Among the myriad histories of housing in the United States, few have given much attention to what is the focus of Matthew Lasner's detailed, eye-opening volume. Scholarly inquiries on domestic shelters of the past landscape have, on occasion, been case studies of row houses (in New York and Baltimore, most notably), but the great majority of historical probing has centered on the freestanding, single-family residence and the suburban landscape of which it is a part. (Examination of such dwellings within the context of many urban settings and those of most towns coast to coast are rare.) Other scholars have addressed the history of apartment buildings, mostly of the multistory urban kind, primarily focusing on examples in New York and a few other cities where they proliferated (e.g., Chicago and Washington, DC).
High Life breaks new ground in several ways. Rather than frame his exploration around a single physical building type (freestanding house, attached house, high-rise apartment building, etc.), Lasner explores a multitude of types in both traditionally urban and suburban settings, structuring his inquiry not on form but on patterns of ownership. His book is the first detailed historical analysis we have on both cooperative dwellings and condominia, the latter of which, especially, has become a major pattern in housing during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Lasner also underscores the importance of multifamily development in the suburban landscape, providing the most extensive and convincing analysis to date of how common perceptions of post–World War II landscapes as overwhelmingly comprised of freestanding single-family dwellings are misleading.
In its scope, High Life is a very ambitious undertaking, bucking the trend for narrowly focused studies, particularly those developed from dissertations as the “first book.” After exploring the phenomenon of collective ownership in an introduction that could stand as a chapter in its own right, Lasner explores the origins of co-owned housing in the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first chapter addresses pioneering examples of cooperative apartment buildings in New York, delineating the critique of rented quarters and how the co-op was advanced as a preferable alternative, more attuned to occupants' needs, more stable in its tenancy and thus less prone to deterioration, and as affording the opportunity for investment. Here and throughout the text, Lasner balances analysis of physical attributes with social and cultural concerns on one hand and with economic concerns (and realities) on the other. From the start, co-ops were expensive ventures, requiring large sums for construction, purchase of shares, and maintenance in a city where land and services came at a premium. Under the circumstances, New York co-ops were for a well-heeled clientele and their operation stood in contrast to the more usual forms of cooperative enterprises that were self-help, communitarian ventures.
The second chapter analyzes the expansion of co-ops during the 1920s in Manhattan (Park Avenue), but also in the boroughs (Jackson Heights) and in outlying areas of other cities as well (Philadelphia, Washington). Situating relatively high-density developments near the urban fringe spurred new configurations, with walk-up, and sometimes elevator, buildings set in garden-, even park-like settings. This spatial expansiveness and the amenities it afforded was a viable undertaking when the occupants were owners. At the same time, Lasner shows how developing cooperative apartments became increasingly the realm of speculative builders and also places that were professionally managed, institutionalizing matters that had been mostly under the direct control of a building's occupants. He also explores increasing measures taken to ensure exclusivity and new vehicles introduced to prospective owners to finance their purchase.
But co-ops did not remain the exclusive purview of the well-to-do. Chapter 3 explores the rise of collective efforts to improve housing for union members and others of more moderate means beginning in the 1920s. Building on the traditions of philanthropic housing and savings and loan societies, limited-equity co-ops were spurred by the desire of many New Yorkers to improve their housing conditions, break away from landlords, and build a greater sense of community. Some were the product of quasi-philanthropic initiatives, and others were union-organized. An attempt to institutionalize such ventures was made by forming the City Housing Corporation and manifested the landmark projects of Sunnyside Gardens in the Bronx and Radburn, New Jersey. During the Depression a far more successful program was developed by the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) Rental Housing Division, which provided a financially sound framework for developers to create thousands of garden apartment units prior to U.S. entry into World War II.
The proliferation of co-op developments for middle-income residents during the postwar years is the subject of Chapter 4, spurred by an acute housing shortage and facilitated by the provisions of the Housing Act of 1949 as well as the FHA's Cooperative Housing Division. Projects ranged from large, high-rise complexes (Co-op City in the Bronx being the largest) to extensive garden apartment villages. The popularity of such undertakings had its limits, however. Lasner takes pains to discuss how households with children preferred single-family houses and that many middle-income people were not convinced of the benefits of co-op ownership. Furthermore, owners often showed themselves not to be good proprietors. The decisions they needed to make to ensure good property management were as much a source of acrimony or indifference as inducements to cooperate.
Although a major portion of Lasner's history is centered on New York owing to the great concentration of examples in that metropolitan area, Chapters 5 and 6 show how other portions of the country made significant contributions as well during the postwar decades. Retirement communities comprised of co-op dwellings in California and Arizona, as well as pioneering condominium developments in Puerto Rico and Florida, helped render co-owner housing a national phenomenon. Lasner explores key factors that advanced the condominium's popularity, including the important psychological one of seeming more like traditional home ownership. Not surprisingly, this new form of housing became extremely popular among retirees who sought convention and convenience at the same time. Concurrently the “townhouse” developments that were built in abundance in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s were geared to a varied clientele. Many accommodated families with children, for whom the arrangement was welcome given the desire for self-identity, convenience, and amenities such as swimming pools in the face of rapidly rising land values.
The final chapter drives home the fact that as co-ops and subsequently condominia proliferated in new, often low-density areas, co-owned housing also remained an important component of urban development. In many cases, at least in New York, conversion was a widespread practice, sometimes as a part of broader-based gentrification of neighborhoods. Although many conversions were tenant-initiated, however, many otherwise were the work of speculators who had little interest in who occupied the places they acquired, often leaving former occupants adrift in the transformation process. Lasner examines New York's leading role in regulating condominium development to curb some of its abuses. Those reforms, in turn, have led to a housing climate in which this type of co-ownership has flourished across the country since the 1980s.
High Life is more than the sum of its parts. Architecture, planning, real estate development, financing, cultural outlooks, social conventions, as well as visionary thinking and pragmatic tendencies, innovation and conservatism, artistic prowess, and workmanlike practicality—all figure in Lasner's analysis. But, as valuable as his treatment of the understudied realm of co-owned housing is, the ultimate value of this book transcends that subject. High Life plants itself firmly among a small number of texts that are essential to understanding how Americans regard housing as a manifestation of the freedoms bestowed on them and as a means of providing their cherished concept of home. It is no less consequential in its contribution to our understanding of the multifaceted complexion of the twentieth-century metropolis.