De Facto Segregation and the New Deal

Catherine Wurster and the Houser Movement

A colleague of Lewis Mumford and other public intellectuals of the time, Catherine Bauer Wurster was a prominent housing advocate (‘houser’) and activist during the 1930s. Inspired by community planning and housing movements in Northern Europe during the late 1920s and the early 1930s, Wurster’s research and intellectual scholarship searched for ways to implement a European approach to housing in the United States. She became involved with post-World War I architects like Adolph Loos, Andre Lurcat, and Walter Gropius, who informed her understanding of the design practices and financial models behind housing opportunities for lower-class families in Europe.

Her major publication, Modern Housing (1934), played a pivotal role in shaping housing legislation by exploring the interdependence of the social, economic, and design processes that composed modern life. She led a group of influential lobbyists and policy experts who pushed for public housing and policies that provided for families in need.

Most notably, the book was instrumental in the creation of the Housing Act of 1937, which established United States Housing Authority and set aside $500 million dollars for the development of low-income housing. Wurster’s efforts sought to counter the negative outcomes of slum clearance and redlining by advocating for equitable access to quality housing for all Americans. Charles Abrams, the urbanist behind the creation of New York City’s Housing and Development Administration, was inspired by her and wrote a limerick to forever commemorate her.²

“There was a young lady
named Bauer
Who resolved to help
housing to flower
She fought and she battled
And couldn’t be rattled
No power could cower–
this Bauer.”

Charles Abrams
Peter Oberlander & Eva Newbrun, Houser: The Legacy of Catherine Bauer (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2000).

Slum Clearance, Redlining, and Displacement in the City

At the same time, government and real estate developers used policies like redlining to funnel white families out of the cities and into the suburbs. The Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) was established as a part of the New Deal to refinance the loans of homeowners experienced problems making mortgage payments “through no fault of their own.” As banks didn’t have a way to assess the creditworthiness of future homeowners, the HOLC sent out-of-work real estate workers into more than two hundred cities and counties to survey areas and develop maps seemingly based on hazards and risk. In reality, neighborhoods were graded based on the ethnic and racial makeup of their residents.³

This became known as redlining; a discriminatory lending practice that systematically denied loans and insurance to minority residents in neighborhoods deemed high-risk by the banks. These practices perpetuated housing inequality and racial segregation in cities and created the need for social organizing, design, and development.

1934
The Federal Housing Authority is established by the Housing Act of 1934 to regulate interest rates and mortgage terms after the banking crisis of the 1930s.

Black Mountain College and the Exile of European Thinkers

“Nearly every man is a bit of an artist, at least potentially a person of imagination, which can be developed; and, so far as I know at this moment, there is but one way to train and develop him – the way discovered, not by me but by Black Mountain College as a whole. Here our central and consistent effort now is to teach method, not content; to emphasize process, not results; to invite the student to the realization that the way of handling facts and himself amid the facts is more important than facts themselves.”

John Andrew Rice, explaining the concept of Black Mountain College to Louis Adamic
Louis Adamic, “Education on a Mountain: The Story of Black Mountain College.” Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 1936.

John Andrew Rice, an educator and the founder of Black Mountain College, captured the essence of the institution’s democratic, experiential, and free nature in this remark to a colleague. Rice was frustrated with the traditional rigors at Rollins College, and was inspired to create a higher institution of learning that followed the ideas of John Dewey.⁴ Rice founded Black Mountain College outside of Asheville, North Carolina in 1933.

With the growing power of the Nazi Party in Germany and the closure of the Bauhaus, an exiled group of public artists, designers, educators, and intellectuals from Europe started migrating to the United States. Philip Johnson helped Josef Albers obtain a position as the head of the painting department at Black Mountain College’s new art school. Many of the Bauhaus’ faculty appreciated and followed Dewey’s pedagogy.⁵

The intellectual atmosphere at Black Mountain encouraged innovative thinking and creative collaboration, inspiring individuals to challenge established norms and contribute to social and cultural change. The faculty included figures like Buckminster Fuller and Walter Gropius, who would go on to shape architectural discourse for a generation. The academic renewal in the spirit of Dewey, extended to various fields, including art, literature, and social justice, fostering a more inclusive and progressive vision of American society. While the institution would close in 1956 for lack of funds, its faculty and students would carry the teaching philosophy to many other institutions.⁶

1935
President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an executive order creating the Works Progress Administration: a New Deal work-relief program that gave employment to millions of Americans.