ABSTRACT
The Building Zone Plan that New York City enacted in 1916 has been universally viewed by historians as landmark legislation in relation to the issue of design control and the urban landscape. Considering that the city saw more growth in the outer boroughs than it did in Manhattan after 1916, and that zoning provided a framework for this expansion, it is important to understand exactly how the resolution functioned as a control mechanism. The direct physical intervention embodied in the "setback" portion of the Building Zone Plan leaves little doubt about the motivation of the zoning resolution. It was as obvious then as now that the zoning was wholly inadequate to discourage tenement densities from spreading to the boroughs wherever the marketplace could support them.
