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  • Aberdeen Gardens - Hampton VA
    Originally named Newport News Homesteads, "Aberdeen Gardens was a New Deal planned community initiated by Hampton Institue (now Hampton University), designed specifically for the resettlement of African-American workers in Newport News and Hampton. In 1934, the Hampton Institute secured a $245,000 federal grant to create the housing development. It was the only Resettlement Administration community for blacks in Virginia and only the second neighborhood in the nation for blacks financed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Subsistence Homestead Project. The Aberdeen neighborhood was designed by Hillyard R. Robertson, a black architect from Howard University. It became a model resettlement community in the United States. Charles Duke, a black architect, was name architect-in-charge...
  • Ashwood Resettlement Community - Ashwood SC
    "The Ashwood community was created by the New Deal resettlement program to convert defunct plantation or farm land into a self-sustaining community of independent farms with educational, agricultural, and commercial support facilities."
  • Babbin Farm - Caribou ME
    The Babbin Farm is an example of the work of the Resettlement Administration in getting families off the relief rolls and back to farming. An article in the July 1 1937 Bangor Daily News reports on two families, the Babbins and Holmquists who were helped. The article mentions that a million farm families were on the relief rolls as the depression came on. “It was during this crisis that the government came to the conclusion that in most cases a more ideal and beneficial situation exists when the farmer is helped to help himself himself than by parceling out of direct...
  • Bailey Colony Farm - Palmer AK
    "The Bailey Colony Farm is a farmstead associated with the 1930s Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Project in the Matanuska Valley. Although the original forty-acre tract has been subdivided, the house and barn that were built in 1935 remain and, virtually unaltered, they are examples of the project's architectural style. The barn is presently located approximately 150 feet from its original site. It was moved in the late 1940s when the Glenn Highway was widened. The move did not change the general spatial relationship between the house and barn, and the building's current setting is very similar to the original. Ferber and...
  • Beauxart Gardens - Nederland TX
    The State of Texas erected a historical marker in 2009 to commemorate this New Deal resettlement community. The text reads: "Named for its location between Beaumont and Port Arthur, Beauxart Gardens was developed during the Great Depression by the U.S. Government as a federal subsistence homestead colony under the National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933. The act encouraged urban and rural workers to supplement their incomes through agriculture. Residents worked part-time at area refineries and kept gardens and livestock. One of five such colonies in Texas, Beauxart Gardens was located on fertile rice land and provided a total of 50 families...
  • Berry House - Palmer AK
    The Berry House is a farm house built in 1935 as part of the Alaska Rural Rehabilitation Corporation's Matanuska Colony project. Representative of the frame colony farm house typology, the Berry house retains most of its original features and it has been minimally altered since it was built. The structure is located on the original colony tract. A registration form of the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) describes the characteristics of the structure: “The house is a one-and-one half story wood frame structure with a rectangular floor plan. It measures 30' 6" x 35' 6" with a 6' x 14'...
  • Cahaba Homestead Village - Trussville AL
    "Cahaba Homestead Village (usually Cahaba Village, listed as the Cahaba Homestead Village Historic District). is a planned residential development located on the banks of the Cahaba River north of downtown Trussville (map). It was constructed between 1936 and 1938 by the Resettlement Administration on the site of the original Trussville Furnace. Originally called "Slagheap Village" because of the large slag piles covering the site, Cahaba Village became a distinct and active community during World War II. It was incorporated, along with "Old Trussville" into the City of Trussville in 1947... The design was approved in 1936 and constructed over the following...
  • Cahaba Village - Trussville AL
    Originally known as Slagheap, "Cahaba Homestead Village (usually Cahaba Village, listed as the Cahaba Homestead Village Historic District), is a planned residential development located on the banks of the Cahaba River north of downtown Trussville (map). It was constructed between 1936 and 1938 by the Resettlement Administration on the site of the original Trussville Furnace. Originally called "Slagheap Village" because of the large slag piles covering the site, Cahaba Village became a distinct and active community during World War II. It was incorporated, along with "Old Trussville" into the City of Trussville in 1947."   (wikipedia)
  • Campbell House - Palmer AK
    This 1935 Colony House was built as part of the New Deal resettlement program that brought colonists from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin to Palmer Alaska in 1935. The building has recently been restored and accepted to the National Register of Historic Places. It is also the recent Recipient of the 2013 Alaska Association for Historic Preservation Award of Excellence.
