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widening and especially in distributing the burden of that cost over a long period without running up a large bonded indebtedness and interest charges, the fundamental argument for this method of procedure is that it avoids the absolute dead loss to the whole community resulting from the destruction of valuable buildings. It is not practicable to avoid this in any other way and still accomplish the result of widened thoroughfares. Theoretically, it could be done by a direct widening of all the highways in the ordinary manner, if it were to be done promptly; but there are comparatively few cases in which there would be enough immediate advantage in the increased width to make the proposition attractive; and it is obvious that any such wholesale immediate action would involve a sudden and enormous financial burden which it is utterly impracticable for the City to assume.

If, after the gradual piecemeal process of widening at moderate and distributed expense has been begun, the City thinks it would prefer to have the process over and done with promptly, it is just as able to complete the widening immediately, by wholesale condemnation, as if the gradual process had never been entered upon. If the City begins on the gradual process, it can always change to the other when it feels rich enough, or when the buildings on the old lines have become few enough; and in the meantime the erection of new and costly buildings, obstructive to the proposed widening, has been prevented at comparatively slight expense. If the City does nothing, pending such time as it can afford to make the widening at a single operation, the cost of the operation is liable to mount at least as fast as the City's ability to pay for it.

While the method proposed is peculiarly adapted to handling the problem of a thoroughfare along which the majority of the frontage is not yet occupied by buildings standing on the street line, it may be objected that it is not suitable for widening one that is built up, like Forbes Street. It is true that the patchwork appearance of such a street during the process of gradual reconstruction is somewhat unsightly, -- with here and there a wide place where new buildings have gone up, and between them narrow parts, thus exposing the blank side walls of old buildings projecting beyond the new ones. Yet in cities where the sense of

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Last modified on 22-Dec 1999
Design format: copyright 1997-1999 Bruce S. Cridlebaugh
Original document: Frederick Law Olmsted, 1910