Enjoy!

Mad Men Landscapes Out in The Suburbs: A Conversation with Author and Professor Louise Mozingo

Sat, 19 May 2012 09:17:00 -0400

I’ve always been interested in the built environment, and when I stumbled upon Professor Louise Mozingo’s recent book Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes, I knew I had found a kindred spirit.

Her work traces the history of places such as Bell Labs, Microsoft, and General Motors, and the book offers great insight into the origins of these somewhat overlooked landscapes. Louise was kind enough to respond to a few of my questions about her work via email.

I’ll be honest: Reading your book on the creation of suburban pastoral capitalist landscapes made me want to drink a gin & tonic and channel a suburban-style “Mad Men” atmosphere in some far-flung office park. What brought you to this topic? You mention a bit of personal experience in the book’s introduction, but was there something else that intrigued you about this project?

It really was as I described at the beginning of the book—an offhand comment about “the American Versailles” that I never forgot. Soon after that I went to work for a firm, POD Inc. that had designed Hacienda Business Park, a quintessential example of a 1980s large scale office park backed by newly available speculative capital provided by the de-regulation of banking and insurance industries. POD Inc. eventually was bought by Sasaki Associates, one of the design firms most well-known for corporate estate projects, the Deere & Company Administrative Center among them. I myself never worked on corporate projects (I focused on public projects and I was there past the peak of corporate work) but they were part of the offices’ history. I realized that they were some of the most substantial landscape architecture projects in the United States in a time of more miserly aspirations in the public sphere. Once I started the research, I realized that the vast majority of suburban scholarship dealt with residential suburbs, ignoring the workplace component of the suburbs. This let me know I had a research tack that could add a distinctive component to suburban history. Lastly, the relationship between postwar corporate managerial capitalism and the advent of pastoral capitalism was a compelling revelation to me. The cultural geographer, J. B. Jackson and his successor at Berkeley, Paul Groth, profoundly influence the way I think about the American landscape. My project makes vivid the relationship between economic and social structures and the built environment, a core idea of Jackson’s and Groth’s work.

That all sounds excessively academic and serious, I realize, but it was the case. (No my father was not a corporate executive, nor my mother a corporate secretary.)

What’s the biggest challenge with such a work in terms of getting rich, first-hand primary sources? Obviously there are diverse sets of corporate records, business reports, and comments from media outlets such as Fortune magazine, but was it possible to garner first-hand recollections from those personally involved with the final decision regarding an urban-to-suburban move for such corporate entities?

I did interview a set of designers who had an inside view of the executive decision-making but the most revealing find was the internal memos about AT&T Bell Labs from the AT&T Archives and the Olmsted Archives at the Library of Congress. You could see the back and forth decisions over ten years (1930-1940) in the formulation of this unprecedented suburban development that is the origin of all the other suburban corporate landscapes. Some of these AT&T memos were pretty spontaneous and unvarnished, not media ready. I also got access to an internal GM memo (not part of their public relations juggernaut) completed just after the opening of the Technical Center that laid out the whole process of the decisions on the Technical Center. There were a couple of oral histories that proved useful as well. Robert Hewitt was still alive when I was working on the book, living in close by Napa, but I had not realized it until I read his obituary in the New York Times. He was the only one of the early executives that was still alive during the writing of the book.

The other thing I need to mention is that during the arc of researching and writing the book, basically 1997-2008, the internet evolved into a whole new kind of research tool for fingertip ready information. It is vastly easier to figure out where personal archives have been housed or how you might be able to interview someone in 2008 than 1997.

In the introduction to your work you note that “If during the next century business as usual continues in the way we build and inhabit cities, the consequences will be dire for many and palpable by all.” I second this, and are there any policy tools that might be adopted to encourage density or at least “smarter” planning throughout or nation’s (sub)urbanized areas?

To briefly summarize, a “smarter” planning policy requires three interrelated strategies to reorganize workplaces within metropolitan regions. First, state and federal governments should stop paying for new highway and extensions that facilitate conversion of agricultural land for development, including corporate offices. For every mile of roads, sewers, transit lines, and water mains in low-density sprawl there are fewer (and these days poorer) supporting taxpayers. Second, suburban jurisdictions that now ask little more of the next corporate campus than an amplitude of parking and roadways to insure the unimpeded flow of automobiles can recognize that these sites have space and their owners have means. While still providing corporations with status, flexibility, and efficiency, the layouts of suburban corporate landscapes can be reshaped to provide pedestrian, bicycle and transit links with adjacent residential development where workers live. Right now, even if as-the-crow-flies distances are reasonable for walking, biking, and transit use, the enclave building pattern of suburban corporate offices forces long and circuitous routes. Not to mention that sidewalks, bike lanes, and transit stops are anomalies in the separatist geography of pastoral capitalism. Add to the mix new public space, a denser diversity of uses, and a reorientation of state and federal subsidies for transit between multiple employment centers and residential districts—not only to and from the downtown—and suburban corporate offices could become a keystone in the reformation of the suburbs. Third, corporations can re-occupy center cities. In the last two decades the public and private governance of cities, like Portland, Oregon have engendered a resurgence of dense center cities through strategic improvements to tried-and-true urban patterns. Dozens of other cities that corporations abandoned in the postwar era have readied their central business districts to become the next Portland. Urban lots, vacant offices, and economic subsidies lie waiting in places like Cleveland, Hartford, Raleigh, and Birmingham that are well served by transit and pedestrian connections, a mix of retail and service uses, and a surprising amount of newly built and renovated housing where workers can live. I stress that all three measures—a halt agricultural land conversion, dispersed employment centers well served by alternative transit, and downtown incentives—need to be in place to make “smarter” planning policy. I am not advocating that the suburbs do not contain employment centers, rather that the suburbs contain dense and connected employment centers.

The intent of many of these massive projects you describe and explore was to move away from the density and diversity of many large cities in the post-WWII period. As we see a return to these center city locations (I think here of the massive pharmaceutical companies near my own apartment in Cambridge) what will became of these suburban behemoths that you talk about in your book?

Some center cities—Boston, New York, San Francisco, and Portland—are showing re-surgence but I want to stress that in most metropolitan areas this is still not the case. Take a train to Hartford, Connecticut and you will see what I mean. Yes, some new downtown housing, probably doing okay in terms of holding on to existing offices, but nothing like the bustle it was in the 1950s, or even the 1960s. That said, there are some suburban behemoths of corporate estates that have been abandoned because of corporate takeovers and consolidation, not because the headquarters moved back downtown. Connecticut General outside Hartford is a good example of what might happen—it got split up and to a certain extent densified and diversified—new housing, a golf resort type hotel, and new office buildings on the former “estate,” the old building saved after outcry from historic preservationists. In this case, split up and diversified but still suburban, still low density if higher than before, still in an enclave pattern.

The tech companies are not coming to San Francisco from the Silicon Valley for instance, though a couple that started in San Francisco, like Twitter, are trying to stay here as they become established companies as opposed to start-ups. What is happening in the Bay Area, where the Silicon Valley economy is still very much on the upswing, is that there is talk of somehow “urbanizing” office parks both to make them denser and to insert some kind of transit and pedestrian connections. This is where the persistence of the enclave pattern is proving so very difficult to supersede.

I think, in general, the office park landscape is still thriving, for the most part—see the Research Triangle Park. And Apple, cash rich is building a classic corporate estate. (I wrote an article for CLOG about this.) So talk of the demise of the suburban corporate landscape is still premature.

People are generally familiar with the term “office park” and all that such a title entails (the good, the bad, the other). In your book you talk about the ur-proto-office park outside of Birmingham, Alabama. Did you happen to visit as part of your research for the book? What did you find?

To my regret, I did not. I figured out that it was the first office park on a last leg of my fieldwork—as a national phenomenon it was hard to get everywhere I wanted to go. I figured it out at the archives of the National Association of Office and Industrial Parks in Reston, Virginia. They fortunately had a good ULI case study on the Office Park, and other early office parks. Since the Jackson Company (developers of the Office park) was one of the founding members of the NAIOP they also had transcripts of speeches by and interviews with executives of the Jackson Company.

A significant challenge in writing the book was just figuring out a chronology of projects and their locations—all the information was scattered. For instance, I only figured out that the Olmsted firm had designed Bell Labs by a tiny newspaper clipping at the New Providence [New Jersey] Historical Society clip file, lovingly saved by a former Bell Lab employee. I knew about the project—it was widely published in the 1940s and 1950s—but not one mention was made of the Olmsted firm. Once I knew that, then I could go to the LOC Archives in Washington—another trip, of course.

To fall back on a bit of a hoary cliche, are we at a tipping point as regards the construction of far-distant suburban office parks and corporate pastoral landscapes that may signal a retrenchment of building far away from recognizable urban cores? Or will gas and or land prices have to go up significantly?

I would like to answer this in two ways.

First, we are not at the point where land and gas prices make this low-density work pattern untenable for employers—but we will be. Getting to work in a car will be too expensive for employees and providing a parking space will be too expensive for employers. There was an interesting study about Cleveland that concluded the an early round of suburban foreclosures happen because of the rising transportation (i.e. gasoline) costs.

Second, one of the points of my book is that pastoral capitalism started as a matter of taste and privilege among the corporate class, not cost effectiveness. I do not think there is any question that the taste and privilege among the leading edge corporate class in the United States is trending urban, hence the huge Lower Manhattan building bought by Google two blocks from the Highline. Google, Facebook, Genentech and others now run what are privatized public transportation systems, mostly comfy, large buses of the type used for excursions, from San Francisco to their suburban offices on the San Francisco Peninsula, and, in the case of Genentech, all the way to Vallejo, half way to Sacramento. They are doing it because the current crop of “brainy youngsters” like the city. I suspect they might be the avant garde in a renewed city and urbanized suburb—but only if they drive a restructuring to benefit the metropolitan region as a whole.

