The 1925 City Plan for El Paso, Texas, was published by authority of the Mayor and City Council -- H.P. Jackson, and council members W.K. Ramsey, M.C. Tracy, J.B. Brady and A.B. Poe -- and the City Plan Commission -- H.D. Slater, H.L. Birney, Richard F. Burges, W.E. Robertson, R.E. Sherman, and engineer W.E. Stockwell.
The plan is relatively concise, 70 pages with illustrations. It begins with an introduction of its author, George Kessler, citations of El Paso facts, and a summary of city planning issues. The plan itself is divided into four parts: Highways, streets, and railroads; parks, recreation and schools; public utilities; and a section titled "Public Control of Private Property," which introduces the concept of zoning, among other items..
Some of the items will strike readers as familiar -- for example, the plan states the importance of removing the rail yards from the center of the city, an issue continually under discussion. [recent El Paso Inc. article ] The plan also advises that the mountains be left unscarred by building, as an amenity for all the public. And it looks to the future of water supply, urging the city to acquire the right to use river water.
It leans heavily toward the aesthetic, suggesting the importance of public landscaping, parks and recreational amenities for the public. Central El Paso's Memorial and Washington parks were key elements of the plan for the city, which at the time extended to Kern Place to the northwest, about Fred Wilson to the northeast, and about Val Verde and Raynor to the east and south. The city was laced with streetcar lines, which extended to the north and west edges, and down the valley to Ysleta.
The plan calculates a 1925 population of 100,000 in El Paso and outlying suburbs, and 25,000 in Ciudad Juarez. It estimates a population of about 250,000 by 1950, a prediction that proved to be slightly optimistic. That number was not reached until about 1960, when El Paso was in the process of dismantling its streetcar lines. The numbers now -- an estimated population of two million-plus between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez -- dwarf the Southwest metropolis of the past.
El Paso was a commercial, manufacturing and banking center of the vast Southwest, the most important city, according to boosters, between San Antonio and Los Angeles, between Denver and the Mexican border.
The focal point of the city then, more so then now, was the central business and entertainment district of Downtown El Paso, where entertainment, work and urban life concentrated. Outlying retail and business clusters also were considered important -- for example, the Piedras Street corridor, centered about Five Points.
Although hugely expanded and greatly changed, El Paso is much similar in some ways -- Downtown still is considered the center of the city, even as residential and business development has spread to outlying regions. What then was the sum of urban El Paso now is considered its core. For the most part, that core was built upon principles outlined in the 1925 City Plan for El Paso.
Newspaper Tree presents summaries and excerpts from the plan, basically following the outline of the document, beginning with an introduction of its main contributor.
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INTRODUCTION: THE PLANNER [link]
Kessler, an eminent planner in his time, is credited as the inspiration to the plan. He served as a consultant of plans in Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Memphis, Syracuse, Denver, Dallas and Salt Lake City, according to the plan. "Work of less comprehensive nature was done for more than 30 other cities," states the plan on page 6. "El Paso has the benefit now of the mature and well considered judgments of a man who stood at the head of his profession."
The praise continued:
"Whether in landscape gardening or in the broader aspects of city building, his touch was that of the artist, and he believed the fine arts ought to accompany us everywhere in life ... He was no visionary. He saw facts and worked with facts. He took things and men as he found them and enlisted men to make things better.
"It is something that El Paso has known him, however slightly. It is much that he knew El Paso and believed in this city of ours and its promise of greatness and strength and beauty."
INTRODUCTION: EL PASO FACTS [link]
The city's location, culture, weather, progressive development policies, natural resources, recreational opportunities and the ambition so common to community Babbitts (boosters) of the 1920s are touted in this section. Some excerpts:
-- "Within 600 miles of El Paso in any direction there is no other city so populous or so important commercially and industrially as El Paso.
-- "El Paso is the natural concentrating and distributing point for all passenger traffic in the Southwest, as well as for all trade and industrial traffic. Homeseekers and prospective investors in the Southwest always come to El Paso first to ... gain perspective.
