Thread by @MarketUrbanism

Re: Will’s piece, one thing that’s surprised me in doing research on NYC’s 1916 zoning code for a person project is that there really isn’t even a hint of anti-Black racism in it. It’s all class bias and anti-Jewish garment worker stuff. I’m not quite sure what to make of that

I looked high and low for people like Ed Bassett saying racist things. You can find a LOT of inhumane ways that people referred to immigrant garment workers swarming Fifth Ave., but the intense changes roiling Harlem don’t seem to be on anybody’s radar

The closest we get is when, in I believe 1920, Ed Bassett writes (arguing for more open space on private lots), "shall all of Greater New York become gradually Harlemized—in the sense of solid apartment house construction?" At most, a wink, and years after the code was passed

Rapid filtering of overbuilt neighborhoods was *exactly* what the zoning code was meant to stop. Black people were the ultimate "other," and thousands of them were pouring into Harlem every year. And yet...the connection is almost totally absent in contemporaneous writing. Weird!

NYC was a pretty cosmopolitan place and it was uncouth to be too blatant about your prejudice, but not so uncouth that there weren't loud dogwhistles about Jews and Fifth Ave. So the lack of discussion of Harlem and zoning remains a mystery to me