national register nomination for boulevard park historic

Residential hotels were anathema to city planners and reformers who sought to
separate home life from the workplace and the marketplace. Progressive reformers of the
early 20 th century were the initial advocates of hotel regulation, as part of their overall
efforts to mitigate the problems of urban life. Groth states that many of the initial
attempts to regulate residential hotels improved hotel life, like regulations mandating
ventilation, minimum square footage, ratios of toilets to rooms, and other health and
safety rules. However, for many Progressives, the density of hotel life and the
intermingling of different social classes that resulted were problems as serious as
sanitation and safety. City planners used new tools like zoning to prohibit new residential
hotels and boarding houses in the central city, but also prohibited their construction in
new suburbs. The model for Progressive residential districts was based around family
life, with lawns, open space and detached dwellings. Backed by earlier Progressive ideas
about slum clearance and zoning, business interests in central cities wanted valuable
downtown lots for expansion of the business district and new freeways to carry suburban
residents to downtown businesses. Hotels were not counted as residential units, and did
not require replacement before demolition. Their residents were not eligible for relocation
assistance or public housing. Federal policies for public housing counted only families,
not individuals, and ignored the massive population of hotel dwellers displaced by urban
renewal. This population crowded into the surviving existing residential hotel stock, or
became homeless due to the lack of other options. Groth holds the reformers responsible
for the elimination of housing for millions, and claims that the lack of this housing type
became a significant cause of homelessness through the present day. He closes by calling
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