James W. Rouse
Encyclopedia
James Wilson Rouse founder of The Rouse Company
, was a pioneering American
real estate developer, urban planner
, civic activist, and later, free enterprise
-based philanthropist
. He is the maternal grandfather of actor Edward Norton
.
, the son of Lydia (née Robinson) and Willard Goldsmith Rouse, a canned-foods broker. His father, a lawyer trained at Johns Hopkins University, once ran as the state's attorney for Harford County. When he lost, the Rouse family moved from Bel Air, Maryland to Easton. Rouse grew up in Easton (then population: 5,000) on a well-to-do street on the edge of town. He was taught at home by his mother until second grade, when he was transferred to a public school (which found him to be well prepared enough to skip a grade). At the age of 16, in his senior year of high school, Rouse faced significant life changes: he lost his father and mother to illness, and childhood home on Brooklett's Avenue to bank foreclosure. Rouse was encouraged by his siblings to improve his chances for college admission by doing a year of preparatory school at the private Tome School
in Port Deposit, Maryland.
Facing money problems and unable to continue at the Tome School, the Rouse family sought a way for him to attend college by appealing to his oldest sister, who had married a Navy officer stationed in Hawaii. Rouse declared himself his sister's dependent and, with Navy connections now secured, was thereby able to attend the University of Hawaii at a greatly reduced cost. Despite the exotic lure of the islands, Rouse missed Maryland. Again, the Rouse family found a scholarship for Jim at the University of Virginia. He declared his major as political science and waited tables at a local boarding house. Not being able to cover the gap between his scholarship and his remaining expenses, he proposed leaving Charlottesville and moving to Baltimore to try and make it on his own.
In 1933, Rouse arrived in Baltimore in search of opportunity. He was fortunate to find a job parking cars at the St. Paul Garage. He later remarked that he got the job even though he could not drive. He convinced his foreman to teach him rather than fire him. Although he had only two years of undergraduate college on his transcript, in the 1930s that was enough to qualify for law school. He borrowed money and attended classes three nights at the University of Maryland
law school while working at the garage over 100 hours a week.
After graduating in 1937 he worked for the Federal Housing Administration
and in 1939 he was a partner with Hunter Moss at a mortgage
banking firm called the Moss-Rouse Company, which would eventually become the Rouse Company.
After World War II
he became involved in Baltimore, Maryland's efforts to rehabilitate its decayed housing stock. This led to his participation in Dwight D. Eisenhower
's National Housing Task Force starting in 1953. He introduced (or at least helped popularize) the term "urban renewal
" to describe the series of recommendations made by that task force.
in Glen Burnie, Maryland
, the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River
and the first built by a real estate developer. His company used the term "mall" to describe the development, which was an alternative to the more typical strip mall
s usually built in the suburbs (the "mall" in "strip mall" came into usage later, after the enclosed mall had been popularized by Rouse's company). Although many now attribute the rise of the shopping mall
to the decline of the American downtown
core, Rouse's focus at the time was on the introduction of malls as a form of town center for the suburb
s.
His company became an active developer and manager of shopping center and mall properties, even as he shifted focus to new projects which eventually included planned communities and festival marketplaces.
Harundale Mall has been replaced by Harundale Plaza. In 1999, the mall reopened and redeveloped as Harundale Plaza, a strip shopping center. Stores include A.J. Wright, a Super Fresh supermarket, Outback Steakhouse, Hollywood Video, and a U.S. Post Office, along with several other typical strip-mall stores. The signature "rock" from Harundale Mall is now at Harundale Plaza. As of April 2008 Value City had departed Harundale Plaza following a corporate decision to sell several locations before ultimately closing all Value City stores in December 2008. A Burlington Coat Factory now occupies the space Value City once held.
. After engaging in a planning exercise for the Pocatinco Hills estate of the Rockefellers, Rouse constructed his first planned residential development: the Village of Cross Keys
in Baltimore. On June 16, 1961, Rouse bought 68 acres (275,186.5 m²) inside the city from the Baltimore Country Club for $25,000 an acre. Rouse excitedly proclaimed that this undertaking “will be the largest, and potentially most important development in the history of Baltimore.” Rouse hoped that he could bring to the residential field “some of the fresh thinking, good taste and high standards which we believe have marked our shopping center developments.”
Familiar with bad housing in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
, Rouse now had an opportunity to demonstrate what housing within a city’s borders could be like. “There is a real need for residential development,” he said, “in which there is a strong sense of community; a need to feed into the city some of the atmosphere and pace of the small town and village; a need to create a community which can meet as many as possible of the needs of the people who live there; which can bring these people into natural contact with one another; which can produce out of these relationships a spirit and feeling of neighborliness and a rich sense of belonging to a community.” In a city that practiced strict racial segregation, Rouse intended Cross Keys to be open to all who could afford to live there. The development was a mixture of townhouses, garden apartments, a high-rise apartment house designed by Frank Gehry, stores grouped around a village square, and an office complex. By 1970, the Village of Cross Keys had become among the most desirable places to live in the Baltimore area.
While Cross Keys was still under construction, Rouse decided to build a whole new city. The creation of Columbia, Maryland
, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., was the greatest adventure of Rouse’s life. Columbia was the ultimate opportunity: the chance to embody his ideals in a whole new city. For the undertaking that would become Columbia, Rouse turned to his partner in previous projects, the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company
("CG"). At a meeting at company headquarters in Hartford, Rouse made his pitch to CG’s top real estate and mortgage people and the company’s chairman of the board, Frazar B. Wilde. The questioning was mostly negative, until Wilde joined in. He expressed the view that CG couldn’t lose. If Rouse’s project did not succeed, the land could always be sold, and probably for a higher price than what it cost.
The land for the new city would be owned by a subsidiary called Howard Research and Development Corporation. CG would own half of that corporation and Rouse’s corporation the other half. Rouse would be responsible for the management of the acquired land and for preparing a master plan for development. CG also put up some of the money for Columbia’s infrastructure. The rest was supplied by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the Chase Manhattan Bank
.
By the end of the summer of 1963 close to 14000 acres (56.7 km²) of Howard County
farmland had been acquired, and the time was at hand to begin planning what to do with it. Rouse wanted to hear from a wide assortment of experts and scholars. He brought together an assemblage which became known as "the Work Group." It consisted of top people in health, family life, education, recreation, government, transportation, and employment. Ultimately emerging was the idea that the new city should be a real multi-faceted city, not a bedroom suburb. It should be possible for its residents to find everything they needed right there—jobs, education, recreation, health care, and any other necessity.
What would be the component parts of this city? How should it be divided? What was the ideal size for the core component that would provide most of the essentials for the optimal growth of human beings? Rouse was not reluctant to bring up his home town of Easton as the kind of place that provided the best nourishment of the human spirit. Consensus formed around the idea that the basic subdivision within the new city should be the village, a unit of from 10,000-15,000 people. This number was thought to be the most likely to foster a local feeling of identification: for merchants to get to know their customers, ministers their memberships, and teachers their pupils and parents.
Within the city, there would be 12 villages. Each village would have a central gathering place where people of different income levels and types of housing would cross paths and mix. Each village would have a middle school and a high school, a teen center, a supermarket, a library, a hospital, an auditorium, offices, restaurants, some specialty shops, and a few larger recreational facilities. It also would have a multi-denominational house of worship known as an "interfaith center." The hope was that one building would be used by several religions.
In addition to the villages there would be a core area that would function as the new city’s “downtown.” In it would be the central office of the city’s governing body, the Columbia Association. Here would be the main cluster of retail stores (arranged as a mall), a hotel and conference center, a hospital, movie theaters and a concert hall, a community college, and branches of the Maryland Institute College of Art
and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
The main entertainment area was to be known as Tivoli, after the entertainment area in Copenhagen
. Early on, Rouse said that he hoped Tivoli would be a place “where, under the benign influence of having fun and relaxing in familiar ways, people would have opportunities, especially attractively and conveniently presented, for discovering new ways to enjoy their free time—new foods, new visual and tactile aesthetic experiences, even new social relations.” Rouse wanted the town center in Columbia to provide the most comprehensive range of recreational activities and services that had ever been contemplated in a new town.
