Dreaming: Edward Logue’s Roosevelt Island, Then and Now

Edward Logue’s Roosevelt Island doesn’t match exactly with what we see today, but it’s in the ballpark.. But who was Ed Logue? You’ve probably heard of Louis Kahn, designer of Four Freedoms Park. And maybe Philip Johnson whose masterplan steers Roosevelt Island’s development. Ed Logue hired both, and he’s also the guy who renamed Welfare Island after FDR.

By David Stone

Roosevelt Island Daily News

Edward Logue and Roosevelt Island

A new book by Harvard professor Lizabeth Cohen about Logue sees Roosevelt Island as his Utopia. In a recent visit, reported in the Commercial Observer, Cohen considers how he’d feel about what became of it.

Edward Logue tackled developing Roosevelt Island after Robert Moses failed twice. He had big ideas.

How New York City Was Made by Water

Hired by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to lead the Urban Development Corp., Logue aimed for social integration statewide. He failed with most of it, especially the hated Nine Towns plan for integrating Westchester County. Roosevelt Island stands as his finest achievement.

Logue came to New York after rebuilding Hartford’s city center, a project now considered an ambitious failure. And after his vision for Boston replaced decrepit Scollay Square with Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market and a government center.

Boston was a mixed bag. Everyone loves Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market, but the government center not so much. It’s an overreach on a mammoth scale.

City Lab takes a broader view:

“(Logue) led major urban-renewal projects on the East Coast from the 1950s into the 1980s, combining Robert Moses-like ambition with a deep commitment to progressive New Deal values.” 

City Lab
Why “Fair Share” Housing Failed

“We have to face directly, in any way we can, the proposition that until the nation decides that low-income black people can have a place to live that they can afford, a place to send their children to school, outside Cleveland, outside Boston, we are just kidding ourselves.”

Ed Logue, in a speech one month after taking over UDC

Logue was talking about integrating Westchester County. His Nine Towns plan hit huge roadblocks and was doomed.

But for Roosevelt Island, Edward Logue brought the same fair housing ideas and succeeded. Conditionally.

Lizabeth Cohen takes a walk on Main Street

Cohen, who spent 14 years researching and writing  Saving America’s Cities: Ed Logue and the Struggle to Renew Urban America in the Suburban Age, joined the Commercial Observer for a look at Roosevelt Island today.

Her observations are mixed with others.

Hudson-Related built and manages Southtown, and Hudson’s Alex Kaplan gets close to the optimism many Roosevelt Islanders still share.

“There’s sort of a natural check-and-balance philosophy to the place,” Kaplan told the Commercial Observer. “It’s a true public-private partnership. That’s part of what has made it so successful.”

“So successful” is debatable. Many locals disagree, but that may be as much nostalgia as realism.

Except for the epic flop of Main Street Retail, Hudson-Related’s been a better than you’d expect community partner. Guided by Hudson president David Kramer, they’ve worked toward increasing affordability in Southtown.

Roosevelt Island: “…an ever-lonelier relic of an era when governments weren’t shy about building big things.”

But Cohen “…grimaced at seeing that some of the developers’ newest construction, such as a project called Riverwalk Point, had an off-street drive for cars.”

“This feels really different, doesn’t it?” she asked, approaching the development. “Because there were no cars originally. There was no sense that you’d be arriving in a vehicle. It was just going to be, ‘You’re going to approach the building as a pedestrian.’ ”

But seeing historic sites still intact pleased her. And our community garden would too, if she saw it.

Logue envisioned the Chapel of the Good Shepherd as a community space, exactly what it’s become.

And she wondered how Logue’s integration ideal turned out and was pleased at an actively diverse schoolyard at PS/IS 217.

Edward Logue’s Roosevelt Island and Developers.

“Our development, at the end of the day, is additive to the original,” Frank Monterisi, a Related Companies executive, told the Commercial Observer. “You look at Roosevelt Island and say, from the original thought, how can there be further development brought to the island to make it better?”

• ‘It’s Becoming Too Expensive to Live’: Anxious Older Adults Try to Cope With Limited Budgets
• Edward Hopper’s Secret Life, Truths Hiding Behind Works We Love
• The High Line’s Ruined: Now Who Committed This Crime?
• Edward Hopper’s New York Window, Plus Cats And All
• COVID-19 Killed My Friend And Neighborhood Legend Maurice Edwards

That’s a developer’s point of view, not that of anyone living here. Roosevelt Island’s pioneers wanted more of the same, and market rate rentals weren’t “better.”

Further development was in the master plan, but the Manhattan-level rents were not.

Even so, it can’t be denied that, overall, market-driven housing brought more diversity than Logue anticipated.

It’s just different diversity.

One thing stressing disconnect locals recognize is reflected in Monterisi’s reported belief that “the island’s community is as strong as ever.”

That’s wrong. Roosevelt Island may be more diverse, but it’s far from strong.

It once was. It stood up to RIOC and forced out Gov. George Pataki’s president Jerome Blue.

More to know about Roosevelt Island

These days, it’s fragmented, different than Edward Logue hoped for the place he named Roosevelt Island.

But times and people change. Community spirit can swell, and new leaders can inspire unified purpose.

That should make the next ten years interesting.

We will do well to keep Edward Logue’s vision in mind.

Also from the roosevelt island daily news

• 
  The US Remains a Grim Leader in Preterm Births. Why? And Can We Fix It?March 22, 2023
  Tamara Etienne’s second pregnancy was freighted with risk and worry from its earliest days — exacerbated by a first pregnancy that had ended in miscarriage. A third-grade teacher at an overcrowded Miami-Dade County public school,
• 
  Common Woodworking Problems and SolutionsMarch 21, 2023
  Professionals and hobbyists understand the woes of woodworking. Fortunately, a few woodworking problems have smart solutions you should know.
• 
  Immobilized Astor Place Cube Slated to Spin Again by SummerMarch 21, 2023
  The iconic Astor Place Cube, which has been immobilized for nearly a year because of structural damage, would be restored to its original free-spinning glory by July 17, under a proposal from the city Department
• 
  Adams faces campaign finance violationsMarch 20, 2023
  (The Center Square) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing tens of thousands of dollars in fines for alleged violations of state campaign finance laws involving his 2022 inaugural fund. The New York City’s Campaign
• 
  Freedom Lover Ron DeSantisMarch 17, 2023
  davidstone1313 See author's posts