Jane Jacobs’ building
Jane Jacob’s Death and Life of Great American Cities is known, among other things, for its description of the street ballet she observed from her home on Hudson Street in Greenwich Village. In a few pages, she describes the comings and goings of various people on various errands, and illustrates the diversity you find in a healthy local community.
While I sweep up the wrappers I watch the other rituals of morning: Mr. Halpert unlocking the laundry’s handcart from its mooring to a cellar door, Joe Cornacchia’s son-in-law stacking out the empty crates from the delicatessen, the barber bringing out his sidewalk folding chair, Mr. Goldstein arranging the coils of wire which proclaim the hardware store is open, the wife of the tenement’s superintendent depositing her chunky three-year-old with a toy mandolin on the stoop, the vantage point from which he is learning the English his mother cannot speak.
Later on she makes a similar point about the diverse enterprises that can thrive in older and cheaper buildings, but could never afford the cost of doing business in new ones.
The floor of the building in which this book is being written is occupied also by a health club with a gym, a firm of ecclesiastical decorators, an insurgent Democratic party reform club, a Liberal party political club, a music society, an accordionists’ association, a retired importer who sells maté by mail, a man who sells paper and who also takes care of shipping the maté, a dental laboratory, a studio for watercolor lessons, and a maker of costumer jewelry. Among the tenants who were here and gone shortly before I came in, were a man who rented out tuxedos, a union local and a Haitian dance troupe. There is no place for the likes of us in new construction. And the last thing we need is new construction. What we need, and a lot of others need, is old construction in a lively district, which some among us can help make livelier.
The building above, by the way, is in Greenwich Village but is not (unless by chance) the one she wrote about. The picture is borrowed from Discount Hotel Deals.
