Iliana Weisberg

The Scythe of Progress:

Lincoln Center and the Complexity of Urban Renewal in New York City The Mechanisms behind German-American Assimilation

A Kultural Blow: “The scythe of progress must move north [from Columbus Circle to Lincoln Square]…”1 –Robert Moses to The New York Times Today, Lincoln Center in New York City stands as a cultural center of opera, music, and dance. The Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, and the New York City Ballet all have homes there. But in the 1950s, it was people who had homes there. The neighborhood was home to seven thousand low-income families and eight hundred businesses.2 That all changed in the mid 1950s with the introduction of a slum clearance project that would result in the construction of Lincoln Center, called the Lincoln Square Renewal Project, after the neighborhood that the endeavor would demolish and build over. The project was spearheaded by Robert Moses, a New York City public official who had extensive experience with slum clearance. Although the Lincoln Square Renewal Project was presented to the public as a symbol of American high culture during the Cold War, Moses’s goal of slum clearance and visions of renewed local prosperity conflicted with the needs and attitudes of local residents, which brought to light the significance of the ideological dissonance between culture as art and culture as community in slum clearance projects. In 1955, the city of New York designated a neighborhood of the Upper West Side known as Lincoln Square for urban renewal, the process of replacing or restoring urban areas considered blighted, in order to create a new cultural center in the city.3 Robert Moses had been discussing the possibility of providing a new home for the Metropolitan Opera as early as 1952, and when this area was designated, it became clear to him and the executives at the Metropolitan Opera that its size made it

Iliana Weisberg

The Perpetual Foreigner:

The E ects of Orientalism on US Race Relations with Asians and Asian Americans during the Cold War (1945-1991) Julian Hough Michael Cai

1 Charles Grutzner, “Stevens Expands Lincoln Sq. Plans,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), October 27, 1956, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/10/27/88476576.pdf 2 Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 1014. 3 Edgar B. Young, Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution (New York: New York University Press, 1980), XII.

a good place to see that project through.4 The New York Philharmonic realized around this time that they would also need to relocate soon. Arthur A. Houghton, a director on the board of the Philharmonic, sought out the same architect as Moses and the Metropolitan Opera had, and it was this Today, Lincoln Center in New York City stands as a cultural center of opera, music, and dance. The Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the Juilliard School, and the New York City Ballet all have homes there. But in the 1950s, it was people who had homes there. The neighborhood was home to seven thousand low-income families and eight hundred businesses.5 That all changed in the mid 1950s with the introduction of a slum clearance project that would result in the construction of Lincoln Center, called the Lincoln Square renewal project after the neighborhood that the endeavor would demolish and build over. The project was spearheaded by Robert Moses, a New York City public official who had extensive experience with slum clearance. Although the Lincoln Square renewal project was presented to the public as a symbol of American high culture during the Cold War, Moses’s goal of slum clearance and visions of renewed local prosperity conflicted with the needs and attitudes of local residents, which brought to light the significance of the ideological dissonance between culture as art and culture as community in slum clearance projects.

The construction of Lincoln Center was largely funded by wealthy businessmen who were in communication with the executives of the various arts companies that would find homes at the new Center. Though the government did provide a noteworthy amount of funding through urban renewal legislation, it was not enough to cover the full cost of the ambitious undertaking, and further support from wealthy patrons was necessary. John D. Rockefeller III, whose family contributed significant funds to the project, was chosen as chairman for the Exploratory Committee, a group of executives in charge of the initial planning.6 In addition to Rockefeller, this committee included executives from the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic, as well as businessmen who were not involved in the arts, such as Devereux C. Josephs, the chairman of the New York Life Insurance Company.7

4 Letter by Robert Moses, January 21, 1952, The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY; Memorandum, “Memorandum on Proposed New Opera House Site,” October 17, 1955, The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY. 5 Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 1014. 6 Young, Lincoln Center, 19-20. 7 Young, Lincoln Center, 20-21.

