Concord Park was Morris Milgram’s initial venture as a professional homebuilder. His motivations were idealistic: Milgram wanted to prove that multiracial suburbs were not only practical but also superior to segregated developments. From its groundbreaking in 1954 and well into the 1960s, Concord Park’s fortunes were closely tracked by progressive activists, scholars, and journalists (most friendly, but not all). Milgram would devote the rest of his career to building, promoting, and managing integrated housing. Although he is largely forgotten today, he counted among his supporters Martin Luther King, Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as other humanitarian leaders of the era. By the time of his death, in 1997, he could rightly claim to have provided some 20,000 units of housing across the nation while adhering to staunch anti-discrimination — and actively pro-integration — policies.
To be sure, Milgram modulated his approach as public sentiment and housing law evolved. Today some of his tactics seem dubious (and are, in fact, illegal); some of his initiatives were successes, others abject failures. But in retrospect his projects seem prescient — ongoing experiments, at once mundane and brave, for how to knit together a divided America house by house, street by street. Milgram saw housing segregation as a stubborn, complex, and pernicious problem that America could not — must not — ignore; that is the essential lesson of his pioneering career. Six decades on from the founding of Concord Park, we still haven’t solved the problem, and Milgram’s experiences and insights remain vital.
“The perfect community for careful buyers”
“EASY TO OWN … DELIGHTFUL TO LIVE IN,” proclaimed a sales sheet for “THE ARIZONA,” a low-slung ranch house fringed by trees and shrubs, shown in a black-and-white sketch. “You’ll find CONCORD PARK the perfect community for careful buyers,” the sales copy continued, “providing the freedom of country life … the privacy of a ¼ acre lot … the facilities of a large city, only minutes away.”
In late 1954 and early ’55, prospective homebuyers could drive north from Philadelphia on Roosevelt Boulevard, a quarter-mile past the city line, then fork left at the drive-in movie theater to reach the muddy field that was becoming Concord Park. There stood the development’s first phase — 29 houses newly finished or under construction. Stepping into the model home, visitors would have found an ambience of soothing, middle-class domesticity — Milgram understood that the unconventional development would need to look reassuringly familiar. The 19-foot-long living room, looking out on the back yard, had a framed picture of Lake Shore Drive, plant stands, a coffee table bearing ceramic ashtrays. The boy’s bedroom had books and gadgets; the girl’s, an easel and a rocker. Sales agents pointed out modern features like a garbage disposal and pre-tuned TV antenna, and conveniences like a built-in laundry hamper; they talked up the clever floor plan, which allowed kids to troop from their bedrooms into the kitchen and outside without crossing (and dirtying) the living room.