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The Local Origins of a New Deal Housing Project: The Case of Lockefield Gardens in Indianapolis
Robert G. Barrows
| The headline in the Indianapolis Times in early September 1933 came as a surprise to most residents of the Hoosier capital: "$4,460,000 Loan Will Help City to Banish Slums." The accompanying story, datelined Washington, D.C., explained that tentative approval had been given for federal funds to "finance elimination of slums and construction of low-cost housing units in the Indianapolis Negro section." The proposed program, noted the reporter, had been "put through without publicity" by a planning committee of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, "the representatives of which manipulated secretly to obtain the approval of the federal works board." The preliminary negotiations had been "so under cover" that even Democratic Congressman Louis Ludlow, who represented Indianapolis, had learned of the scheme only the day before.1 |
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The Times article marked the first open discussion of a public housing project that would eventually become known as Lockefield Garden Apartments, more commonly referred to simply as Lockefield Gardens. The enterprise remains relatively well-known today because of its long-term importance, both practically and symbolically, to the African American community of Indianapolis and also because of a historic preservation controversy that swirled around it in the late 1970s and early 1980s. (Ultimately, about two-thirds of the original project was razed; the remaining buildings were rehabilitated and incorporated into a new apartment complex.) Lockefield is invariably—and accurately—described as a federal project constructed under the auspices of the New Deal's Public Works Administration (PWA). What such a description omits, however, is recognition that Lockefield's origins involved considerable local initiative. An ad hoc committee of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce had in fact begun examining links between poor housing conditions and the provision of social services to city residents several months before the PWA's Housing Division even existed. Moreover, when the PWA did become involved its initial role was conceived as merely loaning money for the venture, not building the project itself. So although Lockefield Gardens is well known, the story of its local beginnings remains incomplete. |
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Housing, if not necessarily housing reform, constituted very much a front-burner issue in the early 1930s. Residential construction had peaked in the mid-1920s, several years before the stock market crash in 1929. Thereafter housing starts declined year after year. Construction of residential property dropped by 95 percent between 1928 and 1933, at the same time that non-farm foreclosures skyrocketed. Little wonder that one historian has referred to a "crisis in residential real estate" during these years. Herbert Hoover's President's Conference on Home Building and Home Ownership in December 1931 brought together housing experts from around the nation to respond to this dire situation. The conference and the recommendations emanating from it produced few immediate results. They did, however, embody the beginning of a change in attitudes regarding the role of government in housing. One recommendation suggested that government should begin to aid private efforts to house low-income families—an idea that, at least in the United States, had generally been derided as unacceptably radical.2 |
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