It was through these executives and businesspeople that the board—and by extension, those working on the project as a whole—gained access to significant financial resources, as well as high profile social and press connections.8

The patriotism at the heart of Rockefeller’s support for the project in particular embodied the political concern with American culture that caused many of the project’s backers to get involved with the building of the Center. He himself had no professional knowledge of the arts, but he did believe in their significance to culture and specifically to American culture.9 To him, it followed that in the post-World War II era of American economic prosperity, it was important to look to the arts. He was concerned about the personal fulfillment of those American citizens who had the leisure time to think about such things now that their economic needs were being met, and that the arts such as those offered at Lincoln Center could offer this fulfillment.10 Rockefeller said that the place of the arts “is not on the periphery of daily life, but at its center. [The arts] should function not merely as another form of entertainment, but, rather, should contribute significantly to our well being and happiness.”11 He was also concerned about America’s cultural image in an international context.12 Since the 1920s, Europeans had often stereotyped American society as superficial, materialistic, and lacking any particular culture, a view that was still prominent in the 1950s when Rockefeller was considering Lincoln Center.13 He hoped that the creation of an American cultural icon would aid in improving that perception.14

Some saw the increased accessibility of American high culture and art as a measure of American freedom as a whole, which during the Cold War era was closely associated with the struggle against communism.

8 Samuel Zipp, “The Battle of Lincoln Square: Neighbourhood Culture and the Rise of Resistance to Urban Renewal,” Planning Perspectives 24, no. 4 (October 2009): 411, Taylor & Francis Online. 9 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 174. 10 Julia L. Foulkes, “The Other West Side Story: Urbanization and the Arts Meet at Lincoln Center,” Amerikastudien / American Studies 52, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 233, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41158305?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents. 11 Louis Calta, “Lincoln Center Honors John D. Rockefeller 3d,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), June 24, 1970, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1970/06/24/80031713.pdf. 12 Foulkes, “The Other,” 233. 13 Egbert Klautke, “Anti-Americanism in Twentieth Century Europe,” University College London (The Historical Journal), May 2011, 6, https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/ id/eprint/1303252/1/Americanization_Revised_May_2011_Historical_Journal.pdf. 14 Foulkes, “The Other,” 233.

Rudolf Bing, the director of the Metropolitan Opera, once said of the construction of the new Metropolitan Opera House, “[T]o build only an adequate and not the best opera house possible today in New York City would make the country the laughing stock of the world, and the opera a subject of Russian propaganda.”15 Even then President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw Lincoln Center as significant enough in the context of Cold War efforts to speak at its groundbreaking ceremony in May 1959. At the ceremony, he said this of the project: “The beneficial influence of this great cultural adventure will not be limited to our borders. Here will occur a true interchange of the fruits of national cultures. From this will develop a growth that will spread to the corners of the earth, bringing with it the kind of human message that only individuals— not governments—can transmit.”16 Eisenhower linked the building of Lincoln Center and the art it would contribute to society with the goal of spreading American culture across the globe. He saw the project as something that was ideologically working in tandem with the foreign policy of the time. While the government was working at a political level, trying to prevail in the Cold War through diplomatic and military measures, Eisenhower here argued that the cultural endeavor of Lincoln Center could showcase a positive aspect of America to the world, an aspect that the government could not convey.

Those working at Lincoln Center fully embraced its marketing as an accessible cultural icon with its inclusion of uniquely American repertoire throughout its opening season. The opening performance at the new location of the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in the autumn of 1966 was a newly written opera, Antony and Cleopatra, based on the Shakespeare play of the same name. It was written by American composer Samuel Barber.17 Another opera that season was a new adaptation of the Eugene O’Neill play Mourning Becomes Electra. This opera was written by American composer Marvin David Levy.18 In a similar vein, the opening performance of the New York Philharmonic at

15 Victoria Newhouse, Wallace K. Harrison Architect (New York: Rizzoli, 1989), 214. 16 Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at the Ground-Breaking Ceremonies for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City,” speech presented at the Groundbreaking Ceremony of Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center, New York City, New York, United States, May 14, 1959, The American Presidency Project, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-the-ground-breakingceremonies-for-the-lincoln-center-for-the-performing-arts-new. 17 Theodore Strongin, “American Opera to Open New Met,” The New York Times (New York, United States), May 7, 1964, https://timesmachine.nytimes. com/timesmachine/1964/05/07/97389934.pdf. 18 Metropolitan Opera, Season 1966-1967 (New York: Metropolitan Opera, 1966). 101

Lincoln Center included a world premiere of a piece called Connotations, commissioned by American composer Aaron Copland.19 These choices of repertoire for the various Lincoln Center opening seasons that year emphasized the cultural status of the Center as a beacon of artistic achievement that was specifically American, and how this narrative was pushed not only by the project’s backers, but by those directly involved in the arts at Lincoln Center. The emphasis on this idea even included a celebration of American racial diversity, an uncommon mindset at the time. Leontyne Price, a prominent African-American soprano at the Metropolitan Opera, starred alongside Justino Díaz, a Latino opera singer, as the titular characters in Antony and Cleopatra. 20 In a time when topics of race were highly controversial, including marginalized performers in the opening performance at the new Metropolitan Opera showed an attempt to broaden its audience, an effort to include all Americans and not just the elite.

