A Forest at Your Doorstep

FDR speaks at Greenbelt

FDR speaks at Greenbelt
The president visited the partially completed town on November 13, 1936. “I have reviewed the plans but the reality exceeds my expectation,” he said. Pictured L-R: Rex Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration; President Roosevelt; and Wallace Richards, Executive Officer, Greenbelt Project. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Joblessness and homelessness during the Great Depression led the federal government in 1935 to demonstrate how modest, well-built homes could improve the lives of ordinary Americans if these homes were located, designed and managed to promote “family and community life.” The plan was described in a 1937 pamphlet, Greenbelt Towns, published by the New Deal’s Resettlement Administration.

Forests were essential to several New Deal initiatives, including this planned-community program. Of the three greenbelt towns the federal government built, Greenbelt, Maryland, most strongly expressed the idea of a “belt of green.” The surrounding forests, parks, farms and gardens were intended to prevent encroachment from outside development and


Photo taken from the Goodyear Blimp in May, 1936, shows the forests and fields surrounding the town. While much of the town’s original green space has since been developed, and the mix of tree species has changed, eighty years on, a “belt of green,” now preserved, still defines the town. Photo annotations by O. Kelley. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

strengthen the bonds of community by encouraging residents to spend their leisure time in town with the natural world a short walk from their front doors. Greenbelt was shaped by the Garden City ideals of Ebenezer Howard and Clarence Stein. Within a Garden City, a neighborhood was defined as having homes within a half-mile walk from a central cluster of public buildings to include an elementary school or community center. Buildings and footpaths were embedded in forest and grassy common areas where residents could connect with their neighbors. Stein wrote about this aspect of Greenbelt in Toward New Towns for America, and his struggle to make these ideas stick in the sometimes chaotic and rushed atmosphere of the New Deal.


FDR motorcade touring the Greenbelt Lake dam. The forested tract in the background has been owned by the town since the federal government sold the land in 1950–1954. It was added to the Greenbelt Forest Preserve in 2007. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Foreshadowing Greenbelt’s future, FDR in his 1938 introduction to Public Papers and Addresses, described the pendulum of participatory democracy, whereby the wealthy few exercise the lion’s share of political power and then, a few decades later, popular movements would force the government to accommodate the people’s needs and desires. Broadly speaking, the pendulum swung toward participatory democracy during the Great Depression in the form of protests, labor organizing and federal legislation shaped by the demands of the grassroots.


The town’s iconic Mother and Child sculpture, by WPA artist Lenore Thomas, 1937. Footpaths wend through Greenbelt’s landscape, in keeping with Garden City planning principles of using green space to nurture a sense of community. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

The original plan for the Greenbelt envisioned cooperative ownership of community assets—and idea that lives on today. Cooperatives own Greenbelt’s New Deal-era townhomes and 87 acres of protected woodland, the grocery store and the town’s weekly newspaper, founded in 1937.

For decades, Greenbelt residents have fought to preserve their town’s namesake. From 1950–1954, the federal government carried out part of the greenbelt plan that called for selling much of the land to a housing cooperative and the town government. In the 1960s, with sprawl radiating from Washington DC, Greenbelt residents elected a conservation-minded city council and began buying back land the housing cooperative had sold to developers. By 1989, the city owned a contiguous 245-acre forested tract of the original green belt and designated it the Greenbelt Forest Preserve. It protects century-old trees and a variety of habitats—vernal pools, wetlands, oak-hickory stands and a heath ecosystem similar to New Jersey’s pine barrens.

In 1997, Greenbelt’s New Deal-era buildings and adjacent forests became a National Historic Landmark.

"Promote the General Welfare" by Lenore Thomas

"Promote the General Welfare" by Lenore Thomas
Public artworks throughout Greenbelt reflect social and economic themes, an interest in the common man and the pursuit of democratic ideals. The Center School exterior features bas reliefs inspired by nature and the Preamble to the US Constitution. Photo by Arthur Rothstein, 1937. Courtesy, Library of Congress.

Inspired by their town’s founding ideals, Greenbelt’s residents continue to resist threats to their community and its greenbelt. Residents have organized to oppose a high-speed rail project that imperils the Forest Preserve and natural areas to the north, and are pushing elected officials to defeat the proposed plan. It’s the sort of citizen activism Greenbelt’s New Deal planners envisioned from the start.”

Learn more:
greenbeltmuseum.org

https://livingnewdeal.org/projects/city-of-greenbelt-greenbelt-md/

FDR and the Environment, Editors Henry L. Henderson and David B. Woolner (2005); Douglas Brinkley’s Rightful Heritage (2016). “Clarence Stein and the Greenbelt Towns,” Journal of the Am. Planning Assoc., (1990); and The New Deal in the Suburbs, a history of the Greenbelt town program, 1935-1954, by Tracy Augur.

Owen A. Kelley is an atmospheric scientist at George Mason University, working with NASA's precipitation-measuring satellites. A resident of Greenbelt, he studies the natural world in his spare time. This story is adapted from his 2021 photo essay, BEING: Biota Ephemera In Greenbelt. He also wrote A Hundred Wild Things: a Field Guide to Plants in the Greenbelt North Woods. https://www.greenbeltonline.org/okelley/.

New Deal Utopias, by Jason Reblando

New Deal Utopias CoverOver three years Jason Reblando, a Chicago artist and photographer, trained his camera on three Greenbelt towns — Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin— constructed during the Depression to house poor Americans, many of them displaced from the Dust Bowl.

Rexford Tugwell, a Columbia economics professor tapped to head FDR’s Resettlement Administration (RA), modeled the Greenbelt program on the Garden City movement of early 20th Century England, integrating housing with nature. Tugwell’s dream was to create not only housing for those in need, but also a flourishing community. “My plans are fashioned and practical,” he said. “I shall roll up my sleeves—make America over!”

