Leicester Anchor Tenants' Estate

Unwin, Town Planning in Practice p. 232. Read about the Anchor Tenants Estate here. I think that the open space at the centre of this plan is here - and now appears to be agricultural allotments.

Unwin, hypothetical grid plan treatment

Raymond Unwin, Town Planning in Practice p. 314

Raymond Unwin hypothetical (?)

This image is captioned 'Groups of buildings designed to maintain square roof lines on a curving road' on p. 346 of Raymond Unwin's Town Planning in Practice (1909). Although it appears in a general discussion of Letchworth Garden City it is not designated as an actual place and I suspect it may be hypothetical. Note the Tennis Court on the lower right and the small park on the top left featuring a sun dial.

Indian Hill Garden Village, Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

There is one internal reserve in this 1915 plan for a large suburban area, as seen below:

Indian Hill is apparently a verdant and popular place today but either I'm looking at the wrong part of it or this plan was not instituted in this form.

From George B. Ford/Ralph F. Warner, editors for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington DC 1917 p 191

New Holland, North Carolina

New Holland (see its present day condition here) was a major private drainage 'reclamation' project on the shores of Lake Mattamuskeet, North Carolina. The project, described in 1917 as being laid out as 'a scientifically planned town with modern provisions for social, educational, and recreational life - which schoolhouses, playgrounds, churches, public buildings, parks, community centres, and public and semi-public groups attractively groups' petered out and (according to Wikipedia) was finally discontinued, officially, in 1934.  

As presented in Ford and Warner's 1917 book (the source of the previous and next posts - see attribution below) the plan contains many numbered spaces with either road or laneway access, but no key for what the spaces actually represent. However, there is one labelled space in block 103 on what I assume is the east of the plan, between Haarlem, Carrituck, Kawana and what I assume is Albermarle Road East, labelled 'Private Park'. It has three pedestrian lanes for access.



The original sale of lots was advertised in the Raleigh News and Observer for 11 December 1916 (p. 8) and the town's first religious service was held in December 1921 (according to the Kinston, NC Daily Free Press for 22 December 1921, p. 6). The front page of the Elizabeth City, NC Independent for 13 October 1922 showed photographs of the area's pumping station and its hotel. However, ten years later the Independent proclaimed the 'New Holland Farm' to have been 'Doomed by Nature'; nature could feel slightly miffed by this headline given that the article itself, after severely pummelling 'nature' for its underhand ways, went on to blame the 'business depression' for the ultimate failure of the scheme (4 April 1931, p. 1). What is perhaps more interesting about this particular article is that it reveals one August Heckscher, 'New York financier and philanthropist' to be the initiator of New Holland.

Without wishing to go holus bolus into an examination of August Heckscher... though I so much would like to do that detective work, just on spec... I note that one August Heckscher was New York city parks commissioner in the late 1960s and early 70s (he died aged 83 in 1997); presumably (should one ever presume?!) the son of the man above. 

This site names the author of the plan as Harlan P. Kelsey, 'one of the most renowned landscape architects in America'. I found it in George B. Ford and Ralph F. Warner (eds) for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington, DC 1917 p. 116

Allentown, Pennsylvania

The text accompanying this diagram does not elaborate any further on this particular feature of the 'Modification'. A quick scan of the map of Allentown suggests this proposal was not acted upon (but that there are many 'H' blocks). This gives no particular clue either except to affirm Allentown's status as a city of broken dreams.

George B. Ford/Ralph F. Warner, editors for the Committee on Town Planning of the American Institute of Architects City Planning Progress in the United States 1917 Journal of AIA Washington DC 1917 p 7