Greenbelt was meant to be President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s prototype for America’s utopian community, where families had green space and community resources for as little as $18 a month. There were apartments, rowhouses and some free-standing homes among the 885 units finished by 1937.
When Roosevelt took office in 1933 amid the wreckage of the Great Depression, more than a million Americans were homeless, cities were cluttered with shantytowns and density swelled as unhoused families doubled and tripled up.
The Resettlement Administration was created to address the crisis at the urging of agricultural economist Rexford G. Tugwell, who said the United States needed to urban-plan its way out of the housing problem.
Tugwell “drove Roosevelt out here, actually, and said: ‘Look at this beautiful land. Let’s build a city here. Let’s build a small city and show the world how we can combine the best of both city and country living,’” said Megan Searing Young, director of the Greenbelt Museum.
The government began ad campaigns with posters that asked: “Which Playground for Your Child? Greenbelt or Gutter?”
The construction was part of the New Deal plan, hiring unemployed men to build the entire city from blueprints. The builders created a series of “super blocks,” with houses facing a collective green space. The sidewalks weren’t along the road but inside the space, Young said.
The backs of the homes became the service areas, where milk was delivered and laundry was hung, but only during approved hours.
And that was the rub for some.
It was a collective with strict rules and standards. Though the homes were built by Black and White workers, only applications — 5,000 for the 885 units — from White married couples were accepted. The government’s housing managers carefully screened for income and compatibility, social engineering to ensure harmony in the new utopia whose manager reported, after its first year, had “not a shrewish housewife anywhere along the crescent.”
“America’s most famous test-tube city, Greenbelt, Md. — often referred to by its neighbors as Utopia — is 1-year-old this month,” wrote Christine Sadler in an Oct. 9, 1938, article in The Washington Post.