Making, Preserving, and Redeveloping Public Housing in the United States

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Patrick R. Potyondy

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2016

Dissertation Committee:

Steven Conn, Advisor

Lilia Fernández

Clayton Howard

David Staley

Copyrighted by

Patrick R. Potyondy

2016

Abstract

Although a negative reputation still weighs down America’s public housing as a whole, its New Deal incarnation proved to be generally successful. The history of

Columbus, Ohio’s first development Poindexter Village illustrates this. Initially, the project’s construction displaced an established neighborhood; it continued the racial segregation already in place. In response, the black residents formed a strong community, in spite of the challenges facing them. All this solidified into a stout base around which contemporary public history activists rallied in an attempt to save the place from destruction. In the end, they could not save the entirety. Nonetheless, they sparked interest in its history from the Near East Side neighborhood and community stakeholders from across the entire city. They show, in short, how much the public remains invested in its history and the history of public housing.

Poindexter Village is only one such example of this; it was public housing that worked. From its opening in 1940, it became a bulwark of the black Near East Side, a social anchor institution for the otherwise neglected African-American community. Soon after moving in, they made a strong community based upon shared values, mutuality, and safety. In later years, as former residents and community stakeholders looked back upon the place’s history, their history, they expressed a deep, abiding connection to the place, founded upon that positive historical memory. In this, Poindexter Village is not unique.

Communities across the United States have also valued their own public housing ii developments that either once were or still are home. Over thirty such “projects” have achieved listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

Using an array of sources, the following chapters ask a series of inter-related questions: what type of a neighborhood existed prior to Poindexter Village? What type of community did public housing residents make? What aspects of the architecture and urban planning did residents make use of and engage? Why, in sum, were so many people so passionately dedicated to preserving Poindexter Village and its history? This case study led to me to inquire if, where, why, and how public housing developments were preserved and commemorated nationally.

Chapter 1 describes the neighborhood formation and conditions prior to the construction of Poindexter Village. It highlights not only the substandard housing that dominated the area between the turn of the century and 1940, but also the racial segregation that black residents both resisted and made use of. Chapter 2 examines the planning and construction of Poindexter Village during the 1930s. Primarily utilizing primary sources of policymakers and professionals, Columbus’ first public housing project tied into international design trends and aspirations of the Progressive Era.

Ultimately, they set the stage for the successful community formation that residents themselves made, which is recounted in Chapter 3. Based upon what people saw as their shared values, common bonds, and a sense of communal safety, Poindexter’s residents created a strong, vibrant community that served as a core basis for positive memories down the road.

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The dissertation next turns to recent efforts to preserve and redevelop New Deal era public housing. Chapter 4 recounts the proposed demolition of the Village in 2008 and how local community stakeholders responded the following years. Although unable to reverse the tide completely, former residents sustained a type of public history activism long enough that proved captivating for residents across Columbus to be drawn into preserving the place’s history. Activists successfully altered a multi-million urban redevelopment scheme and in so doing, show that urban planning organizations ignore community input at their peril. Finally, Chapter 5 pulls back for a broader view to analyze why thirty-three public housing developments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Combined, Chapters 4 and 5, challenge the elite-dominated nature of historic preservation in the United States.

Dedication

For my mother, father, sister, brother, and life-partner.

Acknowledgments

For students to achieve anything, they need to call on the support and expertise of their teachers, time and time again. I want to first thank Steve Conn for serving as my advisor over six years of graduate education—I grew immeasurably during my time. I also want to thank Lilia Fernández for being another huge influence on my thinking. She was always willing to read another draft or offer an independent study. I also need to thank Clay Howard and David Staley, not only for serving on this dissertation committee but for making it so much better and thoughtful than it otherwise would have been. Many other professors educated me during my time at Ohio State, and they also deserve my great thanks: Paula Baker, Kevin Boyle, Nick Breyfogle, Theodora Dragostinova, Susan

Hartmann, Robin Judd, Stephanie Shaw, and Richard Ugland, Judy Wu. I was also lucky enough to have several excellent professors during my undergraduate time: Peter Boag,

Ralph Mann, and Ginger Guardiola of history, Jennifer Bair of sociology, and Cheryl

Higashida in English helped me professionally while also revealing ways to better understand the world. Many thanks, again, for all of your time and energy.

As such, I was lucky to belong to a great cohort of Americanists at Ohio State’s

History Department, and these friends deserve special thanks. Mark Boonshoft read countless drafts of anything I put in front of him, asked hard questions, encouraged me to make my work better, and was always willing to get a drink when I needed one. Members

vi of the Dissertation Alliance—“DA” for short—kept me going as well. Delia Fernández,

Hideaki Kami, Adrienne Winans, and Leticia Wiggins provided sharp insights, tireless edits, and, perhaps most importantly, great conversation. Wendy Soltz’s excellent editing made each chapter better, but she also deserves special thanks for helping conceive of the entire research project in the first place. Conversations with Emily Arendt, Joe Arena, and Tyran Steward made me a better student, teacher, and intellectual. Karen Roberts, now of the Ohio History Connection, also made the overall project better in several ways, whether critiquing my ideas or now facilitating the donation of the project’s oral histories. Cristina Benedetti helped collect oral histories, which added to the research considerably. Jim Bach saved me on more than one occasion from the impenetrable OSU bureaucracy, while also always being available for a good chat. And the folks of the weekly pickup soccer games I played throughout my time here were a perfect, fun, and necessary stress relief. A huge thanks to all of you.

In the phrasing of one of my professors, historians are scroungers, looking for any and all sources in an attempt to reconstruct the past. Countless individuals have aided my meandering research efforts during this project the last few years. For sharing their expertise and time, I am grateful to the staff members at the institutions I visited in person or contacted electronically. Specifically, I want to thank Justin Cook of the Ohio

History Connection; Randy Black of the Historic Preservation Office of the City of

Columbus; Trudy Bartley, Penney Letrud, and Deidre Hamlar of Partners Achieving

Community Transformation; Bob Clark of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

& Museum; Holly Reed of the National Archives & Records Administration; and Bryan

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Brown and Shellie Zaayer of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. The staff of all the state historic preservation offices often proved incredibly helpful in responding to my requests. Moreover, this dissertation would not have been possible without the many individuals who willingly gave their time to record their oral histories: Randy Black,

Leslie Bridges, Justin Cook, Oretha Edwards, Steven “Paco” Grier, Calvin L. Hairston,

Marilyn A. Kendrick, Rick Livingston, Cynthia Mastin, Horace “Ike” Newsum, Chief

Baba Shongo Obadina, Julie Marie Whitney Scott, Roland Stepney, Daniel Sturkey, and

Laura Tompkins. I also owe a special debt to the members of the Coalition for the

Responsible and Sustainable Development of the Near East Side and the Poindexter and the James Preston Poindexter Foundation. Not only have they worked tirelessly to highlight and preserve local history; they have helped me in my efforts, especially

Julialynne Walker, S. Yolanda Robinson, and Horace “Ike” Newsum. My thanks to you all.

Perhaps most important of all, I couldn’t have achieved any of this without the support of my family. Although she won’t be there at my graduation, I continuously draw inspiration from my mom, Monica, both to excel academically and to be a better person.

My dad, John, has always been supportive in so many ways. And I’m lucky enough to have not one but two older siblings who helped me grow: Lena and Eric can’t know just how much I owe them. My extended family, too, has been the best in direct and indirect ways. Finally, my life-partner made it all possible. The first twelve years have been amazing. The first ten months with our daughter Lilian, even better. I can’t wait for what’s next.

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Vita

May 2009 ...... Rocky Mountain High School

2009...... B.A. History, English, Sociology, University

of Colorado

2012...... M.A. History, Ohio State University

2010 to present ...... Graduate Associate, Department of History,

Ohio State University

Publications

“Reimagining Urban Education: Civil Rights, Educational Parks, and the Limits of Reform.”

Reimagining Education Reform and Innovation. Matthew Lynch, ed. (Peter Lang International

Academic Publishers, 2014).

Fields of Study

Major Field: History

Table of Contents

Abstract ...... ii Dedication ...... v Acknowledgments...... vi List of Tables ...... xi List of Figures ...... xii Introduction ...... 1 Chapter 1: Before Poindexter Village: Racializing Urban Space on Columbus’ Near East Side in the Early Twentieth Century ...... 13 Chapter 2: Constructing Poindexter Village: Responding to “Slum” Housing, the Formation of CMHA, and Providing Modern Housing ...... 58 Chapter 3: Making and Remembering the Community of Poindexter Village ...... 114 Chapter 4: Demolishing or Preserving Poindexter Village: Urban Planning, the 106 Review Process, and the Very Real Politics of Public History...... 159 Chapter 5: Rethinking Historic Preservation to Include Working-Class Public Housing ...... 207 Epilogue: Public Housing, Urban Redevelopment and the Role of Public History ...... 246 References ...... 253

List of Tables

Table 1 Public housing in order of listing on National Register of Historic Places ...... 222

Table 2 Place by National Register Historic Criteria ...... 223

Table 3 Properties listed by segregation type ...... 228

List of Figures

Figure 1 1928 map shows the “residence of Negroes dying in Columbus”...... 28

Figure 2 1928 map of “Negro Neighborhoods” in Columbus...... 29

Figure 3 Map of central Columbus 1940s census data ...... 31

Figure 4 Locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913, 1920 and 1930...... 34

Figure 5 Locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913, 1920 and 1930...... 35

Figure 6 Locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913, 1920 and 1930 ...... 36

Figure 7 Photograph taken at Phillips St. and Granville Alley. Photo No. O-3666...... 42

Figure 8 Photograph taken at the rear of 239 Thorn Alley. Photo No. O-3662...... 43

Figure 9 Photograph taken at rear of 1313 Granville Avenue. Photo No. O-3421-B...... 45

Figure 10 Photograph taken at Thorn Alley. Photo No. 2999...... 47

Figure 11 Photograph taken at the rear of 1313-13 Granville Ave. Photo No. O-3422. .. 48

Figure 12 HOLC map for Columbus ...... 55

Figure 13 The site plan for Poindexter Village ...... 81

Figure 14 Representative Poindexter Village housing design ...... 84

Figure 15 This is the "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3666 above...... 107

Figure 16 This is "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3662 above...... 108

Figure 17 This is the "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3421-B above...... 109

Figure 18 This is "after" photograph of Photo. No. O-2999 above...... 110

Figure 19 This is the "after" photograph of Photo. No. O-3422 above...... 111 xii

Figure 20 Planned industrial parks, office parks, and future planned sites...... 153

Figure 21 Percent black by census tract, 1940 - 1990r...... 173

Figure 22 Population density per square mile...... 174

Figure 23 Vacant housing units...... 175

Figure 24 Map of locations of public housing listed on the NRHP ...... 221

Figure 25 Map of every public housing project built between 1933 and 1949 ...... 221

Figure 26 Santa Rita Courts pictured in 1950 ...... 226

Figure 27 Children at Santa Rita Courts in 1950 ...... 227

Figure 28 Representative Lyndon Johnson at Santa Rita Courts in 1939...... 231

Figure 29 Langston Terrace ...... 234

Figure 30 Langston Terrace ...... 235

Figure 31 Iberville’s community looks on during a foot race in 1942...... 239

Figure 32 Iberville Public Housing ...... 242

Figure 33 Iberville Public Housing ...... 242

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Introduction

Before I began my graduate studies at Ohio State, I noticed consistent news coverage on a local controversy over the proposed demolition of a public housing project

I happened to live nearby. From what I was gathering, community members and former residents were pretty vehement about opposing the redevelopment plans the city had in store for the place. As I followed its story over time, it grew more complex, more layered.

It started to become apparent that public history was a key issue here. I delved farther into the topic when I began working with stakeholders on both sides of the conflict. For myself, that work functioned as an opportunity to connect the academic side of my professional training with an issue that a local community cared deeply about: history.

But Poindexter Village did not have anything but a bad reputation by the time I moved into Columbus in 2009. At neighborhood meetings I attended, white residents who recently moved into the area complained about “the project”. They eagerly asked police officers and city officials who attended the meetings when they were going to tear the place down. The neglected public housing made these new private homeowners fearful.

While I did not share their immediate concerns, I did wonder, quite ignorantly, what motivated folks to oppose demolishing a place that, by all present-day appearances and reporting, looked run-down and which was too-often associated with crime? The 1 redevelopment surely could offer something better. Why should the public spend resources to historically preserve and commemorate such a place? My questions may or may not come as much of a surprise. I was not alone, after all. I had unconsciously—to a degree—absorbed the ethos of our times. An array of scholars—generations of them, in fact, from a spread of disciplines, from both sides of the political aisle—have declared public housing an utter failure. A series of stereotypes arose from these high-profile and somewhat exceptional examples.

But I had a strong inkling that my perceptions at the start were very limited, so I asked why the community felt so attached to Poindexter Village, and why they wanted to preserve its history? As I dug deeper into the public history of public housing, I found that the Poindexter preservation activists were not alone. I knew already, since I had mapped them, that it was one of hundreds of projects built across the United States.

Moreover, I found that communities across the country have successfully listed at least

33 public housing developments on the National Register of Historic Places, perhaps the nation’s premier place for recognizing and commemorating its history and architecture.

The community stakeholders, whose attachment to Poindexter was admittedly tinged with nostalgic longings, showed me that there was value in the place, if only people were willing to look for it.

Although its negative reputation still weighs down America’s public housing as a whole, its New Deal incarnation proved to be generally successful. The history of

Columbus, Ohio’s first development illustrates this. Initially, the project’s construction displaced an established neighborhood; it continued the racial segregation already in

2 place. In response, the black residents formed a strong community, in spite of the challenges facing them. All this solidified into a strong base around which contemporary public history activists rallied in an attempt to save Poindexter Village from destruction.

In the end, they could not save the whole place. Nonetheless, they sparked interest in the place’s history from the Near East Side neighborhood and community stakeholders from across the entire city. They show, in short, how much the public remains invested in its history and the history of public housing.

* * *

But shadows haunt the history of public housing. The phrase “the projects” conjures up a slew of negative stereotypes in the national imagination: welfare cheats, poverty, segregation, isolation, crime, drug abuse. Massive high-rises, like those found in

New York City, Chicago, Baltimore, or St. Louis’ infamous Pruitt-Igoe towers, darken any mention of public housing. In the phrasing of historian Samuel Zipp, “Here’s any number of colliding images: Stopover. Poorhouse. Slum destroyer. Slum creator. Lungs of the city. Filing cabinets for the soul. Towers in the park. Vertical ghettoes.”1 A place associated with “warehousing the poor.”2 Historian Lawrence Vale noted that “American

1 Samuel Zipp, “Superblock Stories, Or, Ten Episodes in the History of Public Housing,” Rethinking History 17, no. 1 (March 1, 2013): 41. 2 David Fleming, City of Rhetoric: Revitalizing the Public Sphere in Metropolitan America (Albany: SUNY Press, 2008), Chapter 6. 3 public housing [is] surely among the most frequently vilified government programs yet devised.”3

That public housing has simply failed is today’s conventional wisdom. And it is not new. In a careful study of public housing in popular discourse from 1950 to 1990, A.

Scott Henderson writes that “by the late 1960s, though, a highly problematic image— based largely on race—had come to dominate the popular press, obscuring alternative representations that would have more accurately depicted the range and variety of public housing throughout America.”4 The introduction to Public Housing Myths highlights that

“analysts from a surprising range of political ideals agree that public housing as built has almost no redeeming features.”5 An array of scholars—generations of them, in fact, from a spread of disciplines—have declared public housing an utter failure. Howard Husock,

Harvard University’s director public of policy case studies, captured the essence of this consensus when he wrote in 2003, without footnote, “Everyone knows how quickly . . . housing projects in big cities turn into dangerous, demoralized slums.” He titled his book

America’s Trillion Dollar Housing Mistake.6 Other popular studies focus on individual cities that ostensibly to represent larger patterns. The book Blueprint for Disaster: The

Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing or the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth focus

3 Lawrence J. Vale, “The Imaging of the City: Public Housing and Communication,” Communication Research 22, no. 6 (1995): 647. 4 A Scott Henderson, “‘Tarred with The Exceptional Image’: Public Housing and Popular Discourse, 1950- 1990,” American Studies. 36, no. 1 (1995): 31. 5 Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale, eds., “Introduction,” in Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 10. 6 Howard Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake: The Failure of American Housing Policy (Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 1. 4 on the massive high-rises that did, indeed, appear to fail terribly by most measures.7 The latter notes just how recognizable the photograph of the imploding St. Louis towers became across the country.8

A series of stereotypes arose from such prominent examples that came to stand in for all public housing styles and iterations. These included that “public housing residents are all criminal or welfare cheats; that the US public sector stopped public housing

[spending] in the 1970s as a result of [systemic] failure; that all public housing projects have themselves become slums that must be destroyed; and that public housing can never be a tool of social and economic development.”9 No matter the label, the American public has become extremely suspicious and negative about public and affordable housing.10

The reality of its history, and contemporary battles over its preservation, however, tell quite a different story.

Public housing in America has developed through several distinct phases and cannot easily be lumped together. Before the high-rises of the postwar, the New Deal in partnership with local communities built hundreds of low-rise, garden-style housing projects across the United States. Moreover, when former residents of those earlier forms of public housing—before the high-rise—are interviewed about their collective past, they often recall positive memories of strong families and safe, supportive environments

7 D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Chad Freidrichs, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, 2012. 8 Freidrichs, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. 9 Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Fritz Umbach, and Lawrence J. Vale, eds., Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015), 10. 10 Rolf Pendall, “Opposition To Housing: NIMBY And Beyond,” Urban Affairs Review 35, no. 1 (1999): 112–36; J Tighe, “Public Opinion and Affordable Housing: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of Planning Literature 25, no. 1 (2010): 3–17; John Arena, Driven from New Orleans: How Nonprofits Betray Public Housing and Promote Privatization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). 5 intertwined with the surrounding area that were well-designed for walkability and what contemporary urban planners call placemaking.

Poindexter Village is one such example of this; it was public housing that worked.11 Poindexter Village was the first public housing project built in Ohio’s capital city, and from its opening in 1940, it became a bulwark of the black Near East Side, a social anchor institution for the otherwise neglected African-American community. Three other developments followed soon, built for whites. In total, the four would house some

4400 people. The next three—Riverside Homes, Sullivant Gardens, and Lincoln Park— were slightly smaller than Poindexter, but the design principles looked identical.12

Poindexter’s residents made a strong community based upon shared values, mutuality, and safety soon after moving in. In later years, as former residents and community stakeholders looked back upon the place’s history, their history, they expressed a deep, abiding connection to the place, founded upon that positive historical memory. In this,

Poindexter Village is not unique. Communities across the United States have also valued their own public housing developments that either once were or still are home. Over thirty such “projects” have achieved listing on the National Register of Historic Places.

