In this article, I retell the history of Rockefeller Center, using questions of labor to introduc... more In this article, I retell the history of Rockefeller Center, using questions of labor to introduce new dimensions to that well-known project. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the project’s patron, espoused cooperation between capital and labor. The Center’s architects developed their own ideas about cooperation through a series of urban schemes and through their modes of practice. The process of design and construction, among other episodes in the project’s development, made the possibilities and limitations of these cooperative ideals apparent. This re-evaluation of such a familiar work can encourage new thinking about how architectural historians and educators treat questions of collaboration.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City seems anomalous in twentieth century urban history. First pre... more Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City seems anomalous in twentieth century urban history. First presented in 1930 as a critique of existing American cities, the project developed into a program for territorial decentralization over the ensuing decade. Although Wright's often elliptical rhetoric can seem disengaged from urban discourse, this article argues that Broadacre City was based on prevailing suburban trends that it attempted to intensify. In doing so, the article makes two significant claims about Wright's work. The first is that Broadacre City was not a utopian master plan but rather a hermeneutical framework for managing socio-spatial change. The second is that the project was as critically attentive to changes in and around American cities as it was uncritically informed by existing forms of privilege and prejudice. If Broadacre City appears to be better grounded in urban history as a result, then its historiographic status needs to be revisited.
In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrela... more In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti- urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.
In this article, I retell the history of Rockefeller Center, using questions of labor to introduc... more In this article, I retell the history of Rockefeller Center, using questions of labor to introduce new dimensions to that well-known project. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., the project’s patron, espoused cooperation between capital and labor. The Center’s architects developed their own ideas about cooperation through a series of urban schemes and through their modes of practice. The process of design and construction, among other episodes in the project’s development, made the possibilities and limitations of these cooperative ideals apparent. This re-evaluation of such a familiar work can encourage new thinking about how architectural historians and educators treat questions of collaboration.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City seems anomalous in twentieth century urban history. First pre... more Frank Lloyd Wright's Broadacre City seems anomalous in twentieth century urban history. First presented in 1930 as a critique of existing American cities, the project developed into a program for territorial decentralization over the ensuing decade. Although Wright's often elliptical rhetoric can seem disengaged from urban discourse, this article argues that Broadacre City was based on prevailing suburban trends that it attempted to intensify. In doing so, the article makes two significant claims about Wright's work. The first is that Broadacre City was not a utopian master plan but rather a hermeneutical framework for managing socio-spatial change. The second is that the project was as critically attentive to changes in and around American cities as it was uncritically informed by existing forms of privilege and prejudice. If Broadacre City appears to be better grounded in urban history as a result, then its historiographic status needs to be revisited.
In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrela... more In Looking Backward (1888) and Equality (1897), Edward Bellamy offered two distinct but interrelated visions of a utopian future. The first and more famous book was set in a luxuriant, centralized metropolis. The sequel detailed decentralized, suburbanized infrastructures. Within the literature on Bellamy these emendations have been treated as evidence of regressive anti- urbanism. This paper argues instead that Bellamy used correlations between topography and technology to mediate an evolving approach to social reform. The discrepancies between the two texts did not represent abandonment of the city but rather an expansion of the scale and scope necessary to ensure social progress. While Looking Backward has often been invoked in relation the Garden City and City Beautiful movements, a new reading of Equality offers opportunities to rethink Bellamy’s relationship to planning history.
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Papers by Joseph M Watson