Segregation Forms: Redlining

The University of Richmond's Digital Scholarship Lab has developed a fantastic resource that provides access to hundreds of so-called "security maps" created between 1935 and 1940. The product of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation [HOLC], the maps and area descriptions represent the neighborhood risk assessments generated by mortgage lenders, developers and real estate appraisers. HOLC's analyses were the basis for what came to be referred to as redlining, segregationist housing and real estate practices.

Image above: Wichita Mapping & Engineering Company. Wichita, Kansas. 29 May 1937. Robert K. Nelson, LaDale Winling, Richard Marciano, Nathan Connolly, et al. "Mapping Inequality," American Panorama, ed. Robert K. Nelson and Edward L. Ayers, accessed 20 October 2016, https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/36.704/-96.943&opacity=0.8.

Boom & Bust Syndicates

During the 1880s and early 1890s big real estate development "syndicates" proliferated. Platting activities simultaneously peaked in such cities as Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee and San Francisco.(1)

The previous post introduced one such enterprise in San Antonio, Texas. In New York, Maximilian Morgenthau's syndicate was especially powerful, known for its lucrative ventures on Amsterdam Avenue, 179th, 180th and 182nd Streets.

In Kansas, the so-called "Big Syndicate" formed in the spring of 1887. Organized as the Atchison Land, Improvement & Investment Company, its investors planned to develop a street railway and dummy line.  Missouri architect Max J. Scholer surveyed the proposed transportation corridor and also designed the syndicate's two-story Commercial Street property. He independently acquired properties along the proposed dummy line in the city's Highland Park subdivision.(2)

Later that year, the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church responded to the boom by establishing Midland College in the Big Syndicate's subdivision. Other municipalities that had vied for the foundation included Beloit, Minneapolis and Topeka, Kansas and Beatrice, Grand Island and Lincoln, Nebraska. But Atchison and its syndicates offered the Synod $50,000 for buildings, 25 acres of land, and net profits from land sales. By January 1889 the college had completed an ambitious new brick and grey stone building.

The 1887 Kansas Boom was short-lived & Highland Park sales were especially lackluster. Within its first two years, Midland College enrollments dwindled by over 25%.


(1) Fisher, Ernest M. "Session of Real Estate Speculation: Speculation in Suburban Lands." American Economic Review 23:1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Forty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (March 1933), p. 153.

(2) The Atchison Globe (2 June 1887).

Bungalow Men

As the Southeastern Architectural Archive's Bungalows exhibit enters its closing months, we came across a design for a bungalow real estate office.  Represented in entrepreneur Henry L. Wilson's The Bungalow Book: A Short Sketch of the Evolution of the Bungalow from its Primitive Crudeness to its Present State of Artistic Beauty and Cozy Convenience (Chicago, 1910), the real estate office building adhered to a 22x24 footprint. Wilson anticipated that the five-room wooden batten structure would cost $500. Wilson, who touted himself "The Bungalow Man," suggested that such an office would yield financial rewards by banishing "all feelings of distrust and uncertainty from the mind of an investor."(1)

New Orleans had its own "Bungalow Man" in general contractor William R. Gilbert (born c. 1884 Iowa), who acquired considerable property on Audubon, Birch, Broadway, Green, Jeannette, Peniston and Pine Streets.(2) From his office at 15 Audubon Boulevard, Gilbert constructed thirty bungalows in 1914 alone. He built to suit, and sold the frame residences furnished or unfurnished.(3) Chicago's Northwestern Expanded Metal Company used his bungalows to promote its metal lath.

In 1915, Gilbert donated a small bungalow to the Charity Hospital International Fair (CHIF) for its grandiose fundraiser at Heinemann Park, held October 3-10th.(4) He was also responsible for the bungalows on the 1500 block of Audubon Street. In the late 19-teens, he relocated his sales office to the Hennen Building and began advertising in the Spanish-language publication Mercurio.

(1)Henry L. Wilson, The Bungalow Book. p. 114.

(2)"Gilbert Buys More Land." The Times-Picayune 27 May 1914; Flo Field. "Chapter II. First of Everything House." The Times-Picayune 18 May 1915. Before moving to New Orleans, Gilbert built bungalows in Memphis, Tennessee. He returned to Memphis after World War I.

(3)"1512 Audubon Street." Advertisement. The Times-Picayune 10 May 1914.

(4)"Children Rally with Enthusiasm to Cause of Chif." The Times-Picayune 23 September 1915. Conceived as an international fair and based on a world map, architect Allison Owen designed the event. "Chairman Newman Declares Chif Is Certain of Success." The Times-Picayune 16 September 1915.

Images above: Henry L. Wilson. The Bungalow Book: A Short Sketch of the Evolution of the Bungalow from its Primitive Crudeness to its Present State of Artistic Beauty and Cozy Convenience. Chicago: 1910, p. 114. Architectural Trade Catalogs, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.