My reference to Audubon Park, New Jersey in For More Birds revealed an historic experiment in middle class public housing. In that instance the earlier residents of Audubon voted the newly-arrived shipyard workers out of their borough. So in response, those displaced residents created a separate Audubon Park borough.
In the meantime, that anecdote revealed a short-lived and little known corner of the United States government’s Federal Works Agency. This came from a unit called the Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division. The government constructed eight housing developments under the auspices of the program circa 1940-1942, including Audubon Park.
The Concept
Col. Lawrence Westbrook pitched the original idea a few years earlier. He intended it to align with the spirit of a latter phase of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The underlying concept fell within the precepts of Progressivism.
In this instance, Progressives felt that middle class home ownership would create socially beneficial and desirable results. Logically then, the government should take steps to promote such ideals. However, despite the claim, the Administration promptly mothballed Westbrook’s solution.
According to the theory, mutual or cooperative arrangements would foster home ownership. First, the government would leverage its capabilities to construct housing. Then it would ease ownership over to cooperative boards as residents could support them.
This was a type of ownership still not very common in the United States. Co-op boards own the property and lease units back to individual residents, each of whom owns a share in the company. One sees this arrangement in places such as New York City, particularly in Manhattan. It exists rarely elsewhere, especially uncommon in typical suburban settings.
A Focus on National Defense
There were other New Deal era cooperative developments elsewhere by 1940. The twist here was the program’s specific national defense focus. The United States had already began a military buildup in the years prior to Pearl Harbor and U.S. entry into the Second World War. This required a large influx of skilled labor for factories that manufactured the machinery of war. Of course, those workers had to live somewhere nearby. The government dusted-off Westbrook’s idea and he moved forward with several prototypes. As described by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Cooperative housing in the United States, 1949 and 1950.
“Under the defense housing program of the Federal Works Agency eight projects (the so called Westbrook projects) were designated for eventual sale to nonprofit housing corporations formed by the tenants. During the war however the dwellings were placed on a rental basis managed under the direction of the Public Housing Administration in order to insure their being available for war workers… By January 1951 the first five had successfully negotiated a purchase contract the sixth was operating the project under a lease and the last two were still under PHA management.”
Eight Projects
The eight developments totaled 4,050 units according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Designers and builders included Progressive elements such as abundant shared open spaces in park-like settings. Some of them also incorporated interesting themes into their road designs and names. I’ve done my best to describe them based on my observations:
- Audubon Park (map): Semi-Circles; Birds
- Avion Village (map): Teardrop; Aviation Pioneers
- Bellmawr Park (map): Ribs; Trees
- Dallas Park: privatized – unknown
- Pennyback Woods (map): Cul-de-sacs; Flowers and Universities
- Greenmont Village (map): Oval; People who were notable in the 1940’s
- Walnut Grove (map): Native American Breastplate; Trees
- Winfield Park (map): Arcs and Geographic Contours; Oceans and Waves
My descriptions probably said more about my psychological point of view than any actually intended shapes. Feel free to provide your own Rorschach interpretations as appropriate.
I already describe Audubon Park in that earlier article so I decided to focus on a couple of other Mutual Ownership Defense Housing properties, both in Texas. One may wonder why Texas had two outliers while other projects sprouted closer to industrial areas of the Northeast and Great Lakes. Lawrence Westbrook was a Texan and he was the boss. That probably explained it.
Avion Village
Avion Village grew next Hensley Field, later Naval Air Station Dallas and now the Grand Prairie Armed Forces Reserve Complex. The first residents of Avion Village were “civilian employees of the North American Aviation Company”. They built B-24 bombers and other aircraft for the war effort.
An historical marker erected at the site provided additional explanation.
“As early as the mid-1940s, housing was scarce in Dallas as well as in other centers of defense production and military activity throughout the nation. The private housing industry was unable to keep up with the demand for shelter in these areas. Some federal officials saw the situation as an opportunity for experimentation in architecture and planning, as well as establishment of a pilot program aimed at lowering the cost of quality housing through the use of prefabrication and mass production building techniques. Defense housing officials also wanted to introduce industrial workers to mutual home ownership as an alternative to traditional suburban home ownership.”
The Mystery of Dallas Park
I don’t have a map of Dallas Park. Seven of the eight Mutual Ownership Defense Housing properties passed successfully through the intended process. They now operate as cooperative enterprises more than seventy years later. However, Dallas Park failed. The name disappeared from the map
The Search
I could not locate it precisely through Intertubes searches and the Geographic Names Information System didn’t list it at all. Gone. Vanished. I gave up after longer than I’d care to admit. I’d probably offer a small reward to the first 12MC reader who can locate it on a map with definitive supporting evidence (maybe I’ll write an article about your hometown or something, like I did for Peter).
UPDATE: A 12MC READER FOUND IT!!!
I uncovered contemporary information from Get Your Own Home the Cooperative Way (1949),
“The development of the Dallas Park Mutual Ownership Corporation covers 114 acres and is in Dallas proper… The rental for a one-bedroom apartment is $22.50 per month; and for the three-bedroom single dwelling, from $32 to $34 a month. In addition, the residents pay $6.75 to $8.50 a month for gas, light, and water. Buildings at Dallas Park are of frame and brick and were completed January 1, 1942.”
Clues
Dallas Park probably reverted to private ownership soon thereafter because a 1955 report said it happened a few years earlier. Privatization for other mutual ownership properties was already under consideration:
“Basically, the conversion would involve nothing more than exchange of perpetual use contracts for warranty deeds, with accrued funds due the tenant to be applied toward the purchase price principal.”
Building materials became increasingly scarce once the U.S. entered the war as a combatant. Additionally, real estate developers applied political pressure, arguing that residential construction wasn’t a government function. The experiment, while seemingly successful given the longevity of all but one of the mutual housing corporations, lost its sponsorship and support. The Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division disbanded.
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