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City Tour of Greenbelt MD
The City of Greenbelt has gone into the history books as the first community
in the United States built as a federal venture in housing. From the beginning
it was designed as a complete city, with businesses, schools, roads and
facilities for recreation and town government. Greenbelt was a planned
community, noted for its interior walkways, underpasses, its system of
inner courtyards and one of the first mall-type shopping centers in the
United States. Modeled after English garden cities of the 19th century,
Greenbelt took its name from the belt of green forestland with which it
was surrounded and from the belts of green between neighborhoods that
offered easy contact with nature.
In 1997 Greenbelt celebrated its 60th anniversary. To coincide with this
historic event, the United States Department of Interior saw it fit to
recognize Historic Greenbelt as a National Historic Landmark. At such
a time it was appropriate to ask how this early prototype of the planned
community has weathered through the years. Have the design concept and
the social and cultural features built into that design succeeded in fulfilling
the town’s early promise?
Greenbelt is one of three greenbelt towns envisioned by Rexford Guy Tugwell,
friend and advisor to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and created under
the Resettlement Administration in 1935 under authority of the Emergency
Relief Appropriation Act. (Greendale, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, and Greenhills,
Ohio, near Cincinnati, are the other two towns. A fourth town, to be located
in New Jersey, was never built.)
Greenbelt was an experiment in both the physical and social planning
that preceded its construction. Homes were grouped in superblocks, with
a system of interior walkways permitting residents to go from home to
town center without crossing a major street. Pedestrian and vehicular
traffic were carefully separated. The two curving major streets were laid
out upon and below a crescent-shaped natural ridge. Shops, school, ball
fields, and community buildings were grouped in the center of this crescent.
The architecture was streamlined in the Art Deco style popular at that
time—with curving lines, glass brick inserts in the facades of apartment
buildings, and buttresses along the front wall of the elementary school.
These buttresses create vertical lines framing a set of bas reliefs by
WPA sculptor Lenore Thomas. (These features make the original buildings
of the city some of the finest examples of Art Deco to be found in the
Washington area. Indeed, the Greenbelt Community Center is considered
one of the ten best structures in Art Deco style within the United States.)
A sculpture by Thomas, a mother and child statue, graces the town center.
Greenbelt was also a social experiment. Designed to provide low-income
housing, it drew 5,700 applicants for the original 885 residences. The
first families were chosen not only to meet income criteria , but also
to demonstrate willingness to participate in community organizations.
(In 1941 another 1,000 homes were added to provide housing for families
coming to Washington in connection with defense programs of World War
II.)
The first families, who arrived on October 1, 1937, found no established
patterns or institutions of community life. Almost all were under 30 years
of age. All considered themselves pioneers in a new way of life. A mix
of blue and white collar workers, they reflected the religious composition
of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.—Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish;
but because of the racial bias controlling public policy at that time,
all were white.
Almost immediately the new residents formed a town government—the
first city manager form of government in the State of Maryland. They also
formed the first kindergarten in Prince George's County. During that first
year they also formed a citizens' association, a journalism club which
published the first newspaper (still published today on a weekly basis
as the Greenbelt News Review), and a community band. Interdenominational
church services were held in the elementary school auditorium, which also
functioned as a community center. The Greenbelt Health Association opened
to provide hospital services. Police, fire and rescue squads formed. Residents
held a town fair that first summer. In 1939 the first public swimming
pool opened in Greenbelt—first in the Washington area. Numerous
clubs flourished. In fact, Greenbelters were so busy attending meetings
that the town council called a moratorium on meetings between Christmas
and New Year’s in 1939 to permit residents to spend time at home
with their families.
Greenbelt is also unique for its cooperative institutions. Boston merchant
and philanthropist Edward Filene provided funds to Greenbelt Consumer
Services, Inc., which operated a food store, gas station, drug store,
barber shop, movie theater, valet shop, beauty parlor, variety store,
and tobacco shop. In December 1941 citizens within the community were
able to raise funds to purchase GCS.
In 1952, when Congress voted to sell off the greenbelt towns, citizens
in Greenbelt formed a housing cooperative (Greenbelt Veterans Housing
Corporation, later Greenbelt Homes, Inc.) which purchased the homes. (The
other two greenbelt towns were purchased privately.) Citizens also formed
a cooperative baby sitting pool, a cooperative nursery school, a cooperative
kindergarten, and a cooperative savings and loan association. In fact,
when Greenbelters confronted any kind of a new problem, their typical
first approach was to form a new cooperative.
Today much of the original features of this planned community still exist.
In addition to it, the city itself has expanded to include additional
shopping centers, high rise office buildings, garden apartments, townhouses
and private development. With the construction of the Baltimore-Washington
Parkway, the Capital Beltway, and Kenilworth Avenue—which meet in
Greenbelt—the city has become a center of major residential and
commercial development within the Prince George’s County.
Greenbelt Links
Greenbelt Citylink
Prince George's County Public Schools
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