  • Cherry Lake Farms - Cherry Lake FL
    The Cherry Lake community was a Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) project to build a community for resettlement of families from the urban areas in Florida. FERA bought 15000 acres on which it planned to build farms, housing, and an industrial plant, withe the goal of creating a self sufficient farming community. Started with temporary housing then post office, community center, sawmill, family homes, etc.
  • Cherry Lake Farms - Madison FL
    "Cherry Lake Farm (also known as Cherry Rural Rehabilitation Project) was a New Deal rural relief program initiated by the FERA and the Resettlement Administration (RA) and implemented by the WPA. The project involved moving 500 needy families from Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville onto a 15,000-acre communal tract. The workers formed the cooperatively-owned Cherry Lake Farms (headquartered in the 1839 former plantation home, the Hinton House) and constructed a school, an auditorium, a coop store, barracks, a lumber yard, and a mill. Families lived in 170 cottages with phones, electricity, and running water?all furnished by jointly-owned utilities."   (www.floridamemory.com) According to the...
  • City of Arthurdale - Arthurdale WV
    "Arthurdale was the first of many New Deal planned communities established under Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. It was intended to take impoverished laborers, farmers, and coal miners and move them to a modern rural community that would allow them to become economically self-sufficient... Mrs. Roosevelt was so passionate about the concept that she brought it to the attention of her husband, who decided to place the project under the direction of the United States Department of the Interior. Construction began at the end of 1933 and from the outset it was clear that the Arthurdale community had become one of Eleanor Roosevelt’s...
  • Cumberland Homesteads - Crossville TN
    "Cumberland Homesteads is a community located in Cumberland County, Tennessee, United States. Established by the New Deal-era Division of Subsistence Homesteads in 1934, the community was envisioned by federal planners as a model of cooperative living for the region's distressed farmers, coal miners, and factory workers. While the cooperative experiment failed and the federal government withdrew from the project in the 1940s, the Homesteads community nevertheless survived. In 1988, several hundred of the community's original houses and other buildings, which are characterized by the native "crab orchard" sandstone used in their construction, were added to the National Register of Historic...
  • Dalworthington Gardens - Dalworthington Gardens TX
    Dalworthington Gardens (named that for its proximity to Dallas, Fort Worth, and Arlington) was established in 1934 as a subsistence homestead project by the Resettlement Administration: "In early 1934, the federal government allotted $250,000 to buy 593.3 acres of land south of Arkansas Lane near Arlington, Texas.  It would contain 80 sites for development (U.S. Plat and Dedication).  In June of that year, Civil Works Administration workers arrived to remove all fences and clear out the woods except in the extreme south end of the project.  On July 13, a local contractor, F.A. Mote was awarded the contract to build the...
  • Deshee Farms Barn - Johnson IN
    This barn was given new siding and doors, a concrete foundation, and a concrete and wood wall by the Resettlement Administration (RA), between 1937 and 1938.
  • Deshee Farms Structures - Johnson IN
    There are a variety of structures on this property. All were constructed by the Resettlement Administration (RA) between 1937 and 1938. There is a home with aluminum siding and a side porch (moved from Deshee Farms in 1945), a rear shed, and an attached garage.
  • Estate Mandahl Homestead Community - St. Thomas VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Estate Mandahl on St. Thomas. The work was funded by a $20,400 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The 1939 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the outcomes of homesteading on St. Thomas as such: “Fifty-three homesteaders occupy 80 plots on two Federal homestead projects in St. Thomas on which they have contracted to purchase 609 acres. These projects are largely of a subsistence homestead character since no agricultural cash crop other than vegetables and fruit for local consumption is grown...
