In 1935, the Resettlement Administration undertook the Greenbelt
construction project which was to serve three major purposes:
In this project, I would like to discuss some of the aspects of the
construction, including the labor and materials used, as well as some
economic and safety concerns. Keep in mind that these factors continually
intertwine in
the construction business and many times it is hard to discretely separate
the roles played by each factor in individual design decisions.
Safety was, indeed, a major concern of the designers. After all, this
project was to provide housing for citizens who had already suffered
through the Great Depression, and Roosevelt agreed to this project because
it would provide a "Utopia" for the stricken citizens. Certainly,
safety should be pretty high on the list of "Utopia" ingredients.
Designers felt that a special effort would have to be made to ensure
safety because they had some disturbing statistics on their minds. In 1922,
100 lives were lost when the Knickerbocker Theater building collapsed in
Washington. This tragedy was caused by a weak structure and surely
could have been prevented by stricter building codes. Additionally, fire
caused a major threat. According to the Bureau of Census, 7,874 lives
were lost in 1935 due to inhalation and burns, the majority of which
occurred in homes (Thompson 95).
Many of the homes in America at
that time were old and dilapidated like the one in the picture.
As you can imagine, a home like this would be a definite fire hazard.
In order to address these safety issues, the Greenbelt homes were
built to rigid building code standards. Fire resistive materials were
used as much as possible. These materials included brick veneer,
asbestos shingles, and cinder block. Note that in 1935, asbestos
was not known to be hazardous to one's health. In fact, only positive
qualities for this material are mentioned in the Kidder-Parker
Architects' and Builders' Handbook. Under "Asbestos Siding and Roofing
Shingles", it states: "because of incombustibility, low coefficient of
expansion, and low heat-conductivity, asbestos products will withstand
high temperatures without disintegration or loss of strength" (Parker
923).
In addition to these fire-resistive materials, other measures were
taken to be sure that the residents would be safe and feel comfortable.
The designers adhered to strict standards of sanitation, ventilation,
lighting, durability, and low maintenance costs. Glass brick, which is
also a fire-resistive material (however, very expensive) was used to provide
natural sunlight in some stairwells. It seems that this nice feature was
added mostly for
aesthetics. A pitched roof, like the one shown in the picture, will
provide for good ventilation in the summer months because hot air can rise
into the "dead" space. Also note that, in the picture, this house, which
was eventually a brick building when completed, has slate roofing
shingles
being applied to the roof which will serve as extra insulation in the winter
months. In addition, the shingles serve as a good water resistant
protection for the structural elements of the roof. These shingles are
especially important on the
flat roofs that were built for the concrete cinder block houses. With a
flat roof structure, rain and snow doesn't run off nearly as easily and,
therefore, it is important to keep the moisture from soaking into the
lumber and causing it to rot. A rotted roof is very vulnerable to
collapse, especially during a storm with winds or any substantial weight of
snow settling on the feeble structure.
One of the effects of using fire-resistive materials and adhering to
rigid building codes is that the cost of materials skyrockets. This was
a common complaint of private industry in the time period. Being forced
to comply to stricter regulations, many organizations complained that
these regulations would unduly increase the cost of materials. Many of
these organizations were trade unions who were afraid that a forced
increase in the cost of materials would be offset by a reduction in the
labor wages. These trade unions were encouraged under F.D.R.'s
National Industrial Recovery Act which created the National Industrial
Recovery Administration in 1933. Since the trade unions had gained enough
political power to discourage the mandating of the strict
building codes, these codes were not followed by many builders in 1935.
The federally funded project of Greenbelt seemed to be the ideal place
to practice some of these higher standards. This was to be a "make-work"
project to provide jobs for those struck by the Depression, provide
low-income housing for many also hurt by the economic strife, and to
inject some money into our economy to give the nation an economical
boost. Mark
Boyd focuses on the Great Depression in his project. Click on his
name
to go
to his project and gain some more knowledge of the Depression and how it
affected the American citizens.
