The Suburban Dream in Midtown

In the 1920s, the more self-contradictory an idea, the greater the gusto with which someone took it up. A vertical, congested suburb is a case in point. Suburbs are typically low, horizontal places with low-dwelling densities. The suburban vogue of the 1920s, typified by Forest Hills, gave Fred F. French an idea. Why not bring suburbia into Midtown Manhattan? Of course, in Midtown you could scarcely have built as much as a block of Forest Hills — unless you redefined it vertically. French assembled a substantial tract on 42nd Street east of Second Avenue. Today it is an expensive neighborhood. Back then it was a tough place, Prospect Hill, in a neighborhood of warehouses, slaughterhouses, and generating plants like the Consolidated Edison Waterside plant, which was recently demolished.

French was trying to take advantage of a Midtown that had only just established itself as the city's central business district. He figured people would want to live close to their places of work. The East River waterfront was a convenient location. The Midtown boom was taking shape around Grand Central Terminal, an easy stroll or ride from Prospect Hill, which was also close to the Second Avenue El. (It's hard to believe today how well served by rapid transit the East Side once was.)

Still, French knew that the immediate surroundings of his new development might put off prospective tenants. His strategy was to insulate. The location on the crest of the hill helped, lifting the project above its surroundings. (You have to climb stairs from 42nd Street to get to the complex.) He oriented his buildings westward, with largely unfenestrated façades facing the river. Today river views command a premium, but French believed his tenants would as soon not have views of abattoirs or gasworks. Besides, he considered his site a good one not because it was on the riverfront but because of its proximity to Grand Central. He also incorporated two private parks into the complex, on the inland side, of course. And there were no through streets.

Tudor City, as French named his development, thus had a sense of tranquil isolation — like a suburb. His wasn't the only vertical suburb of the 1920s. Le Corbusier's "radiant city" concept, which was the prototype for our postwar subsidized housing projects, was worked out in the 1920s. But Tudor City bears little resemblance to Corbusier. Tudor City's buildings are closely packed, and they aren't "towers in a park" but towers with a park. And aesthetically Tudor City is as far from Corbusian modernism as you can get — just look at the nearby U.N. Secretariat building, which typifies the Corbusian aesthetic. The façades of Tudor City's buildings are finely detailed with Tudor arches, terra cotta ornamentation, patterns of contrasting red brick and white plaster, spiky finials, and windows of multiple small panes.

Rather, as Tudor City's name implies, the style is borrowed from medieval England, by way of Queens. The Tudor style may have gained popularity through its use in the upper-class resort community of Tuxedo Park in Orange County, New York, but the style probably became the momentarily most popular one for suburban houses when Grosvenor Atterbury chose Tudor as the defining style of Forest Hills Gardens in Queens. So strongly was "Tudor" associated with "suburban" that "Tudor City" was tantamount to "suburban city" — nothing too strange for the 1920s.