Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T18:52:53.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Building for Babbitt: The State and the Suburban Home Ideal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Janet Hutchison
Janet Hutchison
Affiliation:
National Museum of American History
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In his 1922 novel Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis introduced his main character, George Follansbee Babbitt, a realtor and member of the local planning board, by describing Babbitt's suburban residence. Paraphrasing contemporary house-plan publications, Lewis characterized the Dutch Colonial dwelling as at once “competent and glossy.” Babbitt's yard, “was perfection … his bathroom … porcelain and glazed tile and metal sleek as silver … and his bedroom … right out of Cheerful Modern Homes for Medium Incomes.” Indeed, his house “had the best of taste, the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences.”

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1997 , pp. 184 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Lewis, Sinclair, Babbitt (1980 reprint by the New American Library; originally published, New York, 1922), 15–16.Google Scholar

2. This essay concentrates on the organizational structure and marketing of the Hooverendorsed housing programs. My larger monograph also considers individual communities that sponsored such organizations as the Better Homes Movement and offers a deeper discussion of class, race, and reception.

3. Hoover, Herbert, American Individualism (New York, 1922)Google Scholar. Wilson, Joan Hoff in Herbert Hoover, Forgotten Progressive (Boston, 1975)Google Scholar clarifies his commitment to civic action. See also Barber, William J., From New Era to New Deal: Herbert Hoover, the Economists, and American Economic Policy, 1921–1933 (New York, 1985), 191–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. There is a wide literature on the history of the Americanhome, although much of that literature fails to address the relationship of housing to state policy. For discussions of the single-family detached dwelling as the American dream, see Wright, Gwendolyn, Building the Dream: A Social History of Housing in America (New York, 1981)Google Scholar, and Moralism and the Model Home: Domestic Architecture and Cultural Conflict in Chicago, 1873–1913 (Chicago, 1980)Google Scholar; Clark, Clifford Edward Jr., The American Family Home, 1800–1960 (Chapel Hill, 1986)Google Scholar; Handlin, David E, The American Home: Architecture and Society, 1815–1915 (Boston, 1979)Google Scholar; and Fishman, Robert, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York, 1987).Google Scholar

For an analysis of cooperative housekeeping, cooperative options, and apartment-living ventures, see, respectively, Hayden, Dolores, The Grand Domestic Revolution: A History of Feminist Designs for American Homes, Neighborhoods, and Cities (Cambridge, Mass., 1981)Google Scholar; Bailey, Kristan Sylvain, “The Federal Government and the Cooperative Housing Movement, 1917–1950” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie-Mellon University, 1988)Google Scholar; and Cromley, Elizabeth C., Alone Together: A History of New York's Early Apartments (Ithaca, N.Y., 1990).Google Scholar

The one study that recognizes the contribution that Hoover made to housing policy is Hawley, Ellis, “Herbert Hoover, the Commerce Secretariat, and the Vision of the ‘Associative State,’” Journal of American History 61 (June 1974): 116–140CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which includes the Better Homes Movement as central to Hoover's housing policy.

5. This description is my synthesis of the houses promoted by the various programs. Other similar descriptions, topology, and an earlier history of the suburban home are found in Gowans, Alan, The Comfortable House: North American Suburban Architecture, 1890–1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1986)Google Scholar. Gowans uses the term “suburban” to mean “less than fully urban.” I would expand the term to include such houses built within the city limits, in developments, and in the countryside. While Gowans argues that the farm depression made it difficult for farmers to purchase such dwellings, I would suggest that the material evidence shows widespread adoption of “suburban” houses across the rural landscape. See also McMurry, Sally, The Progressive Farmhouse Ideal (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

6. Literature on housing still lacks a clear overview of the history of real estate development over time. The best analysis of real estate development during the interwar period is Weiss, Marc A., The Rise of line Community Builder: The American Real Estate Industry and Urban Land Planning (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

7. For an analysis of women's responses to suburbanization during this period, see Marsh, Margaret, Suburban Lives (New Brunswick, N.J., 1990)Google Scholar. On changing youth culture and concerns, see Fass, Paula, The Beautiful and the Damned: American Youth and the 1920's(New York, 1977.)Google Scholar

8. The United States Housing Corporation oversaw the construction of two government-funded housing developments. Most of the projects were not completed and the federal government sold ownership rights after the armistice. See Ford, James, Report of the U.S. Housing Corporation (Washington, D.C., 1919).Google Scholar

For a description of the development of one state-financed development, see Candee, Richard M., Atlantic Heights: A World War I Shipbuilder's Community (Portsmouth, N.H., 1985)Google Scholar. In 1917, another form of new state involvement occurred with the establishment of federal Land Banks, which provided farmers with long-term mortgages at low interest rates.

Paul Murphy, “Address of Paul C. Murphy, Before the Interstate Realty Convention, Held at Aberdeen and Hoquiam, August 9–11, 1917, Under the Auspices of Grays Harbor Realty Board,” Box 482, United States Housing Corporation, National Archives (hereafter cited as USHC, NA). “Own Your Own Home” originated in 1917 as the “Buy a Home” Campaign sponsored by the National Association of Real Estate Boards.

I am grateful to Brian Horrigan, curator at the Minnesota Historical Society, for generously sharing with me his research on the Own Your Own Home movement. In particular, my discussion of Murphy and the role of celebrity endorsements uses Horrigan's analysis of this topic.

9. Buy a Home Campaign, Local Campaigns, Box 456, Own Your Own Home Papers, Department of Labor, N A.

10. Ibid.

11. “Address of Paul C. Murphy, Portland, Oregon, Before the Minnesota Land Owners Convention of Minnesota, Jan. 9, 10, 11, 1919,” Box 462, Own Your Own Home, Department of Labor, N A.

12. Paul C. Murphy, “Address of Paul C. Murphy, Before the Interstate Realty Convention, Held at Aberdeen and Hoquian, August 9–11, 1917,” Murphy returned to Oregon after overseeing the setup of the Washington headquarters.

13. Carrie Chapman Catt to Honorable Louis F. Post, Assistant Secretary, Department of Labor, 18 June 1919, Box 456, USHC, NA; King H. Pullen, Southern Pine Association to James Ford, 23 June 1919, L. R. Putman File, Preachment, Group No. 3, Box 462, USHC, NA.

14. For example, Senator Albert Fall of New Mexico claimed that these federal developments showed “an insidious concerted effort to socialize this Government of ours, to overturn the entire Government of the United States.” Quoted in Jackson, Kenneth, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1983), 192Google Scholar. “Own Your Own Home Show Formally Opens To-Day,” New York Post, 22 April 1922, Housing, Clippings, General Accounts, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (hereafter cited as HHPL).

15. Blivens, Bruce, “Do Workingmen Deserve Homes?” The New Republic, 5 March 1924, 39–41Google Scholar. See also Wood, Edith Elmer, The Housing of the Unskilled Wage Earner: America's Next Problem (New York, 1919)Google Scholar; Whitaker, Charles Harris et al. , The Housing Problem in War and Peace (Washington, D.C., 1918).Google Scholar

16. “The Housing Committee of the National Association of Real Estate Board to the Executive Committee at Washington, March 6–8, 1922 By Henry R. Brigham, Chairman,” 4, Report of Housing Committee File, Box 35, Idler Papers, NAREB, Roosevelt Presidential Library (hereafter cited as RPL).

17. Herbert Hoover, “Good Homes as Investment,” The Delineator, October 1924, 2. This emphasis on housing a stable industrial labor force has its antecedents in the nineteenth century. Hoover, Herbert, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1952), 257Google Scholar; Herbert Hoover, American Individualism.

18. For a discussion of Hoover's ideas about social science management and planning, see Karl, Barry D., “Presidential Planning and Social Science Research: Mr. Hoover's Experts,” Perspectives in American History 3 (1969): 347–409Google Scholar, and Alchon, Guy, The Invisible Hand of Planning: Capitalism, Social Science, and the State in the 1920s (Princeton, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As Brian Horrigan notes, it is no coincidence that government involvement in housing was originally under the purview of the Labor Department.

For Hoover's commitment to macroeconomic planning in the construction industry, see Bjornstad, Fred, “‘A Revolution in Ideas and Methods’: The Construction Industry and Socio-Economic Planning in the United States, 1915–1933” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1991)Google Scholar. These associates included James Taylor and John Gries, who remained active in government housing policy throughout the interwar period.

19. Herbert Hoover to President Harding, 9 February 1922, Commerce Papers, Building and Housing, HHPL. Information on the Food Conservation campaign and the women's enlistment can be found in Lloyd, Craig, “Aggressive Introvert: Herbert Hoover and Public Relations Management, 1912–1923” (Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1970.), 48Google Scholar. For articles on standardization, see, for example, “Secretary Hoover's Standardization Plan,” New York City Expert (April 1922) in General Account Papers, Housing, Clippings, HHPL, and “Government to Squeeze Waste Out of Industry: Department of Commerce Plans to Reduce Variety in Practically Every Article of Commerce in Country,” New York American (31 July 1922)Google Scholar, General Account, Housing, Clippings, HHPL. For his advocacy of a new building code, see “Hoover Presents New Building Code,” New York Times, 22 January 1923, General Account, Housing, Clippings, HHPL. Herbert Hoover (unsigned) to Mr. Ernest T. Trigg, president, National Federation of Construction Industries, Commerce Papers, Building and Housing, HHPL. Hoover's stance on the importance of voluntarism remained unchanged. In his memoirs, he asserted that the “free and confident” economy was more successful than the planned economy of Roosevelt's New Deal, citing as proof house numbers constructed per annum. The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (New York, 1952), 96Google Scholar. For an excellent discussion of Hoover's optimism about the translation of wartime voluntarism into peacetime efforts, see Cuff, Robert D., “Voluntarism and War Organization During the Great War,” Journal of American History 64, no. 1–2 (1977): 358–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Hoover, Memoirs, 92.

21. Marie Meloney, “Better Homes,” The Delineator, October 1922, 9. idem, “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, June 1923, 2. There is a wide literature on the role of maternalist reform in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Significant are Skocpol, Theda, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)Google Scholar; Gordon, Linda, Pitied But Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, eds., Mothers of a New World: Matemalist Politics and the Origins of the Welfare Suites (New York, 1993)Google Scholar; Muncy, Robin, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890–1935 (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; and Ladd-Taylor, Molly, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1994).Google Scholar

22. Donald Wilhelm, “Memorandum for the Secretary,” 22 June 1922, Commerce Department Bureau of Standards, Commerce Papers, HHPL.

23. “Statement by Secretary Hoover for Christian Science Monitor,” 25 March 1925, Bldg. and Housing, Commerce Papers, HHPL. In addition to sponsoring home exhibitions, the national Better Homes office distributed home-ownership manuals and zoning primers from the Commerce Department to local committees.

24. Meloney, Marie, “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, September 1922, 2Google Scholar; Edwin Brown to Mr. Clarence T. Myers, secretary, Lake Division, ASHSB, 26 November 1923, Architects’ Small House Service Bureau Papers, Minnesota Historical Society (hereafter cited as ASHSB, MHS); Meloney, “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, January 1924. 1; idem, “Better Homes Prizewinners,” The Delineator, October 1924, 1; idem, “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, November 1922, 18.

25. Meloney, “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, November 1922,18; ibid., “Better Homes in America,” The Delineator, May 1923, 1.

26. For a discussion of the National Better Home, see Janet Hutchison, “The Cure for Domestic Neglect: Better Homes in America, 1922–1935,” Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture II, ed. Wells, Camille (Columbia, Mo., 1986), 168–78.Google Scholar

27. James Ford to Marie Meloney, 14 January 1926, Bldg. and Hsg., Better Homes in America, HHPL (hereafter cited as BHA); Meloney, “Ten Great Songs,” The Delineator, November 1923, 5.