* * *

11 Historian Nicholas Bloom examined the New York City Housing Authority and found that the agency successfully managed and provided decent, affordable housing during its lifetime. His study focuses almost exclusively on the housing authority. Nicholas Dagen Bloom, Public Housing That Worked: New York in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 12 “City’s $5,830,000 Slum Clearance Program Pushed Toward Completion,” Columbus Citizen Journal, May 11, 1941, CMHA Files; “Housing Projects to be Completed by Fall,” Columbus Dispatch, May 11, 1941, CMHA Files; Judith Robinson et al., “Public Housing in the United States, 1933-1949: A Historic Context, Volume I” (The National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, October 12, 1991), Appendix 4. 6

In public housing scholarship, “all too often, the worst cases are allowed to become mythologized into the reigning stigmatized stereotype, even as these ‘worst cases’ fail to be analyzed in nuanced ways.”13 While making public housing policy has always been entwined in the nation’s political battles, critics have hailed from both the left and right. Since its inception, public housing has been on the receiving end of a torrent of constant criticism.14 Sociologists have often spoken of public housing projects as veritable islands—areas cut off from the surrounding area. As a case in point, in a master’s thesis completed in the school of social work at Ohio State in 1966, Shirley

Bowen Rhodes noted that “some observers have noticed that Metropolitan [sic] low-rent

13 Bloom, Umbach, and Vale, Public Housing Myths, 4. 14 Henderson, “Tarred with The Exceptional Image,” 31; Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934); H. Warren Dunham and Nathan D. Grundstein, “The Impact of a Confusion of Social Objectives on Public Housing: A Preliminary Analysis,” Marriage and Family Living 17, no. 2 (1955); originally published in 1957, Catherine Bauer, “The Dreary Deadlock of Public Housing,” in Federal Housing Policy and Programs: Past and Present, ed. J. Paul Mitchell (New Brunswick, N.J.: Center for Urban Policy Research, 1985); John P. Catt, “Experts Critical of Public Housing,” The New York Times, July 20, 1958; William Moore, The Vertical Ghetto: Everyday Life in an Urban Project (New York: Random House, 1969); David K. Shipler, “Troubles Beset Public Housing Across Nation,” The New York Times, October 12, 1969; Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); George S. Sternlieb and Bernard P. Indik, The Ecology of Welfare: Housing and the Welfare Crisis in New York City (Transaction Publishers, 1973); Rachel G. Bratt, “Public Housing: The Controversy and Contribution,” in Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Chester W. Hartman, Ann Meyerson, and Rachel G. Bratt (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986); John F. Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); William E. Schmidt, “Public Housing: For Workers or the Needy?,” The New York Times, April 17, 1990; Alex Kotlowitz, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (Anchor Books, 1991); Michael H Schill, “Distressed Public Housing: Where Do We Go from Here?,” The University of Chicago Law Review 60, no. 2 (1993): 497–554; Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Bradford McKee, “Public Housing’s Last Hope,” Architecture 86, no. 8 (1997); Lewis H Spence, “Rethinking the Social Role of Public Housing,” Housing Policy Debate Housing Policy Debate 4, no. 3 (1993): 355–68; John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America (Penn State Press, 2000); Lawrence J. Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects: Public Housing and Public Neighbors (Harvard University Press, 2009); Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake. 7 housing areas for low-income families are particularly devoid of any real sense of community that is meaningful to their inhabitants.”15 Sociologist Sudhir Venkatesh highlights this view among social scientists especially, who have said that a public housing project is like a “city-within-a-city.”16 Such literature tends to lump high-rise towers along with garden-style dwellings into a monolithic conception of “public housing projects” that are isolated, cut-off from the surrounding neighborhood.17 Moreover, partly through scholars, the problematic language of the “ghetto” followed African Americans from their pre-public housing neighborhoods into their new developments.18

Historians, meanwhile, have produced their own studies of American public housing. A majority of public housing histories from the 1980s through the 2000s have primarily presented case studies of individual cities that reinforce a narrative of decline and failure, an indictment of white liberal urban planners who exacerbated the stark urban racial divide. A majority of these histories focus on top-down workings of professionals

15 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960); Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961); Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper & Row, 1980); Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations, no. 26 (1989): 7–24; Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London ; New York: Verso, 1994); John E. Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 1994); Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes As Public History (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1995); David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 1996); Edward S. Casey, Remembering: A Phenomenological Study (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000); David W. Blight, “Historians and ‘Memory,’” Common-Place 2, no. 3 (April 2002), http://www.common-place.org/vol-02/no- 03/author/; Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Geoffrey Cubitt, History and Memory (Manchester University Press, 2007). 16 Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, American Project: The Rise and Fall of a Modern Ghetto (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 9. 17 Ibid., 4–9. 18 St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945); Elliot Liebow, Tally’s Corner: A Study of Negro Streetcorner Men (Boston: Little, Brown, 1967); Ulf Hannerz, Soulside: Inquiries into Ghetto Culture and Community (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969); Lee Rainwater, Behind Ghetto Walls: Black Families in a Federal Slum (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Venkatesh, American Project. 8 and institutions.19 A few have approached the topic from a policy perspective.20 Only in the last decade, however, have historians incorporated the voices of the people who called the projects home. A new public housing history has emerged that challenges many of the myths about public housing in the United States. These historians have illustrated how residents themselves, far from powerless, in fact shaped public housing policies at the grassroots level while also making strong communities.21 Without the people, public housing remained simply empty, lifeless structures. Urban planners from the top-down and residents from the bottom-up transformed mere space into a meaningful and lasting place.22 Together, they engaged in a process of placemaking, a process rooted in a locale’s history and lives through those who remember it most vividly.23 The

19 Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Bauman, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal; Raymond A Mohl, “Making the Second Ghetto in Metropolitan Miami, 1940-1960,” Journal of Urban History 21, no. 3 (1995): 395–427; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); Bloom, Public Housing That Worked. 20 Gaia Caramellino, “Planning Note: Negotiating Modern Architecture During the New Deal,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (September 2012): 376–77; Edward G. Goetz, “The Transformation of Public Housing Policy, 1985–2011,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (September 2012): 452–63; Joseph Heathcott, “Planning Note: Pruitt-Igoe and the Critique of Public Housing.,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (2012); Lawrence J. Vale and Yonah Freemark, “From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing,” Journal of the American Planning Association 78, no. 4 (September 2012): 379–402. 21 Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era; Lawrence J. Vale , Reclaiming Public Housing : A Half Century of Struggle in Three Public Neighborhoods (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall, The Dignity of Resistance: Women Residents’ Activism in Chicago Public Housing (Cambridge University Press, 2004); Rhonda Y. Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); John Baranski, “Something to Help Themselves: Tenant Organizing in San Francisco’s Public Housing, 1965–1975,” Journal of Urban History 33, no. 3 (2007): 418–42; Kelly Anne Quinn, “Making Modern Homes: A History of Langston Terrace Dwellings, a New Deal Housing Program in Washington, D.C.” (Dissertation, University of Maryland, 2007); Amy Lynne Howard, More Than Shelter: Activism and Community in San Francisco Public Housing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). 22 “Space” is more abstract than “place.” What begins as undifferentiated space becomes place as we get to know it better and endow it with value. . . . The ideas “space” and “place” require each other for definition. Yi-fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 6. 23 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1960); Tuan, Space and Place; Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 9 publicly-contested history of Poindexter Village and the thirty-three public housing developments on the NRHP reveal how urban communities attach and formulate connections to distinct urban places.

In the case study portion focused on Poindexter, I have sought out the oral histories of former residents to capture the type of story that is too often forgotten or ignored. I pursued these in large part because the housing authority has not preserved the majority of its historical records, thus erasing much of its and its residents’ history.

Working closely with community members and organizations, I have located interviewees.24 These efforts, for instance, led me to additional oral histories that the community performed at a local history festival. Additionally, I have examined newspapers, proceedings of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), contemporary social science surveys, census data, business directories, reports, maps, some participant observation, architectural plans, and photographs.

The following chapters ask a series of inter-related questions: what type of a neighborhood existed prior to Poindexter Village? What type of community did public housing residents make? What aspects of the architecture and urban planning did residents make use of and engage? Why, in sum, were so many people so passionately

1995); Monica Perales, Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010); Project for Public Spaces, “Project for Public Spaces: What Is Placemaking?,” accessed March 16, 2015, http://www.pps.org/reference/what_is_placemaking/. 24 Oral histories are imperfect—as are all sources used to reconstruct and understand the past. Memories fade, or change. They may stress nostalgic reminiscences, or play up challenges. It is the historian’s job to make sense of the competing forces inherent in oral history collection and interpretation. Whatever the limitations, oral histories provide insights into processes that would have otherwise remained completely invisible. Although my identity as a white male—interviewing former residents and community members of color—created a level of distrust at first, most interviewees accepted my earnest explanation that I hoped to help preserve their history. Ultimately, interviewees proved open and willing to record their experiences and contribute to historic preservation. 10 dedicated to preserving Poindexter Village and its history? This case study led to me to inquire if, where, why, and how public housing developments were preserved and commemorated nationally.

11 community input at their peril. Finally, Chapter 5 pulls back for a broader view to analyze why thirty-three public housing developments are listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Combined, Chapters 4 and 5, challenge the elite-dominated nature of historic preservation in the United States.

Chapter 1: Before Poindexter Village: Racializing Urban Space on Columbus’ Near East Side in the Early Twentieth Century

Summarizing the racial atmosphere that black southern migrants walked into when they stepped out of Columbus, Ohio’s Union Station in 1913, Professor Frank

Quillin wrote, “Scarcely any [African Americans] own their own homes. They cannot buy or rent in any good portion of the city. They are crowded off by themselves in miserable tenements owned by white men and built with total disregard for sanitary conditions, but let at high rentals.”25 Without a doubt, the neighborhood collectively, and affectionately, remembered by the African-American community as the “Blackberry

Patch,” on the city’s Near East Side had substandard housing in the early twentieth century. The area compared poorly to richer, whiter spaces of the city. It was, in sum, like much of urban America then—little different from the infamous slums of Chicago, for instance, or the famous tenements photographed by Jacob Riis.

The formation of the city’s preeminent black neighborhood and its housing resulted from two mutually reinforcing forces: first, a context of racist reaction against new southern black migrants and their exclusion from many white neighborhoods as they entered the city and, second, the agency of the African-American community in making their Near East Side into a livable area. Over time, part of the Near East Side has become

25 Frank U. Quillin, The Color Line in Ohio: A History of Race Prejudice in a Typical Northern State (New York: Negro Universities Press, 1913), 149. 13 known collectively and affectionately as the “Blackberry Patch.” But it remains likely that this transformation occurred in the latter decades of the twentieth century.26

The Great Migration shaped Columbus like it shaped other northern urban centers. Although it was not an industrial hub like Detroit or Pittsburgh, Columbus still attracted thousands of migrants from the South, which rapidly increased the local black population. In 1860, black residents made up only 5 percent of the city’s population with less than 1000 people. By 1900, African Americans comprised just over 8000 residents, or 6 percent, in a city now 125,000 strong.27 Black Columbus grew most rapidly during

World War I with a large majority of the population migrating from the South. But each decade between 1900 and 1940 witnessed a growth in size of the black population greater than what the entire black population had been before 1900.28 By 1920, Franklin

County’s black population reached just under 24,000 or 8.42 percent of the county.29 This accounted for almost the entire black population located in Columbus, which rose from

12,739 in 1910 to 22,181 in 1920.30 In 1930, Franklin County’s black population was 9.9 percent, or 35,781 individuals, with 32,724 of them concentrated in Columbus. 31 Those

26 The origin of this popular neighborhood name is unknown. It only begins appearing in books and artwork created by former Poindexter residents, and then newspaper accounts about those individuals (primarily Aminah Robinson), in the 1980s and later. For instance, see Anna Bishop, Beyond Poindexter Village: The Blackberry Patch (1982) and S. Yolanda Robinson, There Is Magic in the Blackberry Patch (2011). 27 Vinnie Vanessa Bryant, “Columbus, Ohio and the Great Migration” (MA Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1983); U.S. Census Bureau, “Table No. 1415. Population of the Largest 75 Cities: 1900 to 1996,” Section 31: 20th Century Statistics, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999, https://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec31.pdf. 28 Quillin, 134. 29 Social Explorer Dataset (SE), Census 1920, Digitally transcribed by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Edited, verified by Michael Haines. Compiled, edited and verified by Social Explorer. 30 J.S. Himes, Forty Years of Negro Life in Columbus, Ohio (Washington, D.C., 1942), 141. 31 Social Explorer Dataset (SE), Census 1930, Digitally transcribed by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Edited, verified by Michael Haines. Compiled, edited and verified by Social Explorer. 14 born in Ohio accounted for just over 12,000 of that figure, making migrants the majority of the black population. They accounted for over 18,000 people in 1930.32 By 1940, the rate of incoming migrants had slowed so that African Americans made up just under

39,000 or ten percent of the county’s population.33 Still, an African American walking down the street in the city was more likely than not a Southern migrant. They searched for a better life and better opportunities. They made that a partial reality for themselves, but they also faced discrimination from white residents and the real estate industry, which limited their housing options.

Social science, in particular, identified “slums” primarily where black residents lived and often conflated the physical dilapidation they chronicled with the supposed immorality of the people who lived there.34 The housing that African Americans could access was indeed substandard in both quantity and condition, and the city came to associate its black citizens with that squalor and overcrowding. In spite of those limitations, African Americans increasingly formed businesses in the Near East Side neighborhood, which meant they actively strived to make their own world into a livable and vibrant space.

Scholars such as Henri Lefebvre, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, and urban planner

Kevin Lynch have illustrated not only that spaces are socially constructed, they are

32 Andrew Barta, “A Sociological Survey of the East Long Street Negro District in Columbus, Ohio” (MA Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1933), 111. 33 Social Explorer Dataset (SE), Census 1940, Digitally transcribed by Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Edited, verified by Michael Haines. Compiled, edited and verified by Social Explorer. 34 For example of this Progressive Era tendency see, Natalia Molina, Fit To Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). 15 socially delineated and defined.35 Historian Dolores Hayden has highlighted that space is produced and contested as it becomes wrapped up in notions of place.36 And urban historians have increasingly focused on how “space makes race,” a move which has built not only on the spatial turn but has also expanded in conjunction with a number of studies of racialization focusing on a diverse array of topics most often including labor unions, the state, immigration, and whiteness.37 Hayden, who focuses on the politics of space, calls this “territorial history,” which in the United States has often involved the intersection of housing and race.38 Perhaps most importantly, N.D.B. Connolly has highlighted how, from the 1890s to the 1960s, a diverse set of urban dwellers—including

African Americans—“made tremendous investment in racial apartheid, largely in an effort to govern growing cities and to unleash the value of land as real estate.”39

35 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1991); Yi-fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977); Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960). 36 Dolores Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 18–20. 37 Eric Avila and Mark H. Rose, “Race, Culture, Politics, and Urban Renewal An Introduction,” Journal of Urban History 35, no. 3 (March 1, 2009): 343; For a concise explanation of the spatial turn, including the importance of Arnold Hirsch and Thomas Sugrue, see Matthew D Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). For studies of racialization, see Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1980s (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999); Thomas A Guglielmo, White on Arrival : Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). For an examination of how federal policy hardened racial categories, see David M. P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). Although this chapter focuses on the black-white racial binary, scholars have examined the racialzation of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Latinos across the United States. For examples, see David G. Gutiérrez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995) and Lilia Fernández, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). 38 Hayden, 22–25. 39 N. D. B Connolly, A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 3. 16

This chapter builds upon these approaches through an analysis of Columbus,

Ohio’s Near East Side neighborhood, which formed into an African-American community during the early twentieth century. It utilizes writings from the time period, demographic data, extensive social scientific research, photographic reports, and government records. It also maps business locations derived from three African-

American city directories. These visualizations track the progression and racialized- formation of the Near East Side between 1913 and 1930.40

During this time the Near East Side of Columbus, Ohio, became identified as a black neighborhood, prior to the era of public housing construction. African Americans helped define their own space.41 It argues that several reinforcing social dynamics converged to make this area into an identifiable black urban space and indeed the primary black neighborhood of the city between the first decade of the twentieth century and

1940. This process took hold in large part before the federal United States Housing

Authority (USHA) and the local Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) built the city’s first and all-black public housing project named Poindexter Village in the area in 1940.

Without excusing the role of the state, this chapter challenges the notion that public housing construction of the 1930s and later was the originator or even the primary driving factor in creating urbanized racial segregation—several other factors, emerging

40 Through this approach, this chapter illustrates that “the map is a more appropriate medium for thinking about, organizing, and conveying . . . geographical information” than text alone. See Staley, Computers, Visualization David J. Staley, Computers, Visualization, and History: How New Technology Will Transform Our Understanding of the Past (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2013), xiv. 41 Connolly, A World More Concrete. 17 from earlier decades, proved just as significant.42 In Columbus, a black neighborhood had established itself prior to the city’s public housing construction, which in many ways helps to explain why this site was selected for “slum clearance” and public housing in

1938 in the first place. Social scientific research, government zoning and regulation, reforming efforts, the racist reactions of whites, the Great Migration’s impact on the city, and the substandard housing options blacks found, all contributed to the racialization process.

By the mid-1930s, social scientists, newspapers, government surveyors, and

African Americans themselves identified the Near East Side—also known as the East

Long Street District—as Columbus’ preeminent black urban neighborhood, before government built and run public housing arrived in the late 1930s. In spite of negative characterizations of the area as a “slum” and in the face of widespread racial discrimination, the black community established itself in this neighborhood creating a strong foundation for future collective memory formation.

New Migrants Encounter Northern White Attitudes, Municipal Planning, and Real

Estate Practices

In the first decades of the twentieth century, as black southern migrants traveled into Columbus in search of a better life, they found a hostile atmosphere. Writing in

1904, a contemporary observer commented on this great migration, highlighting the rapid

42 Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960; Joel Schwartz, The New York Approach: Robert Moses, Urban Liberals, and Redevelopment of the Inner City (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1993); Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit; Bauman, Biles, and Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes; Thomas A Guglielmo, White on Arrival : Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 18 change in the city. “Columbus has not escaped this change,” J.B. Malone wrote. Migrants were “pouring into the city.”43 Like sociologists in later decades, Malone cast this mass movement in a negative light. Writing almost forty years later, E. Franklin Frazier echoed these sentiments, proving that social scientists were not immune to the biases of their time. Frazier commented on urban American when he wrote of “masses of ignorant, uncouth, and impoverished migrants [who] flooded the city.”44

In 1913, Frank Quillin of the University of Michigan, a professor of sociology and economics, related an anecdote from the assistant adjutant-general of Ohio that captured the growing racial tension as black migrants settled in Columbus: “The anti- negro feeling here in Columbus is white heat. We are expecting an outbreak any day and are getting everything in readiness for it, so far as the military is concerned. Probably you noticed that new Gatling gun has been placed in the rotunda of the capitol building.”45

Perhaps he exaggerated, but Quillin went on to describe his own impressions of how he saw the city’s reception of the new migrants:

Columbus, the capital of Ohio, has a feeling all its own. In all my travels

in the state I have found nothing just like it. It is not so much a rabid

feeling of prejudice against the Negroes simply because their skin is black

as it is a bitter hatred of them because they are what they are in character

and habit. The Negroes are almost completely outside the pale of the white

43 J. B. Malone, “The History of the Columbus Negro in Politics,” The Columbus Negro: A Social Study, unpublished manuscript, edited by J. E. Hagerty, (Columbus, 1904): 102-103, as quoted in Himes, 134– 135. 44 Edward Franklin Frazier and Anthony M. Platt, The Negro Family in the United States (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1939), 285. 45 Quillin, 145. 19

people’s sympathy. . . . This condition of affairs has been growing by

leaps and bounds during the last five or ten years. . . . Whatever the cause

may be, this much is evident—the feeling against Negroes is bitter in the

extreme.46

Although Quillin claimed to describe a unique context, he instead captured a common attitude during these early decades: American society continued to equate the “skin color” and “character” of migrating “Negroes” together. This was especially true for migrants.

Like other northern and western cities, Columbus as a whole was unprepared for the arriving southern black migrants. Columbus joined Akron, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and

Youngstown in attracting the largest number of African-American migrants in Ohio.47

Historian Vinnie Bryant writes that the “sudden influx of migrants created problems which the city was not prepared to deal with. Prior to the migration there was no organizations [sic] or agencies to deal with the welfare problems of the city’s blacks.”48

Between the end of the Civil War and the early 1900s, the vast majority of blacks settled in the section already known then as the East Long Street District, or what is being called here the Near East Side. The neighborhood had been established before the Civil War, but only after 1900 did the bulk of Columbus’ black population reside there.49 J.S. Himes, a contemporary historian of the period, argued in 1941 that “because of white hostility

46 Ibid. 47 Vinnie Vanessa Bryant, “Columbus, Ohio and the Great Migration” (Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1983), 2. 48 Ibid., 2–3. 49 Ibid., 5. 20 and, to a certain degree, limitations due to economic factors, blacks were not able to settle in all parts of the city.”50

In addition to political and economic discrimination, whites denied African

Americans entry to restaurants, theaters, hotels, and schools. In the early 1900s, The

Chittenden, Columbus’ fanciest hotel, claimed it “thoroughly renovated” any rooms where black maids stayed (while their white masters visited the city) by “taking up carpets, washing all the bed-clothes, airing and often destroying the mattresses.” A white bartender who served a black colleague a drink was threatened that he would be fired if it happened again. The Young Women’s Christian Association did not admit any women of color either.51

Those bitter white attitudes translated into increased racial segregation. Whites fled streets on the city’s East Side around Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue when blacks took up residence. This process had already begun in the late 1890s in Ohio’s capitol, and it moved fast. According to one Columbus building-and-loan official at the time, the very next day after the first African American moved onto 22nd Street between

Mount Vernon and Long Street (just one block from where the future public housing development Poindexter Village would be built), seven “For Sale” signs appeared up and down the block. More followed as property values wilted. As noted above, southern migrants made up many of the new arrivals, which may have accelerated the transition since both non-migrant blacks and resident whites held special prejudice against them.

Perhaps not realizing the long-term effects of such a transition, the first black resident

50 Himes, 136. 51 Quillin, 146. 21 north of Mt. Vernon Avenue in 1899 recalled, “It was fun to see the white people run after a negro family moved onto the street.”52

Observant social scientists also recorded the process. Richard Clyde Minor, a doctoral candidate at Ohio State University, noted that African Americans first settled just east of downtown along Long, Gay, and Spring Streets. The area became known as the “Bad Lands” and, Minor wrote, “the better people of the community as fast as possible found homes elsewhere” as African Americans moved primarily eastward along

Long Street. This process is also supported in the mapping of black businesses exhibited below. Minor also highlighted the effect of the Great Migration during and after World

War I: “These migrants literally pushed [white] Columbus citizens into better homes.

Farther east on Long Street and to the North and South on the streets that intersect it went scores of Negro families.” “The entrance of these” migrants, Minor continued, “was the signal for the exit of white families. The boom incident to the World War opened up two new residential districts, Bexley and Upper Arlington. Many white families went to these new districts.” Real estate agents spurred on this white flight as “many [whites] sold their properties for losses,” Minor wrote. “Real Estate dealers, White and Negro, reaped the harvest for they sold real estate to Negro families at inflated prices. The hysteria of the white owners emanated from an assumption that is, at its best, but a half truth, namely that the coming in of Negroes lowers values of real estate.” Moreover, incoming blacks often obtained the most rundown property, areas that had been neglected already.

52 Mary Louise Mark, “Negroes in Columbus” (Ohio State University Press, 1928), 17–18. 22

“Business men along Mt. Vernon Avenue had to change their clientele,” Minor concluded. “One moving picture show has now all Negro patrons, which less than ten years ago would not admit Negroes,” while the white owner of a nearby restaurant attempted to hold on, barring African Americans altogether. Neighborhood boundaries were serious demarcations of social turf. Violence also lurked in the background. “A

Negro took his life in his hands if he went into” the Milo neighborhood, an area also near downtown but just north of the Near East Side.53 White attitudes did not only shape the housing market, however. Progressive era planning in Columbus made no attempts to reshape the general reception southern migrants received.

The Progressive Era City Beautiful movement spurred the creation of the city’s first central plan, published in 1908, just as black migrants made their way into the city.

