Housing the “Front Office to the World”

The Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association and Manhattan Industry

Battery Park City has its roots in the planning philosophy of David Rockefeller and the DLMA. The DLMA was established in 1958 when the Downtown Manhattan Association, Inc. (founded as the City Hall Park Association in 1937) and the Committee on Lower Manhattan, Inc. (originally organized as a committee of the New York State Chamber of Commerce) merged into a single organization. ¹⁰ The organization represented a variety of powerful downtown financial institutions, including the American Stock Exchange, the Wall Street Journal, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley, the American Express Company, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, Khun, Loeb, and Metlife Insurance. ¹¹

The DLMA saw itself as an “unofficial, knowledgeable advisor” to government. It had “no governmental powers,” and had to “work with one city department or another to bring life to its plans.” Yet, the group had close ties with powerful actors at all levels of government. In fact, the organization formed at the recommendation of Robert Moses, who urged Rockefeller and his associates to develop an overall strategy for the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. ¹²

The DLMA’s overarching goal was to expand Lower Manhattan’s Financial District, an area they saw as central to the nation’s economic identity. The DLMA’s view of the Lower Manhattan economy was rooted in the growth of producer services. The group recognized that “The post-war period has seen increasing employment in financial enterprises, in business and professional services and in government offices,” while “There has been substantially declining employment in manufacturing, wholesale trades, communications and in transportation.” ¹³ This confidence in the expansion of producer services was part of the DLMA’s overall view of the Lower Manhattan economy. The organization saw the area as a historic center of banking, trade, and finance whose leading position in these industries should be preserved in the future. The organization’s first report stated, “The area’s first industry from the standpoint of employment is an historic one, shipping, which utilizes the services of nearly 50,000 people. Banks and trust companies are next, with more than 45,000 employees. The location of these institutions in the ‘Financial District’ results in part from their close relationship to the stock and commodity exchanges which, in turn, employ more than 25,000 people.” ¹⁴ Consequently, the DLMA saw it as their mission to shape the built environment in Lower Manhattan to give these industries room to grow and prosper.

To the DLMA, Lower Manhattan was central to the national and world economies. Lower Manhattan, the area containing Wall Street, housed “Most of the great investment banking houses in the nation” which “collect the nation’s resources of capital, and send it out again to nourish the economic growth of the whole country.” The DLMA argued that these “Banks and trust companies, stock exchanges and brokers, investment banking houses and insurance firms … made the narrow tip of Manhattan the center of international finance. This the very heart-pump of America’s free economy, circulating creative capital to the furthest reaches of the Union.” ¹⁵ All these activities took place in sixty-three-hundredths of a square mile, where “much of the business activities of the nation are centered” making Lower Manhattan the “front office of the world.” ¹⁶ In this manner, Lower Manhattan was not simply a symbol of American power but also fundamentally important to the nation’s economic might.

Consequently, the group’s main objectives were “to foster, promote and support the improvement and sound redevelopment of economic values” in Manhattan below Canal Street. ¹⁷ By sound economic values, the group meant the expansion of business interests, particularly financial institutions, in Lower Manhattan. The DLMA had a fairly straightforward metric for success in this area: new commercial construction. The organization’s major publications invariably focused on the amount of commercial office space built in Lower Manhattan during a given period of time and the corresponding benefits these projects brought to the city in terms of assessed valuations and tax revenues. ¹⁸

Yet, despite the importance of Lower Manhattan to the nation and world, David Rockefeller saw the area as part of a city in crisis. Rockefeller believed that Lower Manhattan was suffering as a direct result of “the population shifts in the urbanization process which is taking place all over the United States.” These demographic changes had a direct impact on the functioning of the core of American cities. Echoing the ecological model of sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess, Rockefeller noted in a 1959 speech, “Historically, the growth pattern of the metropolitan areas resembles a target. From 1900 to 1910, growth took place at the bull’s eye in the central city itself. From 1910 to 1920, the active grounds had shifted to the next concentric ring five miles or so wide around the city. For the final three decades to 1950, activity spread one more ring, five to ten miles out from the center.” The core of this target in the case of New York was midtown and Lower Manhattan. Yet, these areas had been suffering of late, as there “appears to be a tendency for large industry to leave the central city at the same time that small specialized industries, more dependent on services, customers and suppliers, are being drawn in.” While this meant good things for the center of urban cores, areas surrounding the core, included much of Lower Manhattan, suffered. ¹⁹

