Gwen Shaffer: Philadelphia's first integrated housing development turns 50
The 19 homes on the cul-de-sac were similar in appearance—all single-story rectangular boxes with flat roofs, broad windows, natural wood siding and tubular metal chimneys soaring toward the sky. Certainly, these houses designed by the renowned architectural firm Montgomery & Bishop—with input from Louis Kahn—looked different from the stone twins and brick row homes that dominate Northeast Philly.
But as Friedman quickly realized, architecture was hardly the only characteristic that distinguished Greenbelt Knoll from the rest of the neighborhood—or even the country, for that matter. White and black families living side by side was still an oddity back then.
“I interviewed all 19 families on Longford Street, and the experience really left an impression on me,” Friedman, now 72, says.
Morris Milgram, a pioneer in the nation's open housing movement, had built Greenbelt Knoll nearly a decade earlier as the only planned integrated development in Philadelphia and one of the first in the United States. Milgram required that 55 percent of the buyers be white and 45 percent be nonwhite.
Many months after Friedman visited Greenbelt Knoll, Milgram himself called. House No. 4 was going on the market. Would he be interested in buying it?
When Friedman's wife Lillian saw the five-bedroom ranch back in January 1965, her gut instinct was to squash the possibility of moving there.
Lillian loved the thought of Pennypack Park literally in her backyard, as well as the chance to raise her three young children in an integrated neighborhood. “But the rooms were all choppy. Snow was drifting in through the windows, and there was just a galley kitchen,” she recalls. “I'd always envisioned buying an old Victorian house.”
But Lillian came around after three neighbors announced they'd front the down payment for the $28,000 house until the Friedmans could afford to pay them back.
Lillian, 70, has been shooing deer away from her hosta ever since.
In honor of Greenbelt Knoll's 50th anniversary, the Friedmans and several neighbors petitioned the city to designate the community a historic district. Last month the Philadelphia Historical Commission approved the application, effectively protecting Greenbelt Knoll against physical alterations and demolition that could destroy its architectural integrity. Now residents are pursuing similar recognition from the state. Green with envy: The development is particularly appealing at the height of summer.
Greenbelt Knoll certainly seems worthy of Pennsylvania's historic register—for political, social and architectural reasons.
“The people who moved there were swimming against a very powerful tide in the 1950s,” says Dr. Thomas Sugrue, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania who's writing a book on civil rights in the North. “Their actions were as important as the freedom marches in Mississippi.”...