Year: 2016

“In the 1950’s, urban developer Robert Moses was engaged in a plan to create a roadway through Washington Square Park. Moses’ motivation for doing so was to provide a Fifth Avenue address to the buildings that were to be built in a redevelopment area, located south of Washington Square.

Jane Jacobs was among those working to oppose the plan.

She believed that this roadway was intended to be a “feeder” that would bring traffic through the park to Moses’ planned lower Manhattan, Broome Street Expressway project.

In 1958 Jane Jacobs, together with several key players such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead and Lewis Mumford, formed the Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square Park to Traffic.

Jacobs is credited with creating the name for the Committee.

Norman Redlich, a Villager and the pro bono council to the Committee recalled that, “Among Jane Jacobs’ many brilliant organizing techniques, one of them was always put what you are trying to achieve in the name of the Committee, because most people will read no further than that. So, it was called the Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square Park to Traffic.”

It was also Jane Jacobs who strategically realized the need to go directly to the force that possessed the authority to direct the traffic commissioner to place a sign in the middle of the road that would read, “the park is closed.”

Once she discovered that this power lay with the Board of Estimate, the Committee recognized that it would have to employ a highly political strategy.

Additionally, fellow activist, Edith Lyons later recalled that it was Jacobs who originally said, “Let’s ask them [Board of Estimate] for a 3 month temporary trial, and I bet you when the trial is over, it will have proved our case and it will never be opened again.”

Jacobs’ prediction was correct and after the three month trial, the park was never reopened to traffic.”

http://www.nypap.org/content/jane-jacobs