The dystopic scenario in all this is that disconnected, economically declining suburbs become an isolated realms of economic and social disenfranchisement. This is where the public and private governance of metropolitan regions need to make a choice—to reinforce the enclave pattern in both physical and social dimensions inherent in pastoral capitalism or to renew a sense of collective responsibility of building metropolitan systems that serve everyone while serving themselves. The question to ask is there a clean, fast, reliable, and affordable bus line for the people who vacuum and dust the Google offices?

Getting out and about on Boston's waterfront

Sat, 19 May 2012 08:52:39 -0400

What can you do on Boston’s waterfront? Oh, there’s plenty of wonderful distractions, and here are my suggestions for a day or two out and about during any season.

Enjoy!

"A New South City": A Conversation with Jim Crooks about Jacksonville in the early 20th century

Tue, 08 May 2012 11:35:00 -0400

On my last visit to Jacksonville to explore the city and give several talks at the library, I got time to sit down with Jim Crooks. We talked about the history of Jacksonville and its transformation over the past century. Jim is a thoughtful and interesting scholar, and I knew I wanted to talk with him about his second book on the city, “Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1919: A New South City”.

I put a few questions to Jim about the book via email, and he was kind enough to respond.

I loved the first line of your book: “How do we look at an American southern city like Jacksonville, Florida?” Your work describes a city that has been vastly transformed over the past 90 years. Can you offer the curious traveler a quick thumbnail sketch of the city of Jacksonville in the period in which your book takes place?

Jacksonville in 1900 was a city of 28,000 folk, slightly more than half of whom were African American. It was the largest city in Florida, but smaller than Savannah, Charleston, Augusta, Birmingham, Mobile and Atlanta. It was a small provincial city in a state that in 1900 had the smallest population of any of the former Confederate states. Physically, Jacksonville was bordered on the east and south by the St. Johns River. The river was the reason for Jacksonville’s founding, providing an avenue to the sea to the east, and beyond to other American cities and abroad. The river also was the life line to interior Florida’s agricultural settlements. Jacksonville thus became the commercial center and gateway to Florida. For much of the time since the end of the Civil War, Jacksonville had been the winter tourist capital of the state with fine hotels and restaurants. Like other cities, Jacksonville, though small, had a thriving downtown, affluent suburbs and impoverished slums. It had its parades and festivals, country club and baseball teams. Hemming Park in the center of downtown was the focus for prominent speakers visiting from across the country. Racially segregated for the most part, a small African American middle class had emerged in business, the professions and education. One-third of adult women worked, mostly in low paying jobs. Middle class women had begun to organize themselves, especially in support of public schools which were under funded and poorly performing. Politically white Jacksonville voted Democratic like other Southern whites. Most black Jacksonians were disfranchised, but the few who voted supported Republican candidates.

As you looked into how Jacksonville was transformed after the 1901 fire were there any similarities between how the city rebuilt itself and say a Chicago or even a Seattle after its own devastating conflagration?

The similarities are many. In an era before city planning existed, fire-ravaged cities were re-built much as they had been before. The one exception being that brick frequently replaced wood in construction and some effort was made to insure new buildings were fire-proof. The private sector did most of the re-building and profitting. In Jacksonville and elsewhere, new building was more “modern.” For example the first ten-story sky scrapers were built in the years following the Jacksonville fire. The fires in many cases prompted a new energy in the city. Facing the challenge ahead, locals assisted by newcomers stimulated economic development, suburban growth and downtown vitalization. Clearly a decade after their fires, Jacksonville, Chicago, Baltimore, et. al were bustling cities, greater perhaps than if their fires had not happened at all.

Your book also focuses on the question of race relations and the opportunities (or lack thereof) that Jacksonville presented for its African-American residents. What led James Weldon Johnson to remark that in the 19th century Jacksonville was “a good town for Negroes”, while later it became a “one hundred percent Cracker town”?

In the 1880s when Johnson made the first statement, “a good town for Negroes”, the city had just annexed the predominantly black suburb of LaVilla and blacks with organized labor had elected a Republican city council with 5 black council members, plus a black magistrate. There were black police and fire fighters. Segregation and discrimination existed, but whites generally had a sense of nobless oblige toward blacks, seen in their sponsoring Johnson to pass the bar and become the first African American member in the state. By 1907 when Johnson made the second remark about a “one hundred percent cracker town,” the state had suspended local government replacing black representatives with whites; and passed the white primary and poll tax laws. Blacks were squeezed out of municipal goverment by gerrymandering and simply dismissing fire fighters and police. This shift in attitude reflected similar shifts across the South of voter disfranchisement, the segregation of public accomodations and Jim Crow. The shift reflected a hardening of attitudes by whites influenced by Populist efforts to organized poor white and black voters in the depression 1890s, the manipulation of poor white voters, and the violent attacks against blacks who attempted to vote.

As someone who is keenly interested in transit issues and history how did the average Jacksonville resident get around in this period? Was there an interurban trolley system to nearby towns? And how would you characterize river crossings and the local trolley lines?

River crossing was by ferry or private boat, but few people lived south of the river. South Jacksonville was incorporated separately in 1907 with but 2000 residents. In the city itself, trolley transit existed to the suburbs north, west and southwest. Eventually they were consolidated under the ownership of a Boston trust. For awhile there was an African American owned trolley serving the black community. Jacksonville also in the early years of the 20th century become a rail gateway to Florida with major rail lines connecting the city with Savannah, Atlanta, Pensacola (and west), Gainesville, Tampa and eventually Miami. Men walked (many lived downtown) to work; wealthy men might be driven in a carriage (autos still were a novelty); others took the trolley as did suburban women who travelled downtown to shop. Trolleys were also popular on weekend for outings to parks on the outskirts of the city, often developed by company owners at the end of trolley lines.

Chambers of commerce and other “boosters” (i.e. local officials, etc) have played such a key role in place promotion in American history. How would describe the priorities of Jacksonville’s Chamber of Commerce during this period?

The Chamber, known as the Board of Trade until 1914, played a major role in economic development. For example, it was able to persuade the state legislature to convene for a special session in 1910 to authorize a bond issue for construction of new municipal docks for Jacksonville. The Board/Chamber also led the re-building of the city after the Great Fire of 1901 calling together community leaders (including the mayor and two city council members) to organized the relief and reconstruction. It mediated strikes, supported public education improvements, new hospitals, park development and public health in addition to its support for banking, railroads, insurance and new industry. In my history I call it the premier economic and civic organization of the city.

One often thinks about prominent sports teams defining the character of any city, particularly in the early 21st century. Were there any sports teams (professional or otherwise) in Jacksonville that the citizenry rallied around?

In the early 20th century, major league baseball was in its infancy, pro football barely existed and basketball also had only just begun (for example, Fenway Park in Boston,was built in 1912). Jacksonville high school teams played football and baseball again teams from Gainesville, Tallahassee, Savannah. Major league baseball had just begun spring training, and though Jacksonville was not a site used for spring training, teams played exhibition games locally on the trips north before beginning the season. And these games were quite popular. Tourism had been the major attraction that Jacksonville had for northerners, but the development of resorts further south beginning in the 1890s changed that. During the Florida boom of the 1920s in which Jacksonville participated only marginally, the city was known as the “working city” of Florida, not a tourist attraction.

What sites/places/locales would you recommend to the visitor who would like to see the legacy of the events and transformations that took place in Jacksonville from 1901-1919?

Downtown, a visitor should start at city hall on Hemming Plaza, the building constructed before the First World War as the major department story south of Richmond. It still has some of that grandeur. Downtown has a number of handsome churches built after the Great Fire and a handful of early skyscrapers at the corner of Forsyth and Laura Streets. The original Carnegie Library, now a law office is also worth seeing. Moving west of downtown, is the Ritz Theater, Masonic Temple home to African American business and professional people in that era, the old Stanton High School and Edward Waters College. The southwesterly suburb of Riverside has many handsome old homes from the pre-World War I era, as well as from the interwar era. For specific directions, one might contact the Jacksonville Historical Society whose director organizes tours, or the Riverside Avondale Preservation organization, which was created in 1974.

The Trees of New York City: A Conversation With Author Leslie Day

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 07:14:00 -0400

The ubiquity of trees, like other parts of the landscape, causes some casual wanderers to overlook their presence. This is most decidedly not the case with Leslie Day, a native New Yorker, whose passion for trees extends from the Bald Cypress to the Norway Maple. Recently, she wrote the Field Guides to the Street Trees of New York City, a work which is beautifully illustrated by her friend and colleague, Trudy Smoke. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press, the book is a wonderful addition to the vast litany of publications on Gotham City.

Leslie was kind enough to take sometime out of her schedule to reply to a few of my questions via email, and here’s that conversation.

How did this book become a reality? And perhaps I should start by asking what is your personal attraction and fascination with trees?

After my first book, Field Guide to the Natural World of New York City was published, I was interviewed by Ellen Pall for the New York Times in an article she titled “Meet the Neighbors.” She admitted her ignorance regarding the trees that stood outside her building on Riverside Drive and West 83rd Street where she had lived for decades. We walked around the block, Riverside to West End, West End to 84th, 84th from West End to Riverside and back where we started. I talked about the different tree species and helped her figure out how to identify them. When the article came out in October 2007, her human neighbors read it and said “We want to meet the neighbors too!” I knew that if they felt that way there were probably many New Yorkers who had the same need to know about street trees and so the idea for a field guide to the street trees of NYC was born.

In the introduction to the book, you offer short vignettes of people who share your love and wonder of trees. Is there an interesting profile of another individual or organization that you might tell me about it that didn’t make it into the book?