  • Estate Saint John Homestead Community - St. Croix VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Estate Saint John on St. Croix. The work was funded by a $22,000 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The 1939 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the outcomes of homesteading on St. Croix as such: “On the four Federal homestead projects in St. Croix there are 284 homesteads totaling 2,148 acres under contract. About 70 percent of the homesteaders are now in their fifth or sixth year. During the year 7 homesteaders died, 9 relinquished their plots and 18...
  • Estate Whim Homestead Community - Frederiksted, St. Croix VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Estate Whim on St. Croix. The work was funded by a $46,000 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The Estate Whim plantation spread over more than 1400 acres. The Federal government bought the land in the 1920s and later subdivided the plantation for a homestead plan. The 1933 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands mentions the establishment of homesteads in St. Croix: “The six estates known collectively as "Whim", and located in the southwest portion of St. Croix near Frederiksted, contain 1,450 acres of land,...
  • Estates Colquhoun/Mount Pleasant Homestead Communities - St. Croix VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Estates Colquhoun and Mount Pleasant on St. Croix. The work was funded by a $18,000 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The 1939 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the outcomes of homesteading on St. Croix as such: “On the four Federal homestead projects in St. Croix there are 284 homesteads totaling 2,148 acres under contract. About 70 percent of the homesteaders are now in their fifth or sixth year. During the year 7 homesteaders died, 9 relinquished their plots...
  • Garment Factory (former) - Roosevelt NJ
    "Five hundred acres of the 1,200 acre tract were to be used for farming, and the remaining portion for 200 houses on 1/2 acre plots, a community school, a factory building, a poultry yard and modern water and sewer plants. ...terms were reached with the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union when it was agreed that the Jersey Homesteads factory would be a new cooperative run by the settlers themselves, so would remove no union jobs from New York. Jersey Homesteads was set up as a triple cooperative, comprised of a farm, retail stores and a factory. The farm, consisting of general, poultry...
  • Hattiesburg Homesteads - Hattiesburg MS
    The Hattiesburg Homesteads was one of five "industrial communities" established in Mississippi as part of the Resettlement Administration, and was the smallest project in the state. Twenty four frame clapboard units were built at a cost of $3,152 per unit. Industrial communities were "...established for industrial workers and located in the outskirts of cities and large towns..." (Smith, p. 89).
  • Haywood Farms - Stanton TN
    In 1937, when the Resettlement Administration was turned over to the Farm Security Administration, the proposed farmstead community at Haywood Farms, Douglass Community, was still in the land acquisition stage. Within a year, the Farm Security Administration had “built or repaired 100 houses for tenant farmers in West Tennessee at an average cost of $211 per room, or $2,050 per farmstead, including barns, fences, wells, smokehouses and other outbuildings” (100 tenants aided in state, p. 2). This included the Haywood Farms Project, where 19 homes were nearly completed by then. The contract for construction of 34 complete farm units of four...
  • Haywood Farms Project - Stanton TN
    The Farm Security Administration located 37 farms, developed from land mainly purchased from Willis Burchett Douglass, in the Douglas community near Stanton. The farms included a 5-room wooden frame house, outdoor toilet, waterpump, barn, and smokehouse. "The Project" as it was known locally, was developed as RR-TN-25 for African Americans, and local families participated in renting the farms with option to buy.
  • Historic Dyess Colony - Dyess AR
    "Originally known as “Colonization Project Number 1,” Dyess Colony was first controlled by the Arkansas Rural Rehabilitation Corporation.  This corporation was set up by the Rural Rehabilitation Program of the Emergency Relief Administration in Arkansas.  In 1936 the Resettlement Administration took over management of the Arkansas Rural Rehabilitation Corporation.  The legal structure of the colony was revised, and Dyess Colony Corporation was organized.  When the Farm Security Administration was established in 1937, it became the third agency to administer Dyess. Dyess Colony was an experiment in permanent reestablishment of the independent farmer.  Intended as a pioneer effort, the colony was, in...
