Clarence Stein
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Clarence Samuel Stein, (June 19, 1882 - February 7, 1975), was an American urban planner, architect, and writer, a major proponent of the "Garden City" movement in the United States.
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[edit] Biography
Stein studied architecture at Columbia University and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Upon returning to the United States, Stein joined the office of Bertram Goodhue in 1911 and contributed to three of Goodhue's large-scale projects of the time: the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Diego, California, the company town of Tyrone, New Mexico, and the master plan and individual buildings for the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
In 1919 Stein started his own practice in New York, and in 1921 began his long association with fellow architect Henry Wright. In 1923 Stein also co-founded the Regional Planning Association of America to address large-scale planning issues such as affordable housing, the impact of sprawl, and wilderness preservation. Other founding members included Lewis Mumford and Benton MacKaye; the RPAA helped MacKaye develop his vision for what would become the Appalachian Trail.
From 1923 to 1926 Stein also served as chairman for the New York State Housing and Regional Planning Commission.
[edit] Accomplishments
Beginning in 1923 Stein and Wright collaborated on the plan for Sunnyside Gardens, a neighborhood of the New York City borough of Queens. The 77-acre low-rise pedestrian-oriented development was constructed between 1924 to 1929. It was funded by fellow RPAA officer Alexander Bing and took the garden city ideas of Sir Ebenezer Howard as a model. This neighborhood has retained its special character and has been listed on the National Register of Historical Places.
Construction for Sunnyside started April 1, 1924, two months after it was purchased from Pennsylvania Railroad Company. Because of the high costs of urban land, many neighborhoods were congested and run down, making it unhealthy and an unenjoyable place to live in. Sunnyside was different; the land was not being used by the railroad company so it was cheep. Stein had a very important job with Sunnyside. He was responsible for making not only the neighborhood affordable to the general public, but also making it a healthy and enjoyable place to live. He designed more natural green space with lots of light, resulting in a serene living environment. In between all the apartment buildings there was a central public open space, such as a play ground or mini park. The park was then surrounded by individual private gardens that went to the ground level of the apartments. Gardens were also placed on the front of the apartment buildings between the road and the building. This helped brake up the long lines of houses and also created an appealing mood. Stein needed as much space as possible to incorporate gardens and open areas. Because of this, he had to place the garages by themselves separate from the apartment buildings. The ending outcome of Sunnyside was very successful.
In 1929 Stein and White collaborated on the plan for the Radburn community in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, roughly double the area of Sunnyside. The vision for Radburn was of an integrated self-sustaining community, surrounded by greenbelts, specialized automotive thoroughfares (main linking roads, serviced lanes for direct access to buildings, and express highways), and a complete separation of auto and pedestrian traffic. These thoroughfares were called superblocks. This was because the block is very large with a very large road surrounding the houses with in. Stein knew that the community could not survive without a road system but he also didn't want the roads dominating the land. Instead, the superblocks make the main focus on the yards and the gardens surrounding the buildings. This grand vision was informed by the lessons of Sunnyside, and by the comparable city-planning work of Ernst May in Germany (researched by a young Catherine Bauer), but the experiment was never completed because of the economic pressures of the Depression. Do to the Depression and different land issues, Radburn was not able to become a Garden City, but it was still impressionable because the superblock was a very success idea that has been repeated numerous times.
In the 1930s Stein and the other members of the RPAA saw their social housing cause adopted by the government, at least for a while. They lobbied for the creation of government-sponsored planned communities, under the short-lived Resettlement Administration, and planned for 22 green-belt resettlement towns across the country. Three were built: Greenbelt, Maryland, Greendale, Wisconsin and Greenhills, Ohio. The others were halted when the Resettlement Administration was dissolved in 1936.
Among Stein's other urban-planning credits are the five-city-block Hillside Homes in Williamsbridge, the Bronx, as a Public Works Administration project in 1935; part of the massive wartime labor-force housing at the Walt Whitman Houses in Fort Greene, Brooklyn; Baldwin Hills Village (now the Village Green) in Los Angeles, California in 1941; and his only postwar commission, the re-planning of Kitimat, British Columbia, in 1951.
Stein wrote Toward New Towns for America in 1951, and received the AIA Gold Medal in 1956. He died in 1975 at the age of 93.
[edit] Other Accomplishments
Chatham Village, Pittsburgh
Phipps Garden Apartments (I) and (II), New York City
Valley Stream Project
Greenbelt, Maryland G
reenbrook, New Jersey
Greendale, Wisconsin
Baldwin Hills Village, Los Angeles
[edit] Significance
Clarence Stein's work expanded the idea of a Garden City. He was able to take the boring and stale urban subdivision, and make it inventive and exciting. He believed in molding urban construction into nature. He brought these two aspects together to make a modern yet comfortable environment. Because Steins work is reused so much today, it shows how successful his designs were.
[edit] Published Work
The Writings of Clarence S. Stein: Architect of the Planned Community, 1998
Toward New Towns for America, 1951
Kitimat: A New City, 1954
Report of the Commission of Housing and Regional Planning to Governor Alfred..., 1925
Primer of Housing, 1927 (co-author)
Store Buildings and Neighborhood Shopping Centres, 1934
Radburn, Town for the Motor Age, 1965
Hillside Homes, 1936
[edit] Images
www.ci.cumberland.md.us/.../browse.cfm?pic=429
http://www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq042/042_02_15.jpg
[edit] Sources
- Stein, Clarence. (1951). Toward New Towns for America: MIT Press.
- Stein, Clarence. (2005). Infoplease Web site: http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0846615.html.
- Stein, Clarence. (1957). "Toward New Towns for America: with an introduction by Lewis Mumford.
- Radburn. (2005). Retrieved October 26, 2005, from http://formertopdog.tripod.com/radburn/
- Stein's papers at Cornell
- The Village Green Web site
- [Modern Architectural Theory: A Historical Survey, 1673-1968, Dr Harry Francis Mallgrave
