Old Greenbelt, Crescent Road and Southway, Greenbelt, Prince George's County, MD

Significance: The community of Greenbelt, Maryland, was created through a landmark federal planning initiative in the 1930s and exhibits thoughtful integration of transportation, housing, retail, government services, green space, and pedestrian circulation. Since this origin at the hands of the federal Resettlement Administration from 1935-38, Greenbelt has continued an emphasis on planning and maintaining its physical and social character as a progressive community.

Franklin Roosevelt's victory in the 1932 presidential election initiated sweeping changes in the federal government to combat the economic depression of the 1930s. Among Roosevelt's advisors was Columbia University economics professor Rexford Tugwell, who had a particular interest in promoting economic recovery in the agricultural sector. Having been named assistant secretary of agriculture and then undersecretary of agriculture, Tugwell masterminded the formation of the Resettlement Administration, dedicated to moving families from substandard urban and rural locations to new, planned communities. The Resettlement Administration included the Suburban Resettlement Division, which was concerned with moving low- and moderate-income young families from cities to new suburban towns. Economics was a primary concern of this effort, anticipating that the low cost of outlying land would make new communities more affordable. This greenbelt town program utilized Garden City planning principles, first promoted in the United Kingdom by Ebenezer Howard and taken up by American planners, architects, and intellectuals including Henry Wright, Clarence Stein, and Lewis Mumford. Garden City ideals featured the prominent inclusion of parks and green space to augment the density of clustered, multi-family housing and emphasized planned integration of residential, commercial, recreational, and industrial uses throughout the city. Greenbelt, chartered by the state of Maryland in 1937, was the most prominent and complete town in the United States planned along these principles.

Construction of the original section of Greenbelt, Maryland from 1936 to 1938 provided work for thousands of unemployed laborers, as was characteristic of many New Deal programs. The town was an innovative combination of superblocks (neighborhood units with groups of row houses and apartments intersected by pedestrian walkways through communal green space), a central grouping of commercial and recreational structures, and segregated circulation patterns for pedestrian and automotive uses between the residential and commercial zones. In addition, the federal government promoted cooperative enterprises and associations in Greenbelt as a way to foster affordability and an enduring sense of community.

This original section of Greenbelt established a precedent in housing form and in planning that strongly influenced subsequent development. In anticipation of World War II, the federal government developed 1000 new units of row housing for defense workers in an adjacent section of the federally-owned land. These houses were developed into another neighborhood unit of superblocks with curving, picturesque streets grouped around a later elementary school. Old Greenbelt represents a successful example of a planned community, federal intervention into the housing market, and creation of an enduring community spirit through careful social planning.

Survey number: HABS MD-1217
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 80004331