Doraville subdivision preserves American turning point

By Mark Davis

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The future beckoned. Chuck and Millie Fadden announced they were moving out of her parents’ Long Island home and heading to Georgia. In 1955, that was big news; everyone in the neighborhood talked about the young couple’s plans down South.

Their new home? It was a curious collection of angles and glass, with big windows facing a backyard so new bramble still clung to trees. Just one story tall, the home backed into the sloping lot and rested on a concrete slab. It even had a curious name: ranch house.

Odd name or not, the couple was smitten. They bought their home in Northwoods, a new subdivision in Doraville. They got one of the fancier models, a three-bedroom, one-bath structure. It set them back $13,750. They shook hands, signed the papers, and moved in.

Northwoods would grow into more than 500 homes — the first large-scale, planned suburban community in Georgia. It was the South’s version of Levittown, the name given sprawling communities built in New York and Pennsylvania to answer postwar demand for affordable shelter.

Now, more than a half-century later, state and federal officials are considering whether to declare the Doraville community a historic treasure. Unpretentious Northwoods, whose homes average less than 1,500 square feet, may take its place alongside the mansions of Ansley Park on the National Register of Historic Places. It’s like a ’70 Nova sharing garage space with a ‘35 Duesenberg.

Millie Fadden, who raised two daughters in the little house, thinks historians are just realizing what she’s known for years. She wishes her husband, who died in 2006, was around to share her pleasure.

“I’m kind of proud” of the recognition, said Fadden, a retired Rich’s department store employee. “This is a good home, a great neighborhood.”

‘Brighter future’

It’s more than that, said Department of Natural Resources historian Richard Cloues. Northwoods, he said, represents a moment in America when life changed, profoundly.

The nation had come through a depression and world war. The boys were home and working. Detroit was turning out shiny cars with fins. The future was as bright a brand-new DeSoto.

Nothing better represents that sunny national mood than the ranch house, said Cloues, who heads DNR’s Historic Resources Section. That’s what makes it historic.

“It reflected a vision of what suburban community living could be, and it was unmatched,” he said.

The ranch was the suburbs — a yard, a carport, a place where you could sleep with the windows open and feel safe. It was a radical departure from the more traditional Colonial-style homes and bungalows, with their familiar gables and dormer windows. Long and low to the ground, with few exterior touches, ranches had an open floor plan where the back door opened to a patio. They were simply designed, sturdy, and went up quickly, which enhanced their appeal in an era in which housing was scarce. A bonus: Ranches originated in California, land of movies and easy living.

Fueling the demand for housing was a combination of factors, including a cultural shift in expectations for the rising middle class. Suddenly, people wanted more than shared quarters with in-laws or getting their fresh air on the fire escape.

Northwoods builder Walter Tally understood. In the early 1950s, when he sought local financing for his Doraville project, local bankers balked. They’d never seen anything like these stark structures, squatting on the ground. They promised to fund his plans only if he made substantial design changes.

He said no, and sought financial help from bankers in Boston. They said yes, and the boom was on.

The houses cost from $9,200 to nearly $14,000, and came in six basic models. “They sold the model homes even before they were on display,” Cloues said.

The subdivision was so successful that House and Home magazine in July 1955 declared the community “one of the South’s most handsome.”

Inventory, oral history

On a recent windy morning, Georgia State students from Richard Laub’s architectural history class crowded into a narrow living room in Corrine Lang’s home. They shared space with longtime residents and Precious, a nervous-looking, long-haired Chihuahua who sniffed everyone’s feet. The students are doing an inventory of housing styles in the community to prepare a submission to the national register. Laub wants it done by the end of the academic year.

Laub also wants his students to interview residents in an oral history project. Their memories, he said, need to be captured.

“For them [longtime residents], this was the promised land,” he said.

Ray and Lou Jenkins thought so. In 1956, they bought their three-bedroom, one-bath home from the original owner for $9,400.

“We were looking toward the future,” said Lou Jenkins, a lawyer. “It was a nice neighborhood.”

Still is, said Ray Jenkins, Doraville’s mayor for six years. “These little houses are still good houses,” he said.

It was a place where children rode bikes until twilight or swung on a rope across the nameless creek that runs through backyards, said Connie Binkley of Tucker.

A retired flight attendant, she’s an original Northwoods kid: graduate of Northwoods Elementary (now a private school, Yeshiva High School) and Sequoyah High (now Sequoyah Middle School). She recalls cookouts and climbing trees, taking shortcuts to school under the gaze of multitudes of parents.

“Oh, this was my homeplace,” said Binkley, whose mom, Lang, lives in the same house she and her deceased husband, Lamar, bought in 1955. “This represents the time when we all grew up.”

American snapshot

Northwoods grew up, too. By the 1980s it was full, and changing. Some original residents moved away, chasing bigger houses and yards in Atlanta’s more distant suburbs. Neo-eclectic architecture — the “McMansion” — took over as the house of choice for builders and buyers. Figuratively and literally, it overshadowed the lowly ranch.

The value of those ranch homes has increased twentyfold, according to computerized sales records compiled by area real estate agencies. For example, a three-bedroom, one-bath home sold in June for $150,000.

The neighborhood remains a snapshot of American life. Increasingly, long-timers share space with newcomers. Some have traveled a lot farther than the Long Islanders, the Faddens, to own their little piece of America.

On a recent morning, the wind snatched at a sign tacked to a utility pole. Lost Dog, it read. And, below that in Spanish: Perro Perdido.

Tom Bearden considers some newer residents his friends. He and his wife, Wilma, bought their two-bedroom, one-bath house in 1951. They paid $9,200, making monthly payments of $52.

Now his wife is deceased, their daughter long grown, but Bearden remains in the little house. It has 1960s-era furniture, with lines as straight and simple as a slide rule, another artifact from long ago. The only thing out of place is a late-model TV. A black cube, it dominates a small table in the living room

Bearden, 88, is pleased that his neighborhood may take its place beside mansions and other places where momentous things happened. He cannot help but sound slightly bemused, too.

“These are just simple little houses,” he said.

Bearden paused, recalling earlier times: bridge parties and golf outings, the rattle of bicycles as kids hustled to get home at twilight. He will stay in his home as long as he can.

“This,” he said, echoing his neighbors, “is a good neighborhood.”