Greenbelt

Greenbelt is the first and the largest of the three experimental New Deal Greenbelt Towns, the others being Greenhills, Ohio, and Greendale, Wisconsin. Greenbelt was planned and built by the federal government as an all-White town. The cooperative community was conceived in 1935 by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell, whose perceived collectivist ideology attracted opposition to the Greenbelt Towns project throughout its short duration. The project came into legal existence on April 8, 1935, when Congress passed the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935. Under the authority granted to him by this legislation, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order, on May 1, 1935, establishing the United States Resettlement Administration (RA/RRA).

First called Maryland Special Project No. 1, the project was officially named Greenbelt when the Division of Suburban Resettlement of the Resettlement Administration began construction, on January 13, 1936, about eight miles north of Washington. The complete Greenbelt plans were reviewed at the White House by President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on April 30, 1936.