The Lincoln Center backers launched a successful publicity campaign that leaned on the idea of increased accessibility to culture for all Americans. In 1960, they released a brochure quoting Eisenhower’s speech. The purpose of this brochure was to encourage the public to donate to Lincoln Center as it was being constructed: “Lincoln Center is everybody’s job. For everybody has a stake in the Center—government, business, labor, philanthropy, and above all the individual American. [...] Lincoln Center is your job, too—and your opportunity!”21 (Appendix C) This brochure marketed the Center as a trailblazer that was meeting “the demand for more opportunities for all Americans to enjoy concerts, plays, opera, ballet, and other musical and theater arts.”22 The Center had multiple incentives to market itself this way. Besides the need for donations, it was easier to justify such a large slum clearance project if they could defend the claim that what they were building on the area would benefit more Americans than it displaced. The brochure was not the only promotional material that took this angle. Other advertisements and articles, some of which were not produced by those affiliated with the Center, had already adopted this point of view by the time the groundbreaking ceremony occurred. For example, a 1957 New York Times article stated, “Lincoln Square is one of these [great rebuilding projects], [...] it is of such magnitude [...] such appeal in its cultural

19 Julia L. Foulkes, “Streets and Stages: Urban Renewal and the Arts After World War II,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 2 (Winter 2010): 418, https://www. jstor.org/stable/25790364. 20 Metropolitan Opera. 21 Lincoln Center - “A Mighty Influence” (New York City, NY, 1960), 5. 22 Lincoln Center, 5.

purposes that it must succeed.”23 Nonetheless, although the reasons for supporting the Center were often tied to and marketed as an opportunity for American culture to flourish, the clearance project’s spearhead did not consider this as important.

Robert Moses, the urban planner who coordinated much of the project, concerned himself less with the geopolitical implications of the final outcome of Lincoln Center and more with the practical economic aspects of localized urban renewal. Moses saw urban renewal as a pragmatic effort to increase the profitability of the city.24 To further this goal, he took advantage of Title I of the Housing Act of 1949. Under this law, the federal government was authorized to allocate 500 million dollars in capital grants and 1 billion dollars in loans for the clearing of blighted urban areas.25 The Lincoln Square renewal project garnered $2.5 million in federal funds through this law.26 These funds were pooled with the funds from the wealthy sponsors to finance the project. Securing this grant was an important step in moving forward with the project. Though a 1954 revision of the Housing Act allocated additional funding for the rehabilitation of the tenements who lived in the cleared area, Moses did not take advantage of this. He viewed rehabilitation as overly idealistic, especially because he already had city planning projects under his belt by this time. He wanted to continue using the method that had been successful for him in the past, which meant private assurance for investors he trusted and full slum clearance without rehabilitation.27

In order to move forward with the project, Moses had to convince both the city’s government officials and its general public that the Lincoln Square neighborhood could indeed be classified as a slum. As the head of the Committee on Slum Clearance, he compiled a set of facts that were meant to show that the area had deteriorated to the point that clearance was the most logical course of action. He released excerpts from the Lincoln Square Slum Clearance Plan that supported this point to the public in 1956 (Appendix D). Much of Moses’s data focused on the physical state of the neighborhood and its buildings. Four hundred and

23 “Lincoln Square’s Future,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), July 19, 1957, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1957/07/19/84734524.pdf. 24 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 163. 25 Steven C. Forest, “The Effect of Title I of the 1949 Federal Housing Act on New York City Cooperative and Condominium Conversion Plans,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 13, no. 3 (1985): 724, https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1267&context=ulj. 26 Foulkes, “The Other,” 228. 27 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 163.