“Beginning with the dream and faith of a very few public-spirited citizens” such as the

City Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Columbus Board of Trade also backed the plan.54

The city did not complete all of the suggested improvements, but the plan exhibited a civic spirit that placed faith in the ability of government—spurred on by women reformers, pushed by grassroots reformers, and backed by powerful business interests— to work toward the public good. The city included demolition in its plans. Municipal zoning and planning promoted slum clearance Under a picture of a dirt road, the 1908 plan “proposed [a civic center] mall [that] will wipe out this squalid neighborhood, and in

53 Richard Clyde Minor, “The Negro in Columbus” (Dissertation, The Ohio State University, 1936), 24–26. 54 Historians have increasingly begun to credit the role of women in leading Progressive-Era urban reforms. See Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) and Fernandez, Brown in the Windy City. 23 its place provide a park and some of the best building sites in the city.”55 The plan did not address the displacement of any of the residents.

Despite the casual attitude toward the clearance of whole neighborhoods,

Columbus Progressives were also motivated by benevolent sentiments, highlighting that their city represented a broad swath of America. Otto W. Davis of Columbus,

Superintendent of Associated Charities in the early 1900s, took part in the National

Housing Association conference led by Lawrence Veiller in New York City in 1911. He advocated for improved housing conditions, while also noting that Columbus presented problems just as bad as New York’s.56 Though Columbus did not contain the massive, and increasingly infamous, tenements of New York or Chicago, it posed just as difficult a problem for urban reformers, Davis claimed. “It was only natural that housing reformers should have started with tenements, for their evils were bunched and easy to uncover,” he noted wryly in his short article “The Problem of the Small House.” “But having started there, is there any good reason why we should continue to remain with the tenement?”

Davis argued that housing reformers move onto the problems of housing which the majority of Americans were arguably experiencing at the time—in places like Columbus,

Ohio. “The type of two-family house described in the report of the New York Tenement

House Department is common in many cities,” he went on to write. “It is frequently the type of house in which the dark room first appears in the smaller city. I doubt if there is a

55 Austin W. Lord, et al., Report of the Plan Commission for the City of Columbus, “The Plan of the City of Columbus: A Report Made to the Honorable Charles A. Bond, Mayor, to the Honorable Board of Public Service, and to the Honorable City Council” (February, 1908), 52. 56 Otto W. Davis, “The Problem of the Small House,” National Conference on Housing, ed., National Housing Association; Proceedings of the First National Housing Conference Held in New York, June 3, 5, and 6, 1911. (New York: Academy of Political Science, 1912), 11–14. 24 city of 5000 in Ohio today which is free from the two-family house with its dark rooms.”57 Columbus certainly matched other cities in the least: “Sausage Row” was a neighborhood of “eight or ten cheaply constructed four-room houses set flat on the ground” with families occupying both upstairs and downstairs, with two rooms each.

Davis then noted, “The only running water is what comes through the roof. There are no toilet facilities, there is no water supply and almost no yard.”58 Despite passage of a broader, wider-reaching housing code than the tenement code vouched for by Veiller,

African Americans continued to occupy poor housing.59

As the city grew, professional planners and business interests promoted increased zoning. The ideal of the single-family home and the financial interests in land values headlined the 1923 urban plan endorsed by the Columbus City Planning Commission:

“Without Zoning [sic] you are powerless to prevent the destruction of the comfort of your home and the value of the property . . . nearby.”60 The commission, established just two years prior, recommended completely separating residential from commercial use—even in this case of a “small store projecting to the sidewalk line in the middle of a residence block” or “an apartment house in the middle of a residence block.”61 While the U.S.

Supreme Court ruled racially-restrictive zoning illegal in 1917, private homeowners were

57 Davis,11–14. 58 Davis, 13–14. 59 Robert B. Fairbanks, “From Better Dwellings to Better Neighborhoods: The Rise and Fall of the First National Housing Movement,” in From Tenements to the Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth-Century America, Ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 35. 60 Robert Harvey Whitten, Columbus (Ohio), and City Planning Commission, The Columbus Zone Plan. Report Outlining a Tentative Zone Plan for Columbus, Ohio (Columbus: Heizer Print. Co., 1923), 2. 61 United States, Final Report, Real Property Inventory: Columbus, Ohio, Including Columbus, Bexley, Hanford, Upper Arlington, Marble Cliff, Grandview Heights; Period of Enumeration, April 1st to May 15, 1936, ed. O. A. Corzilius (Columbus, Ohio: 1937), 4, 6, 14–18. 25 still able to employ discriminatory covenants until 1948.62 Columbus’ zoning plan followed that spirit when it praised “a certain degree of uniformity in the development of a block or area” as one that was “for their mutual advantage and protection” and

“beneficial to all owners. . . . This is the meaning of restrictive covenants in all better class residential developments. Zoning applies the principle of the restrictive covenant in so far as it can be used to promote public as distinct from purely private ends.”

Ultimately, “zoning creates confidence that the existing character of the neighborhood will be preserved.”63 The race-neutral language did not prohibit racial covenants, nor regulate the private housing market in that regard.

New legal provisions may have been deemed necessary in Columbus because

African Americans were not entirely isolated in a single part of the city. In a study published in 1928, sociologist Mary Louise Mark identified ten black neighborhoods of varying size. The largest concentration of African Americans by the 1920s, however, could be found on the Near East Side, a corridor stretching from the east side of downtown, along and around East Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue.64 Maps created using census data for the first decades of the twentieth century reveal that the majority of census tracts in Columbus were moderately-to-highly segregated by race.

This only increased into the 1930s. The 1940 census showed the area around Poindexter

Village as 78 percent black. Two adjacent tracts were 85 and 87 percent black. But just

62 Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948). 63 Whitten, Columbus (Ohio), and City Planning Commission, The Columbus Zone Plan. Report Outlining a Tentative Zone Plan for Columbus, Ohio, 20. 64 Mark, 15. 26 across Broad Street, two neighborhoods were only 4 percent and 1 percent black.65 The real estate profession sustained this system, limiting individual property-owners from selling to whomever they liked. Historian Kevin Kruse notes that “until 1950, for example, the code of ethics of the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) included this canon: ‘A realtor should never be instrumental in introducing to a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy, members of any race or nationality, or any individual whose presence will clearly be detrimental to property values in the neighborhood.’”66 Thomas Sugrue adds that real estate agents risked penalties and expulsion from the profession if they disobeyed these guidelines.67 As late as 1965, the moderate Council on Human Relations based in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington faced bomb threats at meetings that simply discussed housing discrimination by local realtors.68 It was highly unlikely, therefore, that African Americans—many of them rural migrants from the South—would have been allowed any opportunity to rent or buy in predominantly white areas.

65 Social Explorer Dataset (SE), Census 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, 1940, Digitally transcribed by Inter- university Consortium for Political and Social Research. Edited, verified by Michael Haines. Compiled, edited and verified by Social Explorer. 66 Kevin Michael Kruse, White Flight : Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 60. 67 Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 46. 68 James Richards, “Bomb Threat Halts Talk On Housing / Negro Charges Realtors Practice Discrimination,” The Columbus Dispatch, June 8, 1965. 27

Figure 1 This map, published in 1928, shows the “residence of Negroes dying in Columbus, Jan. 1, 1920 to Dec. 31 1923,” illustrating where black residents were concentrated in the 1920s. The greatest concentration of deaths, circled in red, occurred between East Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue. This area corresponds with area number 1 in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2 This map, published in 1928, shows the location of "Negro Neighborhoods" in Columbus as identified by social scientific research of the era. Area 1 is identified as East Long Street. Broad Street and High Street are the two main streets that bisect the city.

In the city’s economy, black men could “labor at unskilled work” and as janitors, but union membership in most trades was denied them. Historians have documented the job discrimination blacks faced in the urban north.69 In Columbus, black men had “to accept lower wages than white men . . . for the same work.”70 In the mid-1930s, in two census tracts just east of downtown but west of where Poindexter would be built, African

Americans were over twice as likely to be enrolled on W.P.A. relief rolls and almost twice as likely to be on direct relief from the city. Across the city as a whole, blacks fared no better.71 They were over-represented in lower class trades and jobs, especially as laborers, servants, janitors, and porters.72

African Americans were denied political influence in Columbus during these years as well. Although they arguably had some small impact on city politics before the reform of the city’s charter in 1912, afterward, elections for the board of education and the city council were conducted at-large. This meant that black Columbus—isolated as it became on the East Side—could not gain even a localized plurality to shape or directly influence either political body.73 The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority would name its first housing community after the Reverend James Poindexter—the city’s first black member of both the city council and the board of education who rose to prominence during these early decades—but he stands the exception that proves the rule of Columbus politics in the Progressive and post-Progressive eras. As racially

69 For example, see Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, 92 and Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). 70 Quillin, 147–148. 71 James C. Turner, “Population Characteristics of a City Area: A Study of Census Tracts 5A and 9A” (The Ohio State University, 1937), 23. 72 Barta, 131. 73 Himes, 137. 30 marginalized and denigrated minority, African Americans had little hope of achieving political representation in the city.

Figure 3 Map of central Columbus 1940s census data. "PV" represents the center of Poindexter Village. Long Street cuts through the middle of tracts 35 and 36 and the bottom of 28. Mount Vernon Avenue splits tracts 29 and 36 and runs through the middle of 28. Broad Street divides tract 38 and 37 from tracts 36 and 28. The northern edge of what is today known as Old Towne East is highlighted by tract 38. Census tracts 28, 29, 30, 35, and 36 roughly correspond to the circled portion in the above map marking the mortality locations of African Americans. (Map created using Social Explorer)

An African-American-Made Near East Side

Despite the discrimination they faced in Columbus, African Americans established racial uplift societies, businesses, and institutions. Nimrod Allen, Columbus

Urban League Executive Secretary, noted in 1922, “There are nearly one hundred

31 business enterprises on East Long Street and vicinity, embracing haberdasheries, photographers, optometrists, music shops, music studios, beauty parlors, printing establishments, corporations, tailors, etc.”74 East Long became a hub of activity. In her

1928 survey of “Negroes in Columbus,” sociologist Mary Louise Mark pointed out that

“by far the largest colored section in the city is the East Long Street district extending from Third Street on the west to Taylor Avenue on the east and from Long Street on the south to Atcheson Street on the north.”75

Small numbers of black residents called this area home for twenty or thirty years by 1900, many working at the nearby railway yards.76 Mark notes pull factors for African

Americans moving into this area: nearby work at the “railway shops” and geographic proximity to East Broad Street, where some of the wealthiest white residents lived, many of whom “desired to have negro ‘help’ near by [sic].”77 A decade later, in 1933, Andrew

Barta, in his flamboyantly-written observational thesis, felt comfortable enough to identify “the East Long Street District” as “the major Negro community in Columbus.”78

The digital mapping of black-owned and operated businesses in Columbus between the 1913 and 1930 confirms the East Long Street District as one of the preeminent black neighborhoods in the city. By utilizing addresses from three African-

American business directories, the following three visualizations illustrate the growth and slight concentration of black businesses. The maps, when contrasted in the sequence

74 Nimrod Allen, “East Long Street,” Crisis 25 (Nov. 1922): 14. 75 Mark, 16. 76 Ibid., 17. 77 Ibid., 18; See also Barta, 6. 78 Barta, 1. 32 presented below, narrate and illustrate the formation of the black Near East Side neighborhood during the era of the Great Migration.

All three directories appeared as the largest waves of the Great Migration hit

Columbus. The first, entitled The Ohio Business Directory and Information Guide of

Ohio’s Colored Business Men and Women, dates from 1913. It provides listings for 51 cities and towns across Ohio, including Columbus.79 The second directory is entitled the

Columbus Illustrated Directory, described by its compiler W.A. McWilliams, an African-

American minister and editor in the city, as “a Negro yearbook and directory.”80 The last, also compiled by McWilliams, is The Columbus Illustrated Negro Directory.

Interspersed throughout each directory are small features and vignettes on locally- prominent African-American figures. The second directory focused specifically on

Columbus, Ohio, implying a tipping point of sorts when the African-American population reached a sufficient size to require its own set of listings. Still, the locations are more widely dispersed than the next directory from 1930. The following pages provide a side-by-side juxtaposition of the three directories, from 1913 on top, then 1920 in the middle, and then 1929-1930 on the bottom. Each series of maps zooms further into the near east side neighborhood. The map is best experienced online.81

79 Colored Men's Business Association of Ohio, The Ohio Business Directory and Information Guide of Ohio's Colored Business Men and Women, Columbus, OH: 1913. 80 W.A. McWilliams ed., Columbus Illustrated Record (Columbus, OH, 1920), 4. 81 To view the maps online, visit: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zz_8eROqXVK0.kZORaOrNPSVc&usp=sharing. 33

Figure 4 Mapped locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913 at top, then 1920 in middle, and then 1930 at bottom. A number of businesses sit along High Street, at 5th Avenue, in south Columbus, and in downtown, but the majority spread eastward into the Near East Side. 34

Figure 5 Mapped locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913 at top, then 1920 in middle, and then 1930 at bottom. Downtown still holds many businesses, but the majority spread eastward. 35

Figure 6 Mapped locations of black businesses in Columbus in 1913 at top, then 1920 in middle, and then 1930 at bottom. Businesses increase steadily along Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue. 36

In total, the maps include locations and names for 794 businesses.82 The Ohio

Business Directory and Information Guide of Ohio’s Colored Business Men and Women from 1913 reported on 190 African-American business locations. The 1920 Columbus

Illustrated Directory chronicled 226 African-American business locations. And The

Columbus Illustrated Negro Directory of 1930 provided 378 African-American business locations. The number of businesses increased with each directory. More and more places became concentrated on the near east side as well.

Ultimately, the black community of Columbus did not passively accept their position as second-class citizens, but actively made their own neighborhood through the pursuit of a wide variety of business endeavors. Despite the hardships—the racial discrimination in housing, education, accommodations, and employment—that blacks experienced at the hands of white society, the Near East Side developed a shared sense of community and continued to build businesses for and by black citizens. The maps illustrate the impressive agency of African Americans who established a wide array of businesses. They worked diligently to create livable communities. The mapped businesses illustrate this. All sorts of professions and trades and services are represented in the maps: barbers, beauty parlors, insurance companies, entertainment venues, restaurants, legal firms, carpenters, doctors, painters, drug stores, and grocery stores.

Sub-Standard Housing Conditions on the East Side

White attitudes translated into unequal housing opportunities and conditions for the city’s black residents. First, African Americans searching for housing found a stark

82 Only business addresses are represented. The directories also include extensive data on church locations and private residences. 37 lack of housing on offer in the first place. A vacancy survey, conducted by the CMHA just before it displaced people to begin Poindexter’s construction, found that there were never more than 100 open housing units available in the area on the market at any one time for African Americans.83 A few years before, the Real Property Inventory of 1936 found only 9000 total units occupied by blacks across Columbus.84 That percentage of available, open housing—1.1 percent—fell well below averages for open rental units in the US. For comparison, although Indianapolis’s vacancy rate dropped precipitously from a high of 12 percent in 1932, it still sat at 3 percent in 1936.85 Still, “It is very doubtful, if there were more than a handful of vacancies at any one moment” for black residents, wrote Eduard S. Goodman in his 1940 Ohio State thesis.86 In Columbus, the rental shortage impacted the black community the most. He described the situation as one of a serious “housing shortage for Negroes” in the city.87

The private housing market was simply not providing adequate housing for the city’s black community. Dr. J. S. Himes, Research Director of the Urban League, told the

Cleveland Call and Post in 1942 that “in more than a decade only five new dwellings have been constructed for Negro occupancy with private funds” in Columbus (emphasis added). That small tiny number, the paper reported, was “designed specifically to meet the housing needs of the group of colored families who are eligible for Poindexter Village

83 Eduard Goodman, “The Effect of Relocation on the Former Occupants of the Site of the Poindexter Village Housing Project in Columbus, Ohio, 1939-1940” (The Ohio State University, 1940), 10. 84 United States, Final Report, Real Property Inventory, 38. 85 Demographic Internet Staff U. S. Census Bureau, “Housing Vacancies and Homeownership,” accessed June 26, 2014, http://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/; Catherine Bauer, “We Face a Housing Shortage,” ed. M. B. Schnapper, Public Housing in America, vol. 13, no. 5 (New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1939), 25. 86 Goodman, 10. 87 Ibid. 38

[public housing] and who cannot afford high priced homes.”88 Himes made an important distinction while speaking to the black-operated newspaper, however: private developers had simply not been producing acceptable housing for African Americans, and there was certainly more demand than supply. In its first Housing Division Bulletin in 1935, the federal housing division of the Administration of Public Works outlined the problem as the author Edith Elmer Wood saw it: “We have left it so far to private enterprise, and the conditions we have are the result.”89 All this—white attitudes, the lack of housing units, their condition—helps to partially explain why the black community had to settle for what—and where—whites made available.

Second, making the situation doubly dire was that not only were housing numbers lacking, but so were adequate conditions. From 1932 to 1942, a total of 817 tenant- occupied dwellings housing black families were declared unfit for use in Columbus. The

Real Property Inventory of 1936 also reported that at least 43 percent of dwellings occupied by black families needed major repairs, and another 11 percent were unfit for use.90 These numbers echoed those found in other cities. The year 1934 witnessed the largest, most extensive survey of residential real estate in US history. The federal Civil

Works Administration examined sixty-four cities and over 2.5 million dwelling units.

They found that 17.1 percent of these were overcrowded, 60 percent needed major repairs, almost 50 percent had no furnace or boiler, 17 percent had no flush toilet, and

88 “Plan Ground-Breaking Ceremony for Housing Project at Columbus, Ohio,” Cleveland Call and Post (CCP), April 25, 1942, pp. 16. 89 Edith Elmer Wood, Slums and Blighted Areas in the United States, 2nd edition printing, originally published in 1935 (College Park, MD: McGrath Pub. Co., 1969), 101. 90 United States, Final Report, Real Property Inventory, 48. 39 almost 10 percent lacked electricity.91 Figures and themes like those above resemble housing conditions in other Midwestern cities like Chicago where indoor plumbing and central heating were not within the price range of even middle income families into the

1930s.92

Early photographic evidence of Columbus, Ohio, captured the poor housing conditions on the east side. Fortunately for historians, the federal Public Housing

Administration (PHA) hired photographers to document the heart of the Near East Side.

The images reveal a highly distressed housing stock. Many pictured African-American residents at their homes. In assessing the photographs, it is important to remember the possible bias of the photographer who may have been white and may have been inclined to capture the more negative aspects of housing that he or she found in the urban space increasingly identified and identifiable as a “slum.” The choices were not entirely randomized, however, since this series of photographs were set up as a “before and after” shoot. Picture locations were chosen because Poindexter Village public housing buildings would soon replace the structures—and displace the people—at the exact locations pictured.

The PHA took one of its photographs at Philips Street and Granville Alley. It shows the backyard of a wooden house. The wood siding is worn and chipped, although it sits on a stone foundation. The ground in the backyard appears to be dirt with debris strewn about it. A washtub sits on one side of the yard with clothes lines above it. The

91 William Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1940), 1. 92 Gail Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), “Chapter 1: American Housing before the Depression,” 7–28. 40 drain for the gutter on the house is dislodged and broken. There are two shacks of some sort also in the yard. One appears barely standing. A cart, designed to be pulled by hand, sits next to them, perhaps to carry wood or produce to sell.

Two individuals are discernable in the picture—both African American—one sitting and the other standing in the doorway, suggesting this photo was taken without the knowledge of those being photographed. A box bearing the brand “Ivory Snow” sits beside the seated individual. This suggests consumer goods were not entirely out of the reach of these residents. Moreover, a sign on the fence reads “wood for sale here,” implying an informal economy of sorts. The house in the rear of the photo has only a single door on the side, no windows to let in air or light. The condition looks similarly shoddy and unkempt.93 A fence encloses the backyard from the alley; it and the gate appear to be assembled from old and worn uneven pieces of wood.

93 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-3666 (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Location: Phillips St. and Granville Alley,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 41

Figure 7 Photograph taken at Phillips St. and Granville Alley. Photo No. O-3666.

The PHA took the second photograph at a specific address, the “rear [of] 239

Thorn Alley.” Thorn Alley would later become one of the boundaries of Poindexter

Village. The image captured four individuals. Two young children sit amidst rubble and trash at the feet of an adult woman. All three are African American. The shack the woman stands in front of is dilapidated, constructed of uneven, makeshift materials.

Wash tubs sit on either side of the shack; it is just as likely that the structure functioned as an outhouse, given the relatively high percentage of housing for blacks that lacked indoor plumbing during this period. The fourth individual sits upon a porch facing the three 42 others. The porch is in even worse shape than the shack, reflecting the rubble on the dirt ground. The roof is crumbling and roughly finished. Electricity cables are visible high above all the buildings in the photograph, however, hinting that even while underserved, the city may have been slowly extending at least nominal utilities to the otherwise neglected area.94

Figure 8 Photograph taken at the rear of 239 Thorn Alley. Photo No. O-3662.

94 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-3662 (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Rear 239 Thorn Alley,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 43

A third photo captures similar conditions, while also shedding more light on the social lives of the area. Two women work with a washing tub, completing the arduous labor of laundry cleaning. A clothes line stretches across the dirt yard as a man sits in the doorway of a house and watches. The housing unit in the foreground is a double-unit with two back doors leading the yard. The roofing is old and slightly rundown, but appears to still have its slate shingles, even if they are slightly worn. The house behind this one is not so lucky, without any shingles at all.95

95 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-3421B (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Rear 1313 Granville Avenue,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 44

Figure 9 Photograph taken at rear of 1313 Granville Avenue. Photo No. O-3421-B.

