book list
The book contains Unit 24: Conclusion (which occupies 14 pages) as well as Unit 23: The Garden City.
Unit 23 has 40 pages of text illustrated with line drawings and a few photographs (one an early picture of a street by Handside House Ltd.). Following this are 32 pages of good quality black and white photographs on glossy paper - 104 pictures altogether. They are mostly of individual houses or street scenes, but there are some of municipal and industrial architecture, and 3 aerial photographs. 11 of the glossy photographs are from Welwyn Garden City, including an aerial shot.
The text is in 3 parts:
Part 1 - The Background
Imaginary Utopias: the historical and philosophical background to the idea
of the planned community.
Real Utopias: the model estates and the garden suburbs of the philanthropic
manufacturers.
Part 2 - The Preparation
The effect of legislation on the growth of housing communities and suburbs.
The style for the garden cities: Bedford Park.
Ebenezer Howard and the Garden Cities Association.
Part 3 - The Realisation
Letchworth (garden city).
Hampstead Garden Suburb.
Welwyn Garden City.
Wythenshawe - retrospective.
The section on Welwyn Garden City is 4 pages long. A couple of quotes:
"Among the very first houses to be built were the workers' cottages in Handside Lane designed for the company, Handside Houses Ltd., in 1920 by C. M. Crickmer and Allen Foxley. These cottages were in a very plain vernacular style with little concession to the markedly Georgian taste of de Soissons which was at this time beginning to form itself. De Soissons' own first houses for the council were the group of 50 he designed in 1921."
"At Welwyn Garden City the philosophy of Ebenezer Howard achieved its most ambitious results in the creation of a rationally planned, industrial city set in the countryside. However, the style which Parker and Unwin had used at Letchworth had now been replaced by a less honest, more debased stylism. Nevertheless, this does not militate against the success of the town planning principles employed;..."
(click on the images for a better view)
Crickmer and Foxley, Handside Houses Ltd, 1920
Welwyn Garden City from the air
House at corner of Russellcroft Road
Louis de Soissons, workers' cottages near Russellcroft Road
Louis de Soissons, cottages in Parkway
Louis de Soissons, house on Parkway.