fifty two out of 482 residential structures between three and six stories were built before 1901.28 Additionally, the committee hired a real estate firm to conduct a survey of the houses. This survey found that most of the buildings in the area were in need of significant repairs. It is notable, however, that despite the firm’s claim that a high number of buildings had insufficient heating and plumbing, their figures showed that 54 percent of them contained hot water, central heating, and a complete bathroom, whereas only five percent did not have these things. Despite this, only four out of those 482 buildings were deemed up to the standards of the firm.29

In addition to the dubious evidence that the area was in need of redevelopment, further documentation focused on the minority status of residents as a reason for the adoption of slum status. Figures found in the documents included the following: 1,250 families, or twenty four percent, were racial minorities, composed of eighteen percent Puerto Ricans, four percent Black Americans, and two percent “other”, which may have been referring to residents of Asian descent.30 While it is possible that these demographic figures were not necessarily meant to prove in a direct way that the area was a slum that needed to be cleared, serving instead as basic information about the area, racist attitudes often played a part in urban renewal. Previously, Moses repeatedly had trouble securing slum clearance funds from banks and insurance companies in the city because these companies did not want to find themselves in a situation where they had to deal with new Black tenants in their housing.31 Given these attitudes, the included figures concerning the minority status of many Lincoln Square residents were likely a contributing factor to the perception of the area as a slum by the relevant authorities. Moses also underestimated the number of tenants who would have to be relocated, citing 6,018 while tenant activist groups estimated closer to 7,000.32

Although Moses gave assurances that Lincoln Square residents would be moved to suitable neighborhoods, he made it clear that the goal of constructing Lincoln Center outweighed the concern for local residents. The apartments he put on the redevelopment plan required a family income of at least $11,525 for a four-room apartment,33 whereas 62.6

28 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 219. 29 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 219. 30 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 219. 31 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 161-162. 32 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 219. 33 Memorandum by Herman E. Krawitz, “Applications for Lincoln Center Apartments,” December 15, 1958, 1000, The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY.

percent of Lincoln Square residents earned less than $4,000 a year.34 Though Moses repeatedly assured the city authorities that he would make sure the Lincoln Square residents were relocated into decent homes, his actual housing plans for the site did not take the neighborhood’s residents into consideration. Additionally, his words often showed that he saw the Lincoln Square residents as a means to an end, even though he sometimes purported to care about what happened to them. At the groundbreaking of Lincoln Square, he said, “You cannot rebuild a city without moving people [...] You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.”35 This metaphor shows that he viewed the original Lincoln Square neighborhood as nothing more than a slum with untapped potential that could only be realized by him.

Many members of the Lincoln Square community initially resisted the project on the grounds that the project did not include transparent plans to rehouse them. In mid-1955, two local protest groups formed: the Lincoln Square Businessmen’s Committee and the Lincoln Square Residents’ Committee. At the time of their formation, their goal was not to save the neighborhood.36 Instead, they fought for a program of lowrent rehousing, as they could not afford to move into the new housing structures that were planned for the site.37 They campaigned for the project to be set aside until a specific plan for this new housing was presented. Their tactics were not forceful: they petitioned the city mayor, Robert Wagner, they wrote to City Councilman Stanley Isaacs (who did come to support their cause), and they even tried (unsuccessfully) to organize a meeting with Rockefeller and other sponsors of the project.38

After a few months, these committees of tenants in opposition to the project sought out Harris Present, a New York City lawyer and housing activist, for help getting the attention of the city officials that they were failing to reach on their own. Present was the founder of an activist group focused on the issue of urban renewal, the New York City Council of Housing Relocation Practices. He galvanized the smaller protest groups of tenants into a more cohesive resistance effort, as well as doing his own

34 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 219. 35 Zipp, “The Battle,” 420. 36 Zipp, “The Battle,” 415. 37 Roberta Gold, When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York Housing (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 95; Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson, Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York (New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2007), 102. 38 Zipp, “The Battle,” 415. 105

What do [the Lincoln Center organizers] intend to do with the more than 6,000 families who are presently residing at the site? [...] I would also like to ask whether the members of the City Planning Commission and the Board of Estimate still would vote for this project even if they could not be shown that proper facilities were available for residents to be dislocated from this area. Although all serious-minded residents are concerned with the demolition of slums, many of us would oppose such demolition unless convinced that better housing facilities would be created for the dislocated tenants.40

This letter was written towards the beginning of Present’s involvement in the cause, when he and the involved Lincoln Square residents were still advocating for better relocation practices. He was trying to draw the public’s attention to the darker aspects of the Lincoln Center project through a medium that so often praised its vision. The residents, however, used more direct methods of protest.