A fourth and fifth image captured two overviews of the area. One, of Thorn Alley shows a few adults standing and chatting together. One holds a baby while another young child stands in between. The alley is unkempt with rubble in and around the yards, and the fencing is sparse and poorly constructed. Most of the yards and the alleyway are dominated by dirt with few plants visible. A car sits in the foreground, however, although it is unknown to whom it belonged. An electrical cable stretches from pole to pole down the alley, but it is not connected to every housing unit. Most of the homes do not have

45 porches. The few, small porches that are present are small or damaged. They lead into small dirt yards or none at all.96 The second overview image, taken from atop Champion

Avenue Junior High School, reveals similar conditions along this alleyway. More trees and plants are visible, however, and a few more individuals stand either working or talking. Two more clotheslines are visible, as are the rundown shacks in yards. The homes are tightly grouped together, however, making a walkable neighborhood, conducive to community building and closeness. A second car appears here, this time parked inside a yard, surely owned by a local resident.97

96 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-2999 (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Thorn Alley,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 97 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-3420 (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Top Champion Avenue Junior High School Looking North,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 46

Figure 10 Photograph taken at Thorn Alley. Photo No. 2999.

Figure 11 Photograph taken at the rear of 1313-13 Granville Ave. Photo No. O-3422.

Two final pictures capture life from the ground again. In one, a man and woman rest on their porch. She, reading a newspaper in a chair; he, sitting beside her on the steps. The house is large, though rundown. The roof above the porch is incomplete, and a hastily-built shed has been attached to the side of the main structure. The lower main window is almost completely damaged, while the upstairs window is crooked though intact. The final image captures a young boy in mid-drink from an outdoor water pump.

As discussed above, many homes of black Near East Side residents lacked indoor

48 plumbing, necessitating the visit outside by the boy and spurring the choice of picture by the photographer. Such a photo captured the image of the slum held by white urban planners and redevelopers.98

The era’s social scientific and property surveys echoed the message conveyed by the urban planners. Their work was imbued with a sense that the local environment formulated the character of the people trapped in it. For instance, Alfred Schmalz, associate director of the Council for Social Action of Congressional and Christian

Churches of America, wrote in 1937 that “from nine to ten million families are destined by society to live in houses and in neighborhoods which tend to destroy character and frustrate life.”99 Surveyors simultaneously identified structures in Columbus they believed to be unfit for use in the Real Property Inventory of 1936—the vast majority of these rested in sections of town occupied by African Americans. They demarked the buildings that sat on the exact neighborhood blocks where redevelopers would construct

Poindexter Village as 81 to 100 percent in need of “major repairs or [as] unfit for use.”100

Moreover, those blocks along Champion Avenue between Long Street and Mount

Vernon produced correspondingly low rent charges, due to both the poor quality of housing on offer and the economic job discrimination blacks faced in the city.101 The entire section was scattered with blocks that held terribly high rates of “dwelling units with no private flush toilet” as well. A few of the blocks which Poindexter replaced in

98 National Archives photo no. 196-HA-OHIO-1-1-O-3422 (Schreick Studio Col. O.); “Rear 1311-13 Granville Ave.,” Records of the Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 99 Alfred Schalz, “The Social Cost of Slums,” ed. Schnapper, Public Housing in America, 13, no. 5: 19. 100 United States, Final Report, Real Property Inventory, Part II, Exhibit B, Graphic Maps, Plate 11E. 101 Ibid., United States, Final Report, Real Property Inventory, Part II, Exhibit B, Graphic Maps, Plate 11F. 49 less than five years had flush toilets in 60 to 69 percent of units. Several blocks, however, reported that 90 percent had no flush toilet. These entire areas were identified and labeled as predominately African American.102

Vital statistics from the previous decade reflected the poor housing conditions as well. In almost every category, African Americans fared worse than white residents.

Averages taken for the years 1926, 1927, and 1928, the white community experienced a death rate of 13.2 per 100,000. The “colored” population death rate was 17.33. The infant death rate for whites: 65.7. For blacks, 106.97. Deaths from disease were similarly skewed. Tuberculosis deaths for whites and blacks were 65.2 and 75.67, respectively.

Pulmonary tuberculosis created starker statistics: a white death rate of 54.67 and a horrifying black one of 211.103

A contemporary study of two nearby neighborhoods provides a juxtaposition of the overall housing and social conditions experienced by whites and blacks. This survey, produced by Ohio State faculty and students from the 1930s, examined nearly 1000 homes in two census tracts on the east side, nearby where the CMHA would build

Poindexter Village. According to the study’s random sampling, tract 9A (portions of tract

30 in above map) was composed of 42.4 percent blacks, 50 percent native-born whites, and 7.6 percent foreign-born whites. Tract 5A was composed of 12 percent Negroes, 63 percent native-born whites, and 25 percent foreign-born whites.104 The study noted that the black population in tract 5A was rising rapidly and the tract 9A slightly less so when

102 Ibid., Part II, Exhibit B, Graphic Maps, Plate 11H. 103 W.A. McWilliams ed., Columbus Negro Directory, 1929-1930 (Columbus, OH, 1930), 63. 104 Turner, “Population Characteristics of a City Area: A Study of Census Tracts 5A and 9A,” Table 1, pp. 4. 50 compared with the 1930 census.105 The relative stability of the two tracts (both native whites and Negroes had similar time-lengths for residing in the areas) provides a window to compare housing conditions in this pre-public housing period.106 Housing conditions in these two tracts were diverse, but blacks were clearly relegated to the worst homes.

Fewer black homes had electricity—80 percent compared to 97 percent for whites.

Moreover, black housing was twice as likely to have a coal stove instead of a modern furnace for heating. Only 68 percent of black-occupied places had a “bathroom” (a bathtub and sink with running water), while white-occupied units claimed over 86 percent. Finally, 89 percent and 93 percent of native-born and foreign-born whites respectively could claim an “inside toilet.” Only 68 percent—or two-thirds—of black homes claimed the same.107 And overall, African Americans occupied older homes than whites.108

The survey of these nearby areas noted characteristics of what social scientists and reformers considered “slums.” Although foreign-born whites had a lower divorce rate than native whites, the authors noted, “The Negro population has a higher per cent of divorces and separations than does the native white.”109 Social science of the period considered this a warning sign of social and individual decay.110 African Americans were also more likely to rent in these two neighborhoods, an important point considering the

105 Ibid., 5. 106 Ibid., 21. 107 Ibid., Table 11, p. 14 For definitions of survey terms, see page 48. 108 Ibid., Tables 8 and 9, p. 10, 12. 109 Ibid., 10–11. 110 For the most prominent example, see Frazier and Platt, The Negro Family in the United States. 51 mythic place home ownership has in the American mind.111 Finally, blacks occupied smaller housing units than native or foreign-born whites, which may have perpetuated the idea that African Americans preferred overcrowded conditions.112

Through surveys like the one above, social scientists helped construct the idea of the slum as much as they identified it as a physical reality. In the introduction to the sociological thesis, “A Housing Study of the Negro of the City of Columbus, Ohio,”

Hew-Yi Cheng of Ohio State set out accepted sociological theory: “It is understood that a housing problem may be said to exist wherever any portion of a population dwells under conditions dangerous to health, safety, and morality.” Substandard housing, however, was caused as much by “the lack of guidance of urban growth, by poor planning of buildings, faulty construction, and . . . defective sanitation” as it was “increased by the greed of some landlords, the carelessness of some tenants, and ignorance of the laws of hygiene by both.” Overcrowding in housing, Cheng stressed, perverted the morality of not only adults but especially children.113

After identifying substandard housing in areas occupied by African Americans,

Cheng concluded that only forceful regulation by the federal government could solve the problem of poor housing and the immorality it incubated. In his eyes, tenants and landlords appeared equally culpable for the poor conditions, so an outside force would be

111 Turner, “Population Characteristics of a City Area: A Study of Census Tracts 5A and 9A,” Table 12, p. 15. 112 Ibid., 18. 113 Hew-Yi Cheng, “A Housing Study of the Negro of Columbus, Ohio” (MA Thesis, The Ohio State University, 1925), 1–2. See also, Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986). 52 needed “if the present situation is to be much improved.”114 Cheng made no mention of public housing, but the idea is interesting nonetheless, illustrating that social scientists of urban planning were readily identifying the limitations of private and locally-provided housing.

But when the federal government did regulate the private housing market, it was just as likely to reinforce racialized spaces. Beginning in the late 1930s, the federal government began directly subsidizing and underwriting white suburban development through the two-tiered American housing system, well-documented by historians. The

Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) and the Federal Housing Administration

(FHA) made up this upper tier, bestowing tax incentives to private white homeowners.115

The HOLC guided mortgage lenders with a series of city maps (including Columbus) produced in 1936. These outlined which urban areas across the nation the federal state deemed suitable, desirable, and safe to lend to.

Thus did private homeowner subsidization come to reify the racial differentiation begun by the likes of the zoning code drawn up by Columbus city planners in 1908 and

1923 as discussed above. In Columbus, the HOLC “Residential Security Map” literally visualizes the interconnections between space and race. The HOLC map deemed the entire Near East Side area, home to the majority of Columbus’ black population, as Type

“D.” The red-outlined boundaries follow a large swath of land to the east of downtown, along Long Street and engulfing Mount Vernon Avenue. The location of Poindexter

Village—the public housing to be built a short four years later after the publication of the

114 Ibid., 37–40. 115 Radford, 45. 53 map—would sit on the eastern end of the tract labeled “D7.” The census tracts found within D7 were almost all majority-African American and had been for some time by

1936. While the city and private renters had been underserving the black population in this district in terms of access to public utilities and housing conditions, the federal government reified the stark contrast between what urban planners considered “slums”— most often populated by blacks—and desirable, new developments—most often occupied by whites, who could obtain beneficial FHA-backed mortgages.116 Both federal and local policy had come to mark the Near East Side as a black, and simultaneously inferior, urban space.

116 Residential Security Maps, compiled 1933 – 1939, ARC Identifier 3620183 / Local Identifier RG 195:HOLC-City Statistics, Series from Record Group 195: Records of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, 1933 – 1989. The Ohio State University Libraries, 2013. Federal HOLC “Redlining” Maps for Ohio Cities. Accessed August 20, 2014, http://library.osu.edu/find/collections/maps/redlining-maps-ohio/. 54

Figure 12 The HOLC map for Columbus. The African-American Near East Side is circled in red.

Conclusion

While the terminology and labeling of many of these areas as “slums”—or later

“ghettoes”—was certainly problematic, there is no denying that the material conditions on Columbus’ Near East Side were substandard.117 Housing available to blacks tended to be of lower quality than that available to native and foreign-born whites. Real estate interests participated in and encouraged racist practices that limited the options of African

Americans and influenced the choices of whites. Many black families were left to live in rundown private-sector housing, some without indoor plumbing, many without toilets, and most without proper heating or air ventilation. This added up to a grim material existence for the East Side urban space.

Although Barta’s thesis identified the squalor he seems to have delighted in finding, he also noted several lasting black institutions along East Long Street: the

Empress and Odgen Theatres between St. Clair and Garfield Avenue, the “Adelphi and

Theresa Buildings with the offices of many doctors, lawyers, dentists, insurance firms and security companies, real estate brokers, and the like”; the Masonic Hall on the corner of 18th Street. Mount Vernon Avenue had more businesses and entertainment spots: drug stores; pool rooms; the Pythian and Cameo theaters; fish markets and fryers; a branch of the Ohio National Bank on the corner of Miami Avenue; and the offices of the weekly

Columbus Sentinel newspaper.118

117 For an examination of the making of “slums” and “ghettoes,” see Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto and Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis. 118 Barta, 15–17. 56

Ultimately, housing provided on the private market for working-class and poor blacks in Columbus was far from adequate. A majority of it was dilapidated and old. It lacked indoor plumbing or modern heating. Children were forced to fetch water from crude pumps outside, and most families used toilets that were little more than holes in the ground covered by a shack. The use of zoning, racial covenants, and block-busting by real estate agents first promoted racial segregation in Columbus. Migrants from the

South, seeking a better life for themselves and their loved ones, often found more of the same white hatred they knew too well in the urban North, which limited their housing and social opportunities. These factors helped create a neighborhood and urban space that was identifiably majority-black by the 1930s.

Chapter 2: Constructing Poindexter Village: Responding to “Slum” Housing, the Formation of CMHA, and Providing Modern Housing

Tragedy lurked on Armistice Day, 1953, in Columbus, Ohio. That day, an apartment building that several African-American families called home burned to the ground. The fire, which broke out on Goodale Boulevard, killed two children.

Thankfully, other children escaped, even as photographs chronicled the complete destruction of the tenement building. Two of the four displaced families, found homes in

Poindexter Village, the city’s first and all-black public housing project. Their former housing constituted the exact type of “slum” conditions that local and national housing reformers sought to replace. The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Project completed construction of the project in 1940, and offered 426 units of modern—and safe—housing to the city’s African-American community.119

Urban planners held high hopes for their new, modern creation. Social scientists interested in urban planning had identified “slum” conditions in areas occupied by the city’s African Americans. They helped not only create the idea of these areas specifically as “slums” but also solidified the areas as black urban spaces. The local housing authority built upon this research agenda. In the contemporary scholarship from the period, researchers often collapsed notions of wretched physical and environmental conditions

119 Photographs of Tenement Building on Goodale Boulevard, Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Russell C. Taylor, Director, Unnamed Binder, ca. 1954, no pages, CMHA Files. 58 with the morality and racial identity of those who called the area home. Surveyors photographed the conditions black families experienced in the area where Poindexter

Village would soon be constructed. Through the process of taking photographs, urban planners documented conditions that could rationalize the demolition that urban renewal legislation demanded. In addition to this, however, they also contributed to the racialization process of Columbus’ Near East Side, identifying a neighborhood and space as black. The local and national housing authorities constructed Poindexter Village in a black neighborhood for the existing black community.

The federal representatives, the architects, engineers, and contractors crafted

Poindexter much as professionals did for developments across the country from 1933 to

1949. Early public housing planners created housing on a human scale, one that opened the way toward interaction with the surrounding community and laid open the way to strong community building and what urban planners call “placemaking” today.120 Public- housing planners in the 1930s drew inspiration from the old while also establishing the new. In fact, Poindexter’s planners designed for the neighborliness that Jacobs lauded some twenty years later. The plan for Poindexter placed a church, school, and plenty of open space at the heart of the development. Food and other cultural services like entertainment and a recreation center could be found nearby. Their plan could not be entirely successful for it reified the already-existing patterns of racial segregation, which would have competing outcomes in the short and long-terms. Racial segregation remains,

120 William Hollingsworth Whyte, The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (Washington, D.C.: Conservation Foundation, 1980); Lynda H Schneekloth and Robert G Shibley, Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities (New York: Wiley, 1995); Beginning in 1975, the Project for Public Spaces organized around the central idea of placemaking. The organization credits Whyte and Jacobs with inspiring its work. Project for Public Spaces, “Project for Public Spaces: What Is Placemaking?” 59 then, the big asterisk despoiling the record of this phase of public housing construction.

It, however, left the city and community with mixed collective memories.

In this chapter, the city of Columbus and professional urban planners are the primary actors, shaping formation of the housing and thus the social dynamics of the

Near East Side. From the turn of the century to the 1930s, the intertwined processes of racial prejudice, racial discrimination through real estate practices and municipal urban planning, studies by contemporary social scientific research, African-American migration, and African-American agency in creating increasing numbers of businesses established the Near East Side neighborhood of Columbus as a black space.

New Deal architects and planners of Poindexter Village, the city’s first and all- black public housing project, added to the space’s racialized identity, without challenging the racial status quo of segregation. In large part because public housing perpetuated racial segregation, but also because it played second fiddle to subsidies given to the private housing market in America’s two-tiered housing funding system, historians have generally cast public housing policy as an overall failure. But as historian Tomas

Summers Sandoval notes concerning federal policy, “even a flawed model . . . can produce unintended beneficial results.”121

This chapter, however, argues that many of the beneficial results described above, despite the long-term negative dynamic of segregation, were planned and deliberate. The design of Poindexter Village replicated or produced several successful architectural and planning features, contrary to much popular and scholarly belief about America’s public

121 Tomás F Summers Sandoval, Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community and Identity in San Francisco (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 129. 60 housing. The design of the city’s first housing project resembled planning aesthetics drawn from the New England town ideal and paid attention to walkability, mitigating vehicular traffic, human-scale buildings, and other design features. All of these culminated in a plan that laid a foundation where a strong community and collective memory could be forged.

Part of this process involved the “slum clearance” that federal legislation demanded; it displaced a number of people and leveled homes. But it leveled substandard housing in the process while replacing it with modern, well-built, and well-designed housing specifically for a black community that the city had previously neglected. This hardened and institutionalized the racial classifications of black and white.

Moreover, the naming of the public housing project after the prominent African-

American politician and Reverend James Preston Poindexter constituted an act of commemoration, which only added to the identification of the area as a proud black space. Ultimately, the reification of the area as a black space through the construction of a lasting institution built for black Columbus residents and the naming of that institution after the city’s preeminent black cultural icon forged a solid foundation upon which strong memories of place might be constructed—memories that would endure more than seventy years later. To borrow a phrase from public housing historian Nicholas Dagen

Bloom: the United States Housing Authority (USHA) in partnership with the Columbus

Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) built public housing that “worked.”122

122 Bloom, Public Housing That Worked. 61

Legislating Public Housing

Although the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority formed in 1934 as a result of the Ohio Housing Act and thus pre-dated the United States Housing Act of 1937, it took big-government backing to produce the city’s first large-scale public housing.123

The 1937 federal law included the “equivalent elimination” clause, which required an equal amount of slum clearance to the new housing produced. This was the central way that real estate interests limited the scope and effect of American public housing. They desired to head-off any competition, which the government might have offered, had the state been allowed to build its public housing anywhere without also reducing the number of houses in the area.124

Historians have long lamented the two-tiered system of housing that developed in the United States in the twentieth century. Perhaps foremost among this cohort is Gail

Radford. She highlights the disparity between the two levels—in her purview, one geared toward white suburbs with cheap mortgages and the other a limited and poorly-executed system termed public housing. But Radford also argues that the size and fervor of the modern housing reform movement, led by Catherine Bauer, in the 1920s and 1930s illustrates that Americans might have preferred communal public housing options had they been financially and legislatively promoted as the first tier system was.125 This fervor manifested itself in the New Deal as the Housing Division under the Federal

Emergency Administration of Public Works (or Public Works Administration, PWA).

123 New York City was the only city that successfully constructed what can be described as public housing without federal money. 124 U.S. Congress, Senate, United States Housing Act of 1937, 75th Cong., 1st sess., 1937, 891-892; Radford, Modern Housing for America, 190. 125 Radford, Modern Housing for America. 62

Public housing after 1933 challenged the stance long taken by the National Real Estate

Boards which, according to historian Janet Hutchinson, had “cheered the [temporary] demise of state-constructed housing” in the wake of the conservative resurgence after

World War I.126 Real estate interests continued to lobby and shape housing legislation when it was revived after the onset of the Depression, all the way through the passage of the 1937 housing act.

Although a majority of historians have leaned toward declaring the 1937 Housing

Act a failure (due largely to its requirement of equivalent slum clearance, its second-class status in the two-tiered system created by the lobbying of real estate interests, general underfunding, and creation or reification of racial segregation), historian D. Bradford

Hunt has led the charge challenging this consensus.127 Poindexter Village’s history supports a revisionist understanding of public housing as it reveals a thoroughly well- planned housing project, even as it also participated in the displacement of current residents in the area that social scientists and planners identified as a “slum.” It does not predicate, in short, that the lower tier utterly failed because it was limited in scope when compared to the upper.

Moreover, upon examining documents from the PWA Housing Division, the

United States Housing Authority created by the 1937 housing act, and the local CMHA, it becomes apparent that the design styles of the former greatly informed the latter. Limited

126 Janet Hutchison, “Shaping Housing and Enhancing Consumption: Hoover’s Interwar Housing Policy,” Bauman, Biles, and Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 85–86. 127 D. Bradford Hunt, “Was the 1937 U.S. Housing Act a Pyrrhic Victory?,” Journal of Planning History 4, no. 3 (August 1, 2005): 195–221; Hunt also challenges the retrenchment narrative that dominates public housing literature, pointing out that funds shifted more than simply decreased in the postwar period, D Hunt, “Review Essay: Rethinking the Retrenchment Narrative in U.S. Housing Policy History,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 6 (2006): 937–51. 63 or flawed though it may have been in legislative design and implementation, Columbus’ first public housing project proved attractive to its residents as it carried out the will of state-level and federal legislation reform efforts.

States began establishing their own housing authorities in the wake of the

National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) passed in 1933.128 NIRA called for the

“construction, reconstruction, alteration, or repair under public regulation or control of low-cost housing and slum-clearance project.”129 The legislation created a Housing

Division under its PWA to experiment in solving the nation’s housing needs. That early phase was superseded by the 1937 United States Housing Act, however, which established the United States Housing Authority (USHA). As Robert Moore Fisher points out, “The Act declared that it was the policy of the United States to promote the general welfare by using federal funds and credit, among other things, to help states and local governments ‘remedy the unsafe and insanitary housing conditions . . . that are injurious to health, safety, and morals of the citizens of the Nation.’”130 This “among other things” included federal guidelines governing the construction, planning, placement, and design of effective and attractive housing built on a human scale. Another main objective though was to “increase employment quickly,” a vital goal of the New Deal.131

Such legislation, however, did not pass without opposition. Real estate interests, who were content to support residential racial segregation as discussed above, remained

128 William Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1940), 15–16. 129 Robert Moore Fisher, 20 Years of Public Housing: Economic Aspects of the Federal Program (New York: Harper, 1959), 27. 130 Ibid. 131 Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 15. 64 public housing’s staunchest opponent. This group was hardly the only one. In his review of the first two decades of public housing, contemporary public policy commenter Robert

Moore Fisher highlighted this issue in 1959:

The organized opponents of federally aided low-rent public housing

consist mainly of real estate and business groups, builders, suppliers, and

mortgage lenders of single-family houses, and property owners’

associations. They include the National Association of Real Estate Boards,

the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, the National Association

of Home Builders, the National Retail Lumber Dealers Association, the

United States Savings and Loan League, and the National Apartment

Owners Association. Criticism of “political socialized” public housing has

been expressed by these organizations in congressional testimony and

lobbying activities and through nationally financed community

organization.132

As a result, housing authorities across Ohio experienced difficulties. Historian Frank A.

