Greendale Historic District
The Greendale Historic District is a National Historic Landmark District encompassing the historic core of the village of Greendale, Wisconsin. The village core was designed in the 1930s as part of a New Deal program to establish so-called "greenbelt towns" as model suburbs, and is one of three such communities built by the federal government. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005 and designated as a National Historic Landmark in 2012. History After the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the U.S. economy sputtered and many jobs were lost as the world slipped into the Great Depression. By 1933 14 million Americans were out of work. 273,000 homes were foreclosed on that year, and housing construction fell to 10% of what it had been in 1925. Lacking affordable housing, many people crowded into city slums. Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration, inaugurated in 1933, had pledged economic recovery. To deliver his New Deal, Roosevelt had to try new things, and one of the ideas considered was the 'greenbelt towns' program. The idea was presented to Roosevelt by Undersecretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell. Based on the garden city movement in England, the goal was to build new towns outside