Myer R Wolfe

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Myer Richard "Mike" Wolfe (July 15, 1918 - June 25, 1989) was an American urban designer and a founding member of the Department of Urban Planning (1961) and the Urban Design Certificate Program (1967) at the University of Washington. His life work pioneered such topics as urban form, the town as artifact, the urban design process, and comparative urbanism in the field of urban planning.

Contents

Early years

Wolfe was born in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1918 to Bernard Wolfe (1890-1972) and Ester Krawetz (1890-1969), Eastern European Jews whose families immigrated to the US in 1907 and 1909, respectively. Bernard was a plumber, and Esther, a knitter. They first lived at 145 Boylston Street in Malden, MA, and then moved to 91 Howard Street in Haverhill, MA. The household included Mike’s older brother and a cousin who was about the same age as Mike. [1]

Wolfe graduated from Haverhill High School (ca 1937) and received a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture (ca 1941) from the University of New Hampshire in Durham, NH. He joined the US Army Air Forces in 1942, serving in the Burmese-Chinese-Indian theatre of operations until 1945. He then enrolled in Cornell University’s ten-year old Urban Planning Program and received a Master of Regional Planning degree in 1947, submitting a thesis entitled "The Current Toll Road Trend." Wolfe’s first academic appointment was at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, KS. In 1949, he moved to Seattle to teach at the University of Washington School of Architecture. [2]

Institution Building at the University of Washington

At the University of Washington School of Architecture, Wolfe was in the company of other such future luminaries as architect Victor Steinbrueck, whose advocacy was responsible for preserving much of Seattle’s urban architectural heritage; and Richard Haag, who founded the program in and later the Department of Landscape Architecture. Together with other local colleagues, these newcomers helped create the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (1957-58) (name changed to College of Built Environments in 2008), which helped formalize the establishment of separate departments of Architecture and Urban Planning (1961) and of Landscape Architecture (1969). [3]

Mike Wolfe was active in the surrounding Puget Sound region, serving on the Washington State Highway Commission, the Seattle World’s Fair Commission, and carrying out important funded research about the developing Seattle suburbs. He collaborated early on with some of the young forward thinkers who had joined programs in Engineering, Geography, and Sociology, and who were shaping the emerging fields of data and computer sciences, leading to the quantification of the social sciences. [4] Wolfe cooperated with Engineering Professor Edgar Horwood, one of the early contributors to the development of the digital and spatial US Census [5] and the founding member of URISA (Urban and Regional Information Systems Association). [6] In 1961, Horwood led one of the first use of computerized data in urban planning, applied to the development of the Community Renewal Plan of the City of Spokane, WA, which served as a pilot case for using US Census population and housing digital data.

Wolfe welcomed geographers, anthropologists, sociologists and economists as faculty in the newly formed Department of Urban Planning. He himself remained a traditional urbanist, focusing on the visual and formal dimension of cities. He did not espouse the construct of dividing the quantitative from the visual, writing forcefully and prematurely (1965) on the promises of "a visual supplement to urban social studies". [7] He formed one of the first Urban Design programs in the US (ca 1967) that was independent from the established departments of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Planning. The program welcomed students from all the professional programs (urban planning, architecture, and landscape architecture) enabling them to work together with the ultimate goal of making quality urban environments. In 1965 Wolfe started a class called the Urban Form, which remains at the core of the urban design and planning program today. [8]

Wolfe stayed at the University of Washington until his death in 1989. He ended his academic career as the Dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning (1979-83), a position that allowed him to foster further interdisciplinary teaching and research both between the College departments and within the larger university setting. [9]

Lectures and Consultancies in the US

Wolfe actively shaped academic and professional organizations such as the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning [10] (ACSP founded in 1969) and the American Institute of Planners (which was folded into the American Planning Association [APA] in 1978). He advised the Johns Hopkins University Center for Metropolitan Planning (1972), graduate programs in urban design and planning at the universities of Puerto Rico, Texas, Maryland, Hawaii, and Minnesota, as well as the US National Endowment for the Arts on Urban Design Education (1982). He was a Visiting Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles (1963-64). After retirement from the University of Washington, he became Acting Dean of the then College of Architecture and Environmental Design at Arizona State University [11] in Tempe (1986-87). [12]

