Houser: The Life and Work of Catherine Bauer

Graham Adams, Jr., is a professor of American history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick.

Catherine Bauer ranks among the most outstanding leaders of the
public-housing movement in the United States. Author of some 115
articles, books, and reports, she left an important legacy of
theoretical concepts that are still relevant today. At the same time,
she also played a significant role as political lobbyist and
administrator.

Bauer’s theories found their fullest expression in her book, Modern
Housing, published in 1931. Most construction until the 1920s, she
observed, had been based solely on profit seeking. She strongly opposed
the 19th-century attitude of “exploit and get out.” New standards
for the human environment, Bauer declared, must be grounded not on
speculation but on public utility. She advocated carefully planned
projects that emphasized a pleasant outlook, sunlight, privacy, and
sanitation. Almost universally well received at the time of its
appearance, her work still retains importance more than half a century
later.

Turning from the theoretical to the practical, Bauer became an
indefatigable lobbyist for public housing. Several years of hard work
finally led to the passage of the Wagner–Steagall U.S. Housing Act of
1937, which, the authors contend, represented a milestone in American
social history. It called for slum clearance and financial support for
construction of decent, safe, sanitary homes for low-income families.
For the first time in history, the United States government entered the
field of low-cost housing, which could not be supplied by private
enterprise.

In the later years of her life, Bauer pursued an academic career at the
University of California in Berkeley and at Harvard. In her courses, she
strove for a multidisciplinary approach to public housing that would
make use of the skills of planners, engineers, architects, and landscape
designers.

Houser is a well-researched and well-written biography of this talented
woman. It is unfortunate that in their obvious admiration for her, the
authors tend to accept everything she said or did without the exercise
of any critical judgement. Given her lively, innovative mind, Catherine
Bauer might well have expressed some disappointment at this approach.