Abstract
How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890-1960 Paige Glotzer Columbia University Press (2020) 320 pages, $30 The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore's Racial Divide Lawrence Lanahan The New Press (2019) 336 pages, $28.99 The Voucher Promise: "Section 8" and the Fate of an American Neighborhood Eva Rosen Princeton University Press (2020) 352 pages, $27.95 Three recent books set in Baltimore paint a vivid picture of the legal history of housing segregation. "5 Put another way, the Land Trust Company sought out lands owned or occupied by indigenous persons, or people of color, that would soon be dispossessed and conveyed to settlers because those transactions had a possibility for heightened profit.6 Investors in the Land Trust Company were usually not elites; rather, they were ordinary members of British society that subscribed to the Land Trust Company's offerings in an effort to secure a modest, but steady, dividend.7 The effect of the investment on American development patterns proved pivotal in the early industrial age. Prior to this investment, American developers, such as those of Baltimore's row houses, needed a relatively quick return on investment and could only finance smaller projects because of limited capital.8 With securitized global capital, however, the Roland Park Company could take on a larger project-a planned community-over a greater period of time than previously permitted under the prior forms of financing.9 Indeed, the need of the Land Trust Company to pay a dividend over time encouraged such large-scale, long-term projects that could satisfy investors' expectations of a return over the years.10 Why the Land Trust Company chose to purchase the land that would become Roland Park, which is still today one of Baltimore's most exclusive communities, is unknown. "20 This desire arose out of a twoyear effort by Bouton to determine the best means for structuring how the community would operate.21 Despite considering restrictive covenants for Roland Park, lawyers convinced him instead to utilize deed restrictions.22 Glotzer does not explain why, and there may be no known historical reason, though restrictive covenants had been utilized in other similarly-situated subdivisions in the 1890s.23 From a contemporary perspective, the deed restriction is usually considered a clunky way to achieve the results desired by modern covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) that are reciprocally recorded at the time of subdivision through a master declaration that is administered by a homeowner's association (HOA).