Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia

How a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model promoted by both public entities and private developers.

Eminent historian Joshua Freeman rescues garden apartments—typically low-rise multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens—from their invisibility in the American landscape. He details their outsized influence on housing policy and social policy as they helped upgrade living standards for working people. Inspired by the a...