In August 2011 my husband and I moved from our boat at the 79th Street Boat Basin on the Hudson to a 2-bedroom apartment in Washington Heights facing Fort Tryon Park. I am becoming involved with this exquisite park and am so moved by the work the gardeners and volunteers with the Fort Tryon Park Trust do alongside workers from the NYC Parks Department.

Perhaps the most famous literary tree in NYC is the tree that “grows in Brooklyn”. What type of tree was this? Also, are there other trees in NYC that have found themselves featured in other literary works?

The tree that “grows in Brooklyn” was an ailanthus tree, native to China and other parts of Asia and an extremely tough and hardy tree that grows EVERYWHERE in the city! And of course there is the horse chestnut tree that stood outside Anne Frank’s bedroom prison. Seedlings or saplings from the seeds from her tree are being planted at Ground Zero I think.

The book has many wonderful photos that illustrate the tremendous diversity of trees in the five boroughs. Did anyone encounter you and share a tree story with you were out taking photos for the book?

Many people came out into the streets asking me why I was taking photos of their trees. I remember one woman in City Island in the Bronx who said that she was so proud of her trees and the beautiful trees of the island and she was thrilled that they would make it into a book. Another woman in Flushing, Queens invited us into her backyard for a drink of cold water and told us all about her trees and her garden. Almost everyone was thrilled that their trees might make it into a book about New York City street trees.

Many trees are quite beautiful and impressive as they stand amidst their surroundings in such an urban environment like NYC. Do you have a favorite tree “plus” building or structure in terms of context and the contrast such a pairing provides?

I love seeing the trees against brownstones and small townhouses built in the 1800s. These buildings are so beautiful and of such human scale and the trees in front of them in summer give glimpses of the architecture and red and brown sandstone colors and in winter the buildings are a gorgeous background for trunks and bare branches.

You must have a “wish list” for more trees you’d like to see planted around NYC. Any particular favorites and where would you like to see them?

I love that they are planting such a variety of species now with millionTreesNYC. I particularly love the deciduous conifers: the bald cypress and dawn redwood. These trees grow enormously tall and it is a joy to see them in front of schools.

Can you share a few favorite blocks in NYC for “tree-spotting”? And perhaps tell us a bit about what trees we might find there and why they are special or unique?

Where I live now in Washington Heights, there are some amazing trees. On Broadway, between 192nd Street and Bennett Avenue, there is an enormous American elm tree. It is one of the largest trees I’ve ever seen - over 8 stories high and in great health. Along that block are some beautiful red oaks, and then along the inside pathway to the building right before Bennett Avenue is one of the largest linden trees I have ever seen. It must be 10 stories high. I’ll know in the spring whether it is an American linden or a silver linden or a little leaf linden.

I think my favorite tree is an American elm on the northeast corner of Central Park West and 77th Street, right next to the Alexander von Humboldt statue. The photograph of this tree is on page 100 in the book. (Here’s that wonderful tree)

American Elm at 77th and Central Park West

Anything else you’d like to add?

Trudy Smoke and I are giving author/illustrator talks/slideshows and tree walks to all kinds of communities in the city. Recently we spoke to a group of seniors at the Goddard Riverside Community Center. They were enthralled with the discussion, raising their hands, asking questions with each slide. We have met the most wonderful people - all ages, from little children to people in their 90s who are interested in trees and what they do for us and what we need to do for them. Trees make a difference in how you feel inside. In my talk I say that our need for trees, our love of them and our wanting to look out at them where ever we go might just be in our DNA, hidden in each one of our 3 trillion cells. Look who we evolved from and who we share our DNA with - arboreal primates, who need trees for shelter, food, protection from enemies. Trees are home.

Author Leslie Day & Illustrator Trudy Smoke

Some Books I've Loved: The Urbanology Edition

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:17:00 -0400

Much of my professional and personal life is spent thinking about cities. The sight of a curious architectural ornament or an unusual plaque in my travels often sparks a visit to a bookstore or a library to get more details.

It is exhilarating, and whether I’m in San Francisco or Sheffield, I can always find something new to think about in terms of urban planning, architecture, geography, or the broader catch-all category that is sometimes referred to as “urban studies”. Here are a few of the books that always keep me coming back for more, more, more in terms of inspiration, controversy, and communion.

Communitas
by Paul and Percival Goodman

A plea for a humane and human-centered focus to urban planning, this book influenced my own thinking about cities when I first encountered it as an undergraduate at the University of Chicago. A decade or so before Jane Jacobs published “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”, the Brothers Goodman fired off this salvo that honored and defended the urban condition. Quite a gem, and one that is full of thought bubbles and possibilities.

The Pig and the Skyscraper : Chicago: A History of Our Future
by Marco D’Eramo

With the words “Chicago” and “history” in the title, you’d be forgiven if you thought this was a dry and plodding linear timeline of the Windy City’s greatest hits. This broad critique of capitalism as experienced in Chicago in the past 150 years (think railroads, hog butchering, etc.) is not without its flaws, but it is an engaging read. D’Eramo’s codas to each chapter, including creatively titled sections (i.e. “Market Missionaries Besieged in Fort Science”) are perhaps the most effective portions of this far-ranging work.

The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech
by Irving Lewis Allen

I first encountered this book when it quite literally fell off the shelf at a used bookstore in Tampa. One can quite literally dip into the book at any place and learn a bit about the origins of phrases like “rush hour”, “gold digger”, and “straphanger”. It’s a fun read, and it also left me wondering about the origins of other colorful aphorisms, sayings, and witticisms.

The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seven Through the Tenth Centuries
by Paul Wheatley

The late Paul Wheatley was quite the polymath, and this far-reaching work published after his death is a final testament to his scholarship and his general interest in the question: “How did cities come to be as they are?” This particular book looks at the origins of cities in the Islamic world, and Wheatley weaves together a range of materials to explain and describe these rather fascinating places.

A Guide to Chicago’s Murals
by Mary Lackritz Gray

The art that we see everyday in our walk to work or in as a fleeting glimpse from a car goes largely ignored. When we are presented with art that is surrounded by other Important Works of Art, we perk up and pay attention (paying $20 might have something to do with it as well). This book on Chicago’s murals asks, nay, tells us to pay attention as we make our way around the city. It can be used as a practical guide or a spur to an impromptu trip on the El. These murals have stories, and as a whole, this book presents a good slice of the art that makes the city a more interesting place.

The City of To-Morrow and its Planning
by Le Corbusier

In this introduction to this influential work, Le Corbusier boldly stated that “The city of to-day is a dying thing because it is not geometrical”. When this work was first published in 1929, he did not mince words, and his unswerving belief in efficient and rational town planning was, in some sense, admirable. This brisk and commanding treatise on how the modern city should be built and planned was, as it is now, a bold statement. He was not terribly concerned with how actual humans would make use of these proposed cities, but that was all quite secondary in his manner of thought.

Three by Three: Los Angeles

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:45:00 -0400

I’m starting a new feature on my site and I’m calling it “Three by Three”.

Three great websites, three great books. That’s it.

The focus? History, geography, planning, architecture, and other things that fall into my roundhouse of urbanology.

I’m going to start with America’s Second City (apologies to my own sometimes home of Chicago)

Here goes nothing, Los Angeles.

Books of Note:

1) The WPA Guide to the City of Angels

In the 1930s and 1940s, the Federal Writers Project sent out-of-work writers and other types scurrying over America to document folkways, foodways, back alleys, shipyards, street corners, and so on. The guide to Los Angeles is by far one of the best documents of the city during this period and it’s fun to take around a walk around Los Angeles.

2) Los Angeles and the Automobile: The Making of the Modern City

Conversations about cars and Los Angeles generally turn to how horrible the traffic is on I-10/I-5/fill in the blank. Well, how did things get this way in the first place? Author Scott Bottles does an excellent job looking at the history of urban transportation and the Rise and Rise and Rise of the Automobile in the 20th century. Simply put, it is a read that narrates the history of one key part of the built environment in Los Angeles.

3) Material Dreams: Southern California Through The 1920s

So Kevin Starr’s book about Southern California in the Roaring 20s is about more than Los Angeles proper…but then, hasn’t Los Angeles always been about More Than Just the City Limits of LA? Of course it has. It’s a broad, sprawling, socio-cultu-archi-jazzy-history, with chapter titles like “Boosting Babylon: Planning, Development, and Ballyhoo in Jazz-Age Los Angeles”. It does not disappoint.

Sites of Note:

1) WPA Maps of Los Angeles

Who was doing what when and where? These maps produced by the Works Progress Administration answer all of these questions, and as such they are quite a dream for an urban studies type. This wonderful site was created by the USC Digital Library, and with 345 maps, you’ll be back more than once. It’s the kind of thing that might inspire a new hard-boiled Raymond Chandler-esque story, a master’s thesis, or a bit of urban exploration.

2) Los Angeles Daily News Negatives

This is a tremendous collection from UCLA, and it’s got many of the usual (and unusual) suspects: Rose Bowl floats, the “World’s Fastest Man”, and an honest, if depressing, clutch of photographs under the subject heading “Abandoned Children”. There are over 5000 images here, and these are the types of items that bring the richness of the city’s history to life in a fashion that is alternately dramatic and just downright commonplace.

3) Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection

I like to eat. I also like to read about culinary history and the Great Old Restaurants of the Past. So when I heard about this collection, I knew it would make the cut. The dedicated staff members at the Los Angeles Public Library have digitized images from over 6800 menus from around the area and placed them right here. You can search around by keyword, cuisine, and date. Warning: I wouldn’t look at this culinary cornucopia while you’re hungry.

A Tale of a Whale(rs)

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:48:00 -0400

Amidst the urban core of Hartford, Connecticut there is a Whale of a Tale or Two, and this on involves the migration of warmth-seeking people from the Northeast to the fast(er) growing regions of the American Southeast, the wide, wide, world of American professional sports, and of course, a Well-Heeled Team Owner.

This tale begins with the New England Whalers, an upstart professional hockey team that was part of the World Hockey Association. They played their games in Boston starting in 1971, and as hockey is woven into the culture of everyday life in the region for many, it made sense that they were quite popular. In 1974, they moved to Hartford, giving the Nutmeg State its first professional sports team. Apologies are due here to the Hartford Dark Blues, a professional baseball team started in 1875. No one built them a fancy sports arena, so I am omitting them from this discussion.

The Whalers were quite popular, and their home was the Hartford Civic Center for much of their time in the city. For a place that was being knocked about by the forces of industrial relocation (to the American South, then the global South), a declining tax base, and the Other Usual Culprits (middle-class flight, etc.), the Whalers were a beacon of light and something that many in the city could rally around. Of course, it should not be forgotten (and it CAN NOT be forgotten by those know hockey) that Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe, played for the team at the age of 51 in the 1979-1980 season.

There were forces in the air bigger and more powerful than anyone could imagine, and one of them was the National Hockey League’s desire to seek out new markets. And by new markets, I mean places in the United States that were experiencing a bit of a population boom, such as the American Southeast and the Southwest. The other Force of Nature (some in Hartford use other words to describe him) was the new owner Peter Karmanos, who took the helm of the Whalers in 1994. Karmanos had made his fortune by spinning 0’s and 1’s into hundreds of millions of dollars as the head of Compuware, a software company that was to the 20th century as the insurance companies of yore had been (are?) to Hartford in the 19th century.

Compuware was based in Detroit, and Mr. Karmanos did not see fit to pull up his company’s stakes to help move Hartford along into a brave new Knowledge Economy of the early 21st century. After several years, he went around the halls of government in Connecticut asking for a few dollars to help the cause of the Whalers. Specifically, he asked for $147.5 million to help assist in his cause for a New Sports Palace in Hartford. Some refer to this as a “public-private partnership”. I think of it as corporate welfare, but that’s just the cynic in me, perhaps.

The writing was on the wall by the spring of 1997, and in July, Karmanos announced that he would be packing up his harpoons and his team and moving them to Raleigh, North Carolina. Resistance was futile, and many people in Hartford were furious.

Today, the Connecticut Whale (don’t add an “s”, friends) play their games at the Hartford Civic Center, which has now been rebranded the XL Center. What’s the XL stand for? Well, it’s an insurance company. Based in Hartford, the Nerve Center of American Insurance Companies, you ask? No, the XL Group is a financial services company based in Ireland. Chalk another one up to the world of global economic restructuring and related matters, processes, and foibles.

At a recent Whale game, I talked to a few of the Hartford Whaler Faithful, including the president of the Hartford Whalers Booster Club, Marty Evtushek. He showed me around the 1994-1995 pocket Hartford Whalers schedule (cost: $1) and some other bits of memorabilia, including a rather nice Whalers stencil (cost: $3), which I gladly purchased.

After a new pleasantries (I showed off my Hartford Whalers jersey, complete with its 1986 All Star Game Patch to establish some credibility), I asked Marty point-blank: “When will the Whalers return to Hartford?” He didn’t miss a beat, and said “2015”. We talked for a bit about the general lack of support for professional hockey in the Southeast and the renewed Yes We Can spirit in Hartford that seemed to signal a bit of a sea change (insert groan) since the Bad Old Late 1990s.

Certainly the crowd was in good form at the game I was at, and the Whale triumphed over the Adirondack Phantoms, 3 to 0. Could there be a triumphant return of the Whalers to Hartford?

To my mind, it’s more than just a mere possibility.

What does it mean to be a Nutmegger? Or is it a Connecticutian? The Connecticut Historical Society has some answers.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:30:31 -0400

When you close your eyes and think about Connecticut what comes to mind?

Growing up in Wisconsin and Washington (the state, not the Seat of Power), I did not think about Connecticut much. My first direct and immediate experience with the Constitution/Nutmeg State was when I took my first trip on Amtrak by my lonesome at age 15. After a memorable experience visiting Washington (the Seat of Power), I hopped on a train bound for Boston’s Back Bay Station.

After a flurry of activity at Penn Station, the train proceeded into Connecticut. What I took away from this two-hour jaunt through Connecticut was that the state was a study in contrasts, many of them quite stark. Mystic looked charming and sea-faring, while Bridgeport looked absolutely broken and exhausted. Why?

It took me 21 years, but I finally made it to a place that provides some excellent and thoughtful answers to a few of my questions. I recently spent time in Hartford at the Connecticut Historical Society Museum & Library and I found it to be stimulating in the best possible way.

Like many of Connecticut’s beautiful public libraries, the Society is housed in a building that looks like a charming rustic cottage from the outside. It is, in fact, a Colonial Revival mansion built for the industrialist and inventor Curtis Veeder. His spirit and excitement about industry were not unusual in Hartford during the late 19th century, and he was joined by hundreds, yea thousands, of like-minded individuals during this period of inventive effervescence. I walked in and I hoped for edification, and yea, I was not disappointed.

Yes, there were many historic tavern signs to see, wonderful exhibits of antique furniture, and a well-arranged broad thematic history of the state punctuated by material objects, but I had to get to one part of the museum straight-away: a room at the end of the main hallway where you could dress up marble busts with costumes.

Trivial, you say? In an era of on-demand entertainment, constant hyperactivity (desired or not), museums, libraries, dusty old mansions, and other institutions of the Old School who seek to enter this Vaguely Brave New Millennium must offer some truly hands-on activities. I thought it was great fun to dress up these busts, and I’m 36. I’m sure that the younger set (insert tepid reference to the Young at Heart) find it fantastic as well.

After this fun dress-up session, I wandered into the library. It was a Saturday, so naturally there were a clutch of geneaologists pouring over town records and the like on the large tables. I made a few queries about the status of documents related to the Federal Writers Project work done in Connecticut. The two women working there were most helpful, and I sat down to while away a few minutes with the town history of Milford, Connecticut published in 1939 as part of this ambitious federal initiative. (Spoiler alert: It’s a good read and there are some nice maps. Don’t take my word for it, go ahead and peruse the entire work here.)

Of course, I could not miss their celebrated tavern sign collection. It’s hard to imagine a hand-painted McDonald’s sign (perhaps one exists?), but in the 18th and 19th centuries, such advertisements were a common way to advertise one’s tavern, inn, and so on. This remarkable collection primarily resides on the walls of the Museum’s auditorium, and fortunately a group had just left the room, and a few stragglers were learning about how to evaluate the merits of a rather elaborate dresser. How very New England, I thought. The signs are a true delight, and this one I found to be quite enjoyable.

And what about the origin of the term Nutmegger? Well, there’s a nice bit on that in the Museum, but I don’t want to give everything away…

Massachusetts Maritime Moments: An Appreciation

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:33:40 -0400

There are many wonderful maritime destinations in Massachusetts, and here are a few of my favorites. If you have any suggestions, please let me know, as there’s always room for more.

The illustrations for this piece were done by the fabulous Regina Jay, who is one of my former students at the Massachusetts College of Art & Design here in Boston.

Enjoy!

Miya's Sushi: A Literary Menu That Should Be Tasted

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 22:14:00 -0400

Today I consider it almost a minor sacrilege against the local foodstuffs of my Seattle upbringing that between the age of 9 to 18 I refrained from all fruits of the sea. While my mother took us out digging for geoduck (correctly pronounced “GOOEY-DUCK”) on the beach along the gloomy coast of Washington and such, I was content to sit at home and ponder the possibility of a hamburger from Dick’s Drive-In.

Oh, if I only had tasted the vast worlds found within Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Connecticut. The Nutmeg State was not on my mind during those Tender Years, except to ponder exactly how in the hell the state got its popular nickname. I have now experienced a world of possibility through this New Haven establishment, which is both local, national, international, thereby bringing together three spheres of foodways, folkways, and narrative cuisine-ry.

As for narrative, I can only say that proprietor Bun Lai’s menu is a mini-masterpiece of personal narrative, confessional, playfully humorous anecdotes, and meditation. The following topics are covered as Bun describes his closeness with the food he and his colleagues serve: Passover, global warming, peanut butter, sensuality, French kisses, the poems of William Blake, one-time French presidential candidate Jose Bove, okra, the power of friendship, and Yale alumnus and actor Zach Appelman.

Also, there is a powerful polemic within this recycled paper menu to those denizens of the deep (and not-so deep) that Swim, Crawl, and Grow Among Us: THE DREADED INVASIVE SPECIES. Yes, you will hear of the ill-mannered wild swan, the rapidly spawning periwinkle, and the somewhat aggressive lionfish. Does Bun tell us to cower in a corner? Run for the hills? Build an underwater fence made out of hope and steel meshing? No, no, and no.

Simply put: THEY MUST BE EATEN. Solutions proposed within this menu include such savory ideas as the Nine Spice Lion, the Japanese Knotweed Roll, and my personal favorite the Rip Van Periwinkle. If we cannot hold them back (spoiler alert: we are too late), we must eat them. Well stated, my friend.

Within the menu you will also hear tales of Bun’s encounters with peanut butter, his time making meals for family friends, and experiences wandering along the Connecticut coastline as a young man, which to my mind were redolent of John Muir and his long walks. Perhaps you have noticed that I have not said Word One about his food? It speaks (and tastes) for itself, my friends, and of course you should go as soon as you can.

Simply put: come for the menu, stay for the food.

See you at Miya’s.

The Last Day of March, The First Day of Hartford

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:24:00 -0400

My first introduction to Hartford, Connecticut came as part of my education at the University of Chicago in the late 1990s. The class was “Historical Geography of the United States”, and in between commentaries on agricultural production and the toll road system in colonial New England, Professor Michael Conzen mentioned something about Hartford being one of the fire capitals of the United States.

