Home Owners' Loan Corporation Neighborhood Grades Composite Shapefile, United States, 1935

This polygon shapefile represents neighborhood boundaries and Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) "grades" and notes for major metropolitan areas in the United States in 1935. The layer is a polygon rendering of many print maps that have been scanned, vectorized, and transcribed by the University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab. Using data and evaluations organized by local real estate professionals, lenders, developers, and real estate appraisers in each city in the 1930s, the HOLC assigned "grades" to residential neighborhoods that reflected their "mortgage security" that would then be visualized on color-coded maps. Neighborhoods receiving the highest grade of "A"--colored green on the maps--were deemed minimal risks for banks and other mortgage lenders when they were determining who should received loans and which areas in the city were safe investments. Those receiving the lowest grade of "D," colored red, were considered "hazardous." The creation and circulation of these maps has been widely proven to contribute to the intergenerational oppression of Black Americans and people of color in the United States. Refer to the documentation for geoprocessing lineage and more information and visit https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/#loc=5/39.1/-94.58&text=intro/