Guilford questions

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The "bad side" bordering on Guilford might have been prevented. The Home Owners' Loan Corporation, the New Deal bailout agency, was so concerned about its deterioration in the late 1930s, before racial change, that the agency developed an ambitious rescue plan. It was called the Waverly Test Program and covered thirty-nine blocks, consisting of more than 1,700 lots along Greenmount Avenue.
Because the "bad side" bordered on the Roland Park Company' prestigious Guilford, Homeland and Northwood, HOLC planners wanted to upgrade the sliver. They unveiled a model improvement program that was touted nationwide.
Those planners saw no value in the original Victorian architecture of Waverly’s old buildings. Instead, if detached houses were of frame construction, as most were, HOLC wanted to strip them of all Victorian influences. A pronounced dormer defining the roofline was to be eliminated so that a bay would not look so dominant. A “more modern” porch would be installed, with a new railing and non-Victorian columns. Similarly, a mansard-roofed Second Empire brick building would be altered to look like a Colonial Revival house. Alternately, slender porch columns could be added and extended to the frieze. With a fancy entrance canopy, the home could be transformed into an ersatz Greek Revival plantation house, not quite a Tara but far more imposing than before. See drawings that show examples of recommended architectural modifications in Waverly: A Study in Neighborhood Conservation
, p. 39 (Washington, D.C.: Federal Home Loan Bank Board).
Nothing came ot the plan. Instead a totally different plan was implemented after World War II. It produced the Waverly Shopping Center and clusters of what now are Section 8 complexes at Greenmount and Matthew.