Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1987

Keywords

zoning

Abstract

Nowadays government regulation of the use of urban land is taken for granted. Such was not always the case. Some sixty years ago, the Maryland Court of Appeals held it unconstitutional for Zoning Commissioner J. Frank Crowther to deny a request for a permit to operate a tailor shop in the basement of a Eutaw Place home. This paper examines the case of Goldman v. Crowther. Goldman's story reads like a comic melodrama with a tragic ending. But the saga also illuminates the social condition - it sheds light and casts shadows on the practice of xenophobia, the nature of law and the excess of regulation.

Publication Citation

82 Maryland Historical Magazine 275 (1987).

Disciplines

Legal History | Property Law and Real Estate

Share

COinS