-- "West of El Paso in the city's trade district is produced one-third of the world's supply of copper. Northwest and southwest of the El Paso are the greatest pine forests on this continent. South of El Paso is Mexico, which has produced one-third of all the silver that has been mined in the world in the last 400 years. El Paso is the center of the range cattle industry. North of El Paso, in New Mexico, are the greatest coal deposits west of the Mississippi. Texas produces one-fourth of the world's cotton and the raising of a fine grade of cotton under irrigation is an important branch of agriculture in the El Paso region.
-- "El Paso also enjoys the special industrial advantages of cheap labor, pure water, cheap power, cheap transportation, cheap and healthful living, exclusive markets and mild but stimulating climate.
-- "Now the city of El Paso through its Chamber of Commerce and other civic bodies and through the municipal government, has emphatically expressed its desire and intention, still further to promote the convenience of the population; to improve public health conditions; to provide more liberally for public recreation; to add to the comforts of urban life; to beautify the city and its surroundings; to develop earnestly all cultural elements in community life; and to give the city of El Paso such distinction among cities that it will acquire new and wider fame."
INTRODUCTION: PLANNING ISSUES [link]
The "Schedule of City Planning Problems" is divided into three sections, those for immediate action, the "Larger Present and Pressing Problems," and "Big Plans for the More Distant Future."
Some excerpts from problems for immediate action:
-- "Without great expense or much delay ... require cement sidewalks consistently through every section where building development has begun.
-- "Provide for the all-year daily and nightly use of school buildings and school grounds so far as practicable by the people for recreation and social purposes.
-- "Abandon unnecessary streets and parts of streets and turn the spaces thus saved into public playgrounds and parks.
-- "Promote planting of flowers, trees and shrubbery on private premises throughout the city.
-- "Institute public gardens, with complete collections of cacti and all the native flora. Use the native flora freely for new hillside parks."
Some excerpts from "The Larger Present and Pressing Problems":
-- "Providing an adequate permanent supply and distribution of pure water at lowest possible cost, having in mind the probable needs, progressively, of this city for the next 10, 25, and 50 years.
-- "Removing railroads from the heart of the city and abolishing grade crossings; at the very least, abating the nuisance of freight train traffic through the business center; and providing industrial and commercial facilities for a great city.
-- "A boulevard or paseo ... to connect the heart of El Paso with the heart of Ciudad Juarez; crossing the river on a monumental free bridge." The bridge, states the plan, "should be a structure meriting international fame; the Bridgehead at either end should be rather broadly developed with parks.
-- "More adequate recreation facilities for adults and children should be provided throughout the city. ... There is a need for more park spaces, large and small."
Excerpts from "Big Plans":
-- "A Municipal Museum to cost from $500,000 upward ought to be regarded by far-seeing El Pasoans as a necessary development.
-- "A vision of the future includes the thorough and systematic development of the entire Franklin range ... with safe and easy roads up to and along the ridge; with trails, some planting, a water supply, summer resorts, picnic grounds, cottage sites, and perhaps a hotel and sanatorium.
-- "The time will come when Ciudad Juarez will be a show city creditable to Mexico and an asset to El Paso as well. It is to El Paso's interest to cooperate most energetically ... and to encourage the growth of a spirit of true neighborliness at this point on the border."
TRANSPORTATION: HIGHWAYS, STREETS AND RAILROADS [link]
The plan repeats in slightly more detail the plan for a new bridge. It contemplates a far more open interaction between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez than currently exists: "Every traveler would be impressed by the evidence of the intimate relations between the two banks of the stream and the cause of international amity would be promoted."
The plan also calls for a bridge leading from Piedras Street to Ciudad Juarez.
Another comment concerns the function of streets: "A fault in El Paso, as in many other cities, is in too wide street pavements on purely residential streets. Unnecessary pavement is hot, unsightly, and expensive, and the space might much better be devoted to trees and grass."