Caulkins argued that housing authorities in Youngstown, Toledo, Akron, and Dayton had to contend with conservative groups that argued public housing equaled socialism.

Moreover, whites rejected the construction of housing projects in their neighborhoods.133

Given these economic and social restrictions, New Deal planners decided to construct

132 Fisher, 20 Years of Public Housing: Economic Aspects of the Federal Program, 21. 133 Frank Arthur Caulkins, “Ohio and Public Housing Under the New Deal: Four Case Studies” (Dissertation, The University of Akron, 1992). 65 housing for African Americans where they believed they could, which sustained the status quo of racial segregation.

Despite this type of powerful opposition, Ohio passed its first housing legislation on October 3, 1932.134 This act provided for the creation of limited-dividend companies; this would not qualify the state to accept federal dollars soon to be on offer, however, under the New Deal.135 Ohio had used New York’s law as a model and quickly introduced the bill for passage to the state senate and house.136 But the passage of NIRA a few months later changed the situation. Ohio—and ten other states including New

York—quickly revised its housing act so that it could gain access to federal loans and grants for slum clearance and public housing construction.137 Ohio was one of the first ten states to pass this second type of housing act, authorizing the formation of local housing authorities (instead of limited-dividend companies).138

Governor George White signed the act on November 5, 1933. Dorothy Schaffter, a political scientist who studied the legislation extensively, claimed that the Ohio act constituted the first housing authority act in the US.139 The act created a state board of housing, with O.W.L. Coffin acting as an executive secretary for its first years. The state agency’s impact on the local scene from this state agency, however, was slight.

Remarking in 1940, almost seven years after its formation, Coffin said, “The state board of housing in Ohio, in my opinion, has failed to live up to its obligations because it was

134 Dorothy Schaffter, State Housing Agencies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), 378. 135 Ibid., 377, 379; Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 18. 136 Schaffter, State Housing Agencies, 377. 137 Ibid., 379. 138 Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 18; Schaffter, State Housing Agencies, 379–380. 139 Cleveland established the first local housing authority in the country. Schaffter, State Housing Agencies, 381–382. 66 impossible to adequately finance it. As a result the local housing authorities have had little assistance from the State Board in their work.”140 The real work happened between local housing authorities and the federal government.

Columbus quickly formed its own local authority. The state board authorized the creation of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority with jurisdiction over Franklin

County in May of 1934. The first meeting occurred on August 10, 1934.141 The CMHA board of commissioners would contain five members with two appointed by the mayor, one by the Franklin County Commissioners, one by the Common Pleas Court, and one by a court judge. The first five members included Charles St. John Chubb, Frank Hunter,

Edgard Weinland, Fred Lazarus, and Charles L. Dolle.142 Columbus was just one of 376 local housing authorities across thirty-eight states, the District of Columbia, and the colonial possessions of Hawaii and Puerto Rico. All of these were exempted from taxation, and all but one were granted the right of eminent domain for slum clearance authorization.143

The 1937 Housing Act, popularly known as the Wagner-Steagall Act, enabled

Columbus and hundreds of other local housing authorizes to plan and construct public housing properties. With some flourish, Nathan Strauss, who would serve as the USHA’s

140 Ibid., 388, 391. 141 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Journal of Proceedings, No. 1, Minutes of Special Meeting of the Commissioners of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority,” n.d., August 10, 1934, pp. 1, CMHA Files. 142 Ibid.; Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 6, CMHA Files. This document, although filled with helpful analysis and clearly authored by CMHA, is not titled or dated since the title page is missing. It appears to date to 1938 or 1939, however, given the other material it was found with in the CMHA files and, more precisely, in the topics covered and not covered as well as the transcription of an apparent speech. Thus, I have titled this source with the first lines on the first page. 143 Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 18. 67 administrator, called the legislation the “greatest single step forward in national housing policy ever taken in any country.”144 On November 1, 1937, the United States Housing

Authority took the reins from the Housing Divisions of the PWA. Although the PWA successfully completed eighty projects, the USHA significantly ramped up production, completing 360 projects across the country.145 USHA legislation enabled massive federal funding to be bestowed upon local authorities in the form of loans, capital grants, or annual contributions.146

Although Nathan Strauss was right to point out the magnitude of the 1937 legislation, the USHA drew heavily from its predecessor, the PWA Housing Division.

Talbot Wegg and Michael Straus, in Housing Comes of Age published in 1938, dedicated their volume to the New Deal’s Harold Ickes, “whose social vision led public housing from theory to fact in the United States.”147 A publishers’ note followed this authors’ dedication. It noted that Straus and Wegg

participated in the development of the Government’s low-rent and slum-

clearance housing programme [sic] since its inception in 1933. They

prepared this book as an adequate record and intimate account of the

manner in which the Public Works Administration Housing Division went

144 Nathan Strauss, Annual Meeting of the National Association of Housing Officials in Cleveland, November 18-20, 1937, as quoted in: Ibid., 23. 145 This number includes PWA limited-dividend projects and PWA direct-built projects. Defense housing and housing built under the Lanham Act add another 217 projects to the total. Judith Robinson et al., “Public Housing in the United States, 1933-1949: A Historic Context, Volume I” (The National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, October 12, 1991), Appendix 2, 3, 4. 146 Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 24. 147 Michael W. Straus and Talbot Wegg, Housing Comes of Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938). 68

about its task. . . . [T]hey have arranged it in a comprehensive and popular

form so that it might serve others as the task of providing low-cost

housing proceeds under the newly established United States Housing

Authority which has taken up the work pioneered by the PWA.148

Elements from the PWA site and unit plans, as well as the guiding principles of the

Housing Division, can be found throughout the architectural and planning documents of

Poindexter Village. Although the USHA superseded the PWA program, the latter’s urban planning ideals lived on through Columbus’ first public housing projects.

The CMHA commissioners quickly decided they should conduct a “tour of inspection of the slum areas” of the city on the following Thursday.149 In a few months’ time, they set about coordinating with other city agencies to determine possible site locations, locating slums, and estimating costs.150 After a first round of surveying, they agreed that an area north of 17th Avenue and west of Cleveland Avenue was best suited for a housing project.151

But the commissioners soon studied surveys and maps under the direction of the federal government, and also sent representatives to Cleveland, Ohio, to determine the best practice for moving forward.152 By the end of March 1935, after “extended discussions of the various substandard areas in Columbus,” the commissioners settled upon the area around Champion Avenue, where Poindexter Village would eventually be

148 Ibid., “Publishers’ Note.” 149 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Journal of Proceedings, No. 1, Minutes of Special Meeting of the Commissioners of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority,” August 10, 1934, pp. 1. 150 Ibid., October 25, 1934, pp. 3. 151 Ibid., February 11, 1935, pp. 6. 152 Ibid., March 14, 1935, pp. 8. 69 built.153 The details of this decision have not been preserved, so it remains unclear exactly why the commissioners selected the Champion Avenue area over other possible locations. Clues, however, are found in the commissioner’s meeting minutes.

The early planning from the top of the CMHA corresponded to New Deal aims.

According to the commissioners voting on the organization’s direction, the primary objectives of the new project, “if approved, would greatly relieve unemployment in the

[Champion Avenue] District, would provide for adequate housing of families of low income, would aid in relieving the city of Columbus and the County of Franklin from the burden of furnishing aid in cases of poverty, crime, delinquency and disease.”154 The first resolutions the commissioners passed then, all unanimously, combined the findings located in the era’s social scientific research, where one’s material and social environment mirrored one another.

Still, no hard conclusion can be derived from the meeting minutes, which provide only a summary of proceedings and not a word-for-word record. Did the CMHA board decide on the Near East Side at Champion Avenue between Long Street and Mount

Vernon Avenue because they equated the black community there with their cited “crime, delinquency and disease,” or did they believe they had found the area and population in the most need?

With this decision in August 1935, no record exists of any meeting thereafter among the commissioners for the rest of 1935 and all of 1936. The next meeting, June

1937 witnessed the commissioners pass a resolution endorsing the Wagner-Steagall

153 Ibid., March 29, 1935, pp. 9. 154 Ibid. 70

Housing Act.155 During this period, however, O.A. Corzilius, long-time executive secretary serving for the board of commissioners since 1934, visited several cities as well as federal housing authorities. He also attended a conference in Washington DC of local housing authorities in December 1937 at the invitation of Nathan Strauss, the national housing director.156 Corzilius returned successful from the trip. Strauss had agreed to allocate one-and-a-half million dollars to Columbus for the construction of public housing. The board then embarked upon locating architects.157 With that, the Columbus

Metropolitan Housing Authority was officially in business.

Urban and Architectural Ideals

The authority’s first buildings, Poindexter Village, were a culmination of

Progressive Era cross-Atlantic pollination—the immense blending of ideas and styles that occurred between reformers in Europe and the United States.158 England and Germany both greatly influenced public housing construction between 1933 and 1949. What would become known as “garden-style” dwellings in America were based on the European, specifically German, Zeilenbau model (translated roughly as “row house”) and the

English Garden City movement. The design lent itself to a close-knit neighborhood environment where residents could feel part of a community and comfortable in the balance of private and public spaces. Finally, the layout of the Village incorporated open spaces, a centralized community building, a church, schools, and nearby marketplace shopping. Planners also successfully formulated Poindexter Village as a node of

155 Ibid., June 1, 1937, pp. 13–14. 156 Ibid., October 7, 1937 and December 4, 1937, pp. 15–16. 157 Ibid., December 14, 1937, pp. 18. 158 Ibid., December 17, 1937, pp. 17; Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998). 71 considerable size, ensuring its centrality to the area without isolating its structures from the surrounding community.

Howard Dwight Smith epitomized the dedication on the part of some architects toward aiding the less fortunate. Smith, most well-known for his work on the football stadium at Ohio State University (OSU) as well as some municipal buildings downtown, acted as one of the contributing architects on the Poindexter Village project. In an address before the eighth annual meeting of the National Public Housing Conference in New

York City on January 27, 1939, Smith fittingly titled his speech “Architecture in the

Public Service.” He called for a “socialized architecture,” while daring to hope that it would not befall the same types of red-baiting that are so infamous in regards to

American so-called “socialized medicine”: “Let us consider for the moment that by the practice of ‘Socialized architecture’ we refer to that form of advice in aesthetics and in technical service rendered by the professionally competent with first consideration for human needs rather than for personal or professional gain.” Placemaking advocates would cheer Smith’s call for “first consideration for human needs.”

This OSU professor hoped for public “service” from his colleagues, while arguing that this was “no intention to minimize or belittle architecture as a fine art and as a vehicle for the expression of human emotion.” Smith was highly qualified to give the address and to serve, at the time, as the General Architectural Consultant for the

Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority. He was a former president of the Columbus chapter of the American Institute of Architects. He was a professor of architecture at

OSU and also acted as the University Architect. He not only put his own advice into practice, but openly advocated for others in his profession to do the same.

He used his address to push for action—to take up the mantle and spirit of FDR’s

New Deal:

So much has been said of the need in low-cost housing that the mere

recital at this point will serve to emphasize it. The need for literally

millions of shelter units meeting the accepted minimum of living standards

which has developed in the past decade has been very meagerly met. . . .

[The] private building industry generally interesting itself in the slightly

higher [income] brackets, little or nothing has been done for those of the

large group of incomes below $1000.

In his call to arms, Smith echoed sentiments of the Progressive Era that preceded him. He admitted his views might be “utopian” and idealistic, but still he wished for a “kind of unselfish service rendered by a St. Francis of Assisi, at once practical and ideal, but thoroughly self-sacrificing.” The problem was that architects sought profit above all, even during the recovery, Smith wrote. They did not make their skills available for the production of housing for the little guy. On the contrary, he continued, “And so I make this first ideal plea for the career architect in the low-cost housing field, a man who like the medical-missionary, becomes in a real sense the social-civil servant, living close to his field of service, if not indeed actually in it.”

The competing tensions between private and public interests sat at the heart of the housing problem for Smith. Architects, he believed, remained wary of any government

73 meddling in their profession. In his view, architects were too preoccupied with notions of state-imposed “aesthetic regimentation” and “state-dictated architecture.” He saw them jealously guarding their capacity to turn a private profit. Presumably, serving a private master did not mean one had to compromise one’s aesthetic commitments. So here,

Smith exhibited his New-Deal sensibilities once again: in the anxiety over federal centralization, “let us not overlook the value of a central ‘clearing house’ for standard ideas based upon common experiences” and needs of the nation’s housing.159

Such was the type of architectural practice that the federal housing authority sought to encourage, first through the PWA under the NIRA of 1933 and then through the

USHA.160 The Housing Division operated under specific goals as outlined by the Federal

Emergency Administration of Public Works. It illustrated the chief concerns of the New

Deal’s primary housing agency, precursor to the larger USHA of 1937.

In May 1935, the PWA, under the administration of Harold L. Ickes, published guidelines for the construction of public housing across the US. The director of the

Housing Division, Horatio B. Hackett, noted that the purpose of the “plans and accompanying data” was to “give architects and engineers the benefit of this information in designing low-rent housing units. In the absence of organized data the Government has found it necessary to provide this useful material.” Wary of the issues that Dwight

Howard Smith acknowledged a few years later—the fear that the state would usurp the

159 Howard Dwight Smith, “Architecture in the Public Service” (National Association of Housing Officials, March 1939). 160 Judith Robinson et al., “Public Housing in the United States, 1933-1949: A Historic Contect, Volume II” (The National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, October 12, 1999), 12. 74 profession of private architects—Hackett stressed that “no attempt has been made to solve individual problems or local site conditions.” That would be left up to the local, private architectural firms to solve.161

The PWA Housing Division, which functioned on one level as an experimental precursor and guide for the later USHA, outlined broad goals for its low-rent housing program. “Ultimate success is dependent on the following items” it stressed above a numbered list: “1. Low land cost. 2. Efficient design. 3. Sound and economical construction. 4. Low interest rate. 5. Long period of amortization. 6. Capable management. 7. Low operating and maintenance costs.” In addition to these seven points, architects and planners were instructed to consider “four major features”: the “location of the project, design of buildings, treatment of grounds, and costs.”162 Alongside emphasizing open spaces, careful selection of location in any given city, the PWA argued, “The architecture of low-rent housing projects should express simplicity, fitness, harmony, and honesty. In addition, there must be a logical and agreeable blending between the arrangement and the design of buildings in relation to that of open areas.”163

Just as planners of the era thought that “slums” reflected the people within, they seemed to argue that new, modern housing could create opposite effects such as “fitness” and

“honesty.” “The first consideration,” the planning document continued, “in low rent- housing must be given to comfort, health, and safety.” “Refinements” should be considered of little import here. And at the same time, “Low-rent housing is to be

161 Foreward, Housing Division, Public Works Administration, Unit Plans: Typical Room Arrangements, Site Plans and Details for Low-Rent Housing (Washington, DC: U.S. Govt. Print. Office, 1935). 162 Ibid., 1. 163 Ibid. 75 approached from two points of view—that of the tenants who will occupy the building, and that of the owner or builder.”164 Federal planners were aware that their new constructions had to be usable and attractive to people, implying they strove to build housing on a human-scale—something that would be lost when high-rise tower construction dominated in the late 1950s and 1960s, in places like Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis or the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago.

Federal and local planners across the country were influenced by European architectural styles. In 1940, Catherine Bauer, perhaps the leading housing reformer of the period, argued that the US borrowed largely from England’s financial, administrative, and design archetypes. One photograph presented by Bauer in her Citizen’s Guide to

Public Housing presents a collection of garden-style brick dwellings that was the spitting image of Poindexter Village. US planners borrowed from England’s Garden City movement, which presented low-cost and simple layouts of two-story, cottage-style dwellings with individual gardens. Bauer credits Austria and Germany, however, with the largest impact on American planners and architects, that “between 1927 and 1932,

Germany and Austria built so many modern low-rent homes with public aid and initiative, and developed the new technique of community planning to such a point, that, until the war, hundreds of students and experts still visited and studied them every year.”165 Perhaps Bauer and similar reformers hoped that America would follow in these footsteps.

164 Ibid., 2. 165 Catherine Bauer, A Citizen’s Guide to Public Housing (Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College, 1940), 11– 14. 76

Poindexter Village architects drew explicitly from German planning, in addition to the English Garden City. Part of the German model included the Zeilenbau, site plan that was adopted across the United States in many locales. This plan arranged residential buildings in a row so that each unit gained the benefit of maximum sunlight.166 The

Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority heavily adopted the German Zeilenbau and

English Garden City-style plans in its earliest housing projects.

Poindexter Village simply stands out as the authority’s first and model project, which incorporated design on the human-scale. For example, local CMHA planners were able to secure three acres of playground space for Poindexter Village plans. The play area sat at the heart of the Village, making it accessible to children from the entire project and, most likely, to children attending the nearby elementary and middle schools. Reporting in the late 1930s, CMHA reported “it also will be given a Community Center valued at

$63,000.”167 This community center sat in the center of the project, and as will be discussed in the following chapter, served the project’s residents in various capacities.

After Poindexter, CMHA constructed the Rich Street, Mount Cavalry, and Lincoln Park projects. All featured low-rise, garden-style buildings and all featured a number of residential buildings laid out in neat rows, surrounded with plenty of open space.

Poindexter Village remained the largest project of the early phase of construction, however.168

166 Radford, Modern Housing for America, 60–61. 167 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 22, CMHA Files. 168 Untitled newspaper clipping, Columbus Dispatch, May 11, 1941, CMHA Files; “City’s $5,830,000 Slum Clearance Program Pushed Toward Completion, Columbus Citizen Journal, May 11, 1941, CMHA Files. 77

The influences of European and modern housing planning generally dictated that each housing project contained a high degree of open space. PWA, USHA, and CMHA projects followed this trend. The CMHA’s Poindexter project consisted of 22.44 acres of housing footprint out of a total of 88.9 acres. This added up to 25 percent of land coverage for the space.169 This echoed land coverage amounts of preceding PWA housing projects. The Baker Homes in Lackawanna, New York, covered 25 percent of the land on its twelve-acre site.170 The Dixie Homes in Memphis, Tennessee, covered 16 percent of its 42 acres.171 Plans for USHA-funded housing pursued this land policy. The Ida B.

Wells Homes in Chicago covered 24 percent of the land total.172 Planners desired to incorporate a certain amount of open space so that they would not perpetuate overcrowding density problems common to urban America.

The PWA Housing Division outlined specific “housing standards” for public housing projects. Its Unit Plans dictated qualitative and quantitative guidelines for all of its projects to follow. They touched upon room and door size, kitchens, bathrooms, porches, stairs, storage places, closets, and windows among other topics. Construction was to meet minimum modern housing requirements given for each area. Budgetary economic limitations limited the local housing authority from adding extra features for comfort. Health concerns ran throughout the guidelines: windows were “to run up close to [the] ceiling so that light penetrates deeply into rooms.” “Cross currents of air [were]

169 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 24, CMHA Files 170 Straus and Wegg, Housing Comes of Age, 207–208. 171 Ibid., 210. 172 Robinson et al., “Public Housing in the United States, 1933-1949: A Historic Context, Volume II,” 43. 78 desirable but not readily had” inside kitchens.173 Efficiency guidelines then, but there was also an attention to detail that led the way to a successful housing project under these guidelines.

The USHA and the local CMHA echoed these principles as outlined by the PWA.

The Poindexter plans appeared remarkably consistent with the architectural drawings detailed by the PWA’s Unit Plans document. The spaces marked out for kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms were similar in style and size. Plans made great use of economy of space, making the residences tight, without much extra room. Hallways make no appearance anywhere in the plans, given that hallways were regarded as a waste of space. Instead, living rooms opened directly into kitchens; stairs opened directly into bedrooms and bathrooms.174

PWA Housing Division guidelines also directed architects and planners in shaping the overall site plan as well. In general, these site plans were “striving for openness.” They took into account not only the various types of buildings that the local authority might choose, but also factors such as “orientation, prevailing winds, and the relation of adjoining property as it affects site conditions.”175 All of the PWA site plan illustrations included open spaces. These were often parks and playgrounds for children.

They also included landscaped courtyard space between housing buildings and yards in front of each unit doorway. Schools were marked in every single site plan. Many of the site plans noted the placement of a community building as well, and many of these were

173 Housing Division, Public Works Administration, Unit Plans: Typical Room Arrangements, Site Plans and Details for Low-Rent Housing, 6–7. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid., page titled “Site Plans,” no page number given. 79 located towards the center of the housing project. One outlined an area for a central square where a “band” might set up. Another noted a library near the perimeter. Almost every site plan included extensive drawings of trees and noted that open space would be

“landscaped.” One site plan explained helpfully that “charm and domesticity [were] emphasized.” Finally, every site plan was set up as a precursor to the “superblock” of the

1950s and 1960s—relatively large tracts of land through which traffic was restricted and uses strictly defined. These became common for public housing through the 1950s and

1960s as well with the key distinction that those later projects most often included massive high-rise towers grouped in sometimes huge numbers. One key characteristic of this type of plan limited through traffic, which was to be a high-profile characteristic of

New Urbanism and placemaking urban planning.176

Poindexter consisted of thirty-three housing structures, totaling 426 units. Its site plan mimicked those found in the PWA guidelines. The impression of the PWA site plans is unmistakable. A school area and playground space were placed near the heart of the project. The community building sat next to these in the center. The buildings were ordered in rows. The whole site plan was designed as a superblock, too. There are several blocks where traffic was limited from passing through, while main streets like Champion and Ohio Avenues were able to connect the project to Mount Vernon Avenue to the north and Long Street to the south.177 The Poindexter site plan also outlined details for extensive landscaping. The project possessed space for yards in front of each front and

176 Ibid. 177 Champion Avenue Project No Ohio 1-1, Site Plan, Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority and the United States Housing Authority, Columbus, Ohio, 1939, Ohio History Connection Archives. 80 back door, and places for trees and other landscaping features. These included prepared

“planting beds.”178

Figure 13 The site plan for Poindexter Village

178 Champion Avenue Project No Ohio 1-1, Block I Planting Plan, Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority and the United States Housing Authority, Columbus, Ohio, 1939, Ohio History Connection Archives. 81

PWA projects tended to be more expensive than later USHA housing, however.

