"Remind Them of Their Lofty Ideals": The Friends Neighborhood Guild's Struggle for Public Housing in the Post-War Moment

Date
2014
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Haverford College. Department of History
Type
Thesis
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
eng
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Haverford users only
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
In 1949 the Friends Neighborhood Guild, a Quaker Settlement House, began construction on the 8th and Brown Co-operative in the North Philadelphia neighborhood of East Poplar. The motivation for the project came from the pressing need for housing after WWII, a desire to provide decent housing to East Poplar's poor residents and creeping urban blight in the neighborhood. The 8th and Brown Co-operative incorporated a number of innovative and avant-garde features, including that most of the construction work would be completed by the future tenants, the use of European inspired communitarian design and tenant ownership and operation of the building. The unique project came out of both the Friends Neighborhood Guild's own infatuation with the ability of avant-garde housing to radically improve the housing situation of the country's poor and the post-war Federal public housing programs which provided the Guild with the necessary material support. Despite the Guild's optimistic attitude at the outset of the project, it met a number of unforeseen problems in part due to the pioneering nature of the project. These problems resulted in the Guild's increasing disillusionment with the promise and potential of avant-garde public housing. As such the Guild's subsequent projects during the post-war period-–the urban renewal of East Poplar in 1961 and an elderly public housing unit completed in 1966--displayed a decidedly pragmatic and conventional style. The Guild's shift from idealism to pragmatism mirrors a broader decline in the country's faith in the ability of the government and public housing to solve the problem of urban decay.
Description
Citation
Collections