A Zoning Primer: Another Legacy of Herbert Hoover

In the fall of 1924 the morning paper serialized excerpts and adaptations from a Department of Commerce pamphlet on zoning.

A Zoning Primer

Back in 1922 a committee appointed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover published "A Zoning Primer."

October 3rd, 1924

After a couple of years it and its issues registered strongly enough for the morning paper to serialize it in the "Better Homes" Sunday section. You may recall that the Realtors had started discussing and advocating for zoning in the early fall of 1924.

The Commerce Department committee did not hit the theme of "undesirable citizens," as the Realtors felt free to do, and instead focused on equality, "applicable to all." The leading theme was stabilization of property value, which even if you didn't own property still applied, at least theoretically.

New "Better Homes" Sunday Section Joins Automotive Section in 1924

Back in 1924 the morning paper started a Sunday section titled "Better Homes." It promoted home ownership and advertised real estate and real estate firms, construction trades, home appliances, and home furniture and decoration.

An automobile section had already been going for a few years. The ad placements for the car trade had been considerable and it was clearly an important revenue stream.

To see the two sections developed and published in close proximity really underscores the connection of land use and transportation in the new autoism.

February 24th, 1924

February 24th, 1924

On February 24th of 1924 the "Better Homes section" started. (The page below from the May "homes week" reproduces the graphic more clearly on a single page.)

Proto-zoning Setbacks Halted Bungalow Court Apartments in 1924

100 years ago, in December of 1923 Adam Engel planned to build a bungalow court in the Parrish Grove subdivision, just south of what is now Parrish Middle School. He ran into problems with setbacks.

December 7th, 1923

January 13th, 1924

Less than a month after the original notice in December of 1923, the morning paper reported that Engel said "because of the building restrictions on Stewart street" he had to move his project. The Parrish Grove subdivision dictated buildings "may not be placed nearer than 20 feet to the sidewalk."

The second site at Capitol and E appears to be the Engel Apartments in this 1926 ad, and still around today as the Capitol Court.

Salem's First Zoning Map Limns Familiar Neighborhoods

With the debate on the overlay zones, it was time to return to the history of our zoning. 

December 11th, 1926, red added

Though it may not be exactly the same map that was adopted, this is very close to the first zoning map for Salem. There was a Public Hearing two days later on December 13th, and the zoning ordinance adopted on December 20th, 1926.

• "City First Zoned in December 1926, Appealed to City Beautiful Concept"

In microfilm and then scanning, the map is blurry and hard to parse. Some street boundaries, and a couple of other big streets, are added in red, as well a couple of places and also some zone numbering for 1 and 2. Zones 3 and 4 are indistinguishable. Some of the boundaries might be alleys rather than the streets themselves, so there's still a bit of uncertainty there, and we might be able to revisit it and be more exact later. But you can still see the main outlines of things.

The better class of "Residential District" had setbacks and landscaping requirements.

These clips are from the afternoon paper, and when we looked at things earlier, the clips were from the morning paper. This time the focus is less on beauty and more on exclusion in the service of property value.

In the lead up to the map, it was interesting to see again prominent instances of the rhetoric of "promiscuity" and "segregation."

"Promiscuous building," January 5th, 1926

Evidence for Downzoning to Limit Apartments in the 1970s

Over at Sightline they've got a new piece that is interesting. In "Yes, Oregon, There Is a Way to Build Enough Homes" they look at the housing production in the 1970s, and suggest that widespread downzoning in the 1970s was one ingredient in the decline in housing production.

Multifamily construction in Oregon soared in the 1970s, plummeted in 1980, and has never recovered. By the 2010s, the share of net new Oregon homes in multifamily buildings hit its lowest average in 60 years.

In part, that’s because the public backlash against what former Governor Tom McCall had called “coastal condomania” had also reached far inland. For example, as part of a national trend in the ‘70s, a major downzone banned apartments from much of inner southeast Portland.

We've touched on the rise and fall of construction before here, most recently on last year's Council Work Session on housing.

We are currently underbuilding homes
(Oregon Office of Economic Analysis)

There is some evidence for increasing downzoning here in Salem also.

This will just be a glancing, impressionistic survey, and there are many questions to follow up on in more detail. There are overlapping debates that could have led to downzoning, and not all the downzoning was aimed at banning apartments in the city. A lot of the discussion in the papers about downzoning concerns rural land and County planning, zoning, and land use decisions. It looks like the County had to approve the City's plans, and that appears to have been unwound in today's regulatory scheme, for example. Any good history of 1970s action will also require more knowledge of land use law itself, of SB 100 and the early DLCD, of County-City relations, and of City planning documents. Since this remains in living memory for some, you may know more about one or more of these!

Just at the city level, the adoption in late 1974 of new Statewide Planning Goals arising out of SB 100 and the development of Neighborhood Associations, together seemed to trigger new interest in downzoning. There was also was a recession around 1980 and so it is important to say the downzoning was but one ingredient in any decline in housing production, and not the only factor. (The Sightline piece discusses a couple other factors, too. There are multiple variables in play here and, again, this is merely a sketch.)

