26 Facts About Ebenezer Howard

Sir Ebenezer Howard was an English urban planner and founder of the garden city movement, known for his publication To-Morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, the description of a utopian city in which people live harmoniously together with nature.

Ebenezer Howard is believed by many to be one of the great guides to the town planning movement, with many of his garden city principles being used in modern town planning.

Ebenezer Howard was sent to schools in Suffolk and Hertfordshire.

Ebenezer Howard left school at 15 and began working as a stenographer in London.

Ebenezer Howard subsequently had several clerical jobs, including one with Dr Parker of the City Temple.

In 1871, at the age of 21, influenced partly by a farming uncle, Ebenezer Howard emigrated with two friends to America.

Ebenezer Howard went to Nebraska, and after his farming efforts failed, discovered he did not wish to be a farmer.

Ebenezer Howard then relocated to Chicago and worked as a reporter for the courts and newspapers.

Ebenezer Howard arrived in Chicago just after the great fire of 1871, which destroyed most of the central business district, and witnessed the regeneration of the city and the growth of its suburbs.

Ebenezer Howard began to ponder ways to improve the quality of life.

Ebenezer Howard was described as a humble and practical inventor who used his spare time to create outlines of new cities.

Ebenezer Howard mingled with free thinkers, anarchists and socialists, whose revolutionary and reforming ideas greatly influenced him.

Ebenezer Howard's parents died on consecutive days in 1900, after he had published the first edition of his book, but before work had started on the first garden city: his mother died on 23 November 1900 from pneumonia and his father died on 24 November 1900 from gastritis.

Ebenezer Howard read widely, including Edward Bellamy's 1888 utopian novel, Looking Backward, and Henry George's economic treatise, Progress and Poverty, and thought much about social issues.

Ebenezer Howard disliked the way modern cities were being developed and thought people should live in places that should combine the best aspects of both cities and the countryside.

Ebenezer Howard believed that such Garden Cities were the perfect blend of city and nature.

Ebenezer Howard believed that a new civilisation could be found by marrying the town and the country.

Ebenezer Howard never intended for garden cities to be circular like his diagrams.

Hermann Muthesius played an important role in the creation of Germany's first garden city of Hellerau in 1909, the only German garden city where Ebenezer Howard's ideas were thoroughly adopted.

Ebenezer Howard's ideas influenced other planners such as Frederick Law Olmsted II and Clarence Perry.

Ebenezer Howard was an enthusiastic speaker of Esperanto, often using the language for his speeches.

Ebenezer Howard is buried in a modest grave in Letchworth Cemetery with his second wife Edith Annie, Lady Ebenezer Howard.

The Letchworth garden city was to sustain a population of between 30,000 and 35,000 people, and would be laid out as Ebenezer Howard explained in his book.

Ebenezer Howard constructed Letchworth as an example of how the Garden City could be achieved, and hoped that in its success many other towns would be built emulating the same ideals.

Ebenezer Howard was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1924 and a Knight Bachelor in 1927.

The Ebenezer Howard medal was introduced after Ebenezer Howard's death, and takes the form of a Bronze medal with the motif of an ideal city.