Greenhills

The village of Greenhills, Ohio is in Hamilton County. It is different from most places in the United States, as it was one of three planned community established by the federal government during the Great Depression. These three communities were known as "Greenbelt Communities," and all of them were made to be surrounded by woods and natural landscaping. The other two are Greenbelt, Maryland and Greendale, Wisconsin. The Greenbelt Towns were part of a program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and were to be part of the so-called New Deal. The construction of these new suburban communities served to give jobs to many in his Civilian Conservation Corps (CC), Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the National Youth Administration (NYA), including carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. Greenhills was designed to be a designated "sundown town." A sundown town was a town which excluded all people who were not white. The term comes from signs which indicated that people of color had to be out of the area by sundown. Such towns have been illegal since a 1917 Supreme Court ruling made them so. The original residents were screened by the federal government. In order to live there a family's income had to be in a specific range, children were a must, and prospective residents had to meet certain moral qualifications. The streets were designed specifically with children in mind and with safety as a priority, and all paths led to all sections so that residents could walk anywhere easily. All of the original homes were built with similar floorpans, as has since become the custom in suburbs. The village has grown and changed since FDR's New Deal, but many of the original buildings are still intact.

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