South Street 2

Schermerhorn Row, South Street Seaport.

Continued from here.

In 1968, the same year that the replacement for New York's old Pennsylvania Station (Pennsylvania Plaza and Madison Square Garden) was completed, Schermerhorn Row on the southwest tip of Manhattan was designated an historic landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission to save it from destruction. It would eventually become part of a larger redevelopment: the South Street Seaport.

From the beginning the planning of the South Street Seaport was divided between a variety of interests including the mayor's Office of Development, the Seaport Museum and affiliates, the Maritime Museum, the state of New York, various financial institutions, the Rouse Company, and several design firms. However, as the developer, the Rouse company set much of the agenda for the site, and on the tail of recent successes James Rouse proposed a festival marketplace.[1]

South Street 1

Corner of 4th & South, 1963 and 2011.

In 1968, the same year Jane Jacobs was arrested during a protest against the Lower Manhattan Expressway, Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi took up the fight against the Philadelphia City Planning Commission's scheme to replace South Street with a cross-town highway. Hanging in the balance was the premise that cities can be shaped and formed to meet the needs of their residents.

After the plans for the 'Crosstown Expressway' were made public, the Citizens’ Committee to Preserve and Develop the Crosstown Community (CCPDCC) formed to unite the communities of the South Street corridor against the highway and to create an alternative vision.[1] A driving factor behind the opposition was the idea that communities have a right to self-determination. This concept grew as a response to the power of planners in shaping urban environments, which arguably hadn't changed since the sweeping plans of Fredrick Law Olmstead and the City Beautiful movement transformed cities earlier in the century. However, the seeming absolute power that figures like Robert Moses engendered in treating populated neighborhoods as blank slates contrasted starkly with democratic principles.