99-100. Sunnyside Gardens, Long Island, New York, 1924-28
Plan of Blocks Built in 1926 (top); Photograph of the Court, 1949 (above)
Clarence Stein and Henry Wright

The block is designed as a whole and the street is seen as a service element (Figure 99, top). Within the block, private and semi-private spaces are created. Private gardens are proposed throughout; semi-private open space is provided in three clusters. This arrangement, one year after Corbusier's Voisin Plan for Paris, offers a compelling alternative to the conventional high-rise superblock perimeter building or the tall tower in the center of the block. The buildings are kept low to the ground so that families and children have access to the surface

for play. Enclosed communal spaces provide a measure of physical safety and emotional security (Figure 100, above).

Many of the opportunities of the city grid are understood in this scheme which respects traditional residential desires for light, air, play space, and the potential for personal interaction and association at all times during the life cycle. The scheme also provides requisite densities, building economies in repeated units and acceptance of the city's infrastructure which is necessary if housing is to be produced at all.

in older urban areas.

Stein and Wright, in spite of their exceptional and even influential work at Sunnyside Gardens, Radburn, New Jersey, Chatham Village in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere during the 1920's and 1930's, never achieved the national and certainly not the international prominence of their contemporary Le Corbusier. Their influence on urban planning and especially on planning for housing is now emerging. Much is to be learned from a careful analysis of their work.

Fig. 21—Plan of the residential districts, dated November 1929.

On the site of 70 acres designated upon the general development plan as the core of a town retail center, the program was to design a fully enclosed, air-conditioned, two-level shopping mall to be built in stages up to an ultimate development potential of between 1,800,000 and 2,200,000 square feet of retail selling space. The center would contain, ultimately, five major and one minor department stores and 600,000 square feet of additional shops along with associated public spaces. The latter were to include commercial, display, and garden courts with major shopping facilities around them. Parking at approximately five spaces per 1,000 square feet was to be at grade and on parking decks. The first stage was to consist of two department stores, 300,000 square feet of retail shopping space, and associated public areas. The second stage would add a third department store and 120,000 square feet of retail shopping space. The third would complete the complex and would include deck parking. The center was to be linked with the existing town center plaza and to take note of previous planning decisions establishing highway alignments and entrances and the projected mini-bus route.

## COLUMBIA MALL

Columbia, Maryland

ARCHITECTS: Cope, Linder, Walmsley

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