The Comprehensive Plan Map was not always Aligned with the Zoning Map

The 1973 Comprehensive Plan described "rapid production" of apartments. Interestingly it did not "distinguish between Single-Family and Multi-Family Residential areas" and talks at least in passing about a "mixture of residential with other uses in and near the core area and along major arterial streets." This may represent a course-correction from the 1963 Plan, which employed "buffer zones" between single detached housing and commercial zones. Any shifting extent for sort-and-separate zoning is not clear. The 1973 Plan and zoning map deserve a closer reading.

On housing in the 1973 Comp. Plan

But the Comprehensive Plan soon came under fire. In 1975 it was in the news.

1922 LTE on Zoning Shows Exclusionary Impulses and Still Echoes Today

Here's an interesting letter to the editor from 100 years ago. About zoning, but before our 1926 zoning scheme, it strikes themes we still see today.

February 10th, 1922

From the morning paper, responding to an editorial in the afternoon paper:

A STATEMENT FROM H. F. BONESTEELE
Helena, Mont., February 9, 1922
To the Editor of the Oregon Statesman - On January 3rd the following editorial appeared In the Capital Journal:

"Salem is famed as one of the most beautiful cities of Oregon.

"The chief feature in Salem's attractiveness is the beautiful civic center, with its stately public buildings and its parked grounds, its shaded avenues, bounded on all sides by fine residences, well kept homes with spacious lawns and ornamental shrubbery.

It is now proposed to destroy the symmetry and harmony of this civic center by sandwiching in a garage and salesroom between fine residences and palatial apartment house.

"The need of restrictive zoning laws was never more apparent to protect residence property against unnecessary business invasion and to maintain the desirability and beauty of the city against those who would commercialise for private profit a community asset and in the process work injury to the city.

"The property in question is in no sense a business location. There are a hundred more suitable sites for garages without invading the choicest residence sections and marring the charm of the civic center sites better adapted to business and the utilization of which would increase adjacent property values instead of depreciate them.

"The city council should, on the grounds of public policy, refuse building permits for such structures. There is said to be an old statute, formerly utilized to prevent the erection of livery stables and saloons in residence quarters as public nuisances, and the same law should be invoked against garages amidst dwellings on the civic center. If this statute proves inadequate, and the owners and builders persist in defying public sentiment, a proper zoning law should be rushed through the council to safeguard our scenic assets and protect property values."

City First Zoned in December 1926, Appealed to City Beautiful Concept

May 10th, 1927

Front page, but a small piece
December 21st, 1926

Though it was front page news, the actual zoning ordinance and map did not get much of a headline or even a very long notice. In December of 1926 the City passed Salem's first zoning law, and neither the paper nor the public seemed to pay much attention. This level of coverage seems disproportionate to the hullabaloo it had earlier occasioned.

New Commissioners

Back in the summer, on August 2nd, the Mayor appointed a whole new slate of Commissioners to the Planning and Zoning Commission.

One of our old friends, a candidate for the originator of the "third bridge" concept, Hedda Swart, was among them. I am not sure if he was a traffic engineer with the Highway Department yet, but on the surface it is easy to see him as a substitute for Conde McCullough.

Mid-month they elected officers and started work.

After Zoning Tax Fails at Ballot, Zoning Commission Quits in 1926

Before the City could be zoned in 1926, there was drama.

June 22nd, 1926

On June 21st in 1926, all of the Planning and Zoning Commission resigned:

the resignations declared that the "comprehensive bridge program," and activities formerly planned had become impossible following the refusing of the public on May 21 to grant $15,000 for expenses and expert engineer service.

In some of April and throughout May there had been lots of press and discussion about zoning and planning. In April Council had taken the Commission's request for funding and referred it to the voters. Some wanted a "do not pass" recommendation even. Passage was never a sure thing. A Letter to the Editor on May 19th explicitly talked about the values of a walkable neighborhood, the threat to the corner store, and the centralizing tendencies of zoning. (The writer also wanted a nearby garage and filling station. We may return to it, as an example of transition.)

The issue the previous day, on the 18th, had several articles in discussion.

May 18th, 1926

On the election of Friday, May 21st there were four funding items on the ballot:

• A tax levy to provide $5000/year for three years to fund the Zoning Commission's work.
• $30,000 in bonds for a fire truck and other fire equipment.
• A tax levy to provide about $30,000/year for bridge construction and maintenance.
• A tax levy to provide about $22,000/year for street work.

The Election season was strange by our modern standards. There had been a separate school election for the purchase of the future Leslie Junior High School just a couple of days earlier on Wednesday the 19th. Of the four on that Friday, only the fire department bond measure passed.

But less than the politics of the proposed tax levies themselves, it's the underlying planning matters that remain interesting today.

