Boston:
Blending City Beautiful, Structural Reform and Policy Swirls—and the Machine
On March 30, 1909, at the prestigious Boston City Club, the opening speaker, Edward Filene[1] tasked his audience of two hundred and thirty of Boston’s wealthiest business, religious, and educational elites that “Your hosts have asked you here … to consult with you. We believe that the growth and welfare of our city can be immeasurably helped by coordination and planning ahead. We are allowing slum conditions … of overcrowded housing … even in the outskirts [suburbs] of our city. We must tackle this problem and we can find a way. In the headquarters which will be opened tomorrow morning on 20 Beacon St … we will bring to Boston … a knowledge of all the best things that have been done by any other city in the world, and combining all the best things in a Plan for Boston”.
A later speaker, board member George W. Codman[2], pronounced the real motivation behind the Plan of 1915: “Have we not misconceived the true nature of our corporate city life? We have tried to run the city as a political institution and have made a dismal failure at it. We think now that we want a business administration of our cities with businessmen in command”.[3]
The Noble Experiment
And so the Boston Plan For 1915 was announced—the Noble Experiment had begun. The Boston Plan Executive Committee led by Filene included James Storrow (later to reorganize and save General Motors from bankruptcy), the heads of the Boston Chamber and Boston’s Merchants Association, and Louis Brandeis, in seven years a Supreme Court Justice. Eighty of Boston’s best business leaders served on the Board of Directors. The Plan included sixteen points to be achieved in six years, 1915. The Plan combined:
- Structural reforms (expert accounting for the city, understand the sources of government waste and reduce them, a new charter for Boston);
- Progressive reforms (the best public health department in the nation, comprehensive system of wage earner and old-age pensions, increase the number of branches in the public library, a system of public education “that actually fits the boys and girls of Boston for their life work”, and “better working conditions”);
- City Beautiful reforms (music in the famous Boston Park system) and an “intelligent system of transportation for the whole state, electric, express, freight and passenger”);
- Pure economic development initiatives such as “a careful accounting of the human resources of the city to include the skill level of the workers and the executive abilities of industrial leaders”, and growth in existing industries, and the “introduction of new enterprises”.
So the Boston Plan was a two-pronged initiative. The earlier of the two prongs began in 1905 with the formation of the Good Government Association[4] whose membership totally overlapped the membership of the Boston 1915. The motivation for its establishment was the conviction of one James Michael Curley for fraud in a federal court when Curley falsely took a civil service exam on behalf of a constituent. Curley was the Irish politician, hero of the Last Hurrah. The 1905 election of John F. Fitzgerald (JFK’s grandfather), “Honey Fitz” was the last straw for Boston’s GGA and they spent the entire of Honey Fitz’s first administration initiating law suits, state investigations, and newspaper attacks at him and the “Irish machine”. In 1907, they achieved approval by state legislature of the Independent Finance Commission which subsequently monitored City’s finances.
The state Finance Committee prepared a new charter for Boston whose intent was to reduce the power of the ethnic ward based machine over the city council because they believed the graft and maladministration of the council weakened “the industrial and commercial base of the city” because the council levied high taxes to support its graft, patronage and capital projects in the neighborhoods. Their chief opponent was the much studied ward boss, Martin Lomasney The mayor’s office was strengthened and given a four year term. The Boston Plan 1915 adopted the charter which was placed on the ballot for the next November (1909) election.
To cement Honey Fitz’s political demise, and secure charter approval, James Storrow, Plan 15 Executive Committee member, ran against Honey Fitz for mayor. His de facto campaign manager was the Chair of the Boston Chamber (and fellow Plan 15 Executive Committee member, Bernard Rothwell). In an election in which more Bostonians voted than ever before, the charter passed (52%), Storrow lost, but businessmen candidates secured a majority on the city council. Honey Fitz was elected mayor; the first mayor in Boston’s history to serve four years. Also the first strong mayor in Boston’s history. The Boston ethnic ward based machine had lost—and the era of the strong, charismatic mayor had begun. But only in Boston politics could the next event occur. Honey Fitz’s first announcement was to support the Boston 15 Plan.
Honey Fitz, the Boston Plan—And the Real Boston Plan
The new charismatic mayor would work cooperatively with the city business elites who moments before had sought to remove him and the Irish from power. Over the next four years, Fitzgerald worked to achieve the goals of the sixteen point plan. Fitzgerald brought in the expert, Louis Rourke, the chief engineer of the recently completed Panama Canal, to be his Commissioner of Public Works. That department resulted from Fitzgerald’s consolidation of the separate streets, water, and engineering boards/commission. Hurley then reorganized the entire system of parks and recreation. Fitzgerald was bringing efficiency and eliminating waste.
