Trail marker on Jadwin Street in downtown Richland

Special report from Nancy Doran*

The Richland City Council voted Tuesday night to rename the Urban Greenbelt Trail in honor of Gustav Albin Pehrson, the architect who created wartime Richland, much of which remains in the central city today.

Who was Pehrson? And why would the city name a trail for him?  Aficionados of Richland history know him as the man who, in creating the wartime Richland Village, laid the foundations for our current city. A Swedish-American architect with a significant practice in Spokane, Pehrson took on the monumental task described in the contract’s legalese language: “The services will include plans and specifications complete for dwellings, commercial buildings,…club houses etc., all utilities…The town site will be developed for an ultimate population of about 6500[sic]… expansion to serve a population of 12,000.”

In short, he agreed to design and oversee the building of an entire town (houses, utilities, roads, stores, etc.) for an unknown number of people – and he had to do it quickly.

The Army had an initial guess as to how many workers would be needed for the as-yet unbuilt reactors, a number that grew significantly over the course of the war.  It fell to Pehrson to estimate how many of those workers would bring families, how large those families might be, and therefore what kinds of accommodations were needed to house them. What was the minimum number of stores, and of what kind, that would be needed to make the Village livable for its citizens?  How many schools? What kind of entertainment facilities?

The result was, in Pehrson’s own words “an exceptional war housing project.” Rather than laying out an army-style town with rigid conformity, his plans respected the lightly rolling topography by not leveling the land. The houses, known by their original letter designations (A, B, D, E, F, G, H, L), are mixed together on streets that often curve; homes are sometimes angled for aesthetic variety, or placed in courtyards.  Schools were sited to be in walking distance from residences so that children need not cross major streets to get there.  Neighborhoods had a grocery store, a pharmacy, a gas station.  Other stores and services were centralized near the original townsite, today’s downtown area.

Eighty years later his plans continue to serve the central area of the city well.  With growth, there have, of course been changes, but the design principles are still recognizable as Pehrson’s. The houses he designed continue to provide comfortable and desirable homes for many of Richland’s residents.

Richland recognizes its atomic beginnings in many ways.  Leslie Groves Park pays homage to the general who oversaw the entire Manhattan Project. A memorial to Franklin Matthias, Groves’s deputy at the Hanford Engineer Works, sits on the library grounds.  Leona Libby Middle School honors Leona Woods Marshall Libby, the only woman who was present at the original pile experiment in Chicago. She was one of the scientists at Hanford and lived in an F house on Armistead St.. Kadlec Hospital is named for Matthias’s assistant, Lt. Col Harry Kadlec, the first person to die in the new facility.  We have streets named for Fermi and Einstein.  What we haven’t had is anything named for Pehrson. Renaming the Urban Greenbelt Trail for G.A. Pehrson will rectify that.

*Retired Information Specialist; volunteer for Richland Walks

Correction: Libby lived on Armistead St.