Ebenezer Howard

(1850 - 1928)

Born in London in 1850, Ebenezer Howard worked as a private secretary and stenographer before he first proposed the garden city—a self-sufficient entity owned by a private company with a population of thirty thousand. Two such towns were built in Hertfordshire, later serving as the basis for England’s post–World War II “new towns.” He died in one of them, Welwyn Garden City, in 1928.