Garden Apartments: The History of Low-Rent Utopia

In his new book, Garden Apartments: The History of a Low-Rent Utopia, Joshua B. Freeman explains how a form of multifamily housing with idealistic roots became a ubiquitous model dwelling, promoted by both public entities and private developers. Freeman rescues garden apartments—typically low-rise, multifamily residences that enclose or are surrounded by landscaped gardens—from their invisibility in the American landscape and details their outsized influence on housing and social policy as they helped upgrade living standards for working people.