By Witold Rybczynski, Scribner, 308 pages, $33.99
Reviewed by Dorn Townsend
For many, New York City is associated with skyscrapers. Yet New Yorkers have also been pioneers of an opposite building style: the low-built suburb. The assembly-line homes built in Levittown on Long Island may be the most famous, but they weren’t the area’s first experiments in creating large planned subdivisions. Built 30 to 40 years before Levittown, garden suburbs like Forest Hills, Jackson Heights and Sunnyside in Queens also blazed new ground.
On a national scale, the Levittown suburban prototype — single houses occupying individual lots — has reigned. In his latest book, Last Harvest, author Witold Rybczynski offers two explanations for this. For decades, the working assumption of residential developers has been that American homebuyers avoid density and prefer strung-out subdivisions. Therefore, the selling price of a home in the suburbs has usually been in direct proportion to the size of the lot.
Garden suburbs, on the other hand, focus on ingredients like narrow streets, neighborliness, central green spaces and density. Architecture should be captivating, but it’s not paramount.
Not only did this building approach inspire a passionate following among some developers, but it has returned in more recent decades. Projects like Seaside, a neo-traditional village created in Florida in the 1980s, have demonstrated that, under the right circumstances, homebuyers may actually be willing to pay premiums for suburban density.
Last Harvest, is about the story of Arcadia, a family-run development company that sets out to create a garden suburb and still make a profit. The subdivision, called New Daleville, calls for the construction of 86 homes on 90 acres of cornfields in the Chester County countryside, outside Philadelphia. The title of the book comes from a term farmers use to describe the final sale of their land to developers.
Nonfiction books about suburban development infrequently get described as roller-coaster rides, but this one fits the bill. It is a masterly story of entrepreneurship. Rybczynski chronicles each twist as he follows Arcadia for nearly five years as it chooses architects, entices builders and nurses relationships with municipal planners. Despite setbacks and unforeseen snags, Arcadia manages to turn a farm in the exurbs into permitted lots worth about $15 million.
To be sure, missteps are frequent and throughout the story, the developers have to tread a careful path. To succeed, they have to satisfy opposite ambitions: the concerns of jurisdictions that give permits and the demands of the marketplace. The potential for financial losses, caused by weak markets, held-up project permits and construction delays, lurks around every corner.
What’s particularly memorable is the way Last Harvest, illuminates the timeline for housing developments. Suburbs are often said to have “sprung up overnight,” yet the time horizon for developers appears to move at the speed of glaciers.
Woven throughout the story of New Daleville is a chronicle of real estate development in America. An early chapter examines the importance real estate developers have had throughout history. For instance, before he became a military leader and president, George Washington was a land surveyor, opening up the wilderness for development. Indeed, a large number of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were real estate people, and the author notes, “It’s no accident that when Thomas Jefferson wrote that document, he included an explicit reference to land development in his list of grievances against George III.”
In a sense, Last Harvest, is a cautionary tale for real estate professionals looking to break with the industry’s orthodoxies. Garden suburbs are particularly popular when they get woven into an already urban milieu. Yet New Daleville is an hour outside Philadelphia, and the kind of buyers who leave the city for the suburbs often rationalize the move by trading more space for longer commutes.
In the end, after New Daleville’s first residents have moved in, the owner of Arcadia complains that his project could have turned out better. The author has a more expansive view. Homes in New Daleville are selling for roughly the same price as slightly bigger homes in nearby cookie-cutter subdivisions. And the values of garden suburbs seem to be spreading. Residents say since moving in, they spend more time walking and sitting on their porches with neighbors. “How much of this activity is encouraged by the proximity of the houses and the presence of front porches is difficult to say, but it’s hard not to believe that people are affected by their environment. Put them in a village, and they begin to behave like villagers,” the author notes.
Nearly a century after they were built, New York City’s garden suburbs remain prized residential locations. Brokers in Jackson Heights, for instance, indicate that the rustic-looking row houses with courtyards and gardens built by Edward MacDougall in 1909 command significantly more buyer interest, as well as higher sales prices, than humdrum adjacent buildings. It’s proof that even as design tastes change each generation, what remains true of homebuyers is a desire for a sense of community.