Nectow v. City of Cambridge

A zoning ordinance of the city of Cambridge divides the city into three kinds of districts, residential, business, and unrestricted. Each of these districts is subclassified in respect of the kind of buildings which way be erected. The ordinance is an elaborate one, and of the same general character as that considered by this court in Euclid v. Ambler Co., 272 U. S. 365, 47 S. Ct. 114, 71 L. Ed. 303. In its general scope it is conceded to be constitutional within that decision. The land of plaintiff in error was put in district R-3, in which are permitted only dwellings, hotels, clubs, churches, schools, philanthropic institutions, greenhouses and gardening, with customary incidental accessories. The attack upon the ordinance is that, as specifically applied to plaintiff in error, it deprived him of his property without due process of law in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment.