On lectures in history, James MadisonUniversity Professor evan friss teaches a class about the evolution of the suburbs from the early 1900s until the present. He talks about how changes to home on policy loan policy and the rise of automobiles helped great an alternative to urban living. His class is about an hour. Mr. Friss today we are talking about the suburbs. How many of you grew up in the suburbs . Almost all of you. What kind of adjectives would you use to describe the suburbs . Proud. Mr. Friss perhaps an unusual choice. Like being from nowhere. Mr. Friss good. Other descriptions, characterizations . Safe. A utopia. Mr. Friss a utopia. Family oriented. Mr. Friss family oriented. Nicolas, were you going to Say Something . Drew . I love this. [laughter] mr. Friss good. Some people, utopia, maybe this is a different generation. I thought people were going to say lame and boring, which is why i picked this very lame typeface. I thought we would start with an image of contemporary suburbia. This is an engagement shoot. A young couple taken to the suburban street for their engagement. People get married, they take engagement photos. This went around the internet for a while and lots of people, including myself, left laughed at it. What is so weird about that . Why does this image what is the disconnect . You would think it should be a scenic place like the woods, this is in a neighborhood. Mr. Friss someplace may be scenic or natural. Usually has a romantic feel, not random cars everywhere. Mr. Friss romantic. People might take them in nature or the city, places that seem exciting. Young couples, we do not usually associate with suburbia. But, what we think about suburbia has changed over time. Today we will spend the class thinking about how the notion of a suburb, and it is a notion, what we think about suburbs have changed over time. It depends where we are talking about and who we are asking. We will think about suburbs as a historical construct and what they mean. But i think somebody, maybe nicolas, said it is kind of nowhere. But by definition, it is relative. Suburbs only exist, though word suburb is beneath the city. It is related to the city. It is seen as a nowhere land between the city and rural. I was thinking about this the other day. We think about culture as maybe being urban or rural. Jazz music, hiphop. Those are historically very urban forms of art. And maybe Country Music or folk art, we think of Rural America as having a culture that is very obvious to us, one we would recognize. What is suburban music . Suburban art . Suburban culture . These kinds of things. It can be hard to identify. People who are from the suburbs, maybe not those of us who think they are utopias or drew, who loved growing up there. But people are often embarrassed to be from the suburbs. I say this because at the beginning of the semester i often ask students where they are from. Somebody will say baltimore. And i will say i know baltimore, what neighborhood . And it turns out they live in a podunk town 25 miles outside of baltimore. There are 8 Million People who live in new york city. Probably 30 million or 40 Million People who you ask and they will say they live in new york. No one wants to admit they are from new jersey, i guess. [laughter] mr. Friss they do occupy this strange space. We will go back in time and focus on the 20th century and the mid 20th century, in particular. We will have a early prehistory to think about how suburbs came to be. Although the word existed all the way back in the 14th century, the suburban ideal, the concept of suburbia, began in the 19th century. Particularly in the second half of the 19th century. It has a lot to do with cities. We talked about in class how cities are growing, becoming more industrialized. Over time, cities become associated with chaos, disorder, poor health. As a consequence, people are seeking the tonic of nature as a prescription for better health. People are wanting to escape the city. One of the ways theyre are able to do that before they build suburbs are with urban parks. Here is an example from central park, construction begins just before the civil war. The idea was, if you cannot live outside the city, at least you could get a taste of the country. So they may live in these its, dirty, crowded city, but they can have the benefit of fresh air, scenery flora and fauna, most of which was imported but nevertheless, seemed very natural. Wealthy folk could enjoy the curved path that stood in stark contrast to the gridlike streets of manhattan. As of the 19th century continues and cities become larger and more industrialized, the notion that cities were deceased d iseased, filthridden, perverted places to live, only grows. Some doctors begin to coin medical conditions, one is new yorkitis, that makes people morbid and disturbed by virtue of living in the crowded, chaotic city, with the cacophony, the noise, and all the people. So late in the 19th century, there are a lot of remedies for this. People fleeing the city, maybe farther than central park. There are other natural landmarks. A lot of people are riding bicycles as a way to escape the city. And have some sense of nature outside. So the suburban style takes off after the civil war. People start to emphasize having a detached home, a cottagestyle house, having fresh air accessible, space, i yard, a a yard, a garden. Some of you mention this notion of suburbs being safe and familyoriented. That idea begins to take off in popularity, as well. We talked earlier in the clouds, class, Harriet Beecher stowe, her sister becomes one of the leading proponents of suburbia, in terms of thinking about these spaces as ideal for family to raise a family and encourage domestic feminism. The suburban aesthetic is seen in a number of ways. We will see one example here from new york. This house was designed by calvert fox, one of the people that designed central park. This is a big house, 5000 square feet. Eight bedrooms, only one bathroom. The idea that epitomized here, and a lot of suburban architecture was to emphasize nature, and its relationship to nature. They built this house for mr. Warren, the treasurer of a railroad company. They built it purposely on the hudson river