Jason Reblando, Photographer

Jason Reblando
Author and photographer Jason Reblando

The towns incorporated features designed to encourage neighborly interaction—shared courtyards and lawns, parks and playgrounds, intersecting pathways, public artworks, a swimming pool. Town residents managed schools, shops, and community buildings as cooperatives.

Not surprisingly, conservatives in Congress derided the Greenbelt experiment as both extravagant and “socialist,” and sought to end it.

To win support for the Greenbelt projects, Tugwell called on his former graduate student, Roy Stryker, head of the Information Division of the RA (soon to become the Farm Securities Administration). Stryker famously deployed FSA photographers to document the human desperation that the New Deal agencies were working to address. Photographs by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, and Walker Evans captured some of the best-known images of the victims of the Great Depression. Lesser known were the RA’s photographs of the Greenbelt towns that conveyed an America on the road to recovery. Nonetheless, under pressure from Congress and wealthy farmers deprived of their tenant work force, the RA was discontinued in 1936.

Gazebo, Greendale, WI

Gazebo
Greendale, WI
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Seventy-five years later, author and photographer Jason Reblando has re-captured the founding vision of the Greenbelt towns in his large-format book, New Deal Utopias. His color photographs of the tidy homes and well-tended grounds surrounded by farms and forests recall a kind of everyday orderliness—both ordinary and reassuring. Portraits of the towns’ 21st Century inhabitants depict a sense of small-town pride.

Despite what Reblando’s photos convey, not all is utopian in these New Deal “utopias.” Residents of Ohio’s Greenhills near Cincinnati have struggled for years to defend their historic district from redevelopment. They won National Historic Landmark status for their town, but that doesn’t ensure its preservation. In a recent letter to the citizens of Greenhills, the National Park Service acknowledged the town’s historic significance and the need to preserve it: “Bear in mind that the shared heritage and stewardship of the village should extend throughout the community, and decisions made today will impact current and future generations,” it cautioned.

Published under the fiscal sponsorship of the Living New Deal, New Deal Utopias serves as a reminder that this shared heritage comprises far more than buildings alone.

Pool, Greenbelt, MD

Pool
Greenbelt, MD
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Lake, Greenhills, OH

Lake
Greenhills, OH
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Daffodil House, Greendale, WI

Daffodil House
Greendale, WI
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Susan Ives is communications director for the Living New Deal and editor of the Living New Deal newsletter.

Photographing New Deal Utopias

Daffodil House, Greendale, Wisconsin, 2009

Daffodil House
Greendale, Wisconsin, 2009
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Among the various New Deal programs to help displaced farmers and the urban poor was the Resettlement Administration’s plan to construct new communities called Greenbelt Towns. These towns were a utopian model of modern living envisioned by RA administrator Rexford G. Tugwell who served on FDR’s “brain trust.”

I became interested in Tugwell’s egalitarian ideas for fostering community through the physical and social aspects of town planning, encompassing affordable housing, communal activities, natural landscaping, and cooperatively owned businesses. It was a new concept for Americans, but not for Tugwell, who was influenced by the work of Sir Ebenezer Howard, an urban reformer whose work transformed the landscape of British industrial communities in the early 20th Century. In order to provide relief from the overcrowded slums of London, Howard proposed creating Garden Cities–new communities that would combine the best features of both town and country, namely the social and economic advantages of living in a community with fresh air and green spaces.

Mushroom, Greenbelt, Maryland, 2009

Mushroom
Greenbelt, Maryland, 2009
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

I made multiple trips to photograph the three New Deal Greenbelt Towns–Greenbelt, Maryland; Greenhills, Ohio; and Greendale, Wisconsin. I had learned about the towns through my research on the Garden City, having been inspired by the design and community I found at Julia C. Lathrop Homes, a public housing complex built by the Public Works Administration in 1938. Chicago’s Lathrop Homes had been built with Garden City principles in mind. The New Deal Greenbelt Towns were sited on the suburban frontier outside metropolitan centers.

Gazebo, Greendale, Wisconsin, 2009

Gazebo
Greendale, Wisconsin, 2009
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

Photographing the Greenbelt Towns, I was struck by the beauty and modesty of the architecture and surrounding natural landscapes, as well as the generosity of the residents. Wandering the parks and converging paths, I reflected upon Tugwell’s bold attempt to introduce a new American way of life based on cooperation instead of unrestrained competition. I was impressed at how connected residents felt to their own town, and to their sibling model communities borne out of the Great Depression. As these towns celebrate their 80th anniversaries in 2017 and 2018, I view them as vital communities to be protected and celebrated.

Mural, Greenhills, Ohio, 2009

Mural
Greenhills, Ohio, 2009
Photo Credit: Jason Reblando

I am excited to share my photographs of the towns in my new book, New Deal Utopias, as we continue to grapple with the roles of housing, nature, and government in contemporary American life. Like the Greenbelt Towns themselves, the book is the result of communal effort. I’m fortunate to have Natasha Egan, executive director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, who provided the artistic commentary and Dr. Robert Leighninger, author of Long-Range Public Investment: The Forgotten Legacy of the New Deal, who provided historical context. I’m also indebted to the Living New Deal for providing fiscal sponsorship for the project. Because of the Living New Deal, I was able to secure a publishing grant from the Puffin Foundation as well as connect with an extensive and supportive community committed to preserving the New Deal legacy.

Jason Reblando teaches photography at Illinois State University and is working on a project on the New Deal Greenbelt communities. His work has been published in the New York Times, Slate, and Bloomberg Businessweek. He recently received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant to do research in the Philippines. www.jasonreblando.com