Newsday (Suffolk Edition) from Melville, New York • 11

Debts Deluged Murder Suspect Westfield NJ (AP) John List wanted to keep up with the Joneses But a beat-up Chewy in the driveway and cracks in the plaster of a Victorian mansion are not enough in Westfield Out here one must have money In his book Status Seekers' author Vance Packard described West-field as wealthy bedroom town favored by Wall Street commuters and other nearby Farkard also said the town Is populated by "economic titans who have homes staffed by servants It was not that way for John List mother his wife and their children were murdered last month in the 18-room mansion they had occupied for five years Authorities say List 46 is the prime suspect in the case and a worldwide search for him is under way List a veteran of World War II and Korea who was awarded a Bronze Star was financially solvent when 1m moved his family from Rochester NY to New Jersey in 1965 and put down 610000 on the Westfield mansion He was a vice president of First National Bank of New Jersey His mortgage was $40000 but First Fed eral Savings Ioan Association of Westfield believed he could handle it A short time later List took a position with American Photographic Corp of New York City He was paid $23500 a year But a short time later the economy nose-dived wife suffered a nervous breakdown and underwent expensive treatment at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital New York City List at this point tried to contend with his economic difficulties In September 1968 he borrowed $4000 from a hank securing it with a loan on the mansion He paid up four months later but liad to take a $7000 second mortgage Later he took out a third mortgage of $1800 The house and the bill to heat it cost about $750 a month When JSA Witlke a wealthy New York stationer had the house built In 18S5 it was one of the finest in town Mrs John Wittkc the wife of Wittke's grandson wlto now lives in tiie quarters behind the mansion lent List pictures of the interior of the house so that he could restore it But the restoration plans failed and the pictures were not returned List changed jobs He went to work for State Mutual Life Assurance Co of Continued on Page 14 UPI Telephoto There were three children in the John List family Young friends carried their coffins at services Saturday in Westfield NJ The (High) Rise and Fall of 5th Avenue 1 Doming over the avenue The commission quite cheerfully expects that as many as 25 skyscrapers might go up Michael Grosso executive director of the Fifth Avenue Association seems confident that most of this will happen below 43rd Street Besides he says "not all of tliem have to be 50 stories but he admits on the other hand that there Is nothing to prevent them from being 75 stories talk Plans for a 50-story office-and-residential tower with four or five floors of retail shops already have been drawn up for tiie Best's site which stands- not below 43rd but between 51st and 52nd (The building will rise directly alongside St Cathedral thus providing a dear test of strength between God and Mammon) Across the street a 35-story structure will go up on tiie DePinna's site and the developer of that building has already purchased the Georg Jensen site at 53rd It seems inevitable that most of the remaining small building owners eventually will succumb to more profitable offered by the developers says Grosso the only device we have to keep retailers on the street If the retail image of Fifth Avenue disappears New York and the country will never have another" Which is to say nothing of the aesthetic image By the Fifth Avenue may still be a thriving street but it is apt to be quite a different one Surprisingly few New Yorkers seem to know or care about the reasons for all the diaos of the demolition and construction around them every day Streets buildings and shops crumble gaping holes appear whole new blocks arise the environment grows more faoeless and inhuman by the day and barely a voioa is raised to ask what is hapiening It is as if tin landlord were to march into apartment knock down walls replace the furniture with inflatable plastics change the color scheme and then stand back to any "There better" The tenant shift to hia new plastic chair brushes the plaster off his inflatable coffee table and goes on reading his morning paper It Is possible at overwrought moments to feel that during all the years of anti-war protest when we were out marching on Washington and levitating the Pentagon we should have been here at home stoning the windows of the city planners and real estate speculators The enemy was cutting us up In our own streets With the advent of the "electric lot Improvement bonus" in any case tiie planner's equivalent of the Pentagon's "protective reaction has come to New York Somewhat like that celebrated and unfortunate hamlet in Vietnam Fifth Avenue is to be amenity sought by that plan waa the plaza a bit of elbow room in front of a building perhaps graced with a fountain or two in return for extra bulk You can still get arguments over how good a bargain it was for the city Builders provided plazas each according to his own whim avarice or conscience and aded every inch of rentable bonus space the ordinance would permit The results are there for anyone to examine: they constitute much of the present working environment of Manhattan Virtually every Midtown commercial artery except Fifth is afflicted with corporate elephantiasis Glass and aluminum -sheathed 50-story monuments to the spiritual leadership of Equitable Life Sperry Rand Standard Oil et al stand cornice to cornice from Third Avenue to Broadway and the city is soon to give us the first east-west of similar high-rise office construction along 4Sth Street to the shores of the Hudson (When the wind blows through Manhattan these days you can almost hear the glass shivering) Sixth Avenue in the Avenue of the was supposed to emerge from the wreck-era rubble as a shining testament to the efficacy of the new zoning Until the it was a raunchy promenade of beaneries back-issue magazine shops and pre-pomo novelty shops its one virtue being that it had a varied and bustling street life for most of the day and evening All that raunch and ruckus have vanished now along with most of the retail shops and eating places Nearly as far as the eye can see northward from the 4Qs there are nothing but towering corporate headquarters buildings casting long shadows across the pinched and eclectic little plazas on the street below Incentive zoning rehabilitated the street the way a Iobotomy rehabilitates a manic depressive The Planning planners acknowledge the Avenue of the Americas to be a monumental failure They cite it now as an object lesson in planning gone wrong On Fifth Avenue the newer wiser zoning prohibits plazas Instead the scheme requires a continuous line of retail shops at street level uninterrupted by office entrances which must be situated on sidestreets only No ground-floor banks or tourist offices are to be allowed and the planners envisage shopping arcades that will link up with one another to form a continuous Interior mall on the east side of tiie street But still there Is the constant nearby reminder of how builers are apt to exploit their "bonusable amen- Continued from Page 9 Madison Avenue and later refined by the Pentagon There were that is certain "soft sites which were "ripe for assembly and Land was simply being by retail establishments where there was "the more profitable alternative of office Four- and five-story buildings were "not taking advantage of their full earning First the debasement of language then the assault: everyone saw it coming To head it off the lions of the Fifth Avenue Association last year sat down with the lambs of the City Planning Commission Together they devised a new zoning scheme whose commendable aim is not only to retain the retail character of the street but to promote the inclusion of residential units in any new construction there In elaboration however the- defenders more or less continue the euphemistic stratagems of the marauders Fifth Avenue from 38th Street to 58th Street is now a "special planning according to the Planning Commission (It is both a "preservation district and an "incentive adds one staff member plunging into the spirit of the thing) A survey the report continues "suggests that Fifth Avenue is not only most elegant street but is also one of its most stable However a look at the zoning map shows that most of the avenue is not developed to its full zoning potentiaL In fact approximately two-thirds of the sites within the Special District have been identified as potential building sites (In addition) all Fifth Avenue department stores and large specialty stores an built well below their zoning potential and are therefore susceptible to Accordingly the commission provides an tive Lot Improvment Bonus under which the de-- veloper can increase the overall mass of his building in return for various as the commission felicitously calls them In plainer lan- guage the plan mandates a minimum of two floors of retail space beginning from the sidewalk level in any new building Should the builder agree to provide such as additional retail floors an into- rior shopping arcade or residential units on the upper floors he can increase the of his building by 1 upwards of 40 per cent Ti in essence the Elective Lot Improvement Bonus is an extension of the incentive zoning plan that the city first instituted in 1961 and that stimulated the great reat estate gold rush of the jGQs The principal- jSSUW W11 re Ter tr-M 11 lit.