SC&A has installed a new exhibit entitled “Exploring Suburbia: Housing and Transportation in George Mason University Libraries Special Collections & Archives”.
Suburbs are residential or mixed-use areas, either existing as outlying parts of cities or urban areas or as separate residential communities within commuting distance of a city.
Trolley networks helped to connect cities with their surrounding areas. These connections helped transform formerly rural hinterlands into residential environments. This map shows trolley networks which spurred this development in Virginia, Maryland, and the District.
The suburb first developed on a large scale in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of improved rail and road infrastructure. With the advent of the suburb, came the concept of commuting, or traveling by a mode of transport (train, trolley, automobile, boat, etc.) to and from a place of employment. In general, suburbs have lower population densities than inner city neighborhoods, and most of their residents commute to cities.
The FHA was created June 27, 1934 with the adoption of the National Housing Act. This 1935 booklet was one of its earliest publications. It explains new IRS, mortgage, and lending policies to prospective home buyers. Perhaps the greatest downside of these federal policies was the entrenchment of racial segregation on a national scale.
This exhibition looks at four areas with regard to the rise of suburbia. They are: the effects of advances in transportation; federal government support of suburbs; and the standardization of construction and materials. Finally, the exhibition examines the backlash against the suburban model of stripping the land and building identical houses all in rows.
As localities linked to a national marketplace, localized styles, like popular paint colors, and crafts, like brick making, became standardized. Homeowners associations and restrictive covenants also played an increasing role in controlling these details of home construction. Here is a paint sample brochure from DuPont, ca. 1940
Instead, the 1946-1956 Fairfax County development of Hollin Hills used Contemporary Modern Movement architecture and offered fifteen unique design options that united interiors with the outdoors. Homes were placed to minimize impact on the landscape and provide maximum privacy. Hollin Hills’ home designs and use of the landscape made it a different kind of suburban
environment.
Architect Charles M. Goodman, developer/ builder Robert C. Davenport, and landscape architects Lou Bernard Voigt, Daniel Urban Kiley, and Eric Paepcke built a new kind of community with Hollin Hills. This image shows several homesites in the Hollin Hills development. From “Hollin Hills Community of Vision: A Semi-Centennial History, 1949-1999” (Alexandria, Va. : Civic Association of Hollin Hills, ca. 2000), p. 47.
Materials in the exhibition are housed in George Mason University Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives department.