  • Homestead Housing - Bethlehem, St. Croix VI
    The homestead housing in Bethlehem, St. Croix was built by the Virgin Islands Company with the aid of PWA funding. A partnership program between the Government of the United States and the people of the Virgin Islands, the Virgin Islands Company sought to expand the homesteading and housing programs alongside industrial development on the islands. In Bethlehem, in addition to running the homesteading and housing programs, the Virgin Islands Company took on the reconstruction of the Bethlehem sugar mill, the island’s largest sugar mill. The 1934 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands provides details about a homestead housing program funded with...
  • Homestead Housing - Frederiksted, St. Croix VI
    A homestead housing program funded with the aid of a $45,000 grant from the Housing Commission and a $242,000 loan from Subsistence Homesteads Corporation, sought to improve housing conditions on the Virgin Islands. The program included housing on farm land in the vicinity of Frederiksted on St. Croix. The 1934 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the housing conditions on the islands and the details of the new housing program. "A housing survey in October 1933 in St. Croix, where the need is greatest, showed 2,623 one-room houses, with from 1 to 12 persons in each house. Perhaps...
  • Homestead Housing - St. Thomas VI
    A homestead housing program funded with the aid of a $45,000 grant from the Housing Commission and a $242,000 loan from Subsistence Homesteads Corporation, sought to improve housing conditions on the Virgin Islands. The program included housing on farm land in St. Thomas. The 1934 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the housing conditions on the islands and the details of the new housing program. "A housing survey in October 1933 in St. Croix, where the need is greatest, showed 2,623 one-room houses, with from 1 to 12 persons in each house. Perhaps half of them are relics of...
  • Horral House (Chester Eisenhut House) - Decker IN
    This structure was built by the Resettlement Agency (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) between 1937 and 1938. Its style is typical of early 20th century house
  • House - Johnson IN
    This private house has a concrete foundation, and asphalt and wood walls, constructed through the Resettlement Administration (RA) between 1937 and 1938.
  • Hyland Hotel - Palmer AK
    The Hyland Hotel, also known as the Everglenn Hotel, is a historic property, part of the Settlement and Economic Development of Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley, and is nominated as a community center building within the New Deal Colony Settlement of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska. The hotel was built on one of the main streets of Palmer, a city founded by the Federal Government for the for Matanuska Colony rural resettlement program. While the hotel was built by private individuals, the structure is associated with the New Deal because it was made possible by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration's Matanuska Colony initiative and the land it...
  • La Grande Princesse Homestead Community - St. Croix VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Estate La Grande Princesse on St. Croix. The work was funded by a $28,000 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The 1933 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands mentions the establishment of the homestead in St. Croix: "On the 712-acre estate known as "La Grande Princesse", located in the northeastern section of the island near Christiansted, and also purchased in the fall of 1932, nearly 500 acres were found suitable forhomesteadallotment. TheacrepriceofPrincesseland,together with development and aid, is about 50...
  • Lake Dick Resettlement Community - Altheimer AR
    Lake Dick was a Resettlement project, part of the efforts to help sharecroppers establish their own farms. The Resettlement Administration purchased 3, 453 acres, built "80 houses, six community buildings, and several farm support structures" for a cooperative farm (Arkansas Historic Preservation Program). Eighty white farm families, who had been either sharecroppers or tenant farmers, from 29 Arkansas counties were selected by the Farm Security Administration to take part in the cooperative. The cooperative was designed for each farmer to have his house, with a small plot of land for vegetables, but the remaining acreage was to be farmed jointly. In...
  • Lamesa Farm Workers Community - Los Ybanez TX
    The state historical marker at the site reads: By the 1920s, Dawson County’s rapidly expanding cotton economy was outgrowing its labor supply. Like other areas of the country, Lamesa began to rely on migrant laborers from Mexico to increase the available pool of seasonal workers. One effort to federally regulate migrant labor was the creation of farm labor communities to ensure a dependable source of labor for farmers and to provide safe and sanitary living facilities for migrant workers and their families. The Lamesa Farm Workers Community, present day Los Ybanez, operated from 1942 until 1980. In 1941, the Farm Security Administration...