The Boston Plan folk were not sitting idly either. In a conscious imitation of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, the constructed the “1915 Boston Exposition”: a “graphic display of the living and working city, a display of Boston as a going concern”. The Exposition first opened in the old Copley Square Museum of Fine Arts in 1910. A year later it was moved to a newly constructed Museum of Fine Arts, “built on clean City Beautiful lines” on a swamp tamed, and landscaped overlooking the Olmsted’s Back Bay Fens. The new campus was intended to attract “the willing worker on an average wage to bring up his family amid healthful and comfortable surroundings. That they may become useful citizens”. Over two hundred exhibits, broken down into three main themes: the Visible City, Educational, and Social and Economic. City planning, parks, streets and boulevards and housing exhibits were displayed in “the Visible City”. Also included was a model tenement, and an actual three bedroom North End tenement. Also on display was the City Beautiful as depicted for Chicago—and a Curtiss airplane, models of the Wright brothers’ airplane, and new “moving pictures”. Even the Catholic Church displayed in a portion of the hall—the new Bishop, soon to be Cardinal O’Connell was also cooperating. The 1910 Exposition was so successful that a second Exposition was held later in the year.
Breaking down into committees, the Boston Plan business leaders forged ahead with projects such as constructing a Jamaica Pond boat house and bandstand, and starting in motion the Woodbourne housing and settlement house. The brought in the noted playground expert Joseph Lee. A monthly publication New Boston, commenced. Fifteen bills were prepared for city and state approval. The Housing Committee was especially aggressive and in the first issue of the New Boston it focused on the housing conditions of the North End, West End, Charleston and South Boston. The committee recommended forming a bureau to investigate and enforce housing codes. In January 1911 Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., wrote an amazing article in the New Boston that reflected the status of the housing movement led by the Russell Sage Foundations, calling for Forest Hills-type planned communities in the suburbs of Boston (“A suburban town built on business principles”). The first priority of the housing committee was that “overcrowded, unplanned residential districts should not spread out along the newly opened rapid transit lines linking the downtown core with the suburbs of Roxbury, Dorchester, and Jamaica Plain”.
The most important Boston Plan 15 initiative was issued in 1911 and submitted to the Massachusetts state legislature for approval. It called for the creation of metropolitan district whose purpose was to provide Boston [and the forty towns of the] metropolitan district with a city plan developed on sound moral, industrial and social lines”. The three member board of directors would study and issue recommendations for housing, buildings, safety (fire and sanitary), congestion, and provide reserved land for public use. The proposal was actively and aggressively lobbied by Plan 15 and the new Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber issued a formal report, “Real Boston, the Get Together Spirit Among Towns and Cities”. To further support the initiative the Chamber created the Real Boston Committee composed of suburban and city business leaders. The fate of the “Real Boston” bill, however, was bleak indeed.
The Real Boston bill couldn’t gather enough support to win approval of any of several state legislative committees. A new bill was crafted to meet objections—but it too got nowhere. A month after submittal the legislative committee formally voted it down. The bill was dead—killed by suburban opposition. Suburban opposition was based on suburban unwillingness to be linked in any way with the Boston Irish machine and crony, high tax politics. Their ultimate fear was the metropolitan district was the first step to future annexation. The Massachusetts legislature shortly after passed its own long-range housing program ran out of a Housing Commission. In 1913, the state Housing Commission did require Massachusetts towns and villages to establish a planning board—which Honey Fitz did in 1914. But that was it. In January 1914, a new mayor, James Michael Curley began his first term as mayor of Boston.
Within a year the Boston Plan 15 organization collapsed and disappeared.
[1] Filenes. Boston’s long-lived prestigious department store was founded by William Filene, a German-Jewish immigrant in 1881. Edward, born in 1860 Salem, my home town, left Harvard to run the family business (with his brother Abraham Lincoln Filene); he qualified as a candidate for America’s best employer. A staunch proponent of Taylor’s scientific (treat them like an ox) management, Filene opened up his famous “Bargain Basement” (I shopped there), he instituted a profit-sharing plan, a minimum wage for women, forty hour work week, paid vacations, and health clinic. He engaged in collective bargaining arbitration with his company union, and formed a savings and loan association for his employees. Filene was ousted from the Filene’s active management, though he retained the title of President. He was a founding member of the newly merged Boston Chamber of Commerce (Ritchie-led) in 1911 and in the same year was the leading proponent of America’s first Workmen’s Compensation Law (Massachusetts). He regularly corresponded with a diverse assortment of national leaders, including Woodrow Wilson, Mahatma Gandhi, and Vladimir Lenin. The Boston Plan, Plan – 1915, was his idea.
[2] Codman, whose son Charles was General George Patton’s chief aide de camp during World War II. His part was played in the 1970 movie Patton by Paul Stevens.
[3] “Woodbourne and the Boston 1915 Movement”, Jamaica Plain Historical Society www.jphs.org/20thcentury/woodbourne-and-the-boston-1915-movement.html
[4] Founding organizations were the Associated Board of Trade, the Chamber of Commerce, the Merchants Association, and the Boston Bar Association. Louis Brandeis was its chief founder.
Ron W. Coan 