to take advantage of this beautiful view, the natural splendor. And, situated the house in such a way it was opening up to the river view. The big parlor rooms inside the house were at the back of the house so they could see the water. There was a big, giant porch on the back where they assumed the residents would spend their summer enjoying the breeze and taking in the breathtaking views. You can see there is a garden, i a yard, emphasizing the space that could be had in the suburbs. In much bigger house fan most people were living in in the city. One that was supposed to blend in with nature. Vaux was concerned about the house not sticking out so much. , youthough it was large can see the cables make the house appear very tall. But in the rear, the gables are not there. Instead, there is a hipped roof to deemphasize the verticality. There is also a lot of ornamentation. The idea was that these houses could express the emotions of the owners. These window hoods on the firstfloor windows, elaborate trim along the gables, as a way to stand out, as a way to have these ornamental flourishes, to be part of this suburbanstyle architecture. Which was very much intended for wealthier folks who could escape the suburbs. This is interesting to see what the house looks like today. This was a couple years ago. Nicelooking house. It was on the market for 285,000. Pretty cheap. But it remains a kind of signal of this earlier, impressive era. While some people like vaux were building these suburbanstyle cottage houses, others or thinking about creating the first suburbanplanned community. A couple of examples. One is Llewellyn Park in new jersey, that sat 12 miles outside new york city. The other, riverside in illinois, which was pretty close, about nine miles from chicago. The idea here was not to create these nice, cottage style homes with their own yard in guarding, yard and garden, but an entire community were similar folks could come and develop these suburban developments, these neighborhoods. These planned communities. You can see in both of the plans here, they are emphasizing nature, the roads are curved. They bring in lots of flora and fauna. In Llewellyn Park, the lot sizes are quite large and they do not allow fences. The idea, there would be a shared, open space, where any individual owner could roam in this big, public nature grounds. They are kind of interesting examples for several reasons. One of which, in the Llewellyn Park there is a gatehouse, which they used as a way to promote the idea of privacy, security, these fundamental features of suburban life that we think of today. But also, they suggest as exclusivity. These were in fact, Country Homes for very wealthy city people. Later in the 19th century we have the origins of streetcar suburbs that had houses that are often a little less elaborate, but interesting, nonetheless. Streetcars become popularized in the late 19th century because they become electrified and are able to travel faster. This is an image of pittsburgh. You can see all of the bridges between pittsburgh crossing the rivers around it. These bridges are not carrying automobiles, but rather, pedestrians, railroads, and primarily streetcars. All around pittsburgh, new, suburban streetcar suburbs are developing. Also, squirrel hill, where managers and businessmen can live in these nice, more bucolic spaces, but still manage to get to the city pretty easily. We think of suburbs primarily as a residential. But they are also industrial suburbs. Homestead, pennsylvania, about seven miles outside pittsburgh, is an example of one of these industrial suburbs, and a streetcar suburb that is connected to pittsburgh via this bridge that was erected in 1895. This is not a zoomed in look. What do you find striking about this particular suburb . How does it maybe look unusual . Unlike the others, the streets are very straight and there is no attempt to incorporate nature. Mr. Friss there is a very linear street pattern. They often follow the Railroad Tracks or streetcar tracks, where development is following transportation. It looks like they are close to factories. Mr. Friss good, there is a great deal of industry here. This is the homestead steel works which are eventually purchased by andrew carnegie, which became infamous for a labor strike. This is the center of industry. More than half the People Living here eventually worked for the steel company. We are not going to spend so much time thinking about these kinds of suburbs. But it is important to remember that manufacturing does often move to the fringes of cities. And there are all kinds of different suburbs. I wanted to talk about some of the things that precipitate the modern suburban movement in the mid1950s. Some of that stems from the new deal policies we talked about earlier. In particular, the creation of the homeowners loan corporation, a new deal by product that was trying to help people afford homes. As we discussed a couple weeks back, the Great Depression produced tremendous homelessness, foreclosures, etc. Part of what the new deal wanted to do was create a boom in the Construction Industry and provide homes for people who needed them. This holc was an effort to provide mortgages for people. In the 19th century, most buyers either built their house, or they paid cash for it. Mortgages were just beginning to become a thing. They were often very short term. You would have to refinance. So that holc offered a longerterm mortgage with a lower monthly payment. One of the interesting things about the holc, they did not want to give out loans that would not be paid back. So they had a very intricate process of assessing neighborhood value. They did not want to give loans to neighborhoods they thought would be in decline. So they created a very detailed system where individual assessors would go to a neighborhood, look at the kind of housing. They would look at how old the housing was, if it was in good shape, to determine if it was a good neighborhood that would hold its value, or a neighborhood that was on decline. And they made these maps with colors and letters to denote a were the best neighborhoods, and b, c, and d. But as we see from this map from 1937 richmond, virginia, the most salient feature