Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia

How a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model promoted by both public entities and private developers.

Eminent historian Joshua Freeman rescues garden apartments--typically low-rise multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens--from their invisibility in the American landscape. He details their outsized influence on housing policy and social policy as they helped upgrade living standards for working people. Inspired by the architectural innovations and socialist politics of British garden cities, Red Vienna, and German modernist housing in the 1920s, these large, centrally managed projects were mostly not public housing, but their capitalist developers worked with governments to keep down rents. The results were often relatively small apartments and large communal spaces, aimed at fostering actual American community.

Joshua B. Freeman is distinguished professor of history emeritus at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University New York. He is the author of American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, the Democratic Revolution at Home, 1945-2000; Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World; and Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II.