"Negro slum area between D and C Streets off 1st Street, S.W. Washington D.C." by Marion Post Wolcott, 1941. Farm Security Information, Office of War Information, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.Impoverished American city-dwellers lived in weak, unsanitary housing for much of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Their homes were frequently unstable and often lacked lighting or plumbing. These conditions provoked reformers – and politicians concerned with their cities’ reputations – to demand housing improvements. Discussions of reform persisted throughout the Progressive and New Deal Eras and culminated in substantial federal funding for “slum clearance” in Washington, D.C. and cities across the nation.
The Problem of Slums
A common style of residence for poor residents of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Washington, D.C. was the alley dwelling. In 1865, the National Intelligencer described a community in Southwest Washington, D.C. made up of “cabins… wedged in every conceivable shape into vacant spaces and yards and alleys. ”1This and other poor alley communities were composed mostly of African-Americans, who had migrated to the city for decades preceding and following the Civil War.
During the Progressive Era, reformers acknowledged the deficiencies of alley housing and called for housing improvements. As early as 1890, the Washington Star ran a series of articles on poor housing. The growing field of public health sparked reformers to acknowledge that certain living conditions adversely affected urban sanitation.
Scattered among these five houses there were six sheds of varying sizes. There were wooden box toilets only and no water hydrants at all. The tenants carried all their water from Four-and-a-Half and K streets or from a neighboring house in “Casey’s Alley.” In May 1907 a water hydrant and toilet were installed in the shed which services the rear house. In August 1908 it was found in useless condition.2
Naming unstable alley buildings “evil… unfit hovels,” Weller likened Southwest to a “zone of civic atrophy” on the body of Washington, D.C.3
[reformer Charles] Weller likened Southwest to a “zone of civic atrophy” on the [city's] body
Like Jacob Riis, Charles Weller wrote with an understanding that detailed depictions of suffering – the “humanitarian narrative” – would provoke a tangible public action.4 Yet rather than pure altruism, reform sometimes entailed the self-fashioned expertise, class prejudice, and self-interest of the reformers themselves. To reformers and politicians, alleys were out of direct sight and thus hidden from the disciplinary power of the state. As evident in Weller’s body metaphor, the discourse surrounding low-income housing was that of language of disease and abjectness. City leaders feared that hidden alleys could infect the rest of society, both figuratively and literally.5
At a time when the progressive City Beautiful movement argued that cities could be rationally planned and aesthetically attractive, politicians became concerned that substandard housing adversely affected the city’s look. This pitted the purpose of housing restructuring between welfare and aesthetics.6 Either way, reformers and politicians employed language of disease and abjectness to describe alleys. Poorly built dwellings were “slums,” a menace so detrimental to Washington, D.C. that they required the intervention of the United States government.
Federal Housing Law
The debate over alley housing extended to the United States Congress, the ultimate decision-making authority over the national capital under the U.S. Constitution. Charles Weller’s and other reformers’ efforts culminated in a 1918 law authorizing the District of Columbia to demolish unsafe and unhealthy housing. However, demolition plans stalled amid inadequate funding, a local housing shortage, and disagreements over how to re-house displaced residents.
Title I of the Housing Act of 1949, which contributed significantly to local slum demolition nationwide.Federal housing policy radically changed during the New Deal. Congress passed landmark housing acts first in 1934 – creating the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to stabilize housing and mortgage markets – and again in 1937, funding public housing across the country. Amidst this legislation, Congress also passed the Alley Dwelling Act of 1934, which officially sponsored and partially funded “eliminat[ing] the hidden communities in inhabited alleys of the District of Columbia,” and redeveloping the cleared land.7
The Act also created an Alley Dwelling Authority – the nation’s first city-wide housing authority – to carry out alley eradication. The selection of John Ihlder as Authority chief revealed a connection to the Progressive Era – Ihlder, another associate of Jacob Riis, had lobbied for improved housing for Philadelphia and Washington’s poor for two decades. The Authority met initial success clearing slums and re-housing residents of the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. But the Alley Dwelling Act of 1934 ultimately met the same fate as its 1918 predecessor, stalling amid a World War-based housing shortage.
demolition plans stalled amid inadequate funding, a local housing shortage, and disagreements over how to re-house displaced residents
Congress passed yet another alley clearance law in 1945, creating the Redevelopment Land Authority (RLA), the District of Columbia agency that ultimately planned and organized much of the city’s post-war urban renewal. Other cities across the country were now plotting similar slum eradication programs as the post-war economy stabilized and housing shortages eased. The Housing Act of 1949 promised massive funding towards redeveloping unsanitary housing, provided that these programs facilitated relocation for displaced families and stimulated private enterprise. This funding was the key catalyst for initiating urban renewal in Washington, D.C. and cities nationwide.
Congress’s interest in the fixing unhealthy housing conditions in Washington, D.C. foreshadowed its interest in funding slum clearance plans nationwide after 1949. The actual redevelopment plans that emerged in the 1950s, however, suggest a more complicated relationship between the federal government, Washington, and urban renewal across the nation.
1Daily National Intelligencer, July 25, 1963, p.3, quoted in James Borchert, Alley Life in Washington: Family, Community, Religion, and Folklife in the City, 1850-1970. (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1980), 13.
2Charles Weller. Neglected Neighbors. (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1909), 187.
3Ibid, 202.
4Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 179.
5Margaret E. Farrar. Building the Body Politic: Power and Urban Space in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 58-74.
6Howard Gillette, Jr. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
7Alley Dwelling Act of 1934, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., S. 1780.
2Charles Weller. Neglected Neighbors. (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1909), 187.
3Ibid, 202.
4Thomas W. Laqueur, “Bodies, Details, and the Humanitarian Narrative” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 179.
5Margaret E. Farrar. Building the Body Politic: Power and Urban Space in Washington, D.C. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 58-74.
6Howard Gillette, Jr. Between Justice and Beauty: Race, Planning, and the Failure of Urban Policy in Washington, D.C. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995).
7Alley Dwelling Act of 1934, 73rd Cong., 2nd sess., S. 1780.