Garden Apartments

Architecture and History

The National Register of Historic Places A typical a listing of buildings, sites, or landscapes that have local, regional, or national significance. The National Park Service is responsible for determining what is on the Register and maintaining the list. At this site, you can search the database to find listed properties (there are a number of garden apartments listed!). You can also find out more here about what it means to be on the National Register.

Historic American Buildings Survey

The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) began in the 1930s. Teams are sent out to do intensive research, architectural drawings, and take large-format photographs. The program is administered by the National Park Service and the Library of Congress. Many of the records are available digitally at this site. The photographs in particular are valuable and fun to browse.

The Recent Past Preservation Network

Although garden apartments are now usually too old to be considered part of the "recent past" (less than 50 years ago), this is an extremely useful bibliograpy. It covers architecture, landscapes, and urban development, all of which are important to understanding the garden apartment movement in the past and up to today as the apartments evolve.

National Register Multiple Property Nomination: Garden Apartments, Apartment Houses and Apartment Complexes in Arlington County, Virginia: 1934-1954

This is an extensive document with a great bibliography. It covers garden apartments but also talks about apartment houses and apartment complexes in Arlington, so it is very useful for context.

Arlington, VA Garden Apartments

http://www.fairlington.org/bakergail.pdf
Baker, Gail. "Garden Apartments: Three Case Studies in Virginia." CRM, No. 5, 1999.
This is a great introductory article to the subject of garden apartments; it also describes three cases in Arlington, why they are important, and how they have been preserved.

Arlington County Department of Community Planning, Housing, and Development
Since Arlington is so rich in garden apartments, the county website has a lot of good information on them, including specifics about the neighborhoods that they now find themselves part of and conservation plans.

Articles for Further Reading

The articles cited below deal with garden apartments in more detail. Some include photos and site plans, and others describe garden apartments in areas other than the east coast, so they provide a little more variety. They also cover a range of dates, so you can see how the concept has been viewed over time.

"Garden Apartments." Architectural Forum. Vol. 89, August 1948, pp. 107-114.

"Garden Apartments." Arts and Architecture. Vol. 78, February 1961, pp. 20-21, 28.

"Garden Apartments, Hollywood, California." Progressive Architecture. Vol. 28, July 1947, pp. 64-65.

"Good architecture pays dividends: Bel Air garden apartments, West Los Angeles, California." Architectural Record. Vol. 109, April 1951, pp. 118-122.

Grenader, Nonya and Stephen Fox. "Rooms with a view: in praise of the vanishing garden apartment." Cite: the architecture and design review of Houston, No. 45, Summer, pp. 22-27.

Hess, Paul Mitchell. "Rediscovering the logic of garden apartments." Places, Vol. 17, No. 2, Summer 2005, pp. 30-35.