Decorous Homes and Gardens for Responsible Workers

The Neighborhood N.° 1 of The National Institute of Economic Housing in the Cerro de Montevideo, 1936-1940

Abstract

The article explores the first neighborhood built by the National Institute of Economic Housing (INVE) between 1936 and 1940. Located in the working-class area of Cerro (Montevideo), the complex implied, for the first time, the implementation of a systematic housing policy with the State as a builder and manager. The realization of picturesque gardens suburbs, of handcrafted, compact and finished houses, similar to the case analyzed, marked the interventions of the state institute for a decade and, it is argued here, had as its essential objective the realization of a social engineering based on decorum and responsibility of the subordinate sectors, as well as in their economic and cultural progress.

The garden suburb already had a history in Uruguay in previous decades. The typologies used also had precedents in other specific actions of the State. It is stated in this work that these interventions show a state policy -in whose net technicians and politicians participated- that privileged the settlement and reproduction of the nuclear family. Likewise, the delivery of the rental units moved away from the community model, facilitated the control of individual behavior and assumed the mobility (physical and social) of the working-class family. However, the low productivity that the model brought, led to housing policies being revised from the end of the 1940s.