Time zone: How documents from the 1930s shed light on DC’s land use today

The National Capital Planning Commission’s 100th anniversary is this year, and I was very chuffed that I was invited to present, alongside some distinguished planning professionals, at the kickoff of its centennial celebrations on January 23, 2024.

This was a really cool event: The six of us each chose a document in NCPC’s digital library, and talked about it. (No technical difficulties befell anyone’s screen-sharing while on Zoom, and we wrapped at precisely 7:30 pm. Planners planning, etc.)

I really love NCPC’s digital library, a “collection of influential plans, legislation, and maps that shaped the region’s development from 1924–1974,” which it shares with the DC Office of Planning. I presented on a document, “Experiences with Zoning in Washington, DC, 1920-1934,” prepared by some dude named S.G. Lindholm for the zoning commission in January 1935. (Lindholm doesn’t make any other appearances in NCPC’s library, and I can’t find much about him besides this July 31, 1938, Evening Star article, about “substantial changes in the administration of zoning laws,” which reports his title as the zoning commission’s zoning engineer.)

Zoning was implemented in the District in August 1920 with the completion of the District’s first code, written by America’s first planner, known highway freak, and obvious racist Harland Bartholomew at the behest of the zoning commission. The commission itself had been established in May 1920 by an act of Congress that required it to, in six months, adopt regulations for building height, area, and use districts. Congress’ enabling act was modeled on the federal State Standard Zoning Enabling Act, the brainchild of then-Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.

My chosen text is basically a program evaluation of that zoning code after about a decade of its implementation. I found parts of it, quite frankly, hilarious in light of the work that I do as GGWash’s DC policy director, and did my best to show how the language, concerns, and findings around zoning in its early days are about the same as they are today.

You can see a recording of the event here, and my presentation here. It’s very text-heavy and is, therefore, I think, better viewed in the recording.

However, I cannot help but share with you here some of the experiences with zoning that Lindholm documented. Here are some 90-years-young takes:

On traffic and its discontents

• “As it was soon realized that the traffic arteries could never be filled with stores…commercial islands were designed where parking space for customers could be provided on private ground and the blocking of street traffic minimized” (PDF page 11).
• “The space not provided for in the tenantry must be provided at the cost of the public in the streets and at great inconvenience to traffic” (PDF page 17).
• “There is much evidence to show that the blighting effects of obsolescent dwellings, traffic congestion, etc., which plainly apparent downtown, are also touching these surrounding sections…” (PDF page 27).
• “The traffic problem, especially if aggravated by street cars, complicates zoning” (PDF page 38).

On downtown, having a bad time

• “In this competition with newer sections downtown must be the loser; and the most it can look forward to is for the best blocks to hold their own; less favored blocks must scramble for whatever business they can get” (PDF page 22).
• “Why people will desert the neighborhood of their employment to go miles to settlements in the northern and western parts of Washington, or to Maryland and Virginia is not explained by greater attractiveness of these distant areas. The explanation must be sought in the quality of houses offered downtown…” (PDF page 23).
• “…as a result trading in downtown property is stagnant and values decreasing” (PDF page 29).

On how most people do not care about zoning beyond what matters for their own property

“They [owners of residential buildings who see an opportunity of selling or renting their buildings for commercial uses] would rather have a piecemeal rezoning in favor of their own property than a general rezoning. The Zoning Commission is, therefore, faced with the dilemma of either being a party to speculative deals, or to rezoning all, or at least whole streets, of downtown property” (PDF page 39).

On the appropriate frequency of public hearings

“A restriction on the frequency of public hearings, that undoubtedly has brought about good results, announced in December, 1929, to the effect that thereafter public hearings would be granted only three times a year instead of monthly. Fewer requests for changes have been made and time has been given for a more thorough investigation of their merits” (PDF page 30).

On the ability to sell consents to those who want to develop nearby properties???

“The provisions in the Washington regulations have brought about a pernicious condition in that they practically surrender to property owners the right to sell consents or to arbitrarily withhold consents for certain activities seeking establishment within 200 feet of their property” (PDF page 30).

I hope you, too, find all that amusingly salient.

Anyway, definitely check out the digital library, especially the materials on which my fellow panelists provided their insight. Ras Tafari Cannady II, AICP, the real property management branch head of the Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, broke down “A Policies Plan for the Year 2000: The Nation’s Capital,” a 1961 regional plan. Carlton Hart, the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts’ senior urban planner, showed off a 1963 special issue of Architectural Forum magazine, which contained some crowd-favorite illustrations skewering Washington’s planners and decisionmakers. Brookings Metro fellow and GGWash board chair Tracy Hadden Loh put a 1952 report, “An Approach to the Mass Transportation Problem for the District of Columbia,” another Harland Bartholomew joint, in the context of today’s WMATA drama. Rebecca Miller, Executive Director, DC Preservation League, was very on-brand with her review of ”Landmarks of the National Capital,” an annotated map drawn in 1973 showing the District’s “inventory of historic sites prepared pursuant to the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966.” Andrew Trueblood, now the principal of Trueblood.city, meditated on the Greek concept of time, kairos, and its relevance to the first chapter of the District’s 1950 Comprehensive Plan, “Washington Present and Future.”

I ended the evening by drinking tea out of my “talk to your friends about zoning” mug and buying my own copy of the 1950 zoning code for $30 (plus $4.95 shipping), so it was a pretty solid Tuesday for me, personally.

[Correction: This post originally identified Herbert Hoover as having held the role of Secretary of State. He held the role of Secretary of Commerce. The post has been updated.]