Greenbelt,
since 1935
Postcards, papers and photographs of Greenbelt from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Greenbelt was settled on September 30, 1937, as a public cooperative community in the New Deal era. The concept was at the same time both eminently practical and idealistically utopian: the federal government would foster an "ideal" self-sufficient cooperative community that would also ease the pressing housing shortage near the nation's capital. Construction of the new town would also create jobs and thus help stimulate the national economic recovery following the Great Depression.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Greenbelt’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
1 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewTractor LOC fsa.8a00522, 1935: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Greenbelt, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Tractor LOC fsa.8a00522 (1935) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the Library of Congress (3) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.