Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870-1930 (review)

Drawing on social, legal, and architectural histories; personal memoires; housing brochures; courthouse deeds; and the proceedings of real-estate associations, Fogelson has found, in the history of restrictive covenants, a largely unexplored niche in the mostly recent but still rich history of suburban development. The author means his title, Bourgeois Nightmares, to offset the Bourgeois Utopias that Robert Fishman sketched nearly twenty years ago, using private land-use regulations as an index to the specific fears that drove Americans who bought or sold lots in new developments between the mid-nineteenth century and the Great Depression.¹

However neglected in the past, these covenants, which flourished well before Los Angeles introduced municipal zoning in 1915, prove to be an interesting subject. Pioneering subdividers had to conquer deep-seated American traditions about absolute property rights, not to mention real-estate speculation, many of them ambivalent themselves. Why, Fogelson asks repeatedly, did they do it? The answer is always the same: The "restrictions"—better-named "protections"—sold lots, as the citizens of a rapidly changing nation, famously on the move, yearned for stability and permanence, and wanted assurances that whatever attractions had led them to buy a specific plot would be preserved as long as possible. As they pressed onward, sellers managed to move past the usual common-law "nuisances," hogs and slaughterhouses, eventually to bar rabbits and poultry, grocery stores, fences, even professional offices. Rare before the 1890s, some form of these restraints had become the norm by the 1920s. Not until Arthur Levitt, after World War II, did developers build houses on their own; their responsibilities came to an end as soon as they sold their lots. Long-term enforcement devolved to homeowners' associations, which worked out the standards for architectural specifications and additions, approving styles, colors, and dimensions.

The most famous, or infamous, of restrictions were racial and ethnic, though Fogelson contends that they, while important, were less of a constraint than the others. The white working class, which resisted most other limitations—for example, on keeping poultry, renting, and informal building—were most insistent on these exclusions. But developers were not always as enthusiastic about them. For one thing, racist rules were legally shaky, even before the United States Supreme Court, in 1948, decisively declared them unenforceable. They also posed the problem of determining precisely, in certain cases, who was "white" or "Caucasian. Finally, in a competitive real-estate market, turning down Jews and others with money was difficult to do. Middle-class buyers were most afraid of what their own neighbors might do in the future if not restrained, to bring down property values.

Despite the author's own predilections (he is proud to inform us that he has never lived in a suburb himself, although some of his best friends have), his tone is dispassionate rather than polemic, more apt to switch into low-key humor, as when discussing bans on cats and dogs, than anachronistic indignation. The book has no real heroes, although Fogelson clearly prefers the approach of the great landscaper Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., who thought in terms of how future buyers might misuse their property, rather than that of his son and stepson, big developers, who worried about who they might be. Fogelson reminds us that, given government zoning's inability to demand many things desirable to homeowners, such as minimum purchase prices and (until recently, in a few places), a uniform architectural style, restrictive covenants are still in force.

The book is framed by the story of Palos Verdes Estates, an exclusive, highly expensive, development located on a spectacular peninsula southwest of Los Angeles. First developed early in the last century, early in this one it still fulfills most of its promise to the original buyers: Less than 15 percent of the owners are now of Asian descent, 2 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent black. The place itself is still beautiful, its property values as secure as any in the Golden State