Rockefeller called these places on the fringe of prospering areas of the city “gray areas,” a term taken from the 1959 Harvard University Planning Study, Anatomy of a Metropolis: The Changing Distribution of People and Jobs within the New York Metropolitan Region, which stated, “What is at least clear in the prospect is the trend of development in the ‘gray’ areas that comprise most of the less central parts of the Core, and their counterparts in the older large cities elsewhere in the region.” ²⁰ Similarly, Rockefeller argued that in contemporary cities, “The main problem arises, not at the prosperous core or at the outer fringes where growth is taking place, but in the gray areas between the two.” In response, Rockefeller advocated experimenting “with an imaginative new approach which will restore these spreading areas to acceptable use.”21

Rockefeller compared Lower Manhattan to “a living organism on the move—expanding, contracting, pushing and squeezing in all directions.” Yet, he was not someone to leave the growth of this organism to chance. Rockefeller and the DLMA advocated planning for Lower Manhattan that would encourage “harmony” and have “beneficial influences” on the surrounding region. ²² The group’s first report in 1958 contended that unplanned development was no longer possible in the area. Instead, they argued, “Redevelopment requires bold and aggressive civic action, citizen participation, broad planning, a new approach to land assembly and, in many cases, extensive demolition.” ²³

Rockefeller and the DLMA sought to fight potential decay in Lower Manhattan by targeting what they viewed as the gray areas surrounding the financial district, the area’s industrial sector, through slum clearance urban renewal. Specifically, this meant encouraging the growth of the Financial District into areas occupied by industrial firms located in Lower Manhattan. The organization’s publications noted, “Eastward expansion of the Financial District has created a conflict of uses, with office buildings encroaching on land which has traditionally been used by small industries and activities related to the waterfront.” The DLMA suggested that they should determine which of these two uses, finance or light industry, “constitute logical functions of lower Manhattan” and plan accordingly. In their view, much of the old industrial waterfront of New York, and the city’s industrial loft buildings, were simply “in the logical path of expansion for the Financial District.” ²⁴

Yet, these areas were not simply in the way of the Financial District. To the DLMA, they housed outdated industries that had lost their economic effectiveness. These industrial and warehousing concerns included merchants dealing in fruit and vegetables, butter, nuts, eggs and cheese, fish, coffee, and seeds, as well as purveyors of marine supplies, radio and television parts, and leather. To the organization, these economic activities constituted the “the old supporting services of the early City” that surrounded “the highly developed Financial District.” To the DLMA, there were more productive uses for urban space, and they sought to prepare the built environment to support them. ²⁵ Fittingly, the DLMA proposed eliminating two major vestiges of the old city in Lower Manhattan, the West Side Produce Market and the Fulton Fish Market, and replacing them with new buildings that would support the local economy. Additionally, the group was a major advocate of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a project aimed at replacing industrial loft buildings in what is now SoHo with a highway that would both improve access to Lower Manhattan and allow the financial district to expand in a new direction. ²⁶

Housing for the Financial District: Battery Park City

Soon, the construction of housing became part of the DLMA’s efforts to replace industry with structures more conducive to the expansion of the financial district. The Association’s first report noted that “The Waterfront section north of Fulton Street” was outdated and should be redeveloped. Yet, instead of new office buildings, the organization found that this stretch of Lower Manhattan “offers a favorable opportunity for concurrent development of housing for workers in the Financial District.” ²⁷

The DLMA hoped that housing for financial district workers would come through Battery Park City. The development was a traditional urban renewal project in many senses. It was a stand-alone housing development thought of as a “city within a city” to be built on vacant land created by the removal of used piers and landfill created by the construction of the World Trade Center. Yet, the project sought to appeal to financial district workers in ways that made it distinct from more traditional mid-century public-sponsored housing efforts. From the start, the project was thought of as the center of a walkable, mixed-use district that would breathe life into this section of the city twenty-four hours a day. Second, it was designed with a specific resident, the financial services employee, in mind. Finally, the project was aimed at replacing Lower Manhattan’s industrial sector and upgrading it to new uses that would support the growing sectors of the postwar economy.