The cost efficiency of the International Modern Style suited cost-conscious policymakers who were also wary of pushback from private interests concerning government spending.

The German Zeilenbau method appealed to US planners partly for this reason. Although

PWA projects made extensive use of the German Bauhaus model, USHA housing tended toward less architectural flourishes and amenities.179 These later projects, however, possessed solid planning principles and physical construction even as they were guided by PWA and USHA guidelines. Poindexter Village, for example, still contained several details which added to its aesthetic and historical value.

Poindexter Village’s original thirty-three housing structures were constructed from Flemish-bond, dark-red brick. All of these were two-stories high. Each unit had front and back doors, each with six glass lights. All of the housing buildings were fitted with copper gutters, downspouts, porch-entryway roofs, and flashing, while a majority featured gabled roofs with slate shingles over the central portion of the building. The end wings of these structures had low-slope, essentially flat, composite roofing. Four of the buildings were entirely topped with low-slope composite roofing. All of the units had multi-pane steel-framed windows, always with at least one moveable casement sash in the middle. The buildings were each heated by a boiler, which was placed under one of the units. Coal chutes were also installed for each unit.180

179 Radford, Modern Housing for America, chapters 4, 5 and 6; Kristin M Szylvian, “Bauhaus on Trial: Aluminum City Terrace and Federal Defence Housing Policy During World War II,” Planning Perspectives Planning Perspectives 9, no. 3 (1994): 232–234. 180 Charissa W. Durst and Benjamin M. Riggle, “Documentation Packet for Poindexter Village, City of Columbus, Franklin Township, Franklin County, Ohio” (Hardlines Design Company, November 1, 2013), 5–6. 82

While Poindexter Village could not boast of the architectural embellishments of the sort found at the Lathrop Homes in Chicago, architects and local craftsmen of the project nonetheless constructed attractive buildings. Thin, decorative, metal trellises, for instance, were placed at each unit, which provided an aesthetically-pleasing contrast to the red brick.181 Although today these might not strike average viewers as terribly significant, within the context of such substandard housing conditions that CMHA and social scientific researchers located in urban areas across the Unites States during the

1930s, even small embellishments could have stood out. They helped redefine the area which had previously been identified only as a “slum.”

181 Ibid., 6. 83

Figure 14 Representative Poindexter Village housing design

Community-Centered Public Housing

Poindexter Village also embodied aspects of a long-sweeping archetype: the New

England town. Steven Conn has pointed out that anti-urbanists imagined one vision of what the New England town represented to them when compared to the squalor of the city. Drawing upon Lewis Mumford, Conn writes that “the New England town was the connection between America’s Garden City future and its pre-urban past.” This model

84 was for Mumford (among others) the way to “decentralize urban America into smaller units,” which is to say, improved units.182 The anti-urban impulse examined by Conn was embodied by social scientists and planners in Columbus and the federal government who desired to tackle and eliminate urban “slum conditions.” Part of the answer which public- housing planners applied combined the ideal of the New England town with the English

Garden City.

The New England hamlet varied of course, but it possessed distinct characteristics as an archetype of planning. Historian Sumner Chilton Powell highlights that there were three specific types of New England towns: “the open-field manorial village; the incorporated borough; and the enclosed-farm East Anglian village.”183 The New England hamlet as an ideal shares several key themes including large amounts of open green space; clustered housing structures, often with connected gardens and common areas, usually evenly spaced or distributed about the town; nearby marketplace locations to acquire goods and services, usually within walking distance; human-scale development where individuals knew one another and could run into one another while walking along well-kept roads; and central locations for both a church and school.184

Conn writes that by the 1920s and 1930s, “New England increasingly became synonymous with the small town—the New England village.” Mumford declared in

182 Steven Conn, Americans Against the City: Anti-Urbanism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 9, 125–126. 183 Sumner Chilton Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1963), xvii. 184 Of course, what effect New England towns had on their own culture and society varied, but the ideal image of the hamlet lived on in the American imagination. Jack P Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); John M. Murrin, “The Irrelevance and Relevance of Colonial New England,” Reviews in American History 18, no. 2 (June 1, 1990): 180–181; Powell, Puritan Village: The Formation of a New England Town. 85

1924, “The fact of the matter is that the New England village up to the middle of the eighteenth century was a garden-city in every sense that we now apply to that term.” New

Deal planners, that is, it appears, were quite late to the game in applying what they considered to be the English style of the Garden-City plan. It was the New England hamlet, Mumford concludes for us, that was the “complete and intelligent partnership between earth and man.”185

With the creation of Poindexter Village as its first public housing project, the

CMHA brought the New England hamlet right into the heart of one of its urban neighborhoods. In an interesting paradoxical twist, their impulse—cast here as an initial

“anti-urban” impulse of reform—produced an urban plan that worked which merged many aspects of the New England town trope. On a grand level this makes sense: New

England towns occupied a space (and still do today) as perhaps the localized model for

American democracy. The design itself contributed to this factor: a manageably-sized group of (mostly) private-property owners actively making their city upon a hill. This image is enduring in its breadth. Conn notes how observers of Mexico and Australia compared diverse places to the “community spirit” which fostered a “democratic community” of New England towns.186 It makes sense, too, that American urban planners would replicate its design features.

Poindexter Village was planned in such a way as to mirror this New England ideal. At the very heart of the project sat both the school and the church. In this case,

Union Grove Baptist Church sat directly alongside the main CMHA administration

185 Lewis Mumford as quoted in Conn, Americans against the City, 125. 186 As quoted in ibid., 132. 86 building. Secondly, Champion Middle School was built on the opposite side of this same block. The elementary school was also located nearby. Members of the community were provided quick access to two of the largest and most important social and cultural institutions in the nation, institutions which New England towns were renowned for having.187

The PWA Housing Division, however, was sure to keep in mind that its projects would be making quite a stamp on local areas. “The subject of low-rent housing is new to most architects. In this type of work the house is not an isolated unit. Rather it is a component part of a still larger unit—the regional community, including industrial areas, shopping centers, parks, and residential sections; all co-ordinated [sic] with transportation.”188 PWA guidelines noted that “the advice of city planning boards should be obtained in order to tie the site plan in with the city plan.”189 Localized planning was necessary because each project needed to fit in well with the surrounding space.

Residents of Poindexter also had nearby access to a recreation center and a day nursery. The leaders of public housing reform made sure that active recreation remained a high planning priority. The USHA outlined a wide array of recreation goals:

In any housing project the needs of all inhabitants must be taken into

consideration in determining the elements of recreation. These include the

need for active play as well as the need for relations and rest. Since the

needs vary with different age groups, the special requirements of each

187 Champion Avenue Project No Ohio 1-1, Site Plan. 188 Foreword, Housing Division, Public Works Administration, Unit Plans. 189 Ibid., page titled “Notes Explanatory of Site Plans,” no page number given. 87

group should be met in the treatment of specialized areas in the site

plan.190

To meet some of these needs, Beatty Recreation Center sat on the west end of Poindexter.

Moreover, Poindexter contained an open playground at the center of the overall project.

A day nursery, or day care, was placed at the southwest corner of the project. It was located just off Long Street, on Ohio Avenue.191 For working class communities, where both parents were often required to work, such resources would have proved invaluable.

The physical plan of Poindexter would have shaped how residents made use of the space. It would have also shaped the mental maps community members carried with them as they moved about the project and the surrounding area. Urban planners successfully designed Poindexter Village as a walkable space, which situated it as a central node in the surrounding neighborhood. In The Image of the City, Kevin Lynch studied cities as “a construction of space,” full of areas and places where “every citizen has had long associations with some part of his city, and his image is soaked in memories and meanings.”192 The architects of Poindexter created a new institution that both disrupted past images of the city (the demolition of structures) while also building upon social images of what the space already was (the Near East Side as a black space).

Nodes are one of the most important aspects of urban design that Lynch identifies.

“Nodes are strategic foci into which the observer can enter,” he writes, “typically either junctions of paths, or concentrations of some characteristic. But although conceptually

190 Federal Works Agency United States Housing Authority, Planning for Recreation in Housing (Federal Works Agency, 1939), 5. 191 Champion Avenue Project No Ohio 1-1, Site Plan. 192 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960), 1. 88 they are small points in the city image, they may in reality be large squares, or somewhat extended linear shapes, or even entire central districts when the city is being considered at a large enough level.”193

Using Lynch’s definition, it becomes apparent that the housing authority planners designed Poindexter Village to function as a node for the Near East Side. First, the planners designated the project for black residents only in a predominately black space.

Poindexter, as constructed, became one of the largest institutions in the area, which made a large mark in the space at over eighty acres. It engulfed the local middle school, touched the local elementary school at the perimeter, and was within walking distance of the historic African-American East High School. The housing project was also surrounded by African-American-run businesses as detailed in the previous chapter.

The site plan also functioned as a node at the micro-planning level, too. In this respect, the Poindexter design appears to have followed the guidelines outlined by the

USHA’s guidelines for recreation. Under a section titled “Neighborliness at the

Entrance,” the USHA noted that the “vicinity of the entrance is used as rest and play space by mothers and children during the day. In the evening it becomes a gathering place for the whole family.” Additionally, by making the paved porch area in front of the entryway large enough “will make this space a useful extension of the home at little if any additional cost.”194 USHA and CMHA planners crafted its housing units in such a way as to make entry spaces central nodes of community activity.

193 Ibid., 72. 194 United States Housing Authority, Planning for Recreation in Housing, 16. 89

Such design features garnered popular positive attention, contrary to contemporary media coverage in later decades. Newspapers reported favorably on the public housing designs. The CMHA built three other public housing projects shortly after

Poindexter Village. A caption under one photo of these other projects read: “Units Are

Arranged For Children’s Safety.” The image showed two garden-style brick buildings, almost exactly like those at Poindexter, facing each other. A small street, only a single car’s width wide, separated the grass on each side. Children can be seen crossing safely from one side to the other.195 By constructing “superblocks,” housing builders limited traffic flow through the projects, while diverting main streets around the outer edges.

Removing the Slum from the Slum-dweller?

Poindexter Village’s construction, however, displaced a number of people from the area given the legislated slum clearance provision.196 It appears that the CMHA pursued a process that sustained the racial make-up of the city but which also did not completely sunder the already-existing community. Writing in 1939, sociologist George

B. Mangold noted the possible complications of the displacement process. He wrote that

a serious criticism has come from the transported residents themselves. . . .

They do not claim that a slum remains a slum or that a slum population

will inevitably degenerate into a new slum no matter where it is located;

they do claim that even in the congested sections of a city there are many

opportunities for enjoyment and enlightenment that model housing

195 “Model Homes Are Shown at Developments,” Columbus Dispatch, June 28, 1942, CMHA Files. 196 Given the paucity of archival records preserved by the CMHA, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to pinpoint exactly how many individuals were displaced. 90

districts lack. To pull a people up by their roots and to replant them in a

new soil create [sic] many difficulties and problems. . . . Where once all

were neighbors and acquaintances and perhaps friends, now all are

strangers to one another. New patterns of life and of behavior must be

developed.197

From Mangold’s observations, he highlighted problematics of slum clearance and resident displacement, lessons that urban redevelopers had apparently not learned by

2012, which is discussed in the final chapter.

The CMHA of the late 1930s, however, appears to have been somewhat aware of the issues of displacement. Perhaps national figures who argued in favor of displacement as part of public-housing construction influenced the local planners. In 1935, the PWA

Housing Division produced its first Housing Division Bulletin, authored by Edith Elmer

Wood. “Part VI” was dedicated to the “Beneficial Results of Slum Clearance and

Rehousing” which provided examples from across Europe containing “real evidence of the effect of changing the environment of those who live in slums”: Glasgow, Scotland;

Liverpool, England; and The Hague, Holland were listed.198

Because CMHA has not preserved most of its records, we must rely on Eduard S.

Goodman who studied the “The Effect of Relocation on the Former Occupants of the Site of Poindexter Village” for his masters’ thesis at OSU in 1940. His social scientific study recorded not only the location of the displaced persons but also the process as it was

197 George B. Mangold, “European Programs and Trends,” M. B. Schnapper, Public Housing in America, vol. 13, no. 5, The Reference Shelf. (New York: The H.W. Wilson company, 1939), 155. 198 Edith Elmer Wood, Slums and Blighted Areas in the United States, 2nd edition printing, originally published in 1935 (College Park, MD: McGrath Pub. Co., 1969). 91 conducted by CMHA. He limited his study to people living on the site when the city acquired the land between December 1, 1938, and March 1, 1939. His purpose “was to obtain a before-and-after picture of the housing conditions of the occupants of the project site.”199 The city demolished approximately 370 housing structures from the area, but not all of these could be traced officially through the Post Office.200 He interviewed former residents of the site where CMHA built Poindexter Village. Goodman developed a standard interview with his university professors. By utilizing data made available through the housing authority, he located 254 out of the 311 households officially listed by the Post Office that the CMHA and the USHA relocated between December 1938 and

March 1939. Only ten refused an interview, and another seven moved a second time during the relocation process.201

The CMHA established a relocation office at Beatty Recreation Center on

December 1, 1938. Authorities were aware of the demographic makeup of the area, and thus, in the words of Goodman, “had the wisdom to put in charge of the relocation office a man who, beside [sic] being thoroughly acquainted with the neighborhood, was of the same race as the people with whom he would have to deal.”202 The relocation staff eventually moved into temporary offices at the Poindexter construction site at the end of

June 1939.203 Most of the seized properties were rentals, so the authorities simply had to inform the occupants they were to vacate the premises within thirty days. Although

199 Goodman, “The Effect of Relocation on the Former Occupants of the Site of the Poindexter Village Housing Project in Columbus, Ohio, 1939-1940” (The Ohio State University, 1940), 1–2. 200 Ibid., 8. 201 Ibid., 3. 202 Ibid., 6–7. 203 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Daily Diary of Poindexter Village, 1939-1942” (State Archives Series 1990, Columbus, OH, n.d.), Vol. I, pp. 16, Ohio History Connection. 92 investigators who delivered this message to each rental location also recorded the condition of the structure, the number of people in the household, their income, rents, and the facilities of the building, CMHA did not preserve any of these records. Goodman, however, examined them.

An undetermined number of residents refused to move. Apparently, several households created a taxpayers’ organization which held a “‘stay in’ strike” after the state had purchased the land and buildings. They believed the government could not evict people. Goodman argued that tenants went along with the plan because they did not have to pay rent while they remained on the government-owned property.204 It is just as likely that many of them simply also wished to stay in a community which they called home, where they knew friends and family, or that they simply wished to hold onto the freedom of choice as to when they moved residence. Finally, the CMHA issued eviction suits against three of the “the most obstinate households,” which then pushed the others to relinquish their effort when they realized the government “meant business.”205

The housing authority did aid families in the relocation, however. The City

Division of Charities pressured the CMHA to do this. The responsibility fell on the federal government to rehouse this population if it was taking away their previous residence. The CMHA relocation office hired additional staff to accommodate and aid the families. The city supplied this staff to locate new places to live as well as provide trucks and labor to move.206

204 Goodman, 8. 205 Ibid., 9. 206 Ibid. 93

The CMHA and the displaced individuals experienced the challenge of the housing shortage for Columbus Negroes (discussed in the previous chapter). Over a period of six months, the relocation office identified only 302 vacancies, far below the

370 displaced households from the area.207 When the office located a new residence, however, the housing authority picked up the expense of the move if the family could not afford it.208 Moreover, the CMHA pulled together an “unofficial advisory board” or

“civic organization” of individuals from black institutions in the area, such as the Urban

League, the pastor from Union Grove Church, to help address social problems that the forced move created.209

Poindexter’s construction provides an early example of how to conduct housing demolition, if it is required by lawmakers. Housing officials communicated—to a degree—with present residents and also aided—again, to a debatable degree—in resituating them. Housing restrictions against Negroes as well as the housing shortage in general surely limited where displaced households could move. The housing authority hired staff and teamed with other civic institutions to rehouse the population, however, so that displaced residents were not necessarily thrown miles and miles away from their old neighborhood, which members of Columbus’ present-day community refer to as the

“Blackberry Patch.”

Instead, the displaced remained solidly within the Near East Side for the most part, and thus presumably continued to contribute to the construction of the area’s culture

207 Ibid., 10. 208 Ibid., 11. 209 Ibid., 12. 94 and sense of space. Goodman found that “most of the persons . . . managed to find new locations within a radius of one mile from the center of the project site.” “This,” he continued, “tended to minimize the breakup of emotional ties with the old area.”210 (See map below for locations of displaced households’ new residences.) The ties of community were thus not completely obliterated during this relocation.

Echoing the social science of the 1920s and 1930s, CMHA did some of its own research into the wretched housing conditions that could be found throughout large parts of Columbus. The local authority was aware that federal legislation required public housing construction to replace the same number of units that it created in the process dubbed “slum clearance.” In fact, new construction was supposed to equal the amount of clearance.211 The PWA offered institutional definitions of both a “blighted area” and a

“slum.” Both were described as inflicting a “social and economic liability to the community” although a “slum” was the narrower term, to be applied exclusively to housing conditions. The “slum” definition, moreover, included not only houses but also

“conditions of life . . . of a squalid and wretched character.” The slum characteristic, through such definitions, could easily be attached to people as well as buildings in a given residential area.212 The federal surveyors, as examined above, were not the only photographers and researchers documenting Columbus’ substandard private housing, the

CMHA did as well.

210 Ibid., 14. 211 Ebenstein, The Law of Public Housing, 24. 212 Housing Division, Public Works Administration, Unit Plans, 8–9. 95

Of the few surviving records, it is clear that the Columbus Metropolitan Housing

Authority made sure to identify and document the slum conditions it found throughout

Columbus. As with the federal WPA real estate survey photographers, CMHA’s first four housing projects—Poindexter Village (426 units); Lincoln Park Homes (340 units);

Riverside Homes (252 units); and Sullivant Gardens (334 units)—replaced the exact areas that it photographed. This allowed the housing authority to present direct before- and-after juxtapositions.

In one telling example from the documentation, CMHA researchers identified an eight-by-ten foot “shack” that was occupied by a family consisting of two parents and seven children. “The oldest daughter was discovered by [CMHA] authorities to be sleeping on top of a dresser,” the researcher wrote. Importantly, however, “The family is now living at Sullivant Gardens.” Photographs then captured the tiny shack and its unattractive surroundings. The photographic essay then ends happily in the end: three of the children, at least, are pictured inside and in front of their new, modern public housing unit at Sullivant. The kitchen is clean with fresh linens spread over the table. Electric plugs sprout from the wall, powering the lamp the eldest girl stands next to. The exterior is an attractive, well-constructed brick as opposed to the rundown wooden shack. A large window, taller and wider than any of the children, features prominently as well, just as

PWA-unit plans pushed for. Fresh air and sunlight would enter this house. A trash can sits neatly out front on a manicured landscape, completely different from the overgrown area the shack occupied. And the children are smiling, posing happily for the CMHA authorities.

Another instance highlights the tragic story of two African-American families. It also highlighted the potentially deadly dangers of substandard housing. With stark black and white photographs to the left, the caption reads: “This home in the Goodale area was the scene of a fire on Armistice Day, 1953. The lives of two small children were lost as a result. Two of the four families who lived here are now living at Poindexter Village.”213

One snapshot of the blaze’s aftermath recalls the iconic Great Depression 1937 photograph by Margaret Bourke-White. That picture contrasts African Americans waiting in a relief line in Louisville, Kentucky, under a giant advertisement featuring a white family and the “World’s Highest Standard of Living.”214 With burnt furniture and rubble in the Columbus foreground, the CMHA photographer captured a similar giant car ad in the background featuring “the New 1954 De Soto Automated is here!”

And like the Sullivant family from earlier, CMHA took photographs of black children in the substandard housing they previously occupied. These shots are reminiscent of exposé work by photographer Jacob Riis. The Columbus photographs show children in crowded, dark rooms. There are holes in the dirty walls, and gas lamps resting on furniture. Several beds crowd a small area that is also occupied by the kitchen table as laundry hangs across the room. A dresser sits crammed next to the sink and exposed water pipes. A long series of photographs captured a number of locations apparently from across Columbus. Some pictures—from both inside and outside units— could compete with tenement conditions that were found in New York and Chicago in the

213 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Russell C. Taylor, Director, Unnamed Binder, ca. 1940s- 1950s (no date given), no pages, CMHA Files. 214 Margaret Bourke-White, Photography, Life, February 15, 1937. 97 early and even mid-twentieth century. Another set of photographs specifically documented the wretched environment of the American Addition neighborhood, which sat roughly a mile and a half north of Mt. Vernon and Champion Avenue. But the final photographs also documented the modern housing and structures at the new public housing projects. They feature brick buildings, well-manicured landscapes, electric poles, paved streets, no trash, and people making use of the facilities.215 CMHA professionals made sure to record their work in providing modern housing to Columbus’ black citizens.

