El Paso revisits 1920s plan

Back to the future

Jon Boyd, Sep 10, 10.

George Kessler completed his master plan for Dallas in 1912. He had already devised a plan for Fair Park in Dallas in 1904, and in 1916 he would submit his plan for Houston’s Hermann Park. Among his last projects before his death in 1923 was a master plan for El Paso.

Some local El Paso leaders suggested that decades of development built around highways changed El Paso from a vibrant, high-wage, international city to a low-wage, sprawl-town, prompting them to revisit
George Kessler’s 1920’s plan for the city, according to a story in the El Paso Times (via Smart Growth America):

Ortega and Valencia are not surprised, then, that Kessler’s name keeps popping up when planning issues come up for discussion at City Hall nearly 90 years after his death.

Neither is Mathew McElroy, the city’s deputy director for planning and the person in charge of coordinating the region’s 20-year master plan.

“George Kessler had the insight, even back then, of what would work 10 years in the future, 20 years in the future and even 100 years in the future,” he said. “The plans that he developed in the 1920s are still so relevant today. They are still the basis of where we want to go as a city.”

McElroy said the city’s next plan, which when completed needs to be approved by the council, will probably include caveats for the redevelopment of the core of El Paso.

As Kessler suggested, it also will include plans to create centers of greater density to forge more use of public transportation.

McElroy said that the plans will also call for the continuation of one of Kessler’s favorite things about El Paso: the establishment of neighborhoods that encourage people to walk.

“These are things that are not just good things to do because a plan tells us, but rather because they promote the economic and physical health of El Paso,” McElroy said. “A city that creates density and walkability is a city that creates economic development and healthy life styles.”

The El Paso Times article describes Kessler’s vision for El Paso:

This part of the border was to become a metropolis in the desert.

That was what famed urban planner George Kessler predicted for El Paso in 1925 when the city became the first Texas municipality to adopt a city plan—an outline for proper growth patterns and a recipe for smart ways to build streets, parks and public buildings.

Kessler drew plans for an El Paso that through the decades would become a major economic player in the country and that therefore could provide the best quality of life for the people living along the Rio Grande.

Though the plan was followed to some degree, city officials say, somewhere during the mid-20th century El Paso abandoned most of the key recommendations Kessler made.

“What we got because of that is the type of city that we are today,” said city Rep. Steve Ortega, who has studied the Kessler plan extensively. “We are a city with so much potential, but because of the mistakes made 30, 40, 50 years ago, we are forced to try and backtrack in order to fix our planning problems.”

Ortega wants city development to closely follow Kessler’s largely abandoned plan.

When Kessler was asked by the city to develop a master plan in the early 1920s, El Paso was a city of about 100,000 people with a Downtown business district that rivaled that of Austin and Phoenix.

What Kessler found in El Paso surprised him. He saw a city well on its way to economic maturity based on the number of large buildings in the Downtown.

He also saw a well-defined effort to create livable neighborhoods with beautifully maintained parks and modern schools.

“In proportion to population and financial resources, no other city in the country has invested so much money as El Paso has in the last 15 years in reclaiming raw land for municipal use and occupancy,” Kessler’s report stated. “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.”

Using El Paso’s climate, geography and the financial resources available in the 1920s, Kessler developed a plan that called for development of the core city in a most extravagant way.

Neighborhood development under his plan included the creation of short blocks with wide sidewalks that would make it easy for residents to walk to shops, parks and schools.

Kessler was especially fond of El Paso’s school planning, which he called “world class.” He mentioned the development of Crockett Elementary School and Austin High School as examples to follow nationally.

Though the plan focused on what today would be considered Central El Paso, Kessler did not shy away from growth. He believed El Paso should preserve the green spaces that made up the upper and lower valleys, and that new subdivisions should be concentrated on the sand dunes west, northeast and east of Downtown.

Kessler also developed plans to create more commerce with Mexico, and even drew a master plan for a bridge that would carry a seamless flow of goods and services between El Paso and Juárez.

Nestor Valencia, a retired City of El Paso planner, was cited in the El Paso Times article. He says changes to El Paso started after World War II, when veterans started buying houses in the suburbs, with development on the fringes. Urban sections of the interstate highway system fueled sprawl development, and a once robust public transit system withered away. One plan to resurrect the system hinges on bus rapid transit.

Yet these leaders all agree that the city should use George Kessler’s plan from the 1920’s to reform El Paso’s land use.

The Dallas Morning News describes Kessler’s arrival to their city:

Kessler came to Dallas in 1910 at the invitation of the City Plan and Improvement League, a fledgling civic group headed by Dallas Morning News publisher George Bannerman Dealey.

Kessler had already produced a master plan for Fair Park in 1904, but that was a snap compared to the challenges he faced the second time around. Dallas was a planning disaster, “from a civic point of view the most slovenly community in the United States,” fumed one League member.

The Trinity River flooded almost every year and in 1908 had inundated downtown, drowning several people and destroying hundreds of houses and businesses. Its streets were raw, dirty and crisscrossed with railroad tracks; there were no boulevards, parks or other public amenities — no public realm of any kind, for that matter. The time had come for professional planning, and the Improvement League concluded that George Kessler was the man for the job.

(Photo credit: d_herrera96)