Fire capital? This can’t be good, I thought. Unwise to the ways of this curious acronym, I soon learned that the “fire” in question referred to F(ire), I(insurance), and R(eal) E(state). Ah, this made more sense. He continued on with a whisp of an anecdote surrounding the founding of The Hartford Insurance company, which apparently involved a group of local merchants convening in a local hostelry, and then throwing $15,000 into the kitty to get the company started.

Hartford did not cross my mind much until I moved to New England a few years ago, and remembered a couple of key facts about Hartford: It had warranted mention in my professor’s excellent lectures and that I loved wandering around old, industrial cities in order to get a first-hand glimpse at their streets, their institutions, and their overall milieu. A friend had told me of a celebrated Polish restaurant there, and I knew plenty about other institutions in town, such as the Mark Twain House, the (former) Hartford Whalers, and the Connecticut Historical Society. Add a few old factory buildings, and I was sold.

It seemed appropriate to be going to an old industrial city on an overwhelmingly grey day, so when I woke up and found that March 31st had brought the right meteorological milieu, I smiled. It was a good day for the 100 mile drive from Cambridge, and the Mass Pike delivered on its promise of a charm-free and speedy journey to Hartford.

First up was a stop at the Polish National Home. I have a friend who considers himself the “expert of all things north of New Haven” who said that, as a fellow Pole, I had to stop by. I had never in my life seen a Polish social club in an Art Deco building, so of course its appearance drew me like an Eastern European person to hunks of meat. It was as promised: friendly, full of pierogies, and quite affordable. It was hard to move from my seat after I was done, but I made it happen.

When I left the Polish National Home, I spotted my first abandoned factory. No factory in any American city is really “abandoned”, for the simple reason that there is still money to be eked out of the land and property by waving the redevelopment wand and coming up with new or renovated condos, an artist gallery, or a lively “festival marketplace”. The factory in question was about a pierogi’s throw from the Polish National Home, and a sign out front said “Caswell Factory” and it struck me that I had found part of the industrial past that had made Hartford a manufacturing dynamo for the better part of two centuries. A fence made my usual wandering a bit difficult, and it was interesting to note the building that had once served as the factory headquarters had been transformed into a home for a social services organization. The circle from industrial production to social service provider was complete, part and parcel of a true post-industrial economic transformation.

Another question that has always intrigued me is “What is Connecticut?” It’s between Massachusetts and New York (yes, I realize Rhode Island is in there as well), and it is “The Constitution State”, “The Nutmeg State”, a state with divided allegiances (Red Sox and Yankees), and a place that many think of as full of beautiful people with beautiful boats. I left the forlorn factory building to see if the Connecticut Historical Society might have some answers to my question.

A conversation on Chicago, wandering with a purpose & urban studies

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 07:55:00 -0400

This Sunday, I got to sit down and talk with RIck Kogan, one of Chicago’s most celebrated storytellers and journalists. We met years ago at the Billy Goat Restaurant, and we spent a few hours talking about Chicago history, politics, and our favorite neighborhoods over a drink or two and a cheeseburger.

Rick was kind enough to have me on his radio program on WGN after this first meeting, and I talked about my book on Hyde Park. This time we sat done to talk about my next book, “Secret Chicago”, and the conversation found us talking about the importance of slowing down and looking closely, the Cubs, and some of the sites I’m profiling in this new work.

Please listen to our conversation here, and thanks again to WGN Radio and Rick for having me.

The A To Z of Travel: A New Series

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:42:06 -0400

I was inspired to start this new series after a fortuitous conversation over blueberry pancakes at a wonderful bed and breakfast in Amherst, Massachusetts. I couldn’t decide whether to kick things off with a piece on “Airports” or “Airplanes”, so I went with the letter “B”….

B: The Bed & Breakfast

In the 21st century, most people do not have homes filled with reproduction Tiffany lamps, claw-foot bathtubs, old lithographs of the Gibson Girl, and chafing dishes. In our own time, it is more likely that the average Americans’ home is covered with a few posters of reproduction Impressionist paintings, a serviceable sectional, and several pieces of family china. This contrast is what makes visiting a bed and breakfast so truly unique. It is a chance to step back in time (usually into the Gilded Age or thereabouts), without having to deal with any of the complicating factors of that period, including outhouses, an absence of refrigerators, and tuberculosis.

For the uninitiated, I offer a few observations on the typical bed & breakfast experience.

Checking In:

In a typical hotel/motel check-in experience, the whole process is formulaic. You exchange a mild pleasantry with the front desk employee, offer your last name, hand over a credit card for incidentals, and receive a magnetic key card for your room. Occasionally, there will be some small variances to this process, such as the mention of a complimentary wine reception and/or a request for your car details, in case your car is used to transport scratchy, uncomfortable hotel towels to another nearby state.

There’s a lot of more informality and play, if you will, in the experience of checking into a bed and breakfast. First of all, there’s a certain sizing up that goes on between the overnight guest and the innkeeper at a B&B. First off, you are probably staying at someone’s home, and in some sense you are entering their domain, or castle, if you will. An illustrative example for you. When I first visited a B&B with a girlfriend in college, we stayed overnight at a B&B in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Once upon a time, Lake Geneva was a playground for great industrialists such as the Wrigley family of chewing gum fame. Its glory has faded somewhat, and many of its former mansions have become B&B’s. Our hostess for the stay was a kindly older woman who bore an uncanny resemblance to Aunt Bea from the Andy Griffith show. She asked to sign the guest register, and as my pen reached the paper, she asked, “How long have you two been married?”

My hand trembled as I thought of a number of possible replies. First, the methodical “We are not currently married but we are in a committed relationship”. No, too formal. Second, the question-with-a-question reply: “Do you ask this question of all your guests?” I breathed in gently, and exhaled with “Well, we’re not, actually, uh, really married. We’re just going out.” My girlfriend glared at me with a “We’re just going out?” look, and Aunt Bea replied, “Oh, well, I’ll put you in a room right near mine.” Needless to say, I slept on the floor that night.

Breakfast with your Fellow Travelers:

The communal aspect of a shared breakfast with non-blood relations is one of my favorite parts of visiting a B&B. Recently, while staying in Amherst, Massachusetts I shared a breakfast table with the head Fleming Museum at the University of Vermont, a happy couple involved in international development work in Zambia, and a comparative religion professor from Boston College. The food is usually delightful, and if you don’t have at least one freshly-made baked good at your table, you are probably staying at the wrong type of B&B, or worse, a Super 8, cleverly disguised to look like a B&B. The opportunity for a relaxing conversation over coffee, apple-sage sausages, and blueberry pancakes is always most welcome.

This communality can also result in some awkward moments, and they happen, no matter how good the blueberry pancakes might taste. Once in a B&B in Portland, Maine I was joined by a couple who I heard arguing over which parking space was closer to the B&B as they approached in their late model Mercedes. I should point out that I was in my room on the third floor at the back of the property when I heard them. Not a good start. When I entered the dining room of this quaint Queen Anne house, they gestured for me to come over and join their table. After the requisite introductions, the husband asked me what I thought about Providence. This is never an innocuous question for a travel writer, especially before having coffee. I replied with a few bland pleasantries about RISD’s museum and the renaissance of the city’s downtown in the past few years. The wife jumped in with “Well, Tom hates it. He just like to see what other people like about it.” Tom replied with “Well, Kate, I don’t hate it, but thanks for speaking my mind for me. I didn’t know you were a mind reader.” Uh oh. “You see Max, Tom went to Brown and he really wants to see if people will mention the campus”. Alright, time to punch out another pleasantry: “Yes, the campus is great. A great quad” (I don’t know Brown’s campus well, but it is an Ivy League school, so a well-manicured quad is basically a non-negotiable.” Kate said, “Tom loves that quad, so it seems you picked something he likes”. Uh oh again. My unassuming entry into this breakfast nook had turned into the War of the Roses. Tom jumped in with “Kate doesn’t like anything about Providence, but she still likes to talk about it ad nauseam” Both of them turned back to their food, and neither of them looked at each other or me for the duration.

People say that religion and politics are verboten topics among casual acquaintances. Since that encounter, I have added Providence, Rhode Island and the campus of Brown University to that list.

A Tale of Two Public Spaces: The Jacksonville Experience

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:33:00 -0500

Before I visited Jacksonville, I asked a couple of friends if the city had much going on downtown. Some of them had grown up on the Naval Station, and said they never had much occasion to go downtown for any reason, though they had visited the Treaty Oak, which I found reassuring.

As many people did during my visit, these friends mentioned two things which were repeated to me in a mantra-like fashion by dozens of locals. First, Jacksonville is big. I mean real big, like the largest city in the continental United States big. Which makes sense if you consider that the Jacksonville’s boundaries are contiguous with Duval County, not withstanding a few pesky places that have resisted incorporation. It is a Holy Dyad of Regional Governance, if you will.

How big is Jacksonville you ask? It is 704 square miles. By comparison, New York City is contained within 320 square miles (population 8.2 million) and Chicago (population 2.7 million). The current population of Jacksonville is around 821 thousand souls, and they are spread out across a vast landscape that includes farms, light industrial areas, waterfront areas, and a very small residential downtown population.

The other Inalienable Rock-Solid Fact? No one goes downtown. Despite the presence of a wonderful central library, several excellent cafes, and an up-and-coming modern art museum, no one I talked to went downtown on a regular basis. There were the regular reasons given (a large homeless population, nothing to do, not enough parking, etc.), but it seemed like most of the people I had talked to really hadn’t been downtown recently. Or maybe they were looking for some of the big-ticket items that Jacksonville’s downtown simply does not currently have, such as an abundance of shopping opportunities.

As a lover of great outdoor public spaces, I noticed two spaces in downtown Jacksonville that deserve comment. First of all, I should point out that I have a fairly narrow definition of public space. I don’t count “festival marketplaces”, because you usually have to buy something and they have onerous rules on behavior that are designed to encourage people to linger only if they are buying another frozen chocolate banana or some more sunglasses. With that in mind, I spent time at the Hemming Plaza and the Rosa Park Transit Station.

