So for Wednesday, I have asked you to read excerpts from Kenneth Jackson’s book Crabgrass Frontiers (see below for a rehash of the assginment.) Here are you some questions for you to think about, and to offer comments on before or (immediately) after class:
1 What was everyday life like for folks living in cities in the 1930s? How did the federal government reshape the housing market in the 1930s and why? What were the HOLC and FHA?
2 Describe public housing of the 1930s. In Cleveland, early examples of public housing were Lakeview Terrace and the Valleyview Homes (now torn down) in Tremont. Who would the typical clientele of these properties have been when they were built; who would it have been by the 1960s? More broadly, who benefited from loan programs, from public housing? What were the long-term consequences of such programs?
3 Write about the baby boom and the pent-up demand for housings; describe the building of Levittown; mull over the five characteristics of suburban development. What were the consequences of change?
4 How did the interstate highway come into being? Think about and describe the roadside architecture of "drive-in culture": the garage, the motel, the drive-in movie theater, the gasoline service stations, the shopping center, and the mobile home. What do they have in common and how did they develop from the 1920s through the 1980s?
Offer some thoughts on these questions in the comment and prepare to discuss them in class. We will use images to focus our discussion…
Groups 1 & 2: Jackson, “CH11: Federal Subsidy …,” “CH12: The Cost of Good Intentions”
Groups 3, 4, & 5: Jackson, CH13, “The Baby-Boom …,” and “CH14, “The Drive-In Culture …”
1. Every day life for those in the inner cities seemed to be in some sort of turmoil because there was a race to abandon the city in favor of suburban areas. Also, the Great Depression was causing poverty, even among middle class families that had never experienced it before. The HOLC (Home Owners Loan Corporation) and the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) were both New Deal programs that were designed to provide either public housing or help families purchase their own housing. These programs, although intended to help the poor, facilitated the flight away from urban areas. Also, the inherent racism found in both programs, specifically in the way that each rated neighborhoods, put minorities a great disadvantage and forced them into urban slums.
2. Originally, public housing was designed to help poor Americans during the Depression. Also, public housing originally discriminated against those that were seen as lazy or negative influences. However, by the 1960s, public housing was opened up to those with previous negative connotations such as single mothers and poorer families. However, by this time, public housing areas had been confined to slums. In the end, public housing benefited investors and the middle class, as they were able to flee declining urban areas, while it confined minorities to these declining areas.
3. The baby-boom and the Depression created a situation with in which there was a huge demand for homes. The creation of Levittown Houses and the development of other cheaper, mass produced facilitated the flight of the middle class to the suburbs.
4. The improvement of highways and transportation allowed wealthier Americans to move to the suburbs because they could then live with more land, while at the same time have access to the centralization offered by cities.
It was interesting to read about the push to suburbs and then the changes that occured during depression and post-depression times. I also found it interesting that some of the housing programs house discriminate against some of the people that needed help the most.