In 1956 Jim decided to set up an architecture office in Chicago with his good school friend Malcolm Weiskopf. Over the years Jim and Malcolm developed a successful business, from which Jim retired only a few years ago. Also in 1956, I was offered a job supervising the construction of a housing project in North Philadelphia, which I decided to accept. This project, started by Morris Milgram in 1953, was the first private housing project in the country to allow—in fact, encourage—interracial occupancy. Morris, the former director of the Workers Defense League, had joined his father in the building business—after his father agreed to build "open housing" (i.e., housing without restrictions as to race). It was Marj who had first met Morris through her work with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Building a private housing project was easy in comparison to the work Morris had to do to persuade lenders to provide mortgages to blacks. He had to crack the mortgage barrier raised by banks across the country on grounds that interracial housing was too "financially risky." Morris finally convinced a bank in New York, which was started by the Ladies Garment Workers' Union and had a long history of supporting liberal causes, to make the first loans.

His troubles were far from over, though. In addition to the usual problems builders have (land purchase, getting local approval, project design, marketing) he also had the task of making the developments attractive to white buyers. I say "white buyers" because he could easily have sold all fifty houses if he wanted to sell to black buyers only, but he wanted to demonstrate that interracial housing was feasible and acceptable to both whites and blacks. The problem lay in the fact that because black buyers had been excluded by developers up to that point, there was a surfeit of black buyers ready to buy with cash on hand. Morris had to use every means available to try and hold at least a 50/50 black to white ratio. When necessary, he had to offer "better deals" to whites.

When I joined the team with Morris, about half the houses had been sold, with sales running ahead of construction. Marj and I bought one of the houses in the development, called Concord Park. After this project we built nineteen more up-scale houses in North Philadelphia and then another forty in Princeton, New Jersey, always maintaining the 50/50 mix. I supervised most of these projects and designed several of the custom houses. Although construction had not been completed when I left in 1960, I felt our objective had been accomplished. A few years later the Open Housing Act became law as part of the civil rights legislation, preventing private developers who were dependent on federal mortgage guaranties from discriminating on the basis of race.