Here’s affordable housing, hiding in plain sight
In 1949, Betty Friedan moved to a garden apartment in Queens. Although she would later become world-famous for chronicling women’s discontent in post-World War II America, she had nothing bad to say about her years living in Parkway Village. On the contrary, she thought, she “would never be so happy again.”
Friedan was not alone; Millions of Americans have found joy and comfort in garden apartments. Screenwriter Jan Oxenberg recalled that Bell Park Gardens, further away in Queens, was “a paradise for children.” Critic Lewis Mumford went so far as to describe Fresh Meadows, which combined garden apartment buildings with taller residential structures and a shopping center, as “a slice of the city of tomorrow.”
Garden apartments—two- or three-story multifamily buildings set around courtyards or surrounded by lawns—were a remarkably successful effort in the mid-20th century to provide quality housing for low-income families. They still serve this purpose, not only in New York but across the country. Yet they are rarely addressed by policy makers, architects or academics. At a time when New York, like most American cities, faces a serious housing crisis, garden apartments, hidden in plain sight, deserve a closer look.
Inspiration for garden apartments came from the “garden cities” built in England in the early decades of the 20th century (hence the “garden” in their name) and apartments built by the government for workers in cities like Vienna, Frankfurt and Berlin.
American housing reformers, looking longingly across the Atlantic, experimented with creating communities that brought greenery, light, ventilation, privacy, and safe play areas to families on limited incomes. Sunnyside Gardens in Queens, built in the mid-1920s, was their first initiative, now designated a historic district for the influence it had on future housing.
Garden apartments only became a form of mass housing when the federal government threw its weight behind them during the FDR administration. As part of the New Deal effort to put people back to work, Washington, for the first time, played a direct role in the creation of civilian housing. Garden apartments have become a preferred form of government-subsidized housing; they were quick to build and relatively inexpensive, while providing a dramatic improvement over the tenements and shacks that housed so many Americans.
Some apartments with gardens were built as social housing. But most were built by private developers with substantial government assistance. Most importantly, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) guaranteed mortgage loans for garden apartment construction, eliminating risk for lenders and reducing interest costs. In exchange, developers had to obtain design approval from the federal agency.
By the late 1930s, the basic model for garden apartment design was in place: low, unadorned buildings, usually of brick, placed around courtyards, with carriages kept on the periphery of the large sites. The rooms were small, but the apartments had plenty of windows, cross ventilation, and modern kitchens and bathrooms. Shared outdoor spaces and community amenities, such as playgrounds, laundry rooms and meeting spaces, promoted community cohesion.
World War II halted the construction of garden apartments, but after the war they were built in greater numbers as part of a government-backed effort to meet the enormous need for housing for veterans and their families. Queens was an epicenter of postwar garden apartments.
In the twelve years since VJ Day, at least 30 garden apartment complexes have been built in the neighborhood, providing more than 23,000 housing units. In addition to FHA-backed mortgages, the state and New York City have encouraged the creation of cooperative housing complexes, such as Bell Park Gardens, Beech Hills, and Deepdale Gardens, by providing tax breaks. Although federally funded public housing only served the poor, garden apartments represented an impressive government effort to serve working-class and lower-middle-class families.
Eventually, new suburban single-family homes began to address the postwar housing shortage. But garden apartments offered an alternative for families who wanted to stay in the city, couldn’t afford to buy, or didn’t want to abandon close-knit communities. In the 1970s, many garden rental apartment complexes in New York converted to cooperatives, strengthening residents’ identification with their homes. Drive around Queens today and you’ll see dozens of well-kept garden apartment complexes.
The housing solutions of 1935 or 1945 are not necessarily suitable for today. But the garden apartments demonstrate that with political will and government support, it is possible to build lots of decent, affordable housing quickly. It is time to mobilize public and private resources to redo what our predecessors accomplished.
Freeman, professor emeritus of history at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center, is the author of “Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia,” published by University of Chicago Press on Dec. 23.
