This didn’t happen by accident: Greendale is the product of the Greenbelt program, a federal government initiative undertaken as part of New Deal efforts to end the Great Depression of the 1930s. That extensive and seemingly unending economic crisis created a unique environment that allowed the federal government to engage in what President Franklin Roosevelt called “bold, persistent experimentation.”
One of those bold experiments was the Greenbelt program, which was intended to provide affordable housing for working class families and create jobs for unemployed construction workers across the country. The Greenbelt planners wanted to re-create the traditional communal bond they believed had been severed by over population and a lack of green space in America’s industrial metropolises.
Greenbelt planners considered Milwaukee for one of its three Greenbelt sites for a number of reasons, among them its Germanic character, its socialist political heritage and its long history of metropolitan planning. The planners thought Germans possessed such characteristics as “industriousness, thrift and [a] love of music, art, drama and horticulture,” which they believed would make the project a success. They also believed that local opposition to the collectivist Greenbelt experiment would be low in an area that had voluntarily elected socialists and had previously beena national leader in planning, zoning and population-decentralizationefforts. Milwaukee, in fact, had constructed one of the first publichousing projects in the nation some years before.
Breaking Ground
Inpreparation for groundbreaking, Federal Resettlement Administrationemployees spent much of 1935 and parts of 1936 purchasing the land thatwould become Greendale while trying to balance between the demands of Washington and Milwaukee leaders, each of whom wanted some control over the nature and direction of the project.
Whilethere was not significant opposition to the project, some localobjections did emerge. The proposed homes would be owned by the federal governmentand rented to residents. As a result, builders were concerned thatgovernment construction of homes might depress demand on the regularmarket, while local government officials were concerned that the landwould be removed from the tax rolls.
In the end, the promiseof lower-cost suburban housing for working families and the allure ofhard-to-find construction jobs in the midst of the crippling Depressioncombined to smooth the road of public opinion. The truth of thesituation was that Greendale, like most New Deal projects, was neitheras radical as its conservative opponents charged nor as limited as itsmore liberal supporters lamented.
Greendale remained acompromise for a variety of parties: those who wanted to resettlehomeless rural families, supporters of improved living environments forurban workers and planners who were mostly con cerned with alleviatingthe growing shortage of decent, affordable housing. As Milwaukee’s demographics demanded, most of the original residents of Greendale had beenliving in Milwaukee or one of its suburbs, such as West Allis or SouthMilwaukee.
Of particular importance for Greendale’s legacy wasthe Resettlement Administration’s hiring of a young engineer namedFrank Zeidler to perform surveying work on the Greendale site. In turn,the promise of Greendale had an impact on the future mayor ofMilwaukee. While Greendale’s form was based on decades of localplanning work, the vision of decentralized, suburban-style homes formembers of the working class became a dominant theme of Zeidler’spostwar mayoral terms. Zeidler-led Milwaukee envisioned Greendale’shomes as one part of an expanded city, a premise that wasobjectionable to people who already lived in one of the growing numberof independent suburbs but important to the developing character ofMilwaukee proper.
Individual Ownership
Thesecompeting agendas came to a head after World War II, when the federalgovernment moved to sell the Greenbelt communities, includingGreendale, to individual homeowners. Mayor Zeidler saw in Greendale anexcellent opportunity to devel op housing for war veterans and topursue one prong of a broader program of population dispersal.
Accordingly, the City of Milwaukeemade an offer to purchase Greendale, with the goal of annexing the landto the city proper and developing additional housing units in cooperation with a group organized by the American Legion. These homes werealso planned to be owned by individuals, though the project would bemade possible through a public-private partnership. Once Milwaukee’splans for annexation became public in 1949, support for the AmericanLegion plan dropped precipitously, and in 1950, every single supporterof the American Legion plan was voted out of office by Greendaleresidents.
In a sense, the planners of Greendale had succeededall too well. In Greendale, they had indeed created a cohesivecommunity in a suburban, park-like setting. By 1950, how ever,Greendale’s residents were vocally resisting what the Greendale papercalled “despotic methods” of Milwaukee’s attempts at expansion.
Greendalehad become something much different from what its planners had intended. Those plans had envisioned an experiment in central planning andcollective living. But Greendale residents clearly rejected thatvision in favor of personal control over their political destiny. Theresult of the post war struggle for the future of Greendale was thegovernment sale of the homes to resident-owners. By the early 1950s,Greendale was home to individually owned, if largely owner-occupied,residences in what would become the classic suburban mold. Today,practically the only vestige of these New Deal roots is the diversityof housing styles and types, but this diversity remains as remarkabletoday as it was intended to be more than 70 years ago. Despite theshift from government to individual ownership, Greendale remains a community of renters and owners, and of various socioeconomic classes.While today’s residents have created a Greendale that’s a far cry fromthe ideals of its planners, the continuing attraction of the so-called“originals” stands as testimony to the successful attempts to plan acommunity that remains one of Milwaukee’s most desirable.
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Greendaleinvites all of Milwaukee to take part in its 70th anniversary celebration Aug. 8-10. Christopher Miller will give a speech entitled “WhyGreendale and the New Deal Matter,” and a beer-tasting event will beheld Aug. 9 at Ray and Dot’s, 6351 W. Grange Ave., from 3 to 5 p.m.Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door and may be purchased inperson at the Reiman Visitor Center, 5602 Broad St., by calling (414)421- 1956 or by visiting www.TheGreendaleHistoricalSociety.org.
The Making of Greendale | Photos courtesy of the Greendale Historical Society
