To Mr. Hammer I mentioned what I had said earlier to the
Prince of Wales. He concurred that the Prince would do
well to speak out on such an issue. We discussed how
such small domiciles could serve as peripheral structures
with mid-rise or higher buildings behind them. We agreed
that at least the first stories of massive towers should abut
the sidewalks, in lieu of the oftentimes cold, concrete
or sparse, unimaginatively landscaped setbacks that
surround new buildings. In recent years, due to the efforts
of former Planning Commissioner, Joseph B. Rose, New
York City would mitigate against these spaces.
I had visited Moscow as early as December 1963;
Hammer knew Russian cities for pretty much, at the time,
the full expanse of the Soviet period. We both bemoaned
the fact that there could not be a more sensitive fusion
of exciting modernist schemes with smaller-scale
schemes, mass housing without deadening uniformity,
even a provocative mesh of traditional architecture with
contemporary.
When I first saw the Hammer houses in the late 1960s,
they appeared not only quaint, but practical examples of
small-scale dwellings mantled with great dignity, dwellings
that, in whatever architectural style, should inspire urban
planners. This, at a time—a long time—when architects
and urban planners had been obsessed, it seemed, only
by large towering blocks a la le Corbusier. The concept
of village was lost, not that the functionality of a 19th
century village applied to the 20th century, but at least the
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