Editing Jane Jacobs (section)

== Early years ==
Jane Isabel Jacobs was born Jane Isabel Butzner in [[Scranton, Pennsylvania]], the daughter of Bess Robison Butzner, a former teacher and nurse, and John Decker Butzner, a physician. They were a Protestant family.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|p=9}} Her brother, [[John Decker Butzner Jr.]], served as a judge on the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit]]. After graduation from [[Scranton High School (Pennsylvania)|Scranton High School]], she worked for a year as the unpaid assistant to the [[women's page]] editor at the ''[[Scranton Tribune]]''.

=== New York City ===
In 1935, during the [[Great Depression]], she moved to New York City with her sister Betty.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|pp=15–16}} Jane Butzner took an immediate liking to Manhattan's [[Greenwich Village]], which deviated some from the city's [[Commissioners' Plan of 1811|grid structure]]. The sisters soon moved there from Brooklyn.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|pp=20–21}}{{sfn|Flint|2009|pp=3–5}}

During her early years in Manhattan, Jacobs held a variety of jobs working as a [[stenographer]] and [[freelance writer]], writing about working districts in the city. These experiences, she later said, "gave me more of a notion of what was going on in the city and what business was like, what work was like". Her first job was for a trade magazine, as a secretary, then an editor. She sold articles to the ''Sunday Herald Tribune'', ''Cue'' magazine, and ''[[Vogue (magazine)|Vogue]]''.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|pp=22–23}}

She studied at [[Columbia University]]'s [[Columbia University School of General Studies|School of General Studies]] for two years, taking courses in geology, [[zoology]], law, [[political science]], and economics.{{sfn|Alexiou|2006|pp=23–24}} About the freedom to pursue study across her wide-ranging interests, she said:

<blockquote>For the first time I liked school and for the first time I made good marks. This was almost my undoing because after I had garnered, statistically, a certain number of credits I became the property of [[Barnard College]] at Columbia, and once I was the property of Barnard I had to take, it seemed, what Barnard wanted me to take, not what I wanted to learn. Fortunately my high-school marks had been so bad that Barnard decided I could not belong to it and I was therefore allowed to continue getting an education.{{sfn|Allen|1997}}</blockquote>