How the Suburbs Were Segregated by Paige Glotzer

Author:Paige Glotzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The pilot site covered residential areas that the HOLC rated A, B, and C. A-2 consisted of a mixture of detached brick and frame homes and row houses no more than ten years old and listed no foreign-born or black population, no infiltration, and no “relief families.” The HOLC appraiser described it as “a fairly new suburban area of homogenous character. Well planned development.” Its population “type” consisted of a “substantial middle class.” B-8, considered by HOLC appraiser’s as a “good residential area” “holding up in value,” was home to “a few” relief families but no foreign-born or black residents (despite the unacknowledged nearby presence of Wilson Park). C-9, which primarily hugged York Road/Greenmount Avenue, received low marks because of commercial activity.108 Houses were on average thirty-five years old, the same as in D-6. In addition to other demographic differences between the D-6 and the project area, renters made up only 20 percent of the project site’s occupants and the vast majority of housing stock consisted of single-family dwellings. Project officials also approved of the character of residents, noting that “considerable pride of ownership is apparent, social and cultural activities are established.”109

In addition to altering the borders of Waverly, project officials further redefined the geography of Waverly in relation to the rest of the city. Early reports described the project area’s southern boundary as “making contact with one of the downtown districts.” That contact exposed it to “infiltration of sub-standard influences.”110 Waverly was situated between two and three miles north of the harbor, well removed from the central business district and adjacent areas. Nevertheless, officials placed it in the same imagined geography as predominantly black areas of East and West Baltimore. Whether or not the geographic description “downtown” fit the southern portion of Waverly, it functioned as a social and aesthetic descriptor that linked a working-class rental district to the other mixed-race D-rated areas closer to Baltimore’s old center.

After their initial meeting in July 1938, Mowbray, McNeal, and a Baltimore-based HOLC administrator drew up a proposal to take to a sponsoring agency, the HABC. In the proposal, they mapped out a program to “secure” property values by preventing an at-risk area from further socioeconomic or demographic change.111 HABC sponsored the program on the condition that the FHLBB approved the resulting plans as well as provided funds and supplies.112 In turn, the legal department of the USHA, the parent agency of the HABC, approved all the project decisions.113

FIGURE 5.2  Map from the Waverly pilot project report showing slum districts in Baltimore.

(Arthur Goodwillie, Waverly: A Study in Neighborhood Conservation [Washington, DC: Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 1940, 9])

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.