Wolfe consulted for a variety of public agencies outside of the Pacific Northwest. In 1966, he advised the housing and urban renewal administration of San Juan, Puerto Rico on their strategies, policies, plans and programs. Between 1973 and 1976, he consulted for the State of Hawaii Department of Planning and Economic Development, working on a demonstration program for the production of urban design plans that balanced governmental processes with private sector costs and benefits. The plans addressed new housing development, commercial services, and transit systems, while avoiding the displacement of small businesses and guaranteeing the preservation of historic areas. [13] This work led to the publication of an Urban Design Primer for Hawaii professional planners and elected officials. [14]

Wolfe carried out several major research projects that focused on the fast-growing Pacific Northwest region. With small grants from the University of Washington Graduate School, he studied the dynamics of urbanization. In 1960, he negotiated a research contract with the Weyerhauser Corporation, a major landowner in the Pacific Northwest, to study patterns of suburban land development in the Seattle area. [15] Studying contemporary urban growth and development was as important to Wolfe as preserving the extent environment of older towns. Early on, he wrote about the changing responsibilities of urban planners in the wake of suburbanization and the importance of seeking continuity in urban form through the ages, publishing in the Journal of theAmerican Institute of Planners''. [16] Scaling up his studies of explosive suburban development beyond the Seattle region, he published an article in the British Town Planning Review, [17] which helped him secure a grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1967. The 4-year grant produced Urban Design within the Comprehensive Planning Process, a guide for planners to consider new and old urban forms in the general plan making process. [18]

Wolfe built on the transportation work that he had started in his master’s thesis with grants from the Washington State Legislature to develop criteria for designating highway scenic areas (1962 ), [19] and from the US National Cooperative Highway Program to assess impacts of highway improvements on adjacent communities. From the early-to the mid-1980s, two grants from the National Science Foundation led to assessments of vulnerability to earthquakes and mitigation approaches to guide land use decisions. [20]

Wolfe also received one grant from the US National Endowment for the Arts for research on small towns (1970) and one Design Project Fellowship (1977).

International activities

Wolfe was also active internationally. He received two Fulbright Fellowships for study abroad, one to stay at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, in Copenhagen, Denmark (1959), and the other to stay at the Technical University in Milan, Italy (1965). In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he went to Western Australia to consult on the design of a New Town Prototype for a private consortium. In the early 1970s, the US Department of State sponsored Wolfe to help replanning the central city of San Salvador, El Salvador; in the mid-1970s, he was part of a United Nations Advisory Team to assess the effects of a new expressway, including the possible displacement of existing settlements, in the Metropolitan Area of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and in the late 1970s, the US State Department sponsored Wolfe to give lectures and seminars in Korea, Hong Kong, and Burma. [21]

From 1967 to 1978, Wolfe was a Consultant to and Senior Research Associate in the Urbanisticni Institut in the city of Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia). The project was a demonstration study of regional planning in the Ljubljana Metropolitan Area. It was sponsored by the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, and their Yugoslav counterparts and included advisors from several universities. [22] In 1978, the last year of the “Yugoslav project,” Mike spent time as a Visiting Scholar at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. [23]

Sketches

Wolfe left numerous sketches of towns, cities, urban, and suburban places, which he used to record his travels and to document his studies. His sketches of small towns in the Pacific Northwest were meant to encourage the local populations to preserve the integrity of their built environment. Wolfe also sketched the emerging suburban development that he studied in the Seattle region. In the 1960s already, he was an advocate of the need to use a design approach to the newly emerging suburbs. Some of the sketches came in the form of conceptual diagrams and plans, but most were perspective drawings of places as seen or observed. The sketches were donated both in original and digital form to the University of Washington archives. [24]

Personal life

In 1943, Mike and Rosamond Virginia Fellman (1924-2023), from Newburyport, MA, married in Broward County, FL. They had two sons, Michael (born 1944), an architect, and Charles R (Chuck) (born 1955), a writer about cities and formerly an environmental and land-use attorney. [25]

Legacy

Documents regarding Mike Wolfe’s papers, lecture notes, building designs, urban planning projects, and sketches are held in the University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division Collection #3390

Further reading

Available at the University of Washington Libraries https://lib.uw.edu/types/

Lectures

Mike’s archives at the University of Washington archives include (1) “The economic outlook of the Pacific Northwest,” ca 1982, and (2) “An introduction” to the International Conference “Streets as public property: public/private interaction in planning and design," University of Washington, College of Architecture and Urban Planning, Seattle, Washington, May, 1982. [26]

Available online is “Urban design in the urban planning process,” Ball State University Libraries 1979-10-22 Introduction by Malcolm MacNair; presented as part of the Guest Lecture Series at Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning. [27]

Wolfe Endowment and Lecture Series at the University of Washington

The Endowment awarded a total of 45 urban design students, 35 who received a scholarship since 1993 and 10 who received a thesis award since 1995. It has sponsored 7 MR Wolfe Lectures since 1986.