", of which the Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the first and most successful example. Completed in 1976, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace (comprising Quincy Market
and other spaces adjacent to Boston's Faneuil Hall
) was designed by architect Benjamin C. Thompson
and was a financial success, an act of historic preservation, and an anchor for urban revitalization. However, at its inception, it was considered a highly risky venture, and many critics felt it was doomed to fail. Rouse's innovative business vision looked obvious in retrospect, but it was a bold, contrarian move with few supporters at the outset.
Other examples of Rouse Company "festival marketplace" developments include South Street Seaport
in New York City, Market East
in Philadelphia
, Harborplace
in Baltimore, St. Louis Union Station
in St. Louis
, Downtown Portland's
Pioneer Place
, and the Riverwalk Marketplace
of New Orleans
. The early festival marketplaces like Faneuil Hall and Harborplace led TIME
magazine to dub Rouse "the man who made cities fun again."
funded in part by a for-profit subsidiary
, The Enterprise Development Company, and focused on seeding partnerships with community groups that would address the need for affordable housing and associated social services for poor neighborhoods.
Rouse was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1981. In 1988, Rouse was awarded the second Honor Award
from the National Building Museum
.
The Rouse Theatre in Wilde Lake High School
is named after James. In May 2006, an approximately four-mile stretch of Maryland Route 175
between Interstate 95
and U.S. Route 29
in Columbia, Maryland, was named after Rouse and his wife, Patty.
Rouse received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
in 1995.
The Rouse Company
The Rouse Company, founded by James W. Rouse in 1939, was a publicly held shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties Inc...
, was a pioneering American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
real estate developer, urban planner
Urban planner
An urban planner or city planner is a professional who works in the field of urban planning/land use planning for the purpose of optimizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure. They formulate plans for the development and management of urban and suburban areas, typically...
, civic activist, and later, free enterprise
Free enterprise
-Transport:* Free Enterprise I, a ferry in service with European Ferries between 1962 and 1980.* Free Enterprise II, a ferry in service with European Ferries between 1965 and 1982....
-based philanthropist
Philanthropist
A philanthropist is someone who engages in philanthropy; that is, someone who donates his or her time, money, and/or reputation to charitable causes...
. He is the maternal grandfather of actor Edward Norton
Edward Norton
Edward Harrison Norton is an American actor, screenwriter, film director and producer. In 1996, his supporting role in the courtroom drama Primal Fear garnered him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor...
.
Youth, education, early career
James "Jim" Rouse was born in Easton, MarylandEaston, Maryland
Easton, founded 1710, is a town within the Easton District of Talbot County, Maryland, United States. The population was 11,708 at the 2000 census, and 14,677 according to current July 2008 census estimates. It is the county seat of Talbot County. The primary ZIP Code is 21601, and the...
, the son of Lydia (née Robinson) and Willard Goldsmith Rouse, a canned-foods broker. His father, a lawyer trained at Johns Hopkins University, once ran as the state's attorney for Harford County. When he lost, the Rouse family moved from Bel Air, Maryland to Easton. Rouse grew up in Easton (then population: 5,000) on a well-to-do street on the edge of town. He was taught at home by his mother until second grade, when he was transferred to a public school (which found him to be well prepared enough to skip a grade). At the age of 16, in his senior year of high school, Rouse faced significant life changes: he lost his father and mother to illness, and childhood home on Brooklett's Avenue to bank foreclosure. Rouse was encouraged by his siblings to improve his chances for college admission by doing a year of preparatory school at the private Tome School
Tome School
The Tome School is a private school located in North East in Cecil County in Maryland, USA and is one of the oldest schools in the state of Maryland.-Port Deposit:...
in Port Deposit, Maryland.
Facing money problems and unable to continue at the Tome School, the Rouse family sought a way for him to attend college by appealing to his oldest sister, who had married a Navy officer stationed in Hawaii. Rouse declared himself his sister's dependent and, with Navy connections now secured, was thereby able to attend the University of Hawaii at a greatly reduced cost. Despite the exotic lure of the islands, Rouse missed Maryland. Again, the Rouse family found a scholarship for Jim at the University of Virginia. He declared his major as political science and waited tables at a local boarding house. Not being able to cover the gap between his scholarship and his remaining expenses, he proposed leaving Charlottesville and moving to Baltimore to try and make it on his own.