Much as was the case with many of their projects, the DLMA did not build Battery Park City directly. They were responsible for proposing the idea for the housing development and helping usher it through the various governmental approval processes needed for its completion. Perhaps most importantly, in 1958, they made the first public proposal for the development that would later become Battery Park City. The organization’s first report made a recommendation for a landfill project on the Hudson River waterfront that would contain both commercial and residential uses that, over time, evolved into the Battery Park City of today. ²⁸

Through this publication, the DLMA argued that a demand existed for housing located near places of employment in Lower Manhattan. Of course, by this they meant the offices of the expanding financial district. They contended that “There is every reason to believe that a demand exists for ‘walk to work’ housing in the area.” The walk-to-work concept would be beneficial for encouraging use of area streets throughout the day but also stimulating “the development of shopping facilities, restaurants, places of entertainment and garage facilities which would prove highly desirable for use by the daytime working population as well.” ²⁹

In this manner, the specific form of housing that the DLMA wanted to create in Battery Park City was a neighborhood that resembled the eighteenth century walking city: a mixed-use district that would be continuously by workers and residents. The organization noted that Lower Manhattan was “the historic point of land were the City of New York began, and for generations flourished as a community of residential life.” Although the report outlined how “Long ago the residential population moved uptown and into the surrounding areas,” they nevertheless pointed to a residential past as evidence that new housing could flourish in Battery Park. ³⁰

Of course, the DLMA faced a challenge in planning for housing for this specific group of relatively well-off workers, many of whom had the means to live in the suburbs. The association first addressed this problem by limiting their market. The organization believed that “Attractive apartments at manageable rentals, close to one’s place of employment, will be appealing to middle managers, to working couples and to young professionals” as well as to “many of our member firms for the temporary housing of their management personnel.” The idea that families or more established employees would want to abandon their suburban homes or apartments in other wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods for a new twenty-four-hour community was not yet in their minds. ³¹

However, the association also believed that to create a specific type of community downtown, one active around the clock and filled with retail and leisure opportunities for workers, could tempt some employees to remain in the city instead of relocating to the suburbs. The organization worried that “By night, the area is almost deserted. Janitors, elevator operators, bank employees, scant others keep the night lights on.” Of course, there was some housing. “Here and there, the lights of a small apartment gleam—just south of the Manhattan entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, along Broad Street at Front, along Washington just a stone’s throw from the West Side piers, along Greenwich.” Yet, the organization believed that much more could be done with this area during all hours of the day. ³² In particular, the amenities and leisure opportunities that would come with a residential population were important to the organization, as they would provide benefits for workers and residents of Lower Manhattan. The association’s 1963 report argued that creating “a meaningful center of living for people on a twenty-four-hour basis” meant providing the “daytime worker and the full-time resident some space other than concrete canyons in which they can enjoy their leisure.” They recommended making “the unusually long piers along the East River waterfront,” which were “a blighting eyesore and a safety hazard” “useful and attractive” by turning them into an “esplanade along the river where office workers and future residents of nearby apartments could enjoy the riverfront.” ³³

Beyond simply conceptualizing the project in the pages of its reports, the DLMA influenced the development of Battery Park City. The first formal architectural plan for the project, the development of which was led by Governor Nelson Rockefeller starting in 1966, came after the City of New York was slow to act on the DLMA’s proposal. The plan, officially proposed by the New York City Planning Commission, “included expansion of the financial core and residential development on landfill along the both Hudson and East River, following the broad strategy advocated by the DLMA.” While not always on the same page, David and Nelson Rockefeller often coordinated on the project, though Nelson was the driving force, from the announcement of the start of planning for the project in 1966 to the execution of the master lease in 1969. At the same time, New York Mayor John Lindsay created the Office of Lower Manhattan Development in 1967 to implement the Lower Manhattan Plan, and work with the DLMA on other housing developments in Lower Manhattan. ³⁴