Awards

N.D. Inducted to the University of Washington College of Architecture and Urban Planning Roll of Honor in Architecture Hall on the Seattle campus.

2018 University of Washington College of Built Environment, Distinguished Faculty Award for Lifetime Achievement. [28]

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References

  1. ↑ "PCAD - Myer Richard Wolfe". pcad.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-31.
  2. ↑ "PCAD - Myer Richard Wolfe". pcad.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved 2024-05-31.
  3. ↑ "History". University of Washington. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  4. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  5. ↑ "PCAD - Edgar Miller Horwitz Horwood". pcad.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  6. ↑ Yumpu.com. "Kenneth J. Dueker Emeritus Professor of Urban ... - Esri Support". yumpu.com. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  7. ↑ Wolfe, Myer R. (February 1965). "A Visual Supplement Urban Social Studies". Journal of the American Institute of Planners. 31 (1): 51–62. doi:10.1080/01944366508978474. ISSN   0002-8991.
  8. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  9. ↑ "History". University of Washington. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  10. ↑ https://www.acsp.org/
  11. ↑ https://design.asu.edu/degree-programs/graduate
  12. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  13. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  14. ↑ Wolfe MR. Urban design primer, Hawaii. Hawaii: State of Hawaii Department of Planning and Economic Development, 1975
  15. ↑ Wolfe MR. Locational factors involved in suburban development. In Wolfe MR, Weyerhauser Corporation, editors. Seattle, WA: University of Washington. College of Architecture and Urban Planning 1961. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Wolfe%2C%20Myer%20R%2E
  16. ↑ Wolfe MR. Pages From Planners' Notebooks: Marks of the Eras. Journal of the American Institute of Planners. 1960, 26(2):125-30. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01944366008978395
  17. ↑ Wolfe MR. A chronology of land tenure: influences on suburban development patterns. Town Planning Review. 1967, 37(4):271-290 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40102532
  18. ↑ Wolfe MR. Shinn RD. Urban design within the comprehensive planning process. Shinn RD, editor. US Department of Housing and Urban Development Urban Planning Research and Demonstration Project. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, 1970. https://books.google.com/books/about/Urban_Design_Within_the_Comprehensive_Pl.html?id=6qtPAAAAMAAJ
  19. ↑ Wagner LC. Regulation of outdoor advertising along the interstate system. Washington State: University of Washington for the Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Highways, Streets and Bridges of the Washington State Legislature, 1962. The report includes the following chapters: Louis C. Wagner, Virgil E. Harder. The application of the Federal standards regulation of outdoor advertising upon the interstate highways within the State of Washington; and Myer R. Wolfe, Thomas J. Norton, Sidney Cohn. Criteria for the establishment of additional scenic areas upon any state highway upon to the which outdoor advertising shall be regulated. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Wolfe%2C%20Myer%20R%2E
  20. ↑ Wolfe MR, Heikkala S. Earthquake hazard mitigation, Urban scale vulnerability. Proceedings of the U.S.-Italy Colloquium on Urban Design and Earthquake Hazard Mitigation, Rome, Italy, 12-16 October 1981. Bolton PA, Wolfe MR, Heikkala S, Land Use Planning for Earthquake Hazard Mitigation: A Handbook for Planners. Volume 14, Special publications of the Institute of Behavioral Science. Boulder, CO: Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center, 1986.
  21. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  22. ↑ Wolfe MR. American-Yugoslav Seminar Series, Outline of Lecture: a Study of Alternative Patterns of Urban Growth, an Overview, April 19, 1968.Vladimir-Braco Mi. Myer R. Wolfe: Zapis v spomin [Mark my words]. Urbani izziv [Urban Challenge Journal]. 1989(10):43-44. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44179852
  23. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  24. ↑ "Myer R. Wolfe papers - Archives West". archiveswest.orbiscascade.org. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  25. ↑ "PCAD - Myer Richard Wolfe". pcad.lib.washington.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-13.
  26. ↑ Anne Vernez Moudon papers, 1964-2008 – Archives West https://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:80444/xv71359 Retrieved January 26, 2023
  27. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1mLqbtitRg
  28. ↑ https://be.uw.edu/2018/05/09/ten-honored-with-new-cbe-distinguished-faculty-award-for-lifetime-achievement/
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