I recently came across this interesting page on the historic preservation section of Baltimore’s official website, on a housing development known as Ednor Gardens:

The Ednor Gardens Historic District is an approximately fifty-acre, primarily rowhouse, community developed by the large scale Baltimore building developer Edward J. Gallagher and his sons between 1925 and 1950.

Here’s the Wikipedia page for the neighborhood. And here are a couple of Google Maps screenshots of the neighborhood today.

These are pretty basic, simple, sturdy houses. Structures like this are the workhorses of working- and middle-class housing in many Mid-Atlantic cities. They’re not entirely without style or ornamentation, however. “Ednor Gardens is distinguished by its Tudor, Norman, and, later, Colonial style rowhouses that reflect national changes in residential architectural tastes between the mid 1920s into the late 1930s,” the official webpage reads.

One interesting thing here is that while this is a pretty large area developed by a single firm, it’s not really a mass-scale developer-managed project. Larger than a subdivision, but more fine-grained than a block-large megaproject, this kind of thing allowed developers to bring their economies of scale to the construction phase, make their money, and then basically disappear. It’s very cookie-cutter, yet it was evidently built pretty well.

Here’s a map of Ednor Gardens, from the official page:

There’s a slogan among some leftie housing advocates to the effect of “decommodify housing.” My view, along with many who consider themselves “YIMBYs” (for “Yes In My Backyard”) is that housing isn’t commodified enough, which is to say we should be subjecting housing markets to demand signals, allow developers to build for pent-up demand, and not overthink, say, the uniqueness of architecture or of every single house. As long as the quality is acceptable, cookie-cutter is okay. More supply is good. (Oil is a commodity; oranges are a commodity. Commodities are cheap and plentiful!)

This is not pro-developer per se, but rather pro-market. And it isn’t to say we should rely solely on the market. My view is that we’ve been under-relying on the market for way too long here. Think of how hard it would be to build a housing development this size in an existing city or town today. Fix that first.

Related Reading:

What Kind of House Is This?

Apartments, Ownership, and Responsibility

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