The DLMA’s support of Battery Park City took various forms. For example, in 1967, the organization’s leadership met with Governor Rockefeller to discuss various aspects of the project, including the division of commercial and residential buildings, how to sell or lease the land from the city, and how the City Planning Commission conceptualized subway and highway access. ³⁵ The same year, the DLMA commissioned a report by former Planning Commissioner James Felt to help resolve a deadlock over the amount of market-rate, middle income, and affordable housing that would be included in the site. The report argued that a market existed for the type of luxury housing that Battery Park City could provide for financial services employees in Lower Manhattan. ³⁶

As plans for Battery Park City went forward, it became clear that the stamp of the DLMA’s vision for a walkable community of financial workers would be incorporated into the development. In 1968, the Battery Park City Authority published a pamphlet about the project outlining its benefits to the city. These included the development of walkable, mixed-use community. The report stated, “No part of the southern tip of Manhattan will be more than a ten-minute walk from Battery Park City’s office complex.” Unlike some contemporary urban renewal projects, Battery Park was specifically conceived as a mixed-use development. One of its aims was to “complexify an area that up to now has been used for a singular and limited purpose.” Of course, much of the project was no different than contemporary housing developments built through urban renewal. The plan was to construct buildings of different heights arranged around plazas as focal points. There would be little to encourage “eyes on the street,” as Jane Jacobs emphasized in her work on the West Village. Still, the project was designed with the pedestrian, not the car, in mind. The ground level, despite being located twenty-seven feet above the Hudson, would be pedestrian only and provide the walker with vistas of the Statue of Liberty and Hudson River. ³⁷

Moreover, the DLMA pushed the project as one that would upgrade the city’s industrial built environment. The project was meant to provide housing by filling in eighty-eight water acres over the Hudson River, then occupied by decaying, abandoned piers left, and by utilizing another twenty-seven acres of land on a stated, “Where ancient piers now stand on rotting pilings, some collapsing into the Hudson River, there will be parks and plazas. Apartment and office buildings will replace scabrous, swayback sheds. What once belonged to rats will serve the people.” ³⁸

By the early 1970s, developing a twenty-four-hour city in Lower Manhattan was one of the major goals of the DLMA. Their fourth report, published in 1973, noted, “Fast fading is the image of Lower Manhattan as a Monday-through-Friday daytime hive where major activity ceases at 5 p.m. and where only tourists walk on weekends.” In fact, according to current plans, “New housing will transform the area into a self-contained community with a vast array of attractions for workers, visitors, students and residents. By 1980, 100,000 people—three times the present residential population—will live downtown in attractive new housing of diverse rental ranges.” ³⁹

On one level, there is something forward thinking, even Jane Jacobs-like, about creating a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use community in Lower Manhattan. There is also something novel about the DLMA’s positioning of urban leisure spaces as amenities that would attract finance employees and apartment dwellers to work and reside in the urban core. However, the organization wanted to accomplish these novel goals through fairly standard urban renewal techniques. The group’s 1973 report outlined that providing “all the supportive commercial, educational, recreational and cultural services required of a fully functioning 24-hour community” would require “the newest concepts of planning for open spaces, pedestrian and vehicular circulation and other amenities affecting the quality of community life.” It is hard to imagine Jane Jacobs supporting the creation of housing around open spaces, long a hallmark of slum clearance urban renewal. Battery Park City itself was thought of as a community to be built from scratch on cleared land, not an organically growing community.40

By this point in time, there was also some indication that the DLMA hoped that people besides young employees and singles would live in Battery Park. The plans for the project now included the creation of “elementary and intermediate schools, a library, a health center, retail shops, restaurants and recreational, police and fire facilities” to support this new neighborhood. ⁴¹ In this manner, financial district employees could live with their families, walk to work, and enjoy some of the amenities regularly found in suburban and established city neighborhoods.