Managing Projects Professionally in the Early Years

CMHA, like housing authorities across the country, restricted new residents to those employed in the private sector. They could not be on WPA relief rolls. Thus, one aspect of Poindexter’s community was that it served those who were likely already upwardly mobile and already working class; this public housing, like that across the nation, did not serve the neediest or poorest of the community. In the relief tradition that is best described by Michael Katz’s In the Shadow of the Poorhouse and Lawrence

Vale’s From the Puritans to the Projects, CMHA’s housing served the “deserving” residents of Columbus and not the so-called “undeserving” poorest.216 While that is important to note, this choice likely contributed to the stability of Poindexter’s community (described in the next chapter).217

For good or ill, the CMHA perpetuated what Katz has called the American

“semiwelfare state” and what Vale labels the subjective “worthiness” of tenant

215 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Russell C. Taylor, Director, Unnamed Binder, ca. 1940s- 1950s (no date given), no pages, CMHA Files. 216 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986); Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects. 217 Bloom implies a similar argument in his work. See Bloom, Public Housing That Worked. 98 selection.218 Historians have examined how local housing authorities selected tenants.

Nicholas Dagen Bloom argues that New York City’s public housing “worked” in large part because it did not house the poorest for the majority of its history. Only when it was forced to do so did the city’s public housing struggle.219 Moreover, Amy Howard found that San Francisco’s housing authority enacted exclusionary application processes that included racial references to funnel and segregate applicants.220

Columbus’ local housing authority made sure to calculate the economics of its slum clearance program, something that it would repeat after the turn of the twenty-first century. Land values and federal spending sat at the heart of this calculus. First, the

USHA earmarked just over two million dollars for the constructions of the Poindexter project and just over three and a half million for the next three projects. Moreover, USHA covered 80 percent of the rent subsidies.221

Secondly, CMHA rationalized its slum clearance program based on the land tax values that delinquent private landowners were failing to pay. Tax values on the land where CMHA located Poindexter Village, tax values totaled $245,955. This included

$69,030 for land and $176,925 for the buildings. The annual tax levy amounted to

$4,304.21. The area, however, was delinquent to the sum of almost $11,000. CMHA then claimed that even if the $4,000 dollar amount was in fact paid each month, that amount

218 Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America, part 2; Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects, 7. 219 Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, for example, 109. 220 Howard, More than Shelter, Kindle Location 360, 674, 2918. 221 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 16, 21, CMHA Files. 99 barely covered the cost of city services. Ultimately, Columbus was not losing any tax revenue by supplying public housing.222

During the 1940s, CMHA determined to run its projects professionally. For instance, it committed to revising its management and hiring protocols. Marion F.

Wilson, of the regional housing office, wrote to Columbus’ director Russell C. Taylor to outline some suggestions as to how to improve the professional management of the city’s public housing. Wilson suggested several strategies to better manage the city’s first housing projects. He recommended developing a process to evaluate employees and tenants of CMHA. This included inspecting the units of residents and verifying their income level. Columbus was already actively engaged in learning what it could from other cities. Cleveland’s and Toledo’s manuals were to serve as guides to craft

Columbus’ “Tenant Selection and Annual Review” document. Authorities visited the

Desota Bass Courts project in Dayton, another complex built for African Americans.

Wilson also suggested enacting a practice from the Louisville Housing Authority that required each manager “to ‘walk his project’ every day” to get to know it better.223

CMHA’s professionals sought to help some of the families that could not find adequate housing in the city. “Preference is given to,” a CMHA official wrote, “families living in condemned houses. Those who lived in the area cleared. Families with lowest net income. Those who live under conditions detrimental to safety, health, morality.

Those who have the most children under 16 years old.” Applicants also had to be

222 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 19, CMHA Files 223 Marion F. Wilson to Russell C. Taylor, April 17, 1947, Folder: “Personnel Program for Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority,” CMHA Files. 100

American citizens and residents of Franklin County for at least one year.224 That was only part of the story, for families still had to pay a minimum rent charge. Still, a volunteer, unpaid committee was set up for tenant selection at Poindexter Village. Most of the seven individuals on this committee lived on the Near East Side. Several occupied high positions in local institutions, such as Dr. Joseph Hines who was director of research at the Columbus Urban League, George V. McCausland of the St. Paul Neighborhood

House, and Mrs. Marie Baber who was president of the Ohio Association of Social

Workers.225

The only surviving tenant application from CMHA’s records dates from the early

1950s, and it continued these policies established at the start of the 1940s. It is evident this document was used during the Cold War—veterans and military servicemen are accorded privileged status. Several factors played a role in the entire application. Issues related to “moral” and local concerns were raised. The “Type of [Military] Discharge” for veterans was checked, as was the citizenship status of the applicant. Moreover, the housing authority only wanted residents who had lived in Franklin County for at least a year. The “Local Resident bonus score” was worth ten points. As Michael Katz has illustrated, local governments have never desired to pay for the poor from outside their area.226 The CMHA application also assumed the heterosexuality of the applicants, placing “Man” and “Woman” already into the first two boxes of the “Family

Composition” breakdown. The form further inquired whether either parent had been

224 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 31, CMHA Files. 225 Ibid., 33. 226 Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. 101 divorced. The two categories “Housekeeping” and “Evidence of Resourceful

Housekeeping” could also earn zero, five, or ten points each for the applicant.227

The largest focus of resident selection, however, was on whether the applicant was “displaced by Slum Clearance” in an era when more and more cities were enacting giant urban renewal projects and, secondly, on the housing conditions that the applicant currently occupied. The bottom right-hand side was quantifiable so that points could be added depending on whether or not the applicant and his or her family was to be “without housing,” “about to be without housing,” or whether they lived in “substandard housing.”

Specific housing condition concerns included a list of problems that New Deal reformers had aimed to reform: potable running water, flush toilets, usable showers, adequate electricity wiring, safe heating facilities, and overcrowding. An overriding concern of

CMHA remained housing individuals who did not have access to modern, clean, safe housing.

Such concern is reflected in the housing authority’s breakdown of the first twenty- eight families it housed at Poindexter Village. No specific information such as names or occupations were recorded, but the housing authority did note other quantitative information. The average income was $71.98 per month, or $863.82 per year. The rent that CMHA charged was $12.58 plus $6.11 for utilities. This amounted to only 16.2 percent of the total income going towards rent, and a combined 25 percent for shelter and

227 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Application for Housing,” CMHA Form No. 1, 1/54, CMHA Files, Box 7-2; Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Determination of Housing Need,” CMHA Form No. 2, 5/51, CMHA Files, Box 7-2; Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, Untitled form page, CMHA Files, Box 7-2. 102 utilities. The average size of the first twenty-eight families was 3.5, and, according to

CMHA records, presumably two parents and 1.5 children.228

It is difficult to contextualize these rent figures. In housing policy today, the generally accepted goal to meet an affordable housing definition is that no more than one- third of a family’s income should be spent on housing. Under this criterion, the USHA and CMHA were remarkably successful. The 1940 census did not record income data, but it did report housing rent cost. Aligning these figures with housing conditions, however, adds an extra level of complexity. The majority of rents per month in the census tract where Poindexter Village was built ranged considerably: 12 percent at $12 to $14;

21 percent at $15 to $19; 20 percent at $20 to $24; 20 percent at $25 to $29; and 10 percent at $30 to $39.229 A rent cost of $12 to $14 for the substandard housing photographed by the federal Public Housing Administration or CMHA officials or Ohio

State social scientists was not the same as $12.58 of rent payments for modern public housing.

That many of these families would have come from substandard housing that lacked toilets, bathrooms, proper heating, solid construction, and fire-safe conditions would have made their residency all the more memorable and impressive. The successful urban planning design on the part of the USHA and the CMHA, influenced as it was by the PWA Housing Division, supported a positive experience for the first residents.

228 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “The United States Housing Authority,” in an Untitled Report and Speech, ca. 1939, 34, CMHA Files 229 U.S. Census Bureau. Housing Units Reporting Monthly Contract Rent, 1940. Columbus, Ohio, census tract 28. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed March 12, 2015). 103

Poindexter Village Named and Built

The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority took one last action which helped secure the foundation of the city’s first public housing project: it named the project

Poindexter Village, after the city’s most prominent African American up to that point.

Reverend James Poindexter “had risen as far as society would allow.”230 Since the Civil

War, he stood as a staunch advocate of racial uplift and democracy. In 1870, he argued before a Columbus audience that the ballot “lifts the colored man and sets him on his feet and gives him for the first time a fair start in the race of life.”231 Historian David Gerber placed Poindexter in the group of upper-class black leaders who advocated the race’s

“obligation to assimilate and practice the habits of economy, industry, and morality, and to seek education.” Rev. Poindexter himself told other black leaders in Columbus in 1869

“to inculcate upon your children and let us cultivate ourselves habits in industry, economy, and sobriety.”232 Poindexter’s style was thus more Booker T. Washington than

W.E.B. Du Bois, and therefore generally appealed to white audiences as well.233 In 1880,

Poindexter achieved election to the Ninth Ward city council, becoming the first black member and opening the door for other black officials.234

By applying the name of James Poindexter to the project, the CMHA helped ensure that the community could formulate strong and lasting memories about the location and, in the process, formulate it into a place. Carl Becker was aware of such

230 David A Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976). 231 Ibid. 232 Ibid. 233 Ibid., 214–215. 234 Ibid., 228–229. 104 processes. He is most well-known for proclaiming “everyman his own historian” from his

American Historical Association address in 1931. But one of the takeaways from his message to his fellow professionals was that the average citizen on the street engaged with “knowledge of history” quite differently than the professionally-trained historian. In his address, he reduced history to its simplest terms. Arriving at his proposed definition, he claimed, “History is the memory of things said and done.” And if this definition holds true for “every normal person, Mr. Everyman,” as Becker put it, then everyone “knows some history.” And indeed, this was the case in and around Poindexter Village: the label of Poindexter bestowed upon the location a sense of history and sense of historical accomplishment for Columbus’ black citizens.235

Indeed, Poindexter’s location and its name placed it in an urban space that, perhaps surprisingly, set the housing development up to create a strong sense of place in years to come. On the one hand, the project racially segregated individuals.236 On the other hand, locating and naming the housing project on the Near East Side may have produced a racially-supportive environment in an era of increasing racial prejudice and white hostility. Kevin Lynch emphasized that the image of the city “is soaked in memories and meanings.”237 Local authorities may have realized that a project which targeted African Americans must hold meaning for that community. This was a wise choice from their policy standpoint. Whether or not community members or city officials were aware of the details of Rev. James Poindexter’s history (indeed, he cautioned

235 Carl L Becker, Everyman His Own Historian: Essays on History and Politics (New York: F.S. Crofts & Co., 1935), 233–236. 236 This strand of public housing historiography is best represented by Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto. 237 Lynch, The Image of the City, 1960, 1. 105 attacking racial segregation too energetically during the 1870s), his name implied a racial pride on the location, adding to the notion of an African-American space.238 But he was also a moderate black leader. The use of his name was a message that reinforced—rather than challenged—the racial segregation that the development contributed to.

Alternatively, city and housing officials might have named the housing project after one of the first members of the CMHA commissioners or a primary architect, which happened in other cities.

Seeking, perhaps, to capture some of this history for future generations (and certainly to record its accomplishments for political purposes), the Public Housing

Administration made sure to complete the second half of the before-and-after housing photographs it began taking before the construction of Poindexter. Chapter 3 presented six photographs taken at various locations where Poindexter Village would be built in an attempt to record the “slum” conditions the surveyor witnessed. Officials took another set of photographs to record their accomplishments. The “after” photographs captured the drastic environmental change, with a most telling detail found in each in its absence.

These pictures captured the design in all its modern glory: the clean lines, the solid brick construction, the landscaped lawns with newly-planted trees, the power plant providing power to all thirty-three buildings, the large windows, and handsome porch roofs.

238 Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 1860-1915, 188. 106

Figure 15 This is the "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3666 above.

107

Figure 16 This is "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3662 above.

108

Figure 17 This is the "after" photograph of Photo No. O-3421-B above.

109

Figure 18 This is "after" photograph of Photo. No. O-2999 above.

110

Figure 19 This is the "after" photograph of Photo. No. O-3422 above.

But something is missing in all six of these photographs: people. Each, with the exception of one, is devoid of human beings. Unlike the earlier photographs when capturing black subjects in the picture frame was crucial to the social construction of the

“slum” conditions—necessary to rationalize public housing construction—the “after” photographs showed off the architecture and manicured landscapes created by the USHA

111 and CMHA. Poindexter Village was built. But it lacked the fundamental aspect that could make it come alive.239

Still, via funding and planning guidance provided by the PWA Housing Division and the USHA, the local CMHA constructed public housing that worked. It followed the

English Garden City movement and the German Zeilenbau styles, while adhering to guidelines established by federal authorities and advocates on the subject. The design created modern-style housing for the black Near East Side community, and the local planners did their best to aid those that their slum clearance operation displaced. The location, name, and style of the Poindexter Village public housing project added to the area in important ways. It remained connected to the surrounding neighborhood space through walkable and human-scaled planning, highly aware of how such a residence could be used at both the micro and macro levels. In the end, Poindexter Village was well-designed public housing that worked.

But commemoration and use are layered processes. Planners and organizations alone do not singlehandedly craft such things. It does not only occur in the present. They further shaped the space, but they had not completely forged a place. It is people who combine the name and experience of a location into one being, all of which is always grounded in history, whether it is an awareness of who lived in an area before or the title of a building or set of buildings. Historian Dolores Hayden and geographer Yi-Fu Tuan have emphasized that places are made when communities are attached to them. Hayden

239 In order of appearance above: National Archives photos I-5269, (Schreick Studio Col. O); Public Housing Administration, Record Group 196; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 112 writes that “people’s attachments to places are material, social, and imaginative.”240 The photographs at the end of this chapter captured the end-point, only one of the “after” layers of the transformation which Poindexter Village’s redevelopment project brought to bear on the area. It would take the residents themselves to make it into a community, and into a place. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt helped them inaugurate the housing development’s opening on October 12, 1940.241

240 Tuan, Space and Place; Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, 43. 241 “Throngs Cheer President Here: Roosevelt Makes Whirlwind Visit to Fort Hayes,” Columbus Dispatch, October 12, 1940; “20,000 See Chief Executive On Poindexter Village Trip: Crowds Line Streets as President Passes; Wreath Lad on Columbus Monument,” Columbus Dispatch, October 12, 1940; “Sidelights on Roosevelt’s Visit,” Columbus Dispatch, October 12, 1940; Julia Keller, “The Memories of ‘Mr. Stix’ - Jimmy Rogers’ Stories Tell of Our History,” Columbus Dispatch, January 20, 1986; “Poindexter Village Was Once a Godsend,” Columbus Dispatch, February 4, 2013. 113

Chapter 3: Making and Remembering the Community of Poindexter Village

Jimmy Rogers, just 11 years-old, whose “eyes still watered from the paint fumes,” the buildings were so new, was the lucky youngster chosen to meet the important visitor.

“He wore this beautiful hat, with a brim turned up all the way around,” Rogers later recalled when he was fifty-six. Charismatic and warm, President Franklin Delano

Roosevelt must have made quite the impression on young Jimmy, an African-American boy living on Columbus’ Near East Side. The President was campaigning for reelection, and one can imagine how he turned on the charm. President Roosevelt “had this way of throwing his head back,” Rogers reminisced. “He said, ‘How do you like your new home?’ And I said, ‘I like it a lot.’”242

Poindexter Village, the first public housing project built in Ohio’s capital, had only recently begun receiving tenants when construction was completed on July 1,

1940.243 The President’s October 12 visit officially dedicated the New Deal public works project. Some 20,000 people turned out to see his visit.244 Public housing’s first wave, in fact, fulfilled all three types of security that the President pledged in the early 1930s—a

“decent home to live in,” “productive work,” and “security against the hazards and

242 Keller, “The Memories of ‘Mr. Stix’ - Jimmy Rogers’ Stories Tell of Our History.” 243 Robinson et al., “Public Housing in the United States, 1933-1949: A Historic Context, Volume I,” Appendix IV, pp. 12. 244 “Throngs Cheer President Here: Roosevelt Makes Whirlwind Visit to Fort Hayes”; “Sidelights on Roosevelt’s Visit”; “20,000 See Chief Executive On Poindexter Village Trip: Crowds Line Streets as President Passes; Wreath Lad on Columbus Monument.” 114 vicissitudes in life.”245 This was big government in action. Big government—and Mr.

Democrat, FDR—on your side.

It was not just for show. Roosevelt believed that his New Deal was providing modern, affordable housing to communities across the country, communities and housing just like this in this Columbus, Ohio, campaign pit-stop. It also provided local work for communities, communities that, in the process, built their own public housing developments. And so the President, although ravaged by polio, carefully made his way up to the top of the steps in front of the main administration building at 240 North

Champion Avenue, Columbus.

Marilyn Kendrick was just a little girl then. Like Jimmy, she vividly remembers the visit. She recalled how FDR made his way up the steps to wave to the crowd.246 He would have cast a powerful image to Columbus’ black community, segregated as they were in the Near East Side neighborhood. They faced severe discrimination in employment, education, public accommodations, and housing, but the New Deal Order had helped build them their own institution. In so doing, Poindexter Village represented a symbol of the changing political party alignment taking place across the nation—African

Americans were, as the old adage went, taking down their photographs of Republican

Abraham Lincoln and replacing them with the Democrat Franklin Roosevelt. It also

245 As quoted in David M Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 246. 246 This chapter uses the last name “Kendrick” instead of “Cherry,” because the interviewee made a point to say “Cherry was my married name.” Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, July 30, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 115 represented a substantial step up from substandard housing conditions. Many public housing residents would express sincere appreciation for FDR’s project.247

And so, the first generations of residents made Poindexter Village their own. This mirrored communities across the United States. Several historians have collected and analyzed oral history testimonies to trace community formation in Philadelphia, New

York City, Baltimore, San Francisco, and Chicago.248 This chapter adds to this work.

Sociologically, community is defined by a “search for belonging in the insecure conditions of modern society.” It is a “particular form of social organization based on small groups, such as neighborhoods, the small town or a spatially-bound locality.”249

Residents of Poindexter Village, from the first arrivals through the 1970s, defined their own sense of what it meant to belong to their community.

This chapter, therefore, argues that Poindexter Village residents forged a strong sense of community around four reinforcing, intertwined characteristics: shared values, mutuality, safety, and insider status. Before the community took shape, Near East Side residents helped construct the physical housing. The first residents and those who followed for the next four decades imbued the buildings with social meaning. Shared values for instance, included helping take care of the public housing they began to feel was their responsibility. A commitment to caring for each other’s children helped define mutuality and safety. And Poindexter’s design demarcated only one level of insider

247 For a succinct description of FDR’s “patronage” electoral strategy, see Kennedy, Freedom from Fear, 284–285. 248 Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era; Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality; Howard, More than Shelter; J. S. Fuerst, D. Bradford Hunt, and J.S Fuerst, When Public Housing Was Paradise: Building Community in Chicago (University of Illinois Press, 2005). 249 Gerard Delanty, Community (London; New York: Routledge, 2009), x–xi. 116 status. Overall, the residents themselves, along with the surrounding neighborhood, set about creating a vibrant community at Poindexter Village. They, in turn, made Poindexter into a place, a place that could be positively remembered in years to come. At times,

Poindexter’s residents took advantage of public policy to support their common bonds, which in turn created a foundation upon which lasting collective memories took shape, especially among residents and Columbus’ African-American community. Those memories, however, sometimes reflect a sense of nostalgia.250

Building Shared Values

Visible as the construction was, the involvement of black workers from the surrounding neighborhood may have contributed to fostering a set of shared values.

Following the construction effort, residents moved into the new housing to begin fashioning a sense of home. The first tenants, began moving furniture into units in early

June 1940, although landscaping and planting proceeded late into 1940 and even into

250 In this chapter, I make use of a diverse array of primary sources. These include traditional sources, well- mined by many scholars: newspapers, theses, and institutional documents, for example. But this section relies heavily upon a close-reading of oral histories from former residents of Poindexter Village (and a few contextualizing examples from Chicago). Some historians may cast doubt on this methodology. But oral histories have generally gained acceptance within academic scholarship. Trevor Lummis notes “the validation of oral evidence can be divided into two main areas: the degree to which any individual interview yields reliable information on the historical experience, and the degree to which that individual experience is typical of its time and place,” in “Structure and Validity in Oral Evidence,” The Oral History Reader, ed. Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (New York: Routledge, 1998), 273. The first concern is true of all historical sources. So is the second. As a public historian, I have chosen to err on the side of quoting oral history testimony at greater length than compared to other sources. It is more important in this chapter to give priority to this type of source so as to better convey the type and character of the community that made Poindexter a place. The aim of this chapter, however, is to not only make use of remembrances as one form of historical record or primary source. Instead, as historian Michael Frisch instructs, I treat oral histories as a form of “shared authority,” from A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). While constructing this research project, it became apparent that the local housing authority had not preserved its historical record. While current employees of the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority have helpfully aided me in locating what they could, there was not much for us to find. Nor was the organization, moreover, quick to admit that it could not produce the amounts or types of documents similar to other housing authorities. 117

1941.251 Their pride of place was best captured in a photograph dated to December 15,

1942. Titled simply “Flag Raising of Poindexter Village,” the picture shows an interracial group of nine individuals. Men with hats in hand and women bundled up in overcoats posed with hands over hearts as two of the men in the center began raising an American flag on the pole.252 Residing or working at Poindexter Village clearly laid claim to

American citizenship, even more so during wartime. Overall, residents collectively valued the place, and they exhibited their appreciation of the development by looking out for their fellow neighbors, engaging with housing policy, and taking care of the physical environment.