Of the railroad, the plan had this to say: "It is not the purpose of this report to attempt to say what the solution shall be. It is a railroad problem involving practical matters of operation and maintenance, and the companies concerned are supposed to be working on it.
"There are however certain general conditions for a satisfactory solution ... First--Grade crossings should ultimately be eliminated from all intersections with streets designated on the map as main thoroughfares. Second--Classification yards and tracks not necessary for local service should be removed from the center of the city."
PARKS, RECREATION AND SCHOOLS [link]
"The progressiveness of a city may be measured largely by its parks and recreational facilities, for these are the expression of the aspirations of the community beyond the purely material and obviously necessary things," the section begins.
"But these have more than esthetic value and have been found to pay real, if indirect, dividends which may be translated into cash. The dividends come in attracting new citizens, in keeping the old citizens and reducing the labor turnover, and in the transient and tourist trade."
The plan counted 22 developed parks totaling 97.5 acres -- including Memorial, Washington, Madelyne, and Mundy -- as well as four partly developed parks totaling 313 acres (300 acres for a public golf course) and seven undeveloped parks totaling 175 acres, including the 100-acre site of Charles Davis Park, now land that is owned by the University of Texas at El Paso.
The plan calls for "wide-curb" parkways, a strip of land between the street and sidewalk planted with trees, shrubs, flowers and grass. "They may entirely transform the outward aspect of a city, from comparative bleakness to happy evidences of comfort and civic care."
Of Chihuahuita, which the community still is termed, the plan states: "A large proportion of the residents of Chihuahuita (as the district is locally termed) are not citizens of the United States. Many are transients, families on the way to or from the interior of the United States, peripatetic track workers, beet harvesters, cotton pickers, miners, etc.
"El Paso city is bound to take care of all the large alien population just as if it 'belonged,' and school system, governmental agencies, utilities, and all the appurtenances of urban life must be scaled to accommodate all."
PUBLIC UTILITIES [link]
The plan addressed future water needs, noting that while there is plenty of pure, cheap groundwater, the Rio Grande likely would be needed at some point:
"The waters of the Rio Grande are being rapidly appropriated and used for irrigation purposes. If the city is some day to require water from this source, as seems very probable, it will be wise to take promptly such steps as may be necessary to acquire the right to use it when needed. If this is neglected until the need for river water becomes imperative the cost will be increased."
PUBLIC CONTROL OF PRIVATE PROPERTY [link]
Zoning, a concept which most take for granted now, was new at the time of the 1925 El Paso plan. It is relatively simple, with three categories of land use, with several subcategories. The three main categories listed in the plan are residential, business, and industrial.
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AN NPT POSTSCRIPT
The planners wrote a document against which the present of El Paso can be measured. They were imperfect, afflicted with some of the blind spots prevalent then (and some would argue now, as well). For example, in a discussion of Chihuahuita, a neighborhood that still exists by the foot of the Santa Fe Bridge, they wrote of the "Mexican districts":
"Merely as a reservoir of labor, skilled and unskilled, the districts known as 'Mexican districts' are essential to the city's economy. As a foundation stratum of workers the Mexican element on El Paso is far superior to the corresponding stratum in the eastern, northern, and southern cities. The people naturally have facility to learn the technic of many industries with special ease and rapidity. Given the right training and industrial opportunity, they quickly surpass the production records of many other races in like work."
Such commentary, seen now as patronizing and self-defeating, was a reflection of its time. It perhaps points to an underlying weakness -- the failure to develop all of El Paso's human capital -- that prevented some of the more visionary aspects of the plan truly coming to fruition. The vision was similarly reflected in city plans across the nation; El Paso's city boosters undoubtedly were as sincere as those anywhere else in the country, and today's political and civic leaders echo their statements. These words, from the plan's introduction, could have been written yesterday:
"Nature and a tremendously energetic citizenship combine to afford El Paso opportunities for unique development, with possibilities unsurpassed by any other community in America.
"There is no reason why El Paso should not be, and cannot be, a city of striking distinction among cities, a city so attractive for permanent residence and for transient visits as to make a name for itself nationally famous."
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