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We continue our tour of villages with a visit to an
American village.
March 3,
2009: Let's Visit Some More Villages
February 15,
2009: Let's Take a Trip to the French Village
February 1, 2009: Let's Take a
Trip to the English Village
This is, actually, the village I live in: New
Berlin, NY 13411. Population about 1000. It is in one of deepest economic
backwaters of upstate New York. Not much has been built here since 1915 -- so
it has been left in something close to its original 19th century state, or at
least has not been overrun with 20th century suburban crap. It was, as we
will see, a rather prosperous spot in the late 19th century, with five
hotels! The main industry was agricultural, primarily eggs and cheese to be
shipped to New York City. There is a factory that, during World War II, was
the largest powdered egg factory in the world. Borden's Condensed Milk also
had a large factory, and there was a textile mill.
The town was formed from Norwich in 1807, so the
layout represents early 19th century thinking. This was about 120 years
before the automobile. However, as we will see, the American village does not
look like the English, French, German or Italian village, let alone the
Chinese of Japanese village. Those are all clearly urban places, while the
American village ... looks just the same as the idealized American suburb.
Let's take a trip along Main Street, from the south end of town to the main
intersection. (There is only one stoplight in town.) This is about a quarter
mile.
Here's South Main Street. Your basic two-laner with
room to park at the curb on both sides.
We're walking along the sidewalk. But, there is not
just a sidewalk, but also a strip of greenery on both sides of the sidewalk.
So, the actual width of the "sidewalk" is quite wide. I would say
there's about fifteen feet here. Plus fifteen feet on the other side of the
street. Plus two lanes of traffic, plus room for parking at the curb. So,
this is plainly NOT a Really Narrow Street, or even a Narrow Street. It is
pretty darn wide. There is probably at least 100 feet from building to
building. While there should be a few larger streets for transportation, we
will see that there aren't really any streets in this town that are any
narrower than this. Why were they so big? This was laid out around 1800. It
wasn't for cars. And, the European precedent is clearly for narrower, urban
streets. I've heard that streets were made wide enough that you could make a
U-turn with a horse-drawn wagon. So, right from the start, we have a somewhat
irrational focus on transportation, which, as we will see, is a theme
throughout even though this is 120 years before cars.
This is a vintage photo of Main Street from a little
north of the intersection, looking south. Look at the distance between the
buildings. Isn't that a little excessive? There's enough room for about six
to eight parallel lanes of wagon traffic -- although the wagon traffic that
actually exists in this picture is One Wagon. Admittedly, this is Main
Street, but there aren't any smaller streets in this town. Note the
difference between Main Street and this street in a French village:
We see that the street in the American village is
not just "a little wider," it is about ten times wider. However,
the size of humans hasn't increased. There are consequences when you make
your city ten times bigger but the size of humans remains the same. Also, note
that Main Street is dirt in the above photo. Normally, in the European model,
a street in the center of town would be paved with stones. Like the paving
stones on this French street. But, when you make the street ten times wider,
that becomes a mammoth job.
Let's keep walking along Main Street:
After a few steps we come to a house. This is a
rather nice house for the village, although it is suffering from deferred
maintenance. I'd guess it was built around 1840. We see that people weren't
poor in those days. This is a serious house. It looks to be about 4000 square
feet, and the construction quality is better than anything built today,
including stuff in the $1m+ range. You might laugh, but what is YOUR house
going to look like in 169 years?
So, along from our somewhat irrational focus on
Really Wide Streets and transportation, we also have Really Huge Houses. It
is not just Really Huge. Wealthy people have always had big residences. A
floor-through penthouse on the 60th floor in Manhattan can also be 4000 sf.
Some of those old brownstones are seriously huge as well. And, in those days,
there were seven family members and two servants living there. However, we
see that this is NOT an urban mode of construction. It is not an apartment or
townhouse. It is a rural mode. This is not just an "imitation" or
"ersatz" farmhouse, it is a farmhouse, totally indistinguishable
from the farmhouses dating from the same era, in the surrounding countryside.
So, also from an early time, we see in the American village a failure to
adopt traditional urban modes of design in urban areas. This is totally
different than, for example, the Florentine mode of construction:
To some degree, this decision is an aesthetic
consequence of the original decision, to make the streets Really Wide. Once
you start spacing things out, they tend to get even more spaced out.
Not only is this house a freestanding, detached
"farmhouse-style" building, it sits on its own micro-farm. Most
houses in the village of New Berlin are on lots of 0.25 to 0.5 acres. That,
you will recognize, is
the same as suburban homes today, and vastly larger than typical
urban townhouse lots. Some are larger: my house has a four-acre yard, but is
still inside the village, if you can believe that.
