Читать книгу Sunnyside Gardens - Jeffrey A. Kroessler - Страница 17

In 1902, investors formed the Garden City Pioneer Company “to promote and further the distribution of the industrial population on the land on the lines suggested in Mr. Ebenezer Howard’s book entitled Garden Cities of To-morrow, and to examine, test, and obtain information, advice, and assistance with regard to the matters therein contained, with the view of forming in any part of the United Kingdom Garden Cities … in accordance with Mr. Howard’s scheme, or any modifications thereof.” Within a year the company fixed on a site about thirty-five miles north of London and organized First Garden City, Ltd. They easily raised the initial capital of £300,000, and in keeping with the philanthropic and reformist spirit of the enterprise, investors agreed to limit their dividends to 5 percent. To assure success and secure their investment, they had to act all at once to realize gains from rising property values. Once the venture was complete, the investors would yield control to the residents and only then receive their 5 percent return. As the company’s prospectus stated, “The inhabitants will have the satisfaction of knowing that the increment of value of the land created by themselves will be devoted to their own benefit.” Not for twenty years, however, did shareholders receive that modest dividend.¹²

The home of Ebenezer Howard, Letchworth Garden City, 2012. (Author’s photograph.)

Work began immediately on First Garden City, soon renamed Letchworth. Architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker were charged with transforming Howard’s grand vision into physical form. But they did not interpret their mandate as exclusively forward looking. Quite sensibly, they looked to the past for inspiration, specifically Christopher Wren’s 1666 plan for rebuilding London. But Unwin and Parker also had an affinity for new approaches to community building. Both men were followers of the Arts and Crafts movement, and the writings of John Ruskin and William Morris in particular influenced Unwin, who understood that good design had a beneficial impact beyond simply aesthetic appreciation. Unwin’s reputation as a leader in this area was cemented with the publication of Town Planning in Practice in 1909 and Nothing Gained by Overcrowding in 1912.¹³ Unwin and Parker’s unlikely combination of traditional, even nostalgic, designs with the modernist garden city ideal accounts for a good deal of the charm in the outcome.

Attached single-family cottages, Letchworth Garden City, 2012. (Author’s photograph.)

As planned, Letchworth would house 30,000 inhabitants over 6,000 acres. As built, however, it covered only 1,250 acres, buffered by a 2,500-acre greenbelt. The community featured a range of housing types, from one-family homes to attached row houses, some grouped around interior gardens, others lining cul-de-sacs. Throughout, the houses were arranged so as to enhance the sense of a more intimate scale and to ward off any prospect of a monotonous streetscape. To prevent a plague of lower quality, contractor-built houses, Unwin created a set of regulations governing design, General Suggestions and Instructions Regulating Buildings Other Than Factories in the Garden City Estate (1904). Though Unwin moved on to oversee the planning and construction of Hampstead Garden Suburb, Barry Parker remained a consultant at Letchworth until 1943.¹⁴