The DLMA continued its advocacy for Battery Park City well into the 1970s. Much of their efforts went toward restarting a stalled project. While the piers on which Battery Park City would eventually stand were demolished in 1970, adding acreage to the landfill already created by the construction of the World Trade Center, the space sat idle for over a decade after the Trade Center itself led to a glut of office space on the market, and the economic downtown of the mid-1970s caused additional interruptions. However, in 1976, the organization wrote to its membership that “An important objective of our Association is to promote housing in the area we serve so that Downtown will in time become a 24-hour-town.” ⁴² In 1979, the DLMA worked to restart the project by commissioning Volmer and Associates to produce a report titled Reexamining Battery Park City to get the project going again. In 1977, David Rockefeller met with newly elected Mayor Ed Koch to put the project on his radar. ⁴³

The Project’s Final Form

By 1979, when construction on the project finally began, Battery Park City had changed in form considerably. While in 1969 it was conceived as a space age development, set apart from the surrounding area through raised platforms and distinctive design, by 1979 the project was a model of New Urbanism. Now, Battery Park City was conceptualized as part of Lower Manhattan rather than as a self-contained town. This meant that it was incorporated into the street and block system of the area, and contained a varied set of structures that fit into the existing grid. The plan also called for the project to reproduce and improve upon what was best about New York neighborhoods. ⁴⁴

Yet, much about the project remained the same. The development was explicitly mixed-use and focused on the needs of the financial district worker. The 1979 revised plan for Battery Park City stressed both walkability and the connection between the development and the local producer services economy. The proposal stressed the walkable nature of the project, stating, “Many of the 450,000 employees downtown could live there and walk to work.” Additionally, the vitality of the area “will be enhanced by building housing within close walking distance of the office core. For many, this convenience outweighs the higher rent and smaller spaces that in-town living requires.” ⁴⁵

Further, retail was seen as an amenity with the power to benefit both workers and residents of this mixed-use area. A report on the plan noted, “The presence of a mixed income population downtown after working hours was seen as the key to supporting better retail services; they, in turn, would help downtown compete with midtown for new office development.” ⁴⁶

Moreover, the area would be filled with residents, workers, and visitors around the clock, bringing to life the twenty-four-hour city long ago proposed by the DLMA. Battery Park City “will create a tourist attraction on the East Side of Downtown that will complement the popularity of the World Trade Center’s observatory deck, restaurants and shops on the West Side. The combination of the two projects will firmly establish Lower Manhattan as a regional tourist attraction. In so doing, it will further the Lower Manhattan Plan goal of turning the district into a 24-hour commercial and residential community.” Additionally, the project was once again explicitly conceptualized as mixed-use. “From a market point of view, too, the concept of a mixed-use development on the Battery Park City site continues to be valid. In city after city across the country, the successful downtown renewal projects of the past twenty years have demonstrated the importance of in-town living.” ⁴⁷

Similarly, leisure spaces were an important part of the development plan targeted both residents and workers. Central to leisure opportunities in the area was The Hudson River Waterfront, “Lower Manhattan’s greatest recreational amenity.” The plan noted, “The long-term benefits will make downtown a much more pleasant and stimulating place to work. The riverfront will be opened up for lunch-time strolls and after-work relaxing; in addition, the setting necessary for desirable in-town living will be created. Parks along the Hudson will be connected to a sequence of tree-lined walkways and smaller open spaces within the project area. All of these amenities will provide the sitting areas and open spaces that Lower Manhattan so conspicuously lacks today.” ⁴⁸

All of these would be achieved through new planning ideas. Yet, these new concepts would allow Battery Park City to better serve the project’s original purpose: to expand the Financial District to include a new housing development along the former East River port area. Much to the delight of critics of postwar urban renewal, the final development would use not superblocks but instead conventional block system and building lots. However, this strategy had the goal of allowing “The financial core will be able to expand more rapidly onto the project’s reservoir of vacant land.” Moreover, “Residents of the project will be better able to support Lower Manhattan’s growing range of shops and services. The waterfront amenities at Battery Park City will be more accessible to the employee and resident population of the entire area south of Canal Street.” ⁴⁹

Conclusion

Thus, over the course of nearly half a century, much of the concept of Battery Park City changed, but much also remained the same. The project took several decades to get off the ground, and in the intervening time, much about the city itself, and planning trends in general, changed substantially. Gone was the space-age city within a city, replaced by an integrated New Urbanist development. Over these years, Lower Manhattan lost much of its remaining industrial character as the service economy, in particular the financial services sector, expanded to overtake much of the local built environment. Yet, much about the project remained consistent. From start to finish Battery Park City was designed to provide housing for the Financial District, help turn Lower Manhattan into a vibrant mixed-use area, and upgrade the area’s industrial built environment. Each of these elements of the project continues to define it to this day.

