Herman Gardens

Detroit was humming back in the 30s and 40s.  There was the automobile industry, of course, but during the war there was also alot of defense work going on in the factories.  This required thousands of workers, and there was not enough housing for all these working families. A 1937 law requiring the government to provide affordable housing for low income workers was enacted, and suddenly there was a big push to create projects.

A wealthy physician/mechanical engineer named S. James Herman came up with this great idea to create a master planned community to create a slum-free city.  His plan became a low income neighborhood called Herman Gardens.

During the war years, Herman Gardens apartments housed the defense workers.  Once the war was over, they were all kicked out and the low income families were allowed to move in.

It was during this post-war period that Bill, Carol and the children moved into an apartment there.  There is no one to ask about this period of time, because Patti, Susan, and Tim are all deceased.  Lynda was just a toddler during this time and has no clear memory of that time.  According to Carol and Darwin's marriage certificate, dated May 17, 1950,  Carol listed her home address as 17111 Van Buren, a Herman Gardens street.  This photo from the 40s shows the brand new Herman Gardens housing project.

Carol told me stories about a very nice apartment complex that she lived in with her kids.  Bill was evidently working with the railroad and he came and went. She stated that she had to keep the floors scrubbed nice and clean, and that is why her knees were shot, from years of scrubbing.  She also talked about washing their clothes by hand using a scrub board and hanging everything out on a line.  This was how it was in the project.  There were large beautiful grassy areas where the kids could all play. In 1947, there were about 4000 children living there.  Carol often told the story of giving birth to Lynda on the floor of her apartment alone, with no one to help her.  I am not sure if this event happened at Herman Gardens.  More research needs to be done on that.

 According to a newspaper article about the project from the Detroit Free Press, entitled, "It Wasn't Paradise, It's Trying Not to be Hell-Herman Gardens is Still a Home of Last Resort to Poor," written by Susan Ager, dated November 13, 1983, it was not easy to get approved to become a tenant back in the late 40's.  Every aspect of your life had to be documented, from work and school records to birth certificates. You had to be a low income worker. You could not be a single mom with a bunch of illegitimate kids. You needed to be married. You could not have a police record. And once you were allowed to rent a place, you absolutely needed to keep your apartment clean, because the housing officers would stop in weekly at random times to inspect your apartment.  They wanted to make sure the floors were clean, the children were in clean clothes, and that there was no garbage piling up. That would validate Carol's stories about having to keep the place clean as a whistle. Not long after Carol's marriage to Darwin, the family left Herman Gardens and moved into a trailer for a short while, before driving out to California.

In the 60s, the beautiful place turned into a ghetto slum, according to Ager.  Legal advocates for criminals, unwed mothers, and parasites of society made the argument that there can be no expectations of behavior, whether moral or sanitary.  Once the self policing was forced to cease and desist, the project quickly went downhill. After becoming a filthy, violent, drug-filled, crime-ridden neighborhood where 80 year old grandmothers were forced to start packing heat just to go to church on Sundays, the once beautiful family-orientated neighborhood collapsed.  It became, as the newspaper article stated, a home of last resort.  Dr. Herman's dream to create a slum-free Detroit failed.

It is interesting to note here that Carol married Darwin twice.  And after doing the research on Herman Gardens, I think Herman Gardens may be the one of the reasons.