28. The Daily News Reader, Staunton, Virginia, 11 May 1924, 4. My thanks to Ann McCleary for this citation.

29. Edwin Brown to Clarence Myers, 26 November 1923, ASHSB Papers, MHS.

30. In 1934, for example, Ford claimed more than four thousand participating communities. Annual Reports of the Better Homes Movement, BHA, Hoover Institution of War Revolution and Peace Archives (hereafter cited as HIA). Kohler, Wisconsin, showed model Better Homes until 1958, sixteen years after the demise of the national movement. Kohler Company Archives, Kohler, Wisconsin.

In 1928, the Better Homes movement began sponsoring an architectural design competition for architects building small homes; this competition was separate from the local demonstrations and reacted far more to international changes in style.

31. An excellent overview of the Architects' Small House Service Bureau, including an analysis of cost, is found in Harvey, Thomas, “Mail Order Architecture in the Twenties,” Landscape 25:3 (1981), 1–9Google Scholar. Schrenck, Lisa Marie discusses bureau marketing, operations, designs, and decline in “The Impact of the Architects' Small House Service Bureau on Early Twentieth-Century Architecture” (M.A. thesis, University of Virginia, 1987)Google Scholar. See also Schrenk's excellent introduction in Your Future Home (Washington, D.C., 1992; reprint of 1922 edition, St. Paul: Weyerhaeuser Forest Products); “Report of the Committee on Small Houses, the American Institute of Architects for the year 1923, American Institute of Architects, Box 1, HIA.

Although the American Institute of Architects endorsed the Architects Small House Service Bureau, architects in fact contested the efficacy of such a program. Hoover's endorsement of the Architects’ Small House Service Bureau also drew protests. In Walter Fawcett's “Government Endorsements and the Architect,” Architecture Record, October 1925, 393–94, he questioned the ethics of such governmental endorsements. Hoover refused to revoke his endorsement since the architects were not making excessive profits. John M. Gries to Hoover, 28 October 1925, Bldg. & Housing, Commerce Papers, HHPL.

The central bureau office was located in Minneapolis with branch offices in several other cities.

32. Thomas Harvey, “Mail Order Architecture,” 1–9; “A Short Story of One Year's Work of the Bureau by Edwin H. Brown, President of The Architects’ Small House Service Bureau of the United States Inc,” ASHSB, MHS; The American Institute of Architects for the Year 1923, “Report of the Committee on Small Houses,” American Institute of Architects, Box 4, BHA, HI. Edward D. Pierre, architect, Indianapolis to Mr. Clarence Myers, 3 December 1923, ASASB, MHS. Hoover to Mr. Edwin H. Brown, secretary, American Institute of Architects, 9 April 1924, ASHSB, MHS, 1–2.

33. “Economy and Durability Specified for Three Journal Houses,” Minneapolis Journal, 15 April 1923,1.

34. For a discussion of bureau costs, see Harvey, 5. Mr. Brogren, “Questionnaire,” received 23 January 1924, ASHSB, MHS.

35. Maurice I. Flagg to Mr. Charles D. Kelley, Detroit News, 1 November 1923, ASHSB, MHS; Maurice Flagg to Edwin Brown, 25 October 1923, ASHSB, MHS; Maurice Flagg to James Ford, 25 June 1925, ASHSB, MHS.

36. Architects' Small House Service Bureau, Your Future Home (St. Paul, Minn., 1923)Google Scholar; other architects criticized this alliance, seeing it as commercializing the bureau. Robert T. Jones, Tech. Dir., ASHSB to Mr. N. M. Collart, Superintendent of Decoration, Sherwin-Williams Co., Cleveland, Ohio, 21 December 1923, ASHSB, MHS; Robert Jones, Tech. Dir., to Mr. N. M. Collart, Superintendent of Decoration, 19 November 1923, ASHSB, MHS. Newspapers often had connections to real estate interests and participated in real estate speculation. Requests for bureau house plans that cite Better Homes in America as their source are from areas throughout the country, including New Jersey, West Virginia, and Texas, ASHSB, MHS. James Ford, “The Plan Service of the Architects’ Small House Service Bureau,” American Building Association News, 5.

