Christina Elizabeth Crawford

Atlanta was the site of both the first New Deal neighborhood clearance project in the United States in 1934, and of America's first completed—though segregated—federally-funded public housing: Techwood Homes (for white families) and University Homes (for black families). These projects became models for American public housing in the years following ratification of the National Housing Acts of 1934 and 1937. This research seeks to expand the interwar architectural map through a detailed investigation of Techwood and University, to establish Atlanta’s role as a clearinghouse for European social housing ideas, and to investigate how architectural ideas and forms travel and transform—in this case, across the Atlantic, across Atlanta, and across the United States. The research, writing, 3-D modeling, and cartography that emerge from this project will result in a monograph and allied digital public history project that tests the capacities of new hybrid publishing formats.