Hemming Plaza

This place has all the elements that should add up to a centrally-located public space slam-dunk. It is surrounded on all four sides by major institutions (City Hall, the Jacksonville Public Library, MOCA, a serviceable retail block, and a federal courthouse) and it has plenty of people in it. As a public space located in the heart of downtown in a major American city, most of these people are homeless. Nothing wrong with that, in fact there’s something altogether completely right with that if you really believe in the egalitarian nature of public spaces. But for many people, the assumption is that homeless people are just an unpleasant, in-your-face reminder of society’s decline, and besides, they might ask for money (shocking, I know.)

In conversations with other businesspeople and locals, I found out that the plaza is well-programmed with events for children, a prominent jazz festival, and other seasonal activities. This is encouraging, and these key spaces should have events going on to encourage their by use by a wide range of people.

Ideally, this “wide range” would include downtown residents, and not just the 9-5 business or civil servant crowd. To the best of my knowledge, I don’t believe Jacksonville has many, if any, downtown residents. When I asked one local city employee he said the largest group of local residents were probably those who were the “guests of the government” at a nearby jail.

So part of the prescription might be to think about encouraging more residents to move into downtown. That’s not exactly an easy sell, especially during the Great Recession Redux. But it’s not an Impossible Dream, by any stretch of the imagination. Yes, there are zoning changes that would have to be made, building conversions, and the selling of downtown as a residence (a Publix might be a good piece of cheese to pique the interests of potential renters/condo-owners). But if there’s no one to buy in to get the ball rolling, things will never change, and 20 years from now the same conversations about Hemming Plaza and the rest of downtown Jacksonville will be repeated again.

The Rosa Parks Transit Station

The Rosa Parks Transit Station is located about 5 blocks away from Hemming Plaza, and it is truly an intermodal facility, as the Skyway (Jacksonville’s elevated people mover) also stops there. Overall, it’s well laid out, and there are benches here for passengers waiting to board their buses and it is definitely busy, which is as it should be.

After a few bus rides around the city, I began to think that what might be done here is not at the station itself, but on the buses. Hey, a bus is a public space right? Why not set up a few dry-erase boards or flip charts at the transit station and have people write a verse, drop a lyric, or just write down what they are feeling? It would be easy to take some of these pieces, have a blue-ribbon panel of local celebrities/writers/etc pick the best ones and put them up inside the various buses.

What a great way to acknowledge the local talent throughout Jacksonville, and young and old alike they can look inside the bus and say “Hey, that’s mine. I wrote it!” You could add a QR code for additional information about the author and so on, and who knows…maybe a treasure hunt for different pieces of this unique aspect of local culture and self-expression?

I think the public aspect of having people write up their thoughts and submit them on a piece of paper right then and there adds a bit of street theater, if you will, and it could be a point of civic pride. Get local partners to buy into the project, and you’re all set. I have some thoughts on what you could do on the Skyway, but I’ll save that for another post…

The History (and Future) of Jacksonville: A conversation with author and professor Jim Crooks

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:21:00 -0500

When I started thinking about my visit to Jacksonville, I knew I needed to locate an expert on the history of Florida’s largest city. I talked to people at the Jacksonville Public Library, and they said “Definitely talk to Jim Crooks”. A local B&B owner said: “Don’t forget to drop a line to Jim Crooks”. That works for me, so I set out to locate Jim Crooks, a retired professor of history at the University of North Florida.

Professor Crooks has written several key books on the city’s history, including “Jacksonville: The Consolidation Story, from Civil Rights to the Jaguars” and “Jacksonville After the Fire, 1901-1919: A New South City”. I found both books engaging and thoughtful, and I sent him a set of questions about the cultural identity of Jacksonville, the once-upon-a-time proposed floating nuclear plants, and of course, the future of this First Coast metropolis.

In Florida, one often hears that you “must go North to find the South”. It is obviously hard to generalize about any major American city, but does Jacksonville have retain some of the Southern culture or feel that one might associate with say a Charleston or an Atlanta?

Jacksonville is more Southern than Atlanta,but not professionally Southern like Charleston or Savannah. Atlanta once was our model of what we wanted to become when we grew up. Now Charlotte is more that model. Southern manners are seen mostly in interpersonal relations, friendly and talkative. Yet in many ways Atlanta is more progressive, politically, culturally and economically. We once were called the capital of South Georgia, but that is less true now.

As someone who has lived in the area for decades, what do you think Jacksonville’s greatest challenges are in the coming years and decades?

The biggest challenge is funding local government (the state’s cutbacks dont help). By national standards we do not fund our schools, police, fire or parks comparably on a per capita basis. And we pride ourselves on our low taxes. Our current Democratic, black mayor is afraid to continue a current gas tax when it expires in a couple of years. Local leadership has bought into the national mindset of refusing to raise taxes even when needed. Miami, Palm Beach and Tampa are not this way. Beyond civic finance, there are the usual problems of poverty, education (too many drop outs), environment (ours is fragile with rivers, ocean/beaches, marshes, et. al.)

Jacksonville is a very large place in terms of its physical area, with a relatively low population density compared to New York or Philadelphia. What do you think are the positive aspects in terms of having this tremendous amount of space?

Our 800-plus square miles provide space for growth so that much of the middle class has not decamped to suburbia (though many have). Two-thirds of our metro population has remained in the city. We have a stronger, balanced tax base. But perhaps more important past mayors have set aside a huge amount of land for nature preserves. We have the largest land park system of any city in the 48. Much of the northeastern part of the city is preserved and beautiful. Finally, traffic congestion really only exists at rush hour, unlike downstate where congestion is almost a 24 hour challenge.

In your book on the recent history of Jacksonville, you talk a bit about the proposal in the 1970s to build floating nuclear plants. Do you think of this as a significant lost opportunity for the city and region?

No. It would have been a financial disaster if implemented, and floating nuclear power plants would have been threatened by hurricanes and tropical storms. Local business and political leaders were sold a bill of goods as I point out in my book. I am not anti- nuclear per se, but I am not convinced that nuclear power is as carefully administered in this country as in France, for example. I also think recent gas discoveries are a partial solution to our potential energy crisis.

As someone who loves the urban core of any metropolitan area, it made me a bit sad to see that the current Amtrak station in Jacksonville is at some distance from the city center. What’s your take on the current location of the station?

It sucks. It was planted west of town during the Carter administration. I dont know if it was an effort to develop economically that neighborhood in a black section of town, but it did not work. Civic leaders have been talking for years about combining a train/bus station down at the old railroad station, now civic center, which makes some sense. However, there is no financing for the foreseeable future.

Reading about the LaVilla urban-renewal style project in the early 1990s in your book fascinated me, as it seemed to fall outside the time period that people associate with these massive endeavors. Can you say a bit more about this project and the controversy surrounding it?

LaVilla, an historical black community, was chosen for urban renewal in the early 1990s in part to create a more attractive gateway to downtown from the airport. Also there was the hope that downtown would expand to the west to make the old railroad station/convention center more relevant. Local government cleared much of the land with the Better Jacksonville Plan (which also built a new ball park, library, courthouse, civic center and city hall plus roads), but the private sector never moved in. Urban removal can use public funds to clear and build infrastructure, but the idea behind it is for private enterprise to develop the area economically. This never happened, with a few exceptions, and much of the area is simply open, cleared land. What was lost of course was affordable housing, however delapidated, which should have been replaced with new affordable housing. And a black community. Residents, mostly black, protested the renewal with little effect. Otherwise the rest of the community has ignored it.

For the visitor who might want to stand in two or three places around Jacksonville to get a visceral sense of the city’s recent history (past 50 years, let us say), where would you recommend they visit?

Tough question. Stand in Hemming Plaza in front of city hall, which was a famous department story designed by Frank Lloyd Wright trained Henry Klutho in 1914. It is handsome Prairie style architecture. To the east is the Museum of Contemporary Art and new downtown public library. To the west is a new federal courthouse. To the south a mixture of shops of various kinds included a handsome, closed, gothic style once methodist church. Follow Laura Street on the east side to the river, and one sees much of the best of pre-World War II Jacksonville architecture.

Second, the James Rouse-designed Jacksonville Landing on the River has not lived up to its potential due to poor management, but it still provides restaurants and a lovely view of the river

Third, in Riverside by my condo is Memorial Park constructued in 1924 with a memorial statue to those who died in the First World War, and a great view of the river. Equally important, the park is an open space, about the size of a city block, with a walking joggin track circumventing it, and an open space which residents use for picnics, impromptu soccer or touch football matches and the like. People do yoga in the mornings; occasional weddings take place; and other events. The most used park in the city, surrounded by mostly older condo/apartment buildings on three sides and the river to the east. Very nice.

I could go on—about San Marco, a lovely neighborhood with restaurants, theaters and shops; or the beach communities which are part of the consolidated city but have a character of their own. Or the restored black neighborhood of Durkeeville with shops, Habitat for Humanity homes (we call them Habijax), ball park and school.

Bonus: Here’s an interview with Professor Crooks talking about his time at the University of North Florida over the past four decades.

Rock Chalk Edition of "37 Hours": Lawrence, Kansas

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 20:37:06 -0500

To the uninitiated traveler who spends all of his or her time someplace on one of America’s Coasts within the confines of New York, San Francisco, or Boston, Lawrence, Kansas may not fall within their cultural purview. That is an absolute shame. Fine by me though. More Lawrence for the rest of us, says I.

