I am writing with regard to Rich Guske's inquiry about the Lathrop Homes in Chicago.

As you mentioned in your original posting, this development was built by the PWA. The PWA ran an experimental program that pre-dated the 1937 Wagner Housing Act (which created public housing as Americans came to know--and hate--it). I am not surprised that Mr. Guske has positive memories or his time in this "project." I explain in my book that the PWA Housing Division work was aimed at a broader spectrum of people than later public housing. (It was more of a "universal" program than a "two-track" one, to use the terminology of policy analysts today.) Many architects and planners in this era believed that we needed to reshape our national residential patterns, and such ideas influenced this program. These design professionals and others, including union activists, wanted to develop attractive and affordable alternatives to the sprawl of single-family suburbanization, which had started to take off during the 1920s. They hoped to create models for new kinds of residential neighborhoods that would prove widely appealing: more compact overall--but still with ample-sized and well designed units. Residences would be set in nicely landscaped grounds, with plenty of recreation facilities and on-site amenities, such as libraries, meeting rooms, and daycare. This vision lost out to the two-tier one set in place by the close of the New Deal, the bottom layer of which has by now lost favor with practically everyone. The top tier (involving public supports of various kinds for the "private" market), however, is tremendously popular. Even Ronald Reagan had to back off when he suggested repealing the mortgage interest income tax deduction, a tax subsidy so regressive that it gives the top 5% of taxpayers $22 billion dollars a year.

Mr. Guske might want to take a look at my recent book Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (University of Chicago Press, 1996) in which I detail the origins and demise of the PWA housing program. The book has two case studies, which involve interviews with past and present residents of two PWA developments, although not the Lathrop Homes (Harlem River Houses, NYC & Carl Mackley Houses, Phila.). I do focus specifically on Chicago in two chapters at the beginning of the book, though, where I discuss housing conditions and the property market before the depression. He might also want to consult Thomas Lee Philpott, The Slum and the Ghetto: Neighborhood Deterioration and Middle-Class Reform, Chicago, 1880-1930 (Oxford, 1978); Devereux Bowly, The Poorhouse: Subsidized Housing in Chicago, 1895-1976 (Southern Illinois

University Press, 1978); and Carl W. Condit, Chicago: Building, Planning and Urban Technology (University of Chicago Press, 1973).

Gail Radford radford@acsu.buffalo.edu Dept. of History SUNY--Buffalo Buffalo, NY 14260-4130