#MapMondays - Charles Lamb’s Diagonal Plan for New York City, 1904. Lamb was one of the nu
#MapMondays - Charles Lamb’s Diagonal Plan for New York City, 1904. Lamb was one of the numerous planners at the turn of the century who made it their mission to improve the city through public art, the creation of new streets, parks, bridges, and civic masterplans. As Gregory Gilmartin noted in Shaping the City, “Charles Lamb trained his intelligence on an amazing variety of urban issues: from skyscrapers and street signs to a proposal for communal kitchens that would, he hoped, save women from the drudgery of housework and free them to join in the city’s public life. Few people have had such an effect on the shape of New York and yet been so thoroughly forgotten.” One of Lamb’s most interesting plans was to break up the grid with a diagonal plan, relieving congestion and creating public squares like those along Broadway, the only diagonal street in the modern grid. Lamb discussed his proposal in detail in the April 1904 issue of The Craftsman: “Broadway, the one great diagonal through New York, proves how essential such diagonals are, and it is but recently that a serious attempt has been made to- suggest modifications and improvements in the present plan of New York, so as to rectify many of the difficulties and adjust the changes to the inevitably increasing congestion of the growing metropolis… This permits the development of the city to the utmost that might be possible within many decades, because with the hexagon, the great advantage of the diagonal already discussed is secured, and, at the same time, intervening spaces which can be secured for playgrounds and park areas, between the large central areas, which, in turn, can be used for groups of civic buildings in certain parts of the city, and, again, in other parts of the city seats of learning, recreation, business in all its forms, banking, publishing, the newspaper industries, and the thousand and one trades, which, in their turn, seem to be desirous of grouping themselves around a common center.” (Charles R. Lamb, City Plan, The Craftsman, April 1904) (at Union Square Park) https://www.instagram.com/p/Caz6FU5Ophq/?utm_medium=tumblr -- source link
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