Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Sites

Large development of 2 and 3-story apartments just west of downtown St. Louis, interestingly just east of the up-coming and infamous Pruitt –Igoe public housing complex. Carr-Square Village is still in use, a testament to its forethought and sound construction. Although it is 80 years old and has been through a tumultuous time, the units are in good condition and the area seems to be relatively safe. It is in a muti-block area of the city of St. Louis and when constructed was the black public housing complex (the white being Clinton-Peabody). It was developed at the time that the...

The Clinton-Peabody public housing complex was a 2 and 3-story Apartment complex on the near south side of St. Louis which at the time was a predominately white neighborhood. It was the white public housing complex that was built at the same time as Carr Square Village. It is more wide open than either the Carr Square village and Neighborhood Gardens. All 3 remain in use, surrounded to varying degrees by urban desolation.

"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...

One of Memphis' first two public housing ventures was Dixie Homes, built for African American residents, after the Memphis Housing Authority was established in 1935. "Memphis became the second city in the nation, following New York, to establish a local housing authority" following the establishment of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) in 1934. Consisting of 633 units, the project cost $3,400,000 for both facilities--the first was constructed for whites in keeping with the South's segregation policies. Dixie Homes was constructed following demolition of the Quimby Bayou swamp area slums, and was designed in the two-story, commons area block-style meant to encourage...

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...

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...

Lincoln Gardens was the second Federal Housing Project created under the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Designed to replace eleven acres of housing in poor repair, the Lincoln Gardens' sixteen new apartment buildings opened on July 1 1938 to provide housing for African-Americans with moderate incomes. While most of the apartment buildings were eventually razed, the last building now houses the Evansville African American Museum.

Mountain View Village was begun as a white housing complex, one of four low rent housing projects. Contracts were awarded in January 1940.

By the early twentieth century, the area that would become the Robert Mills Manor site consisted of a large assemblage of dilapidated late-19th and early-20th century residences and tenements surrounding the county's jail on the corner of Franklin and Magazine Streets. Conditions at the site had deteriorated to the point where contemporary accounts called it: "the worst disease breeding spot in the lower section of the city. Its existence was a constant police problem and fire hazard. Its crowded poorly lighted, evil smelling tenements depreciated the entire section of the city." In its 1937 report published in the City Year Book,...

The Williamson Housing Authority built the Victoria Court Housing Project with aid from the Federal Housing Authority. The development consists of a complex of seven, two-story brick buildings laid in rows of three providing a central court (now a modern playground). The project still retains the clotheslines behind the apartment units, some of which were are still in use. The development encompasses the block bounded by Gum Street, West 5th Street, Willow Street, and West 6th Street in what is now called the West Williamson community of Williamson, Mingo, West Virginia. williamsonha.com: On November 25, 1940, ground was broken in West Williamson and on...

Under the authority of the Housing Act of 1937 (Wagner-Steagall Act), Washington Square (80 units) was one of three federal housing developments in Huntington opened in 1940. Washington Square was developed at the “Colored” section and recorded as such on the 1950 Sanborn Insurance Map. The project demolished substandard housing in a black community, with some businesses listed in the 1937-1939 Negro Green Book although others, such as the theater across the 8th Avenue survived the Depression and the project. The eight two-story, row house apartment buildings have flat roofs, brick exteriors, and minimal ornamentation characteristic of the emerging International Style...

The Williamson Housing Authority built the Williamson Terrace Public Housing with aid from the Federal Housing Authority. The development consists of a single row of two-story, brick structures, with one structure set forward, closer to the right of way along Vinson Street. The back street appears on some maps as Smith Street. A retaining wall is to the rear of the projects holding up a steep hill and to the side allowing the forward building to be level. According to the Williamson Housing Authority, “On November 25, 1940, ground was broken in West Williamson and on Vinson Street for the construction of two...