Salem's First Zoning in 1926 Grapples with Laundries, Junk Yards, and Signs

In July 1925 Council adopted the ordinance establishing the Planning and Zoning Commission and a zoning law, which was modeled after what had just been adopted in Portland a year previously, but was being appealed and litigated.

November 6th, 1925

In November of 1925 the City appointed the first Commissioners. They included the State Librarian, Cornelia Marvin, who was also an advocate for eugenics; and State Bridge Engineer Conde McCullough. So right there we have connections with race and transportation on the Planning and Zoning Commission.

Cornelia Marvin and future husband Walter Pierce
praising author of Oregon's sterilization law for
"preventing an increase of defectives."
(September 14th, 1926)

It seems impossible that it is a coincidence that the 1926 Polk Directory could say "There is absolutely no foreign element in Salem." The paragraph is written so the most reasonable interpretation is that "negros," including those with many generations here, are a "foreign element." Earlier and later directories omitted this paragraph, so something was definitely in the air at this time.

The same year, in 1926 "An All-American City"
with "no foreign element"

I have not seen a history here of zoning and the Planning Commission. Maybe one exists. At the moment, I want to sketch out some of that history from the mid-1920s. Through newspaper clippings we will trace out some of that history of zoning and its exclusionary intent.* The larger cultural matrix of exclusionary interests will be clear also. I am not going to argue that zoning is only a tool for exclusion. But exclusionary ends are an important ingredient in the early development of zoning here, and we should take care to center this in our understanding of the way zoning functions. We have sidestepped some of these questions in our contemporary language about aesthetics, the ways buildings and neighborhoods look, about allowable uses in them, and in our rhetoric of "neighborhood character." As we consider new zoning through Our Salem, more specifically consider how we implement more restrictive or less restrictive new standards for missing middle housing, and consider the exigencies of a Climate Action Plan, the use and misuse of early zoning should be on our minds also.

1920s Deed Restrictions as Precursor to Single Family Zoning

One of the things that all transportation advocates have to think about eventually is land use. If things aren't close enough for convenient walking and biking, no network of world class paths and lanes and sidewalks will actually induce meaningful numbers of walking and biking trips that replace drive-alone trips. Even in the best Dutch and Danish cities, bike trips fall off dramatically at distances of three miles. Sure, trips of 10 and 15 miles are not difficult by bike, but even in the best of circumstances they are not widely popular and common. The sweet spot is for short trips. And that means useful things clustered together, not forced apart in single-use districts at car-dependent spacing.

You might recognize Michael Andersen from his journalism at Portland Afoot, at BikePortland, or at People/Places for Bikes. Recently Andersen moved on from Places for Bikes to join Sightline as a Senior Fellow, and his first work there is about residential zoning. He'd been writing about housing at Portland for Everyone, and this is a logical continuation in his thought.

That piece, "Maps: Portland’s 1924 Rezone Legacy Is ‘A Century of Exclusion’," is very much worth reading - and it's got zippy cartography, to boot!

It was in 1924 that Portland voters approved the city’s first zoning plan in a citywide vote, four years after having narrowly rejected the idea.

It was a turbulent moment in Oregon politics. In 1922, the resurgent Ku Klux Klan had swept to electoral victory across the state, putting its members in the governor’s mansion, the House speakership, and controlling the Multnomah County Commission. In 1923, the Klan-backed Alien Land Bill, banning Japanese nationals from owning property in Oregon, sailed through the Klansman-led state legislature with just one dissenting vote.

A parallel national movement was afoot. A White House task force convened in 1921 was pushing US cities to pass zoning codes. The task force’s official documents never mentioned race, but its members were “outspoken segregationists” who (as documented by Richard Rothstein) wrote elsewhere that zoning could help segregate people by race.

This was the political environment when Portland’s real estate brokers brought a revised zoning plan back to voters for another try. Authored by H.E. Plummer, who served as a planning commissioner and head of the city’s bureau of buildings, the 1924 plan was approved with 60 percent of the vote, and formally separated industrial and residential development. And it introduced another idea, too: “single-family” zoning, which required households who wanted to live in certain parts of town to be able to pay not only for a home but for a certain minimum amount of land around it—at least 5,000 square feet in most cases. Other sorts of homes would be banned. [link to Rothstein added to citation]

There is no history of zoning (or of any redlining also) in Salem at the moment. It seems to be completely undiscussed and essentially unknown. But it's hard to believe that Salem didn't follow along to some greater or lesser extent.

So it was very interesting to come across some clippings from this same time period in Salem that seem relevant in this context. These are about deed restrictions rather than municipal zoning, but the goal seems to be the same: To create a floor in housing cost and thereby to keep the riff-raff out.

(House Bill 4134 was passed and signed into law this year to provide  a "specific procedure for petitioning for removal of personally discriminatory restrictions from title of real property." A century-old cost floor is no longer discriminatory, but there are surely instances of lingering racist exclusionary language in deeds around the city.)

Advertorial, August 23rd, 1925
(Note also the car-related ad!)