Communal values were much the stronger since they rested on a pride of a place that attracted major political figures over the years. One former resident named Marilyn

Kendrick, now in her eighties, remembers moving in to become the third family residing in Poindexter, and she remembers FDR’s visit that day—the only other remaining record that has been recovered is from newspaper accounts. While FDR’s official papers record no remarks made by the president and then-presidential candidate up for re-election (not an insignificant point), she remembers him getting out of his car and making his way to the top of the steps at the housing authority’s administration building. As Marilyn recounted her memory, she noted how her parents, from that time onward, voted for

Democrats and Democrats only. The President “was very welcoming,” she says. “That’s what made my mum and dad big Democrats.”253 Moments such as these certainly

251 Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, “Daily Diary of Poindexter Village, 1939-1942,” Vol. II, pp. 160. 252 Ibid., Vol. II, pp. 259. 253 Marilyn Kendrick. Oral History conducted by Patrick R. Potyondy. July 30, 2014. Columbus, Ohio. 118 contributed to the grandness of Poindexter in the eyes of the Near East Side, while also illuminating how public housing shaped electoral politics.

On another visit in October of 1956, almost exactly sixteen years after her husband had presided over opening ceremonies, Eleanor Roosevelt visited Poindexter

Village. She traveled to Columbus for a Democratic Party rally.254 In her “My Day” newspaper column, she highlighted visiting the housing project, noted her husband’s previous visit there, and argued that “the Negro population suffers the most from” the housing shortage. “The Negroes are pushed into the most undesirable places to live—old houses that are rat-infested and have no improvements,” she wrote. But, public housing offered another way as she saw it. Her visit to Poindexter evidently sparked her political passions for she wrote, “One of the failures of the Republican Administration has been its very small appropriation for public housing and yet public housing is the only kind that can meet the needs of the low-income groups.”255

As the woman who nine out of ten Americans admired most at the time, her visit to the traditionally conservative city was key to Democratic political aspirations. At

Poindexter Village, she gave an address, which a young Oretha Edwards was lucky enough to attend. “She was very pleasant,” Edwards remembers. “She had a very humble, sweet spirit. I will never forget that and they were going to make us leave out of there, and she said let them . . . stay, and when she was getting ready to leave, she took every

254 “Mrs. FDR Arrives 2:17 P.M. Saturday, At P’dexter Immediately,” The Ohio Sentinel, October 13, 1956, pp. 2. 255 Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” October 16, 1956. 119 one of their hands.”256 She was not the only resident to remember her visit. Marilyn

Kendrick remembers being invited, as a young adult who then had the last name

Kendrick, to be in the same room when Eleanor Roosevelt visited. Luckily for her, the former first lady chose to go around and shake everyone’s hand.257 Such recollections only add to a place’s memory and importance for a community.

Nor was Franklin Roosevelt the only American president to visit the housing project. Mount Vernon Avenue and Poindexter Village remained core locations for campaigning and visits from national personalities. Roland Stepney worked first as a maintenance worker and then as a manager of Poindexter Village for twenty-six years total. He met President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s. Carter visited the city in 1978 to promote a large urban revitalization program when he presided over opening ceremonies for Mount Vernon Plaza, just a few blocks from Poindexter. Though he reaffirmed his commitment to public housing in his speech, he did not cite the Village as one of the locations where “the occupancy rate is down; [and] vandalism is high.”258 Stepney also met President Ronald Reagan in the mid-1980s when the president was campaigning for reelection.259 Clearly, campaign managers and politicos viewed the housing project as a primary location to visit in the city.

256 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, June 16, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 257 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 258 Jimmy Carter, “Columbus, Ohio Remarks at Dedication Ceremonies for the Mount Vernon Plaza,” September 29, 1978. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29848. 259 Roland Stepney interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, June 12, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 120

Across the 1940s and the 1970s, interviewees portray Poindexter as a wonderful place to grow up. Steven “Paco” Grier, who was born at Poindexter and grew up there until his early teens in the 1950s and 1960s, recalls that he and his friends believed

Poindexter to be exceptional when compared to the other public housing projects in the area that CMHA owned. He exhibits a strong pride of place in his testimony about the community.260 Leslie Bridges, who grew up in the Village and returned later in life to live there for several more years between the 1960s and 1990s, says, “Actually Poindexter was one of the best places to grow up. Those were fun memories because all the parents looked out for kids. . . . We [would] just sleep out all night, and we did in the summer time with tents and stuff.” She continued recalling that they were “very active kids” and that they made use of Beatty Recreation Center. 261 When asked about what the earliest years of life at Poindexter were like, Steven Grier responds, “Fantastic. It was a village and a very vibrant time of my life.”262

For Baba Shongo Obadina, who lived in Poindexter during his formative years between the ages of seven and fourteen, the community is represented by adults who guided the younger generation. He recalls the effect of mentoring adults in the area. As he remembers it, a teacher named Henry B. Ward influenced many kids in the area, including himself:

I was at the age of 13, I was kind of going down the alley, throwing bottles

and stuff like that and he caught me. I got ready to say something not very

260 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti, Transcript, December 5, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 261 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 262 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 121

nice, but something told me not to and he called me over there and I talked

to him. Well, he end up giving me a job and teach me a lot of things, teach

me ham radio operating, teach me to work with wood and plumbing and

remodeling houses. I love this Daycare Center. He kind of directed a lot of

kids on certain paths who came to there, and he made available to us a lot

of things.

Ward also introduced Shongo Obadina to music, giving him his first clarinet, so that he went on to play the cello, then the baritone saxophone, and then into marching band.263

Oral history testimonies illustrate a supportive community which took formation during the first decades of Poindexter Village’s life. Many dynamics shaped the place which the predominately black residents made, and made their own.

Women played a central role in community life. Daniel Sturkey highlighted the role that female teachers played in his life.264 Oretha Edwards says that “Poindexter was a nice place to live and the children really had a good time.” A resident for over fifty years,

Edwards is able to provide a broad take on the community.265 And Calvin Hairston recalls that his cousin, Barbara Cunningham, led the Poindexter resident association for some time, implying the central role that women took up in the continuous process of community formation.266

263 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, April 25, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 264 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, December 12, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 265 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 266 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, April 29, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 122

Women seem to have kept an eye on the community, which is significant if not entirely unsurprising given that they likely made up a higher proportion of the tenants.267

Their role was especially important when it came to watching the younger members of

Poindexter. In the case of one young woman who resided in the Village—and who suffered from some form of mental illness—the community remained tight-knit enough so that this young person maintained an ability to interact with others and move around.

If she was spotted “doing something crazy, they will call me,” Oretha recalls, so that she could go to the woman’s aid.268 Sturkey backs up this point, highlighting the public policies that limited the ability of men to reside in public housing:

There [was] a lot more women there than men but yeah, that’s who, who

ran stuff who took care of [you,] and you didn’t have to worry about your

kids being taken care of [by] others. My mother, like I said we were all

latchkey kids. I remember I lost my key or locked it in the house or

something while my mother’s still at work, it was raining. I remember I

was sitting on my front porch waiting for my mother to come home and

then another lady, older lady, made me come in and she fed me.

He stresses how women “nurtured and cared” for him growing up. His memories are of being “taught table manners” by the women who were his teachers. Women also served

267 An array of state policies that were means- and moral-tested programs regulated black tenants’ lives in public housing, which in later years either excluded black men outright (such as exclusions for criminal offenses) or dis-incentivized their staying with their families (such as income requirements). At the same time, public housing provided single black women an affordable place to live. For more see, Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality, 5–6, 11, 37–40, 126–130; Bloom, Public Housing That Worked, 96–97; Freidrichs, The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. 268 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 123 as his den mothers in Cub Scouts. He adds as a concluding point on the topic, “They were the keepers of everything, and I’m glad they were because they did a really good job.”269

Julie Scott also notes that women watched out for the whole community. She illustrates how close-knit the community had developed by the late 1960s:

In each section there was always one woman on the end, each end who

watch out for the kids in the whole square. So the parents could go to work

and know that their kids were okay, because believe me if we try to go

outside of that block somebody . . . over there is going, “Where you’re

going?” If you went this way, they will go, “Where are you going?”

Punishments could be meted out collectively as well.

Yes, the women would keep an eye, the elderly women, our seniors, they

kept an eye on what was going in that block. And if you did something

that you weren’t supposed to do in that block, they would come out, they

would get in you, depending who it is, and they might whip you. And then

when your parents came home they will wait for your parents. And then as

soon as your parents came, they would knock on the door and say, “Ms.

Mary guess what Julie did.” And then of course after they told them that’s

where we proceed to get another whipping.270

In a similar fashion, Lorraine Hinton remembers that she and others “used to care about the children. We corrected the children.”271 And Gloria Hunter remembers the same

269 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 270 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, January 24, 2015, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 271 Lorraine Hinton interviewd by Is Said, Transcript, November 3, 2010, In author’s possession. 124 process from her time there in the early 1970s: “If you [did] something wrong, when my mother got home, they told my mother about it.”272

And it was women who kept a watch on even more serious issues, too. A “secret society” of women looked out for drug dealers in Poindexter for several years. When asked for more on the group, Oretha Edwards responded quickly, “Oh yes, what happened is we had a chain out there of women, and we would tell each one what was going on in the neighborhood, and one . . . will give it to the police.”273 Proactive measures like Poindexter Village’s women-organized “secret society” as well as a communal-based system of discipline helped preserve community values.

In fact, these women sought to partner actively with police to maintain the community as they saw fit. Cynthia Mastin describes one narrative which, for her, exemplified what she termed the “neighborly love” of the Village. One young woman

had lived out there before me, okay. And I had been out there a couple of

years and she lived right down the alley from me. And so one day, I think

it was on a Saturday or Sunday, I was taking out my trash. And she was

coming up to the alley, and she had a covered plate, you know and it

smelled good. I said, “Oh girl, what is that? That smells good.” And she

told me . . . [it] was ham and greens and mac-and-cheese and whatever. So

she said, “You want some girl?” And I said, “I sure do.” She said, “When

I come back, I’ve got you.” And so you know, maybe half an hour later,

she’d come and she knocked on the door. “Here you go.” She said, “My

272 Gloria Carpenter interviewed by Is Said, Transcript, November 1, 2010, In author’s possession. 273 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 125

name is Nadine. I said, “I’m Cindy.” And that’s how we met. And she

gave me this plate, honey, and she has been feeding me ever since.

Even during the interview process, that young woman had stopped by—indeed, her appearance seems to have triggered the memory recalled in the above story. Even after leaving Poindexter, the two stayed in touch. “Her and her brother came and took me lunch today,” she notes, “and I laugh all the time.”274

A reciprocal respect for their elders and the elders looking after the younger community members was a repeated theme at the public housing community well before

Mastin’s time living there. Shongo Obadina recalls that “one thing about the village is that people knew anyone so people could tell you what to do or what not to do as elders, do you know what I mean? And you would respect and listen to them.” He had several members of his extended family living throughout the Village so that “I can be missing three days because I could be staying with my mother, I could be staying with my grandmother, I could be staying with my friend. I had places I could stay.”275 Sturkey also states that they “were taught as a child by your parents and your elders.”276

He goes onto explain that explains that young community members would go out of their way to look out for the area’s seniors. In this way, Poindexter Tower—a single mid-rise built in 1960 for senior citizens—became connected with the Village as a whole.

You didn’t go playing over there, you didn’t, those were older people, you

just . . . you didn’t go upset older . . . you don’t do that or you get a

274 Cynthia Mastin interview by Cristina Benedetti, Transcript, October 23, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 275 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 276 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 126

beating or something. That’s why I said sacred; it’s not sacred thing. It’s

more on the respect and it’s respecting, you didn’t go over there and do

anything or causing trouble or anything. I had a paper route when I was a

kid, and I used to find extra papers, I would take them over there and give

it to them because that’s like, that’s your responsibility. Or if they needed

a . . . if they were at Carl Brown’s, the grocery store, they needed help

getting their stuff across the street, back to the tower, you just did that . . . .

It was like a … it was a reverence for the people who lived in that, those

were the older people, they needed it.277

Residents like Sturkey defied stereotypes of black public housing residents; so did the community as a whole, which engaged with and appreciated good, strong housing authority policy.

Residents often appreciated strong CMHA stewardship. According to former residents, management maintained the property nicely through the 1970s and into the

1980s. Residents also took part in national political transformations, and major political figures realized that the Village and Mount Vernon Avenue were key campaign locations.

From several angles, residents engaged and shaped housing policy on the ground. They made connections with local organizations outside the housing project to look out for their own interests. The Vanguard League worked as an early and prominent civil rights organization in Columbus in the early 1940s. Although it would merge with the Urban

League in the 1960s, the Vanguard League was the most active civil rights organization

277 Ibid. 127 in the Ohio capital during this early phase of World War II-era activism. Like the

NAACP, the League used lawsuits as a primary strategy to challenge discrimination in restaurants, hotels, and public spaces. They also became involved in housing issues.278

Poindexter Village operated as one of the organization’s bases of operation. It acted as a place where meetings could be held and new members gathered. It was also the site where the League aided tenants in a rent strike. Negotiations over the conflict made their way to the regional and then the national housing offices in 1942.279 With the help of Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) representative John Thornton, the

Poindexter residents’ committee and the Vanguard League succeeded in rolling back the large and sudden rent increases via picketing and a dramatic march on city hall.280

“Poindexter Village Tenants Plan March on City Hall in Columbus Rent Battle,” blasted a Cleveland Call & Post headline from 1942.281 In a sense, without the activism of the tenants as aided by these nearby organizations, Columbus’ public housing would have excluded even greater numbers of poor and working-class members of the Near East

Side.

Another way residents strengthened their community was through participating in resident councils, which were promoted by the housing authority. Residents in housing projects across the United States made use of housing facilities and formed tenant

278 The Vanguard League Papers, 1941-1972, MIC 87, The Ohio History Connection. 279 “Vanguards Deny Part in Picketing of Urban League,” CCP, September 12, 1942, pp. 4; “Probe Seen In Poindexter Rent Fight,” CCP, September 19, 1942, pp 13; “Ohio’s Defense Housing Projects Must Admit Negroes,” CCP, October 3, 1942, pp. 1. 280 “Columbus, O., Tenants Defy Eviction in Rent Battle,” CCP, October 10, 1942, pp. 13 – 14 . 281 “Poindexter Village Tenants Plan March on City Hall in Columbus Rent Battle,” CCP, August 29, 1942, pp. 17. 128 organizations among themselves.282 Residents at Poindexter Village formed councils as well. As a long-time CMHA manager of the Village, Roland Stepney remembers fondly:

They had a strong residents’ council . . . I always stay good friends with

them. I’ll make sure of it I stayed on the good side of them. I would go to

him on a day-to-day basis and ask him, “Do you have any complaints.”

With some in the other communities, some of the residents’ council and

the CMHA staff on site was having conflict, and they were fighting each

other and they didn’t have the close connection. I learned long time ago,

being from West Virginia, it is better as friend than as an enemy,

especially, seniors. A senior citizen, you want to keep them in your corner.

You want to keep them on your side.283

Although the majority of this chapter has focused on the low-rise units built in 1941, senior citizen residents organized within Poindexter Tower, too, which was constructed in 1960. Tower residents would act as door monitors as part of a resident council. They made visitors sign in as they entered.284

282 For example, see Williams, The Politics of Public Housing: Black Women’s Struggles Against Urban Inequality; Howard, More than Shelter. 283 Roland Stepney interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 284 Ibid. Photograph, “Mrs. Crump and Mrs. Price, Human Interest,” ca. 1970s, CMHA Files. Moreover, public housing communities across Columbus—not just at Poindexter—appear to have formed similar groups. CMHA played a crucial role in encouraging their formation. For the Lincoln Park Homes, a public housing project for white tenants only, the manager, S.E. Dolle, wrote to all the women in Lincoln Park to inquire about forming a resident group. “To the Women of Lincoln Park Homes: Would you like to meet with other women in the Lincoln Park Homes to consider forming some sort of organization? Such an organization could consider only the welfare of the small children on the playground or could have wider implications such as general tenant and management problems. If you are interested, will you come to the Administration Building, Thursday Evening, July 16th at 8 P.M.” Shortly thereafter, women of Lincoln Park took up the charge. Three days after the meeting, the Columbus Dispatch reported that “some of the mothers are going to try to pool their work on solving some of their difficulties caring for the children, and are forming a Mother’s Club.” Women quickly elected leaders for their organization. General organization for childcare wasn’t their only concern. They devoted their first meeting to cover first aid, with meetings 129

In a similar fashion, residents valued the architectural scale and design of their new home. That is, Poindexter’s residents helped take care of the residences. Daniel

Sturkey recalls using push-mowers that the CMHA managers kept on the property. He might make a couple dollars that way, he says. He also remembers that grass would grow in the cracks between the bricks on their patio space in front of their unit. While “we weren’t land owners and we knew that,” still:

My mother used to go out there with a butter knife and dig that weed off

from between the bricks. And she wasn’t the only one. Everybody do that

because you wanted yours to look good, and we had a corner apartment, I

had a yard. Everyone didn’t have, everybody had a backyard too, but I

have a front yard, too. And we have a little tree in it. My mother took a

very, took a lot of pride in having that, so her grass is kept clean, there was

no in trash in the yard. . . . There was a sense of ownership.285

Like Sturkey’s mother, residents generally made great use of the opportunities the location of the public housing offered.286

held every Thursday thereafter. S.E. Dolle, CMHA Manager of Lincoln Park Homes, in letter to “Women of Lincoln Park Homes,” July 14, 1942, CMHA Files; “Uncle Sam Is One Landlord Who Doesn’t Object to Children in His Apartments,” Columbus Dispatch, June 19, 1942, CMHA Files; “New Group,” undated newspaper clipping, CHMA Files. 285 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 286 Several residents at Poindexter and in Chicago remembered helping repair the buildings they used. Dorothy Sing, of Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens notes that that community “was like one big family . . . . Everybody in Altgeld Gardens knew everyone. Vandalism was zero out there. If you broke a swing in the playground, your family paid for it. So you know what happened? We didn’t break the swing. We played with the swing and we went home.” She adds that this extended to the residential units themselves, just like at Poindexter: “If something went wrong—if the knob came off your door and needed to be replaced—you were charged for that.” Her husband, Erman, concludes, “Everybody took care of their apartments, and all of the apartments looked very good.” Dorothy and Erman Sing in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 76–77. 130

Julie Whitney Scott remembers her father showing her how to repair a window that she had broken while playing in their residential unit. Revealing that Poindexter, like developments across the nation, served working-class and not poor tenants, he went and got the glass to replace it, and they installed it together.287 Likewise, Sturkey says that short of major issues like plumbing or electrical problems, “other [than] that we took care of yours, you didn’t expect anything from [management].”288Marilyn Kendrick describes a community, which not only made great use of existing facilities, but which improved upon them:

It was a wonderful place because we had new housing and they took very

good care of Poindexter Village. The managers over Poindexter . . . were

wonderful people. They were strict. They wanted to show how they would

like that Village to be maintained, and we maintained them. They used to

have contest[s] for flowers and everything, so we were all talking about

planting flowers around the front porches and in that low space that we

had to plant flowers in, and everybody did that. It was a nice place.289

Her memories match photographs of early CMHA housing projects and site plans, which captured flower-filled gardens as well as extensive landscaping. Through these actions residents represented the best of America’s communitarian tradition.290

287 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 288 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 289 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 290 As opposed to the individualistic Lockean tradition. See, Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era, 2; John F. Bauman, “Introduction,” Bauman, Biles, and Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 1–4. 131

CMHA planners had made sure that public housing construction was placed nearby other vital public institutions, and it became clear that residents valued their location. “This summer,” the Columbus Dispatch reported on another of the first developments constructed shortly after Poindexter, “they [the children] are allowed to fish in the pond on Thursdays and Saturdays. When September comes, the walk to school is just to the end of the park, to Lincoln Park School, newest elementary school in the public school system.”291 Poindexter’s model was similar: an elementary, middle school, and high school were all within easy walking distance of the project. Public housing facilities hosted a diverse set of community-related events and activities. Daniel Sturkey remarks how he and the other children spent “at least five days a week over” at Beatty

Recreation Center, which sat next to the Village. He also recalls that almost every kid living “in Poindexter went to the same neighborhood school. So from kindergarten until we graduated from East High School, most of us, we had been together.”292 Julie Scott became pregnant during her sophomore year in high school, but the principal made sure that she was not kicked out and made to go to night school. She graduated that grade, returned the next fall, and eventually graduated near the top of her class.293

Leslie Bridges notes that the recreation center offered a lot of activities for the children such as sewing, wood working, cooking, and, while “they had art class . . . the dramatic class was best.” Oretha Edwards adds that there was a high degree of resident participation in these activities and classes. Kids also took part in basketball teams, for

291 “Uncle Sam Is One Landlord Who Doesn’t Object to Children in His Apartments,” Columbus Dispatch, June 19, 1942, CMHA Files. 292 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 293 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 132 both the girls and boys.294 Sturkey notes that, as kids, they “probably spent 98 percent of our time outdoors year round. . . . We went outside year round.” The housing project planners had chosen well in creating ample green space with grass and a playground area, since he also recalls playing football with other children in the area in these open spaces.295 The plan for proximity to local educational facilities—which also reified segregation—succeeded as children grew up together, until the 1979 Penick decision instituted busing.296

Reinforcing Common Bonds and Mutuality

The shared pride of place and the common values residents shared for their housing development created or fostered common bonds. A sense of mutuality spread among the community, and it rested both on the shared racial identity of the community as well as the fact that the project served as an anchor institution for the Near East Side neighborhood. Even before the arrival of Poindexter Village, the area