From Unionville to Garden City

Abstract

At first Howard thought of using ’The Master Key’ as the title of his book and, like many an author before and since, he drafted a title page bearing his own name above a diagram illustrating the key and its functions. ‘I have ventured to call my book the Master Key’, he explained, ‘and my justification of this title may perhaps not unfittingly take the form of a diagram representing a key which is designed to open many locks and to thus reveal many modern treasures.’ This diagram and its accompanying text¹ reveal more explicitly than any other surviving document the philosophy underlying the garden city and Howard’s mechanistic approach to its realisation.