Jacobs, Jane, 1916-2006

Jane Jacobs (née Butzner) was born on May 4, 1916, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the daughter of John Butzner, a physician, and Bess Robison Butzner. After graduating from Scranton's Central High School, Jacobs briefly trained to become a stenographer before taking a position as a reporter with the Scranton Tribune. In 1938, she moved to New York City and attended Columbia University's School of General Studies for two years. In the years that followed, she held a number of writing and editing jobs. In 1944, she married Robert Hyde Jacobs, Jr., an architect, with whom she had three children: James Kedzie (1948), Edward Decker (1950), and Mary Hyde (1955).

In 1952, Jacobs became an associate editor at Architectural Forum magazine, where she was introduced to the topics of city planning and rebuilding. She wrote a book sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation that focused on American cities: The Death and Life of Great American Cities was published in 1961 and went on to become Jacobs's most well-known book. In addition to her writing, Jacobs was also an activist. She was arrested in 1968 after she disrupted a public meeting about the Lower Manhattan Expressway, a project she opposed.

...