What else is on this 0.25 acres? Well, out back
behind our enormous 4000sf farmhouse is:
This building. What is it? Obviously it is not a
garage, because this predates automobiles by 80 years. We can also see that
it is quite enormous, and obviously built with great care and pride -- not
just a utility building.
It's a carriage house.
The thing to do in the mid-19th century was to
maintain a carriage. This was no joke: you had to have at least one horse and
maybe several, which you had to feed all winter. (The small door over the
main door leads to the hayloft.) What was the carriage for? I said before
that, in the tradtional village, you didn't need all this stuff, because you
could walk around town and lead an urban lifestyle, even if your village was
very small and out in the country. How many carriage houses do you see in
this French village?
Close to zero. Most people would say: "Well, in
the days before cars, if you wanted to get anywhere you needed a carriage.
Duh!" Like it was that obvious. Have you ever tried to maintain two
horses, and yoke them to a carriage? (I suppose that's what servants are
for.) In a small town, you should be able to walk around the town, and then
if you wanted to go to another town, you could take a "bus" (shared
carriage). Actually, despite the Really Wide Streets, you can walk around New
Berlin. So, a carriage was not at all necessary to get around the town. And,
as we will see, there was also a train which connected the villages. The
point is, our weird American fascination with personal transportation dates
from FAR before the automobile.
This shows the distance between houses. You can see
the white house and carriage house on the right. That is a BIG distance
between houses. You could fit a couple nice townhouses right in there.
Here are some townhouses from about the same
mid-19th century period. This is San Francisco. Townhouses are an example of
an urban format, which we clearly do not have in our American village. (These
townhouses even have garages.)
I suppose people are starting to whine now:
"But .... grass is nice! We need GREEN SPACE." I'll talk about
"green space" at some future point. My point today is: if you make
your roads 10x larger, and your houses on 4x-10x larger plots of land, but
people are the same size, there are consequences. For one thing, you have to
walk 10x farther to do anything. I imagine that would make you start to
fantasize about carriages before too long.
The American village was dysfunctional from the
start.
Let's continue our walk along Main Street.
This lovely stone mansion was completed in 1831. It
is now a bed and breakfast, and is on the National Register of Historic
Places. It
is known as the Preferred Manor.
The entrance foyer of the Preferred Manor. There is
a spring in the basement!
Preferred Manor living room. This is how these old
houses were decorated. Wow!
Preferred Manor bedroom. It is not very expensive to
stay there for a night.
As you can see, in terms of aesthetics and quality,
we haven't accomplished much in the last 178 years.
Front of the Preferred Manor.
Nice house. A little old lady lives here.
Same house. It is big! A carriage house in the back,
of course.
The other side of the same house. It goes on an on
... with multiple chimneys.
Continuing our walk. We've gone about 200 yards so
far.
Nice church! It opened in 1808. A real slate roof.
I guess this is the pastor's house.
A few more steps brings us to ...
The public school. I think this is the most
beautiful public school I've ever seen. Unfortunately, due to declining
enrollment, it was sold a few years ago, and became a private school.
Many schools from that period are astonishing.
Central High School, Detroit, Michgan. A cathedral
of public education!
A brand new high school. In the 1880s, even a glue
factory or a meat packing plant wouldn't be made as ugly as this.
I think that is enough for this week. We're going to
max out the servers as it is. We will continue our tour of an American
Village in the future.
I think of this area as the Yankee Heartland, which
can be loosely defined as the colonial regions north of Virginia. Most of the
Yankee Heartland has disappeared under the strip mall development of the 20th
century. You have to go to quiet little backwaters like this to find it in
something like its original state.
You can see that our civilization has deteriorated
considerably from that time. People in those days did a pretty good job. They
made things of lasting beauty. At the same time, the seeds of our suburban
self-destruction are clearly evident. So, it doesn't make too much sense to
imitate that period in all ways, because we wouldn't resolve the inherent
problems of that time. I would like to retain the best of that period, but
also fix the problems. This sounds difficult, but actually it is quite easy
to do. It's as simple as:
Really Narrow Streets
I said earlier that you needed to concentrate on:
1) Really Narrow Streets
2) Buildings close together (usually multistory)
3) No cars.
In that order. If you mess up the Really Narrow
Streets part, the fact that you don't have cars, or that the buildings are
close together won't solve the problem.
Village in the Alsace region, France.
Nathan Lewis
Nathan Lewis was formerly the chief international
economist of a leading economic forecasting firm. He now works in asset
management. Lewis has written for the Financial Times, the Wall Street
Journal Asia, the Japan Times, Pravda, and other publications. He has appeared
on financial television in the United States, Japan, and the Middle East.
About the Book: Gold: The Once and Future Money (Wiley, 2007, ISBN:
978-0-470-04766-8, $27.95) is available at bookstores nationwide, from all
major online booksellers, and direct from the publisher at
www.wileyfinance.com or 800-225-5945. In Canada, call 800-567-4797.
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