37. H. S. Sackett, secretary and director, Home Modernizing Bureau, to George Akerman, secretary to the president, 17 September 1929, Pres. Subj. File—Better Homes Correspondence, HHPL; H. S. Sackett to Santa Maria Constr. Co., 3 September 1929, Pres. Subj. File—Better Homes Corres., Presidential Subj. File, HHPL.

38. H. S. Sackett, “What Modernization Means Today,” Home Modemizor, 4–7, Better Homes, Presidential Papers, HHPL.

39. “Kohler, Walter Jodok,” Who's Whom America, 1926–27, vol. 18 (Chicago, 1934), 2749Google Scholar. Alanen, Arnold R. and Peitin, Thomas J., “Kohler, Wisconsin: Planning and Paternalism in a Model Industrial Village,” American Institute of Planning Journal (April 1978): 146–47Google Scholar; Kohler, Marie, “Kohler Village Observes its Thirteenth Annual Better Homes Week,” Kohler of Kohler News, July 1937, 3Google Scholar; “Walter Kohler Making Active Campaign,” Kohler of Kohler News, September 1928, 10; “Home Modernizing Bureau Now Permanent Organization: Walter J. Kohler Head of Movement to Stimulate Business and Employment and Improve Homes,” Kohler of Kohler News, June 1928, 8.

40. Wood, Elizabeth, “Modernizing the Discarded and Disregarded House: Attractive Homes Are a Community Asset,” Illinois Clubwoman's World, October 1929, ChicagoGoogle Scholar, Modernization File, Box 63, BHA, HIA.

41. Discussion with and thanks to Maggie McFadden, daughter of Glenora English. Clipping of Dutch Colonial house now in my possession. 5 November 1993; John Colville, “Questionnaire,” received 15 May 1924, ASHSB, MHS.

42. Dolores Hayden, who is critical of this landscape development, credits the Home Ownership conference with establishing this trend. I would argue that the conference synthesized the programs that were already well under way.

43. Marie Meloney to Edgar Rickard, 21 March 1933, BHA General, BAEF Collection, HHPL.

For a discussion of the housing policy debates during the 1930s, see Radford, Gail, Modern Housing for America: Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44. “Memorandum,” 21 March 1934, BHA General, BAEF Collection, HHPL. Better Housing, 14 February 1935, 1–3; Leo Henderson, Mgr. to President Roosevelt, OF 1091, Mis. 1934–36, Box 4, FHA, RPL.

Jackson criticizes the ineffectiveness of Title I, citing Albert M. Cole as noting in 1954 that Title I “is of limited assistance to families of modest income.” Crabgrass Frontier, 364, a 49.

45. Hoover, Memoirs, 92.

46. C. W. Warburton, director of Extension Work, United States Department of Agriculture, 31 March 1934, Special Materials, Box 15, BHA, HIA.

47. Colean, Miles L, American Housing, Problems and Prospects (New York, 1944), 66Google Scholar. The chart of Estimated Number of Non-Farm Dwelling Units Built Annually by Type of Structure, FHA, Division of Economic & Statistics, Chart No. 556A (Revised), 1 March 1939. FDRPL shows slightly different percentages. The chart contains a note that no accurate figures exist as to the number of dwelling units built annually in the United States, that estimates are based on census data and on building-permit data reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that National Bureau of Economic Research Estimates were used for the years 1920 to 1935. See also Historical Statistics of the United Slates: Colonial Times to the Present (Washington, D.C., 1970), N 156–69.Google Scholar

48. Charles, and Beard, Mary, American Citizenship (New York, 1919), 25–27Google Scholar; Lewis, Babbitt, 16; The Editors of Fortune Magazine, Housing America (New York, 1932), 1; Stuart Chase, “The Case Against Home Ownership,” Survey Graphic, May 1938, 263. My thanks to Gail Radford for calling this article to my attention.

49. Charles and Mary Beard, American Citizenship, 25–27. For discussion of marketing efforts to encourage consumer desires, see Marchand, Roland, Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920–1940 (Berkeley, Cal., 1985)Google Scholar and Leach, William, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993).Google Scholar

50. Edwin Brown, “Report of the Committee on Small Houses (To the Fifty-fourth Annual Convention),” ASHSB, MHS.