As part of my life as a public speaker and writer, I recently found myself in this fine city as the guest of the Lawrence Public Library. It’s hard not to enjoy the frisson of the main drag of Mass(achusetts) Street in downtown Lawrence, and a quick jaunt away from this arterial leads the curious traveler to uniquely painted houses (think of the palette of Dr. Seuss), a bustling and diverse local dining scene, and the wealth of institutions, museums, and activities located nearby on the campus of the University of Kansas.

As a form of sincere appreciation and affection, I offer my own suggestions for 37 hours well spent in Lawrence.

A Hotel With Some Substantial History
12PM

Located smack dab at the corner of W. 7th and Massachusetts Street, The Eldridge Hotel is a great base of operations for a visit. Close to everything (truly), the hotel bar is a good place to hobnob with locals before a Jayhawks game or just try out some fine tomato bisque soup. Supposedly, there’s a ghost here as well, but I didn’t see one during my visit. The first hotel on the site was built in 1856, and since it was called the Free State Hotel, it suffered a few slings and arrows during the Border Wars (surprising, no?)

A Bit of Boston Architectural Flair at the Visitors Center
1PM

Talk a leisurely walk across the Kansas River to pay a visit to the Lawrence Visitors Center, which was originally a Union Pacific railroad passenger station. The station was designed by Boston-bred and educated Henry Van Brunt, who had come out to Kansas City in 1881 to establish a new practice and to work on a number of commissions for the Union Pacific railroad. Here you’ll find great brochures, friendly people, and there’s one key fact to remember for fellow railfans (some derisively call us “foamers”. For shame.): over 100 trains pass by the station each day. Yes, there’s some intense train action here, so bring your cameras, lens attachments, and any other necessary accoutrements.

The Queen Anne Style meets a Dr. Seuss Color Riot
3PM

The nearby Old West Lawrence neighborhood has a fine mix of homes in a myriad of architectural styles. The area is dotted with stately Queen Anne numbers, with a smattering of homes in the Italianate and Gothic Revival styles. This guide offers a great walking tour, and visitors should miss the fun and funky mix of homes along New York Avenue around 10th Street. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a real gem on New York Avenue painted with a playful palette of colors that would make Dr. Seuss proud.

Dinner and Drinks at 715 Mass
5PM

Prepare thyself for some fine meat products and wonderful spirits at 715 Mass, conveniently located a smoked trout crostini throw away from The Eldridge Hotel. I’d recommend starting with a sidecar and people-watching from the bar for a few minutes. Other worthy libations here include a maple old fashioned and a divine Oh Lazio (campari, Old Overholt rye, and rosemary). The grilled sausage links are worth sticking around for as part of a leisurely dinner, and don’t forget to ask about which artisanal cheeses are on offer.

Granada, Your Magic Spell Is Everywhere
8pm

The Granada is a performing arts venue that has something for everyone. St. Patty’s Day throwdowns? Yup. Academy Award viewing parties? Oh yes. Indie-rock bands coming through on an exhausting 60 day one-night stand tour from Pensacola to Portland? Without a doubt. Check out their schedule online or ask a local for their take on whatever’s going on that evening.

Washed Up On A Sandbar
10pm

You know when someone tells you “Oh, you had to be there.”? My first reaction to this comment is that the individual in question is engaging in a bit of puffery in order to establish a certain pecking order as regards their participation in certain key social or cultural occasions (i.e Led Zeppelin’s last concert, David Blaine’s latest illusionist feat, etc.) You weren’t there, so how could you understand? I have to say that I have never seen anything quite like the “indoor hurricane” that occurs at 10pm every night at the Sandbar, a local watering hole. The drinks are cheap and strong, and it is certainly worth a stop.

A Tale of Two Breakfast Places
9am

After spending a long weekend in Lawrence, I came to realize that there are two breakfast places downtown that consume the thoughts and conversations of denizens of Larryville and visitors alike: Milton’s and Wheatfields Bakery and Cafe. I went to both multiple times, and they both offer a similar mix of breakfast items and baked goods. If you’re at Milton’s, I would give the nod to the veggie hash and at Wheatfields the frittata sandwich is quite nice.

The Contemporary and the Classic
11am

It’s hard out there for an art museum these days. Do you pursue ground-breaking and more experimental exhibitions at the cost of alienating those patrons who would like to continue seeing more tried and true blockbusters featuring Impressionists and their ilk? The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas manages to offer a mix of exhibits, making it a real joy to visit. Don’t miss the “Nature/Natural” exhibit which looks at the ways that East Asian art illuminates the relationship between natural phenomena and broader notions of what constitutes “the Natural”.

The Best Veggie Burger I Have Ever Had
1pm

After you head back downtown from the Spencer, swing on over to Pachamama’s for lunch. I have eaten a few veggie burgers in my time, and a bad veggie burger makes me want to throw my hands up and just ask for a place of overcooked vegetables or some other surrogate. No problems here on that score, as the quinoa-red bean burger here is fantastic. Oh, that’s not all, as it comes with charred poblano, asadero fondue, and cilantro aioli. The consistency is just perfect, and you can round things out by asking for a side of wood fired vegetables.

Hardware and KU Gear
3pm

One of my favorite things to do in a new place is to walk into small business and start talking to anyone. Could be a fellow shopper, could be a store owner, could be anyone really. Ernst & Son Hardware is just the type of place to start up a conversation. They have a friendly dog on premises, and the usual cornucopia of supplies that comes with being a family owned hardware store. Rakes, single razor blades, drywall, potting materials, and several thousand other items round things out here. Further down Mass Street is the Kansas Sampler store. You’re thinking jams, jellies, homemade candles, and doilies perhaps? Nope. This place is an overstuffed sore dedicated to all things related to the University of Kansas. It’s a bit overwhelming at first, and when there’s a Jayhawks basketball game on tap, the place is packed. Drink in the ambiance, and even the unconverted may leave with a bumper sticker, t-shirt, or a decorative baby bib.

A Jayhawker Interlude
5pm

Inside the Hotel Eldridge, you’ll find the house bar, appropriately named The Jayhawker. Grab a seat around the u-shaped bar and settle down for some conversation and a drink. You may even be able to score a ticket to your next destination…

The Living, Breathing, Heart of College Basketball
7pm

There are certainly larger college basketball arenas in the United States, but there is not a one that has more rabid, sweaty, enthusiasm than the Allen Fieldhouse on the campus of the University of Kansas. It is the home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks basketball team, and the chants, traditions, and rituals among the fans here would make for a fine case study by Clifford Geertz. If you can’t find a ticket, head on over to one of the watering holes on Mass Street to join in the fun.

The Nightcap Hour(s)
10pm

Sliding over to the Bourgeois Pig is a fine way to wind down (or wind up, perhaps?) an evening in Lawrence. The vibe is a bit hipster-y and my request for a drink with something made with whiskey and “anything else you feel like” was met with approval. Make sure and sit outside regardless of climatic conditions and peer up into the trees on the sidewalk. What’s that? A suspended baby doll head? Yes, it is. This piece of public art was placed there by Wayne Probst, local resident, and friend to the late William S. Burroughs, who spent the last seventeen years of his life living in Lawrence.

Coda: This is just one possible way to enjoy your 37 hours in Lawrence. For additional excitement, I’d recommend returning again to explore the city more.

Civil Defense Architecture and a Culture of Possible Apocalypse: A Conversation with David Monteyne

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 18:04:00 -0500

I first picked up David Monteyne’s book “Fallout Shelter: Designing for Civil Defense in the Cold War” in Skylight Books on Vermont Street in Los Angeles. The cover art featured a cut-away of a proposed fallout shelter, and inside the people seemed to be just going about their business, blissfully unaware of the possible destruction that might be headed their way, courtesy of Mother Russia or other Cold War-era enemies of the United States.

I found the book to be eminently readable, and with an engaging narrative that traced the creation of a civil defense architecture-industrial complex throughout the 1950s to the 1980s in the United States, the narrative style was pitch perfect. I contacted David via email at the University of Calgary where he teaches in the Faculty of Environmental Design, and he was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work.

What attracted you to this particular project?

It’s an old saw that historians (maybe all academics) are always writing autobiography. I came of age during the 1980s resurgence of Cold War sabre-rattling—the Reagan years. I watched the made-for-TV movie The Day After as a 13-year old and it made quite an impression on me. As a teenager, I remember seeking out books like Robert del Tredici’s At Work in the Fields of the Bomb to find out more about nuclearism, and seeing The Atomic Cafe, the pseudo-documentary about Cold War fear. These things fascinated me, but didn’t coalesce into a project until about ten years after high school when I started to think about a potential dissertation project in architectural history. At the time I had just read Don Delillo’s Underworld, which has many Cold War scenes. I was working at an engineering library at the University of British Columbia, discovering old reports from the 1960s on the design of underground spaces, and surrounded by 1960s “bunker-style” campus buildings. These strands came together to get me thinking about architecture and the Cold War. The subject was virtually untouched then, and it seemed to offer the chance to examine a significant and widespread approach to Modernist design, but through the lens of politics and social life. As soon as I started to research the subject during my first year of grad school, I got hooked—so many interesting sources turned up, from pop culture to professional journals, government scare films to very serious government publications about how to “design for survival.”

Most people are quite familiar with the (in)famous “Duck and Cover” instructional film as a mainstay of Cold War & civil defense culture. What films did you find during your research that you would find particularly compelling? (And I suppose the follow-up is: “Are any of them available online?”)

There are lots of government and corporate sponsored civil defense films viewable online now. The Prelinger Archive is the best place to go and it is searchable. Some of my favourites from the 1950s include Survival Under Atomic Attack, for the comparison it presents between footage of Hiroshima and dramatic scenes of an American family preparing its home; Operation Cue, which shows one of the Nevada test shots where they built typical houses, peopled them with mannequins and their typical consumer items, and then blew them up to see how they’d fare; and House in the Middle, from the same test, which argues that a fresh coat of paint will go a long way toward protecting your home from an atomic bomb.