Since the project was federally funded and was actually trying to inject
money into the economy, the owners (the federal government) weren't very
concerned with earning a profit. Therefore, it would actually be part of
the plan to use expensive materials and still pay decent wages for
the labor. Well, this is exactly what they did. First, let me point out
that they not only paid decent wages for their unskilled labor, but they
prefered labor-intensive techniques to things that could be done with
machines. The idea was to provide jobs for the unskilled workers who
were left out in the cold by the labor unions. Click over to
Andrew Hales'
project to learn more about how this "make-work" project actually
improved the lives of the construction workers.
In 1931, a typical construction project spent 62.7% on materials and
37.3% on labor (Thompson 53). The Greenbelt project in 1935, however,
spent only 30.4% on materials and a whopping 69.6% on labor. The
project employed over 9700 men for a total of 7,883,400 man hours.
This came to a total of over nine million
dollars spent on labor (Farm Security Administration 7).
The poster shows that the government was, in fact, very pleased with
the inefficient use of labor and boasted about the numbers of men employed
and dollars spent. It can be shown further that the government succeeded
in injecting dollars into the economy. The total amount spent can be
divided up to over $1600 for each of the 885 original residential units.
A private
company trying to at least break even would have had to charge about $80
per
month in rent. But these units were going for a mere $18-$41 per month
(Morris 2).
The differential was made up by the fact that the owner (the federal
government) took a loss on the project. The government didn't expect to
break even at all; it was injecting money into the economy. In fact,
$4,902,000 was spent on inefficient labor and $284,000 worth of
materials was left over. This means that machine-oriented techniques
and better estimating could have saved the government a lot of money.
So, I maintain, the government was not simply providing low cost
housing for its citizens but was genuinely trying to
overspend on the project to help the economy. Also note that the
government's aid in boosting the economy didn't stop with the
construction project. See Zachary Lunin's
project for more details about how the government helped the new
residents of Greenbelt to afford
furniture and things of this sort.
Although the plan was to spend a lot during construction, the goal was
to minimize the maintenance costs that would be incurred, especially
since the community was to eventually be sold to a private owner. In
order to economically help the residents down the road, their maintenance
and utilities costs would need to be minimal. All of this was
factored into the design as well. You can see that when constructing the
residential units, a number of units were strung together in "row
houses". Typically, 2-8 units comprised a "row". By using eight units in a
"row," for example, only the two end units contain three outside walls,
while the remaining six units contain only two outside walls. The
inside walls, between units, are shielded from the weather
conditions. Therefore,the heating bills should be significantly reduced from
what a single home
(which has four outside walls) of that size would incur. In addition, the
inside walls between units can be used for water pipes so that they
don't freeze
in the winter months. In this way, water damage and emergency plumbing
costs are less likely to occur.
In addition to cost savings to individual residents, as mentioned
above, the town as a whole would save in road maintenance costs. The
engineers adopted a system of super-blocks to replace the traditional
gridiron pattern of streets. In this way, the 60 miles of roadways
thought to be necessary to service the homes was reduced to just 6 miles
(Tugwell, 4). In the
long-run, a lot of money would be saved in repaving, snow removal,
pot-hole patching and a
number of other road maintenance items. Since maintenance of local roads
is financed by the local municipalities who, in turn, tax their citizens,
the residents would surely be receiving a savings in property taxes due
to this ingenious design.
Rohit
Kinra's project focuses on the architectural layout of
Greenbelt. Please go to his project for a more in-depth discussion of the
benefits of the geometric design of the town.
The town was, indeed, designed to provide a safe and economical
environment for its residents without too
much regard for the construction costs because, after all, the government
was picking up the tab. When I first visited this quaint little community,
the first thing I thought was
HAVE I FOUND THE EMERALD CITY? I don't have time
to go into the factors that made me think this, but I have included a
side-shoot to this project to explain my reasoning. I hope you enjoy it!