Of course, the DLMA was not the only voice in planning Battery Park City. Elected officials on the city and state level, as well as the Battery Park City Authority, created to manage the project, all played a role, as David Gordon has chronicled in his work on the project. ⁵⁰ However, important elements of the development had their roots in the DLMA and the philosophy of David Rockefeller. The DLMA was a driving force behind expanding the Financial District and including housing for financial workers in plans for redeveloping the area. Furthermore, the group made the compelling case that workers in producer services like finance wanted to live close to their places of work in vibrant, mixed-use urban areas.

It is because of this emphasis in particular that the history of Battery Park City can help bridge the gap between the histories of contemporary urban development and postwar urban renewal. For much of its history, Battery Park City was a project from the slum clearance era of renewal. It involved constructing a community from scratch on repurposed or vacant land and the construction of multistory residential towers arranged around open space. Yet, in advocating for the project, the DLMA hoped to create a community that in many ways resembled a neighborhood shaped by gentrification or contemporary planning philosophies: one in which people would live in a walkable, twenty-four-hour community containing retail, places of employment, transit access, and recreational spaces.

Of course, the DLMA wanted to create this community in the hopes of supporting the city’s financial services sector. Yet, to attract the workers of a postindustrial economy, the DLMA looked to return to some of the urban forms of the preindustrial era—the same types of cityscapes the opponents of urban renewal supported. It is important to note that where the workers in this new financialized economy lived, as well as where they worked, was seen as key to the economic development of cities as far back as the 1950s and 1960s. With the emphasis on housing for workers in the current postindustrial, producer services-dominated, creative economy in scholarship on the contemporary city, it is worth noting that residences for workers in these industries have been on the minds of city leaders for several decades.

Currently, Battery Park City has in many ways merged with the Financial District it was designed to support. Tourist maps and the local press often refer to the area that includes the World Trade Center and much the financial district as “Battery Park City.” The demographics of the development itself point to an area dominated by those working in finance, many of them locally. Over 75 percent Battery Park City’s population works in management, business, science, and arts occupations. Of the total population of Battery Park City, 32 percent work in finance, insurance, and real estate and 29 percent in management of various sorts. The mean earnings of the area are $212,697, with a median income of $151,815. Importantly, a whopping 35 percent of the local population walks to work, indicating that many residents are employed in the neighboring Financial District. ⁵¹ Housing in Battery Park City is not cheap: the median home sale price over the past year was $682,500, and promises for low and moderate income housing in the project have long since evaporated. ⁵²

Moreover, the nearby area has, quite literally, been converted into a twenty-four-hour city designed to meet the needs of the financial services sector. When Goldman Sachs built a new forty-three-story, $2.1 billion headquarters at 200 West Street in what The New York Times referred to as “Battery Park City” in 2009, the company used some of its vast resources to build shops and restaurants in the area that would meet the company’s needs. In what has been dubbed Goldman Village, anchored by Goldman Alley, “as the locals call the public passageway between Vesey and Murray” streets, the company bought a hotel, parking garage, worked with restaurateurs to open multiple franchises in the area, bring a gourmet grocer nearby (one that Goldman Employees living in Battery Park City approved of), along with a florist, eyewear shop, and bakery, among others. Traders flood into local bars when work lets out at 5 p.m. and run down to the local grocery at 1 a.m. to fuel their overnight work. A significant number of workers walk back to homes in Battery Park City when their day is done. It would seem that David Rockefeller’s twenty-four-hour city has finally arrived in Battery Park. ⁵³