There are also several available that try to explain various aspects of the 1960s fallout shelter program. Occupying a Public Shelter depicts a range of characters doing exactly that—the group sing-along of “Frere Jacques” is particularly charming. Meanwhile, Community Shelter Planning was really directed at urban planners and municipal officials in order to sell a new federal program to them, but it is quite well done. And how can you go wrong with a civil defense film starring a young Gene Hackman as a federal bureaucrat?

As someone who has made many visits to Boston’s City Hall, I was wondering what you found most interesting about the building’s architecture. The story you tell of going into the lower depths with the building manager and discovering a trove of Cold War-era biscuits and such is fantastic. Were there any other similar experiences during your research for the book that you might be able to tell me about?

I think one of the most interesting aspects of Boston City Hall is the dichotomy in its reception by design professionals, who tend to love it, and by the general public, who largely hate it. Part of the reason it generates such vitriol among the public is its bunker-like architecture in rough concrete, which is seen as unwelcoming and defensive. In the book I explore why it was built this way, and how certain interpretations of the architecture were influenced by what was going on in the United States at the time.

As for the second question, yes, I visited some other fallout shelters during the course of the research. The first I visited was in an empty old bank building in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I obtained samples of government-issued biscuits (they were rancid) and a fine Office of Civil Defense water barrel that I still have in my garage. The barrel was still full, and I had to empty it cup by cup until it was light enough to budge. This bank building was also interesting in that the owner had installed a windowless bachelor pad in another part of the basement, where the vault was. However, this apartment was less about fallout shelter, than it was about escaping the owner’s previous marriage.

Did you find any relationships between city planners, architects, and persons in the government who sought to combine or merge the interest in civil defense architecture with the growing social unrest in the US during the time period? I always think of certain brutalist buildings on campuses like the University of Wisconsin and the University of Washington that seem to say “Keep out” or “Don’t even think about protesting here” through their use of different materials, the design of their public spaces, and so on?

Absolutely. Civil defense planners and architects explicitly compared the techniques for shelter design with techniques for protecting buildings against vandalism, riots, etc. Thick walls attenuate radiation and also noise pollution from angry mobs; small windows reduce openings for radiation and also reduce targets for thrown stones. University buildings, but especially government buildings, from the late-1960s on would have had security concerns designed into them. There were, in fact, quite a few domestic bombings in that period, one of the most famous being at the University of Wisconsin in 1970.

It may be much too early to draw any comparisons between the two periods, but have you noticed any corollaries between the Cold War architectural milieu and the post 9/11 period in terms of “defensive” architecture and urban design?

Yes, but the changes to buildings and their design, especially to government buildings, were under way long before 9/11, prompted by the embassy bombings and of course by Oklahoma City. In the book’s Epilogue I note that there are clear continuities between 1950s-60s civil defense architecture and the techniques and meanings of building security today. Whether designing a building to defend against a truck bomb, or to defend against nuclear fallout, it really comes down to two basic tools: mass and distance. That is, you need thick walls with small openings, combined with what is today called “standoff distance.” Architects today, as they did during the Cold War, have to strike a balance between security measures like these, and the fundamental liveability and functionality of a building.

What I'm Reading (and What I've Read): The Urban Studies Edition

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:20:01 -0500

Much of my professional and personal life is spent thinking about cities. The sight of a curious architectural ornament or an unusual plaque encountered in my travels often sparks a visit to a bookstore or a library. It is exhilarating, and whether I am in San Francisco or Sheffield, I can always find something new to think about in terms of urban planning, architecture, geography, or the broader catch-all category that is sometimes referred to as “urban studies”.

Here’s a short list of my favorite reads:

Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life
by Paul and Percival Goodman

The Pig and the Skyscraper : Chicago: A History of Our Future
By Marco D’Eramo

The City in Slang: New York Life and Popular Speech
by Irving Lewis Allen

The Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, Seven Through the Tenth Centuries
by Paul Wheatley

A Guide to Chicago’s Murals
By Mary Lackritz Gray

The City of To-Morrow and its Planning
by Le Corbusier

Talking about Washington's U Street: A Conversation with Blair Ruble

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:12:00 -0500

Despite my love of American cities, big and small, I have spent precious little time in Washington, DC. Recently, I found myself turning the pages of Blair Ruble’s book “Washington’s U Street: A Biography”, and found myself much more intrigued by our nation’s capital. He’s got a unique and thoughtful perspective on the city, some of which is informed by his work as the director of the Kennan Institute and Comparative Urban Studies Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. After reading the book, I reached out to Blair to see if he might answer a few questions about his book, U Street, and the general urban milieu of the District. He was kind enough to respond, and here’s a bit of what we talked about via email. Blair has been generous to offer me a guided tour of U Street, and I plan on taking him up on it this spring.

I’ll be honest and say that when I think of DC, I generally think of the presence of the federal government, a myriad of cultural institutions, and policy wonks, and perhaps a few lobbyists. What else constitutes the sine qua non of the District?

You reaction is very typical as most Americans know very little about their capital city. There are numerous vibrant neighborhoods in the city – DuPont Circle, Columbia Heights, H Street NE and better known places such as Georgetown and Capitol Hill – that are well worth a stroll. Nearby Arlington, which was once part of the District, is among the most ethnically diverse communities in the nation. There are serious clubs – the Black Cat, for example – and an increasing number of funky eateries (such as Fast Gourmet which hidden inside a discount gas station at 14^th and W Streets NW). I bet you didn’t know, for example, that more people attend live theater performance in the Washington metro area than in any other American city except New York; or that there are more live theaters than movie theaters. The sine qua non, therefore, is to get out of official Washington into the neighborhoods and discover where real people live their lives.

What brought you to this project?

I have been writing about cities for some time and, one night at a favorite jazz club on U Street, some of the regulars started complaining about gentrification. The more they spoke the more I realized that I didn’t have to travel around the world to find interesting urban tales that would illuminate the human condition. I thought to myself that night that the U Street story was worthy of a book in its own right. As I delved more deeply into it I realized it is a story about DC as a city, and about the failure of outsiders (usually white folks) to consider this a real place. To build on my answer to your first question, I began to realize after living here a long time that this is a city that never gets quite the respect it deserves as an urban community and I wanted to do what I could to change that in some small way.

In some places, people talk about the nature of “town-gown” relations (particularly in college towns, and the occasionally larger urban areas, such as Boston) The District and the federal government have had a fractious relationship at times. What (if anything) might the resolution to such a conundrum? (dare I say roadblock or impasse?)

I don’t think there is a resolution. These are tensions which, as you point out, exist in university towns and they exist in capital cities pretty much everywhere. In some instances, such as Tokyo or London or Moscow, the city at large might overwhelm the capital function. But Washington is much more typical of political city and hometown tensions on display in many capitals. Here, as in many capital cities, the resident population is often more liberal than the government in power (over 90% of DC voters cast their ballots for Obama in 2008, for example). We see similar differences in capitals as diverse as Moscow and Buenos Aires. In other words, some of the tension is functional, and some is overtly political.

Of course, a city such as Washington would not exist if not for the capital and the benefits derived from this status (our metropolitan area has been the least hard hit by the Great Recession, for example). The challenge therefore is to convert unconstructive tensions into constructive ones. For example, no one ever seriously tried to lure tourists off the National Mall into the city of Washington itself until a decade or so ago when a new organization — Cultural Tourism DC — did. The city has been enriched by this interaction. Tourists find a more interesting place to visit and local cultural institutions and businesses find new customers. I think this is an example about what can be done.

Your book about U Street makes me excited to walk through the entire neighborhood(s) it traverses. What three or four stops would recommend for the visitor who’d like to see the best of U Street in the 21st century?

First and foremost, U Street is about the vibe on the street itself. Walk on U between Seventh and 15^th Streets (all in the NW quadrant) and up and down 14^th from, between P and W Streets. Stop in Ben’s Chili Bowl next to the Lincoln Theatre and in Busboy’s and Poets –a restaurant on 14^th north of U – when there is a poetry reading going on. Be sure to examine the names on the African American Civil War Memorial at Vermont Avenue an U Street and think about the lives represented by those names. Then look for a club to hear some music that matches your taste. If you are in the neighborhood after April 2012, check out the renovated Howard Theatre (“the Apollo before the Apollo”), which should be open for business by then.

Alternately, what stops/institutions/structures might you recommend for the visitors who’d like to experience the early 20th century milieu of U Street and environs?

I would stand at the former of 14^th and U and look at the combination or old buildings and new and think about the communal violence that created the empty lots on which the new buildings were built. Pay homage to Ben’s, to the True Reformer Building, to the 12^th Street YMCA (now the Thurgood Marshall Center) on 12^th Street, the Lincoln Theatre and the soon-to-be-renovated Howard Theatre. This would give a start.

Was there a particular thread to your narrative in the book that you had to omit for space or other considerations?

I did not deal with the history of DC public education as much as I should have. It is a large and complex subject unto itself. The neighborhood’s rise was tied to the quality of its schools while the post-Jim Crow city has struggled to define what we mean by quality education. Addressing these concerns deserve a book in and of themselves.

In speaking to local audiences about the book I can see that the Howard Theatre was more important to the life of the community than I fully understood. It was the kind of place where neighborhood kids interested in music could hang out all day and interact with the musicians. Many went on to successful careers because of their time backstage and front stage at the Howard.

Links for further exploration:

A Brief History of African Americans in Washington, DC

A concise primer on the African American experience in DC from 1800 to 1975 by Marya Annette McQuirter, Ph.D.

Frederick Douglass National Historic Site

The National Park Service tells the story of Frederick Douglass at this site, and the views of the capital from here are exquisite.

“Unbuilt Washington”

A far-ranging exhibit at the National Exhibit Museum which explores a range of buildings and monuments that were planned for DC, but ultimately never executed.