Nectow v. City of Cambridge

Nectow v. City of Cambridge, 277 U.S. 183 (1928), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court reversed the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, and found that the invasion of the plaintiff's property right was "serious and highly injurious," and that the placement of the locus of the zoning ordinance would not promote the health, safety, convenience or general welfare of the inhabitants of Cambridge. It, along with Euclid v. Ambler, constituted the Supreme Court's case law on zoning until 1974.

Facts
In 1860, the family of Alvan Clark purchased a tract of land in Cambridge, on which the built a telescope lens manufacturing plant and two family homes. To the west of the Clark family homes was the Cambridgeport residential district. To the south, Ford Motor Company built the Cambridge Assembly plant in 1913. During the Clarks' tenure, the lens factory was one of many local industrial businesses. Like other 19th-century American cities, the city did not have a zoning code restricting economic activity to specific districts, allowing the Clarks to put residential and industrial uses in the same tract.

In 1920, the Clark sons moved the family business and sold the entire 140000 sqft plot to Saul Nectow. Nectow had no specific plan for the site, but intended to resell the property to a new enterprise for redevelopment.

The City of Cambridge established its first zoning ordinance in 1924, which restricted the portion of the Nectow property occupied by the Clark family homesteads to residential uses. A purchaser had agreed to buy the entire tract from Nectow, but reneged on the offer when the new zoning encumbered the residential portion of the tract. Nectow sought to enjoin the city for a regulatory taking that reduced the value of his property.