Ugly laws
HistoryComments
That is a classic example of aesthetic policing. It often mirrored the pseudoscientific trend of physiognomy, where physical markers were used to infer a person's moral character.
If these laws were purely about aesthetics, would they have been applied to wealthy individuals with unconventional features? It is possible that ugliness was simply a legal proxy for poverty or social status.
We still see this in modern blight ordinances and strict zoning codes. It is rarely about the actual look and almost always about protecting property values.
Municipal court records from the early 1900s show that visibility was the specific legal trigger for these citations. The charges were focused on the disruption of the public view, which supports the OP's point.