Throughout most of 1956, resistance persisted in this direction of campaigning for publicized and accommodating relocation practices. Protests continued to get more intense. In the summer and fall of that year, there was a series of hearings before the Board of Estimate, the main decision making committee for New York City, that would decide whether the project would get preliminary approval.41 The activists hired a sound truck to drive through the Lincoln Square neighborhood, imploring the residents to join a planned picket outside City Hall.42 About fifty protesters attended the pickets for each hearing, many of them women and children. Their signs sported slogans such as “Shelter Before Culture”, “Humane Progress Means Decent Relocation”, “No Homes No Culture”, and others in this vein (Appendix E). They also conducted another protest during this period, a mass mailing campaign

39 Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Ohio State University Press, 1993), 279-280. 40 Harris L. Present, “Relocating Slum Residents,” New York Times (New York City, NY), February 18, 1956, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/02/18/84875078.pdf?pdf_redirect=true&ip=0. 41 Zipp, “The Battle,” 421. 42 “Displaced Tenants to Picket City Hall,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), June 15, 1956, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/06/15/86612808.pdf.

of postcards addressed to then New York City Mayor Robert Wagner and the president of the Borough of Manhattan, Hulan Jack, threatening not to vote for them that November if they voted in favor of the Lincoln Square renewal project.43 Despite these efforts, the Board of Estimate unanimously approved the request of Moses and the sponsors of the project to apply for federal funding.44 It was with these protests that the beginning of a shift in the goals of the protestors began to show.

As the advocates for Lincoln Square shifted their aim to ultimately stopping the project altogether, rather than reforming relocation practices, they focused the ideological core of their resistance on the intersection of physically losing their homes and culturally losing their community. In the winter of 1956-1957, the protestors picketed outside a newly opened relocation office to show their rejection of the whole relocation policy as it applied in the case of Lincoln Square.45 Then, in September of 1957, the City Planning Commission had a hearing that would either grant or deny final approval for the Lincoln Square renewal project. Twenty pickets went to City Hall that day with signs that read “Our Children Need Housing Not Promises”, “We Refuse to Move until Homes for Us Are Made Part of the Plan”, and “Moses Is Clearing People Not Slums”.46 It was in the hearing itself, where sixty speakers testified in an eleven hour debate, where the meaning that the project’s resisters were applying to culture truly came to light. At the hearing, Present stated, “I believe if we are going to talk about progress, we have to talk about human progress first. [...] I say no matter how impressive any cultural institution may be, or educational institution, there is nothing more important in a democracy than the human beings involved.”47 The residents of the neighborhood concurred with stronger language, making comments such as, “Why should we give up our homes for this conglomeration of culture?”, “I think it is a disgrace if anybody that professed to love the arts [...] could at the same time ignore human beings”, “What about our homes? Aren’t our homes beauty and culture?” and most scathingly, “But who cares for the little shopkeeper so long as we have culture? Who cares whether we have a home so long as the Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera have one? [...] I think you all know how inhuman the project is.”48 The culture that resonated with the

43 Zipp, “The Battle,” 421. 44 “Lincoln Square Advanced,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), October 1, 1956, https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/10/01/84885122.pdf. 45 Zipp, “The Battle,” 422. 46 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 231. 47 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 235. 48 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 235-236.

residents of the Lincoln Square area was a local network of interpersonal relationships that was heavily reliant on their homes and businesses all coexisting in the same neighborhood, rather than the idea of sophisticated American culture and art that Lincoln Center’s backers were relying on to justify the project. The Lincoln Square residents and their allies hoped that showing the emotional significance of this type of culture in their lives would convince the city authorities that their neighborhood was worth preserving.

By contrast, those who spoke in favor of the project at the hearing focused on the way that a new cultural center would revitalize the city, emphasizing the benefit to the community of New York City as a whole rather than the needs of the smaller community of Lincoln Square. Rockefeller’s endorsement touted the project as “a truly great civic development”, characterizing the project’s sponsors as people who were concerned with the “constructive development of our city for the benefit and enjoyment of all of its people”.49 Rockefeller did not directly evoke the concept of culture, but the references to the city’s “civic” and “constructive development” paired with the context of the ongoing Lincoln Center publicity campaign emphasizing what the Center would contribute to the arts was suggestive of traditional ideas of art and culture. His argument relied on assuming this definition of culture, while the Lincoln Square residents sought to challenge it. Notably, the City Planning Commission believed the Lincoln Square renewal project to be too significant to the comprehensive urban renewal efforts in New York City to delay further, demonstrating that they saw Rockefeller’s indirect argument for traditional culture as more valuable to the city than the argument of the Lincoln Square residents.50 A month later, a similar hearing took place before the Board of Estimate, and in November of 1957, the Lincoln Square renewal project got final, unanimous approval.51 The process of relocating the tenants began in 1958.52

Although the organizations behind the project provided some support for relocating tenants, they failed to address the idea of localized community that was at the heart of resistance. Lincoln Center and Fordham University (for which a campus was being built on the site of the Lincoln

49 Paul Crowell, “Lincoln Sq. Rivals Clash at Hearing before Planners,” The New York Times (New York City, NY), September 12, 1957, https:// timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/09/12/84759776.pdf. 50 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 239. 51 Zipp, Manhattan Projects, 239. 52 Letter to Herbert Graf, July 28, 1958, The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY.

Square renewal project as well) hired a relocation firm, Braislin, Porter & Wheelock, to provide housing aid in the area.53 The firm set up a relocation office to help the residents search for housing, paying brokers for relevant listings. This office included representatives from the New York City Bureau of Real Estate, the civic body that oversaw relocation, and the New York City Housing Authority, which helped residents find public housing.54 While ultimately somewhat helpful, only 28.4 percent of tenants on the Lincoln Center site and 26 percent of tenants on the Fordham site moved into apartments found by a sponsor.55 Fifty two point seven percent and 58 percent of tenants respectively ended up “self locat[ing]”, and the whereabouts of the remaining tenants from these sites were “unknown (many of whom left owing several months rent).”56 Besides the way these efforts were less helpful to the residents than they may have appeared, the help that the relocation office provided did not even attempt to address the central problems with urban renewal that these residents brought to light. The goal of the aid provided to residents was to help them find new housing, not to help them keep a community even though the physical neighborhood was being destroyed, when their community was at the core of what they were fighting for by the time the relocation process started.

Lincoln Center is globally recognized today as a beacon of sophistication and art, just as its supporters hoped it would be in the 1950s. In modern society, however, it also has attained a widespread reputation for elitism. Though few know of the Lincoln Square area as it stood before the almighty Center took its place, the idea of the cultural icon’s elitism existed in their residents’ movement since its beginning. Their criticisms live on even though their homes do not, and the discussion of what makes meaningful culture is essential to that criticism. Today, the Center is sometimes lambasted as obsolete, its art a relic of a time long past, and sometimes praised as a masterful expression of works that can never lose relevance. Lincoln Center continues to be a complicated backdrop to larger debates over cultural values, just as it always has.

53 Ballon and Jackson, Robert Moses, 101. 54 Ballon and Jackson, Robert Moses, 101. 55 Dan W. Dodson, “Family and Agency Equity in Urban Renewal,” The Journal of Educational Sociology 34, no. 4 (December 1960): 184, https://www.jstor.org/ stable/2264349s. 56 Dodson, “Family and Agency,” 184. 109

Appendix A: The site that would be cleared under the Lincoln Square Renewal Project is outlined in black. Source: Lincoln Square: Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 as Amended, photograph, https:// digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/99407f80-9ef0-0130f139-58d385a7bbd0.

Appendix B: An early site plan for the Lincoln Square renewal project, showing the Lincoln Center complex in the middle, the Fordham University campus immediately to its left, and Lincoln Towers in the top right. Source: Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 171.

Appendix C: Pages 4 and 5 of the brochure Lincoln Center - “A Mighty Influence.” Source: “Lincoln Center - A Mighty Influence” (New York City, NY, 1960), 4-5. [Accessed in the Metropolitan Opera Archives.]

Appendix D: Some excerpts from the Lincoln Square Slum Clearance Plan. The Committee on Slum Clearance, led by Robert Moses, released these to the public. Source: Samuel Zipp, Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 171.

Appendix E: Protestors demonstrating in opposition to the Lincoln Square renewal project. Source: Samuel Zipp, “The Battle of Lincoln Square: Neighbourhood Culture and the Rise of Resistance to Urban Renewal,” Planning Perspectives 24, no. 4 (October 2009): 422, Taylor & Francis Online.