in the assessors reports had to do with race. In this case, white neighborhoods tended to be shaded in green or blue, which was the highest ratings. If a neighborhood was populated heavily by africanamericans, it would almost always received a d, or red rating. That was certainly the case in this neighborhood we will look at in a minute. Which today is randolph. It had an effect on neighboring neighborhoods. You can see just to the side of this neighborhood is a yellow grouping, that is currently bird park in richmond. The report for this neighborhood said it would have been higher, would have gotten a blue rating, a b rating, but was downgraded because it is next to an africanamerican neighborhood. And there is a park on this side of the neighborhood. So, africanamericans are walking through this neighborhood. Thereby, supposedly, devaluing. When the assessors wrote reports like this, in other neighborhoods they included all sorts of detailed information. Maybe you cannot see, but under inhabitants, it would often say salaried workers, managerial class, to define the kind of people that worked there, as a way to understand how much money they made, as a way to understand if this neighborhood would become prosperous or maintain itself. But a neighborhoods dominated by africanamericans, the assessor usually just listed negro, and that was enough to designate a red designation. And this is part of the origin of the term redlining, discriminating against groups by withholding government services, etc. There is been some debate about how much of these ratings mattered in terms of lending practices. But there is no doubt there is certainly a sign of how new deal benefits were being meted out disproportionately. It is perhaps not also a surprise there is a correlation between these maps and poverty rates today. This is an overlay, a map of the original holc map from 1937. The areas shaded in red underneath it show a poverty poverty rate of more than 20 . Perhaps the government was good at predicting the future and these neighborhoods were really in decline. Or more likely, the government helped cement the fate of these neighborhoods. So what does it have to do with suburbanization . You notice the areas in red in richmond are at the center, the core of the city. That was often the case. This is a map of chicago. Another from cleveland. And finally, in oakland. All of these from 1940, or 1937. You notice the red is that the city center, the core of the city. The government started to promote by giving loans and incentivizing in other ways, development at the fringes of the city. Which happened at the expense of the city center. It also began the process of associating inner cities, city centers, as the neighborhoods of decline. And similarly that those , neighborhoods of decline where were the neighborhoods in which africanamericans disproportionately lived. And these ideas would become linked in a way that would be hard to untangle for a very long time. Following up on the homeowners loan corporation, a bigger and more important new deal fha, whichwn as the becomes a huge part of the postwar suburban boom that incentivizes suburban building by making home loans much more affordable. And goes even further than the holc in ensuring private loans that will provide longterm loans, with very little down payments. Often less than 10 was needed. This similarly operated and a way that promoted discrimination. The sag fha was more likely to ensure new Housing Development rather than reconstructing or rehabilitating old development, which meant new housing was likely to be built outside the cities. They were more likely to insure mortgages for singlefamily houses, the kind that would be very popular in the suburbs. And appallingly, many that they subsidized, they promoted the idea of restricted covenant. An agreement that the suburbanites then moved into these neighborhoods would be held to, that made sure they would never sell their house to somebody that was not white. Excluding very explicitly africanamericans. These covenants would eventually be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1948 in shelley versus kramer. But discrimination managed to continue in a variety of other ways. These programs are in place before the war. But once the war begins to die down, soldiers are returning home, the g. I. Bill is enabling economic growth. We have postwar, suburban boom that follows world war ii. During the war, towards the end in 1944, there were about 144,000 new houses built in a single year. By 1950, there would be roughly 2 million houses built in that exact year. By 1950, the rate of suburban growth was more than 10 times that the rate of the city center. These new suburbs were often much less dense. The houses looked very similar, and so did the people. The most famous and largest example of the postwar suburbs was in levittown in long island, 25 miles east of new york city. Where Abraham Levitt and his two sons bought 4000 acres of potato farm in 1946 and eventually build 17,000 houses. They do so in a way that is reminiscent of mass production. As you can see here. Nonunionized workers would go from house to house and do the same task, often times very minute, over and over again. They really helped revolutionize the building process. As you can see from this aerial image, they had precut lumber that came from the levitt farms. They made these concrete slabs dont cashrt and dumped the material out and they would quickly build a house. They were able to build a house at a rate exceeding 150 per week. The result is that the houses were very affordable because they were built so quickly. The earliest model sold for 7,900. It is hard to do economic comparisons to today, but it would probably be Something Like 85,000, 90,000 in todays money. It became very affordable for people in the middle class. People start moving in in 1947 to houses that look like this. This is one that is still , but the original cape cod style and floor plan. What do you make of this particular house, compared to other suburban houses . What is interesting . Good, it is one floor. It is very basic, it is simple, compact. These cape codstyle houses were only 750 square feet. They only had one bathr