  • Lindbergh Bay Homestead Community - St. Thomas VI
    The Works Progress Administration and the Work Projects Administration established, maintained, and operated homestead communities at Lindbergh Bay on St. Thomas. The work was funded by a $16,800 emergency relief grant (1933-1940) to the Government of the Virgin Islands. The 1939 Annual Report of the Governor of the Virgin Islands describes the outcomes of homesteading on St. Thomas as such: “Fifty-three homesteaders occupy 80 plots on two Federal homestead projects in St. Thomas on which they have contracted to purchase 609 acres. These projects are largely of a subsistence homestead character since no agricultural cash crop other than vegetables and fruit for local consumption is...
  • Magnolia Homesteads - Meridian MS
    Magnolia Homesteads was one of five Division of Subsistence Homesteads begun in Mississippi in 1934. It was an industrial community of 25 units located in Meridian, intended to combine part-time wage work with part-time farming or gardening. By the time the Division of Subsistence Homesteads was abolished in 1935, none of the projects had been completed, and were absorbed into the Resettlement Administration (Roth). The cost was $2,942 per unit (National New Deal Preservation Association). Farm Security Administration photographs taken in 1935 and 1936 show completed units for the Meridian homestead community.
  • Matanuska Colony Community Center (Palmer Historic District) - Palmer AK
    What is now the Palmer Alaska Historic District was founded in 1935 as the Matanuska Colony Project. It was one of 100 New Deal resettlement programs and involved major efforts by FERA and the Resettlement Administration. The town site of Palmer expanded rapidly with the relocation of 203 colonists from Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 1935 under the Relocation project.  Prior to that the area was composed of homesteads primarily. The Palmer Historical Society has a Colony House Museum that is a 'house' as it would have been in 1935-1945.  It is an original colony house moved into the historic...
  • McComb Homesteads - McComb Homesteads MS
    McComb Homesteads is a small community just three miles southeast of McComb, Mississippi.  It is located just off U.S. Route 98 east, with a highway sign—“HOMESTEADS”—indicating the entrance on the north side of the highway, onto Harrison Drive.  Harrison Drive then intersects Eleanor Drive (which goes west to Van Norman Curve Road and east to Gibson Road south) and continues north northeast, winding around the community, and ending on Gibson Road north. This describes the general boundary/area of McComb Homesteads. Construction of McComb Homesteads began in April of 1934. The community was the first New Deal homestead community in Mississippi and...
  • Migrant Farm Workers Camp - Shafter CA
    "In the 1930s, in the midst of the Great Depression, more than 300,000 migrants from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas flocked to California, driven by poverty and the hope for new opportunities. This flood of migrants, collectively known as the Okies, included a wide cross-section of people—young and old, men and women, rural and urban... In 1935, the Resettlement Administration (RA), and later the FSA, began to establish migratory labor camps to house the destitute migrants. Many migrants living in cars, tents, and shacks along “ditchbank” settlements (Figure 1) were attracted to the sanitary, newly constructed camps located along a 600-mile-long...
  • Old Greenbelt Planned Community - Greenbelt MD
    The heart of today's Greenbelt, Maryland – popularly known as "Old Greenbelt" – is a large, planned community laid out and constructed during the New Deal. It features community facilities such as a school, theater and community center, a large number and variety of housing, basic infrastructure of roads, water and sewers, and extensive landscaping and an attached forest.  Almost all of the original facilities are still intact. Greenbelt was one of four greenbelt towns initiated by Rex Tugwell, head of the Resettlement Administration (RA). Greendale, Wisconsin, near Milwaukee, and Greenhills, Ohio, near Cincinnati, are other surviving greenbelt towns; a fourth,...
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