Ballon, Hilary, and Kenneth T. Jackson. Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2007. Calta, Louis. “Lincoln Center Honors John D. Rockefeller 3d.” The New York Times (New York City, NY), June 24, 1970. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1970/06/24/80031713 pdf. Caro, Robert A. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Crowell, Paul. “Lincoln Sq. Rivals Clash at Hearing before Planners.” The New York Times (New York City, NY), September 12, 1957. https:// timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1957/09/12/84759776.pdf. Dodson, Dan W. “Family and Agency Equity in Urban Renewal.” The Journal of Educational Sociology 34, no. 4 (December 1960): 182-89. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2264349. Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Remarks at the Ground-Breaking Ceremonies for the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City.” Speech presented at the Groundbreaking Ceremony of Lincoln Center, Lincoln Center, New York City, New York, United States, May 14, 1959. The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ documents/remarks-the-ground-breaking-ceremonies-for-the-lincolncenter-for-the-performing-arts-new. Forest, Steven C. “The Effect of Title I of the 1949 Federal Housing Act on New York City Cooperative and Condominium Conversion Plans.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 13, no. 3 (1985). https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi Cooperative and Condominium Conversion Plans.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 13, no. 3 (1985). https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1267&context=ulj. Foulkes, Julia L. “The Other West Side Story: Urbanization and the Arts Meet at Lincoln Center.” Amerikastudien / American Studies 52, no. 2 (Winter 2007). https://www.jstor.org/stable/41158305. Foulkes, Julia L. “Streets and Stages: Urban Renewal and the Arts After World War II.” Journal of Social History 44, no. 2 (Winter 2010). https:// www.jstor.org/stable/25790364. Gold, Roberta. When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York Housing. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2014. Grutzner, Charles. “Stevens Expands Lincoln Sq. Plans.” The New York Times (New York City, NY), October 27, 1956. https://timesmachine.nytimes. com/timesmachine/1956/10/27/88476576.pdf. Klautke, Egbert. “Anti-Americanism in Twentieth Century Europe.” University College London (The Historical Journal), May 2011. https://discovery. ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1303252/1/Americanization_Revised_May_2011_Hi storical_Journal.pdf. Krawitz, Herman E. Memorandum, “Applications for Lincoln Center Apartments,” December 15, 1958. 1000. The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY.

Letter to Herbert Graf, July 28, 1958. The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY. Lincoln Center - “A Mighty Influence.” New York City, NY, 1960. Lincoln Square: Slum Clearance Plan Under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 as Amended. Photograph.https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/ items/99407f80-9ef0-0130-f139-58d385a7bbd0. Memorandum, “Memorandum on Proposed New Opera House Site,” October 17, 1955. The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY Metropolitan Opera, Season 1966-1967. New York: Metropolitan Opera, 1966. Moses, Robert. Letter, January 21, 1952. The Metropolitan Opera Archives, New York City, NY. Newhouse, Victoria. Wallace K. Harrison Architect. New York: Rizzoli, 1989. The New York Times (New York City, NY). “Displaced Tenants to Picket City Hall.” June 15,1956. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/06/15/86612808.pdf. The New York Times (New York City, NY). “Lincoln Square Advanced.” October 1,1956.https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/10/01/84885122.pdf. The New York Times (New York City, NY). “Lincoln Square’s Future.” July 19, 1957. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1957/07/19/84734524.pdf. The Opera House. Directed by Susan Froemke. Metropolitan Opera House, 2017. Present, Harris L. “Relocating Slum Residents.” The New York Times (New York City, NY), February 18, 1956. https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/ timesmachine/1956/02/18/84875078.pdf. Strongin, Theodore. “American Opera to Open New Met.” The New York Times (New York, United States), May 7, 1964. https://timesmachine.nytimes. com/timesmachine/1964/05/07/97389934.pdf. Young, Edgar B. Lincoln Center: The Building of an Institution. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Zipp, Samuel. “The Battle of Lincoln Square: Neighbourhood Culture and the Rise of Resistance to Urban Renewal.” Planning Perspectives 24, no. 4 (October 2009): 409-33. Taylor & Francis Online. Zipp, Samuel. Manhattan Projects: The Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal in Cold War New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.