In 1933, Rouse arrived in Baltimore in search of opportunity. He was fortunate to find a job parking cars at the St. Paul Garage. He later remarked that he got the job even though he could not drive. He convinced his foreman to teach him rather than fire him. Although he had only two years of undergraduate college on his transcript, in the 1930s that was enough to qualify for law school. He borrowed money and attended classes three nights at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland School of Law
The University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law is the second-oldest law school in the United States by date of establishment and third-oldest by date of first classes. The school is located on the campus of the University of Maryland, Baltimore in Downtown Baltimore's West Side...
law school while working at the garage over 100 hours a week.
After graduating in 1937 he worked for the Federal Housing Administration
Federal Housing Administration
The Federal Housing Administration is a United States government agency created as part of the National Housing Act of 1934. It insured loans made by banks and other private lenders for home building and home buying...
and in 1939 he was a partner with Hunter Moss at a mortgage
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...
banking firm called the Moss-Rouse Company, which would eventually become the Rouse Company.
After World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
he became involved in Baltimore, Maryland's efforts to rehabilitate its decayed housing stock. This led to his participation in Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
's National Housing Task Force starting in 1953. He introduced (or at least helped popularize) the term "urban renewal
Urban renewal
Urban renewal is a program of land redevelopment in areas of moderate to high density urban land use. Renewal has had both successes and failures. Its modern incarnation began in the late 19th century in developed nations and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s – under the rubric of...
" to describe the series of recommendations made by that task force.
Shopping malls
In 1958, Rouse built Harundale MallHarundale Mall
Harundale Mall, one of the first enclosed shopping malls, was located in Glen Burnie, Maryland, United States at the intersection of Ritchie Highway and Aquahart Road. Harundale Mall has been replaced by Harundale Plaza located at the same location...
in Glen Burnie, Maryland
Glen Burnie, Maryland
Glen Burnie is a census-designated place in Anne Arundel County, Maryland, United States, and is a suburb of Baltimore. The population was 67,639 at the 2010 census...
, the first enclosed shopping center east of the Mississippi River
Mississippi River
The Mississippi River is the largest river system in North America. Flowing entirely in the United States, this river rises in western Minnesota and meanders slowly southwards for to the Mississippi River Delta at the Gulf of Mexico. With its many tributaries, the Mississippi's watershed drains...
and the first built by a real estate developer. His company used the term "mall" to describe the development, which was an alternative to the more typical strip mall
Strip mall
A strip mall is an open-area shopping center where the stores are arranged in a row, with a sidewalk in front. Strip malls are typically developed as a unit and have large parking lots in front...
s usually built in the suburbs (the "mall" in "strip mall" came into usage later, after the enclosed mall had been popularized by Rouse's company). Although many now attribute the rise of the shopping mall
Shopping mall
A shopping mall, shopping centre, shopping arcade, shopping precinct or simply mall is one or more buildings forming a complex of shops representing merchandisers, with interconnecting walkways enabling visitors to easily walk from unit to unit, along with a parking area — a modern, indoor version...
to the decline of the American downtown
Downtown
Downtown is a term primarily used in North America by English speakers to refer to a city's core or central business district ....
core, Rouse's focus at the time was on the introduction of malls as a form of town center for the suburb
Suburb
The word suburb mostly refers to a residential area, either existing as part of a city or as a separate residential community within commuting distance of a city . Some suburbs have a degree of administrative autonomy, and most have lower population density than inner city neighborhoods...
s.
His company became an active developer and manager of shopping center and mall properties, even as he shifted focus to new projects which eventually included planned communities and festival marketplaces.
Harundale Mall has been replaced by Harundale Plaza. In 1999, the mall reopened and redeveloped as Harundale Plaza, a strip shopping center. Stores include A.J. Wright, a Super Fresh supermarket, Outback Steakhouse, Hollywood Video, and a U.S. Post Office, along with several other typical strip-mall stores. The signature "rock" from Harundale Mall is now at Harundale Plaza. As of April 2008 Value City had departed Harundale Plaza following a corporate decision to sell several locations before ultimately closing all Value City stores in December 2008. A Burlington Coat Factory now occupies the space Value City once held.
Planned communities
In the 1960s Rouse turned his focus to planned communitiesPlanned community
A planned community, or planned city, is any community that was carefully planned from its inception and is typically constructed in a previously undeveloped area. This contrasts with settlements that evolve in a more ad hoc fashion. Land use conflicts are less frequent in planned communities since...
. After engaging in a planning exercise for the Pocatinco Hills estate of the Rockefellers, Rouse constructed his first planned residential development: the Village of Cross Keys
Village of Cross Keys
Village of Cross Keys is a privately owned upscale area of Baltimore, Maryland. It is located off Falls Road between Northern Parkway and Coldspring Lane, and is home to luxury condos and upscale small shops...
in Baltimore. On June 16, 1961, Rouse bought 68 acres (275,186.5 m²) inside the city from the Baltimore Country Club for $25,000 an acre. Rouse excitedly proclaimed that this undertaking “will be the largest, and potentially most important development in the history of Baltimore.” Rouse hoped that he could bring to the residential field “some of the fresh thinking, good taste and high standards which we believe have marked our shopping center developments.”
Familiar with bad housing in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, Rouse now had an opportunity to demonstrate what housing within a city’s borders could be like. “There is a real need for residential development,” he said, “in which there is a strong sense of community; a need to feed into the city some of the atmosphere and pace of the small town and village; a need to create a community which can meet as many as possible of the needs of the people who live there; which can bring these people into natural contact with one another; which can produce out of these relationships a spirit and feeling of neighborliness and a rich sense of belonging to a community.” In a city that practiced strict racial segregation, Rouse intended Cross Keys to be open to all who could afford to live there. The development was a mixture of townhouses, garden apartments, a high-rise apartment house designed by Frank Gehry, stores grouped around a village square, and an office complex. By 1970, the Village of Cross Keys had become among the most desirable places to live in the Baltimore area.
While Cross Keys was still under construction, Rouse decided to build a whole new city. The creation of Columbia, Maryland
Columbia, Maryland
Columbia is a planned community that consists of ten self-contained villages, located in Howard County, Maryland, United States. It began with the idea that a city could enhance its residents' quality of life. Creator and developer James W. Rouse saw the new community in terms of human values, not...
, between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., was the greatest adventure of Rouse’s life. Columbia was the ultimate opportunity: the chance to embody his ideals in a whole new city. For the undertaking that would become Columbia, Rouse turned to his partner in previous projects, the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company
CIGNA
Cigna , headquartered in Bloomfield, Connecticut, is a global health services company, owing to its expanding international footprint and the fact that it provides administrative services only to approximately 80 percent of its clients...
("CG"). At a meeting at company headquarters in Hartford, Rouse made his pitch to CG’s top real estate and mortgage people and the company’s chairman of the board, Frazar B. Wilde. The questioning was mostly negative, until Wilde joined in. He expressed the view that CG couldn’t lose. If Rouse’s project did not succeed, the land could always be sold, and probably for a higher price than what it cost.
The land for the new city would be owned by a subsidiary called Howard Research and Development Corporation. CG would own half of that corporation and Rouse’s corporation the other half. Rouse would be responsible for the management of the acquired land and for preparing a master plan for development. CG also put up some of the money for Columbia’s infrastructure. The rest was supplied by Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association and the Chase Manhattan Bank
Chase Manhattan Bank
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase, is a national bank that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of financial services firm JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2000...
.
By the end of the summer of 1963 close to 14000 acres (56.7 km²) of Howard County
Howard County, Maryland
-2010:Whereas according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau:*62.2% White*17.5% Black*0.3% Native American*14.4% Asian*0.0% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander*3.6% Two or more races*2.0% Other races*5.8% Hispanic or Latino -2000:...
farmland had been acquired, and the time was at hand to begin planning what to do with it. Rouse wanted to hear from a wide assortment of experts and scholars. He brought together an assemblage which became known as "the Work Group." It consisted of top people in health, family life, education, recreation, government, transportation, and employment. Ultimately emerging was the idea that the new city should be a real multi-faceted city, not a bedroom suburb. It should be possible for its residents to find everything they needed right there—jobs, education, recreation, health care, and any other necessity.
What would be the component parts of this city? How should it be divided? What was the ideal size for the core component that would provide most of the essentials for the optimal growth of human beings? Rouse was not reluctant to bring up his home town of Easton as the kind of place that provided the best nourishment of the human spirit. Consensus formed around the idea that the basic subdivision within the new city should be the village, a unit of from 10,000-15,000 people. This number was thought to be the most likely to foster a local feeling of identification: for merchants to get to know their customers, ministers their memberships, and teachers their pupils and parents.
Within the city, there would be 12 villages. Each village would have a central gathering place where people of different income levels and types of housing would cross paths and mix. Each village would have a middle school and a high school, a teen center, a supermarket, a library, a hospital, an auditorium, offices, restaurants, some specialty shops, and a few larger recreational facilities. It also would have a multi-denominational house of worship known as an "interfaith center." The hope was that one building would be used by several religions.
In addition to the villages there would be a core area that would function as the new city’s “downtown.” In it would be the central office of the city’s governing body, the Columbia Association. Here would be the main cluster of retail stores (arranged as a mall), a hotel and conference center, a hospital, movie theaters and a concert hall, a community college, and branches of the Maryland Institute College of Art
Maryland Institute College of Art
Maryland Institute College of Art is an art and design college in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It was founded in 1826 as the Maryland Institute for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts, making it one of the first and oldest art colleges in the United States. In 2008, MICA was ranked #2 in the nation...
and the Peabody Conservatory of Music.
The main entertainment area was to be known as Tivoli, after the entertainment area in Copenhagen
Copenhagen
Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...
. Early on, Rouse said that he hoped Tivoli would be a place “where, under the benign influence of having fun and relaxing in familiar ways, people would have opportunities, especially attractively and conveniently presented, for discovering new ways to enjoy their free time—new foods, new visual and tactile aesthetic experiences, even new social relations.” Rouse wanted the town center in Columbia to provide the most comprehensive range of recreational activities and services that had ever been contemplated in a new town.
Festival marketplaces
Starting in the mid-1970s and continuing into the 1980s Rouse shifted focus to what he ended up calling the "festival marketplaceFestival marketplace
A festival marketplace is a realization by James W. Rouse and the Rouse Company in the United States of an idea conceived by Benjamin C. Thompson of Benjamin Thompson and Associates for European style markets taking hold in the United States in an effort to revitalize downtown areas in major US...
", of which the Faneuil Hall Marketplace was the first and most successful example. Completed in 1976, the Faneuil Hall Marketplace (comprising Quincy Market
Quincy Market
Quincy Market is a historic building near Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was constructed 1824–1826 and named in honor of Mayor Josiah Quincy, who organized its construction without any tax or debt.-History:...
and other spaces adjacent to Boston's Faneuil Hall
Faneuil Hall
Faneuil Hall , located near the waterfront and today's Government Center, in Boston, Massachusetts, has been a marketplace and a meeting hall since 1742. It was the site of several speeches by Samuel Adams, James Otis, and others encouraging independence from Great Britain, and is now part of...
) was designed by architect Benjamin C. Thompson
Benjamin C. Thompson
Benjamin C. Thompson was an American architect.Thompson was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, graduated from Yale University in 1941, then spent four years in the United States Navy fighting in World War II...
and was a financial success, an act of historic preservation, and an anchor for urban revitalization. However, at its inception, it was considered a highly risky venture, and many critics felt it was doomed to fail. Rouse's innovative business vision looked obvious in retrospect, but it was a bold, contrarian move with few supporters at the outset.
Other examples of Rouse Company "festival marketplace" developments include South Street Seaport
South Street Seaport
The South Street Seaport is a historic area in the New York City borough of Manhattan, located where Fulton Street meets the East River, and adjacent to the Financial District. The Seaport is a designated historic district, distinct from the neighboring Financial District...
in New York City, Market East
Market East, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Market East is part of the downtown district known as Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Market East corresponds to the area along Market Street between Arch Street to the north, Chestnut Street to the south, Juniper Street to the west, and 6th Street to the east...
in Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
, Harborplace
Harborplace
Harborplace is a festival marketplace in Baltimore, Maryland, that opened in 1980 as a centerpiece of the revival of downtown Baltimore. As its name suggests, it is located on the Inner Harbor....
in Baltimore, St. Louis Union Station
St. Louis Union Station
St. Louis Union Station, a National Historic Landmark, is a passenger train terminal in St. Louis, Missouri. Once the world's largest and busiest train station, it was converted in the early 1980s into a luxury hotel, shopping center, and entertainment complex...
in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
, Downtown Portland's
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
Pioneer Place
Pioneer Place
Pioneer Place is an upscale, urban shopping mall in downtown Portland, Oregon. It consists of four blocks of retail, dining, parking, and an office tower named Pioneer Tower. The mall itself is spread out between four buildings, interconnected by skywalks or underground mall sections...
, and the Riverwalk Marketplace
Riverwalk Marketplace
Riverwalk Marketplace is a mall located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana. The mall is located along the Mississippi River waterfront stretching from the base of Canal Street upriver to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center...
of New Orleans
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
. The early festival marketplaces like Faneuil Hall and Harborplace led TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine to dub Rouse "the man who made cities fun again."
Retirement
After 40 years at the Rouse Company, James Rouse retired from day-to-day management in 1979. Soon afterwards, he and his wife founded the Enterprise Foundation, a not-for-profit foundationFoundation (charity)
A foundation is a legal categorization of nonprofit organizations that will typically either donate funds and support to other organizations, or provide the source of funding for its own charitable purposes....
funded in part by a for-profit subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
, The Enterprise Development Company, and focused on seeding partnerships with community groups that would address the need for affordable housing and associated social services for poor neighborhoods.
Rouse was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1981. In 1988, Rouse was awarded the second Honor Award
Honor Award
The National Building Museum promotes excellence in architecture, engineering, construction, planning, and design. In furtherance of that mission, the Museum instituted an annual Honor Award in 1986 to recognize individuals and organizations that have made important contributions to the U.S.'s...
from the National Building Museum
National Building Museum
The National Builders Museum, in Washington, D.C., United States, is a museum of "architecture, design, engineering, construction, and urban planning"...
.
The Rouse Theatre in Wilde Lake High School
Wilde Lake High School
Wilde Lake High School is a secondary school located in Columbia, Maryland's Village of Wilde Lake, one of 12 public high schools in Howard County. Opened in 1971 as a model school for the nation, it was Columbia's first high school. It had a unique open doughnut-shaped design with "open...
is named after James. In May 2006, an approximately four-mile stretch of Maryland Route 175
Maryland Route 175
-Annapolis Road:MD 175 begins at MD 3, just south of the latter's northern terminus at Interstate 97, known as Annapolis Road. It runs west as a two-lane suburban highway, passing through local neighborhoods and south of Arundel High School before widening into a four-lane suburban arterial south...
between Interstate 95
Interstate 95 in Maryland
Interstate 95 in Maryland is a major highway that runs diagonally from northeast to southwest, from Maryland's border with Delaware, to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, briefly entering the District of Columbia before reaching Virginia...
and U.S. Route 29
U.S. Route 29
U.S. Route 29 is a north–south United States highway that runs for from the western suburbs of Baltimore, Maryland, to Pensacola, Florida. This highway's northern terminus is at Maryland Route 99 in Ellicott City, Maryland...
in Columbia, Maryland, was named after Rouse and his wife, Patty.
Rouse received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Presidential Medal of Freedom
The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with thecomparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States...
in 1995.
External links
- Remembering James Rouse from the website of The NewsHourThe NewsHour with Jim LehrerPBS NewsHour is an evening television news program broadcast weeknights on the Public Broadcasting Service in the United States. The show is produced by MacNeil/Lehrer Productions, a company co-owned by former anchors Jim Lehrer and Robert MacNeil, and Liberty Media, which owns a 65% stake in the...
- Spring 1988 cover story on Rouse from Blueprints magazine
- Wye Island by Boyd Gibbons is a book about a development that James Rouse planned but never built on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
- Better Places, Better Lives: A Biography of James Rouse by Joshua Olsen is the authoritative biography of James Rouse.
- National Public Radio interviewed Joshua Olsen about his book.
- Merchant of Illusion: James Rouse, America's Salesman of the Businessman's Utopia is a more critical and academic treatment of Rouse's life.
- Jim Rouse: Capitalist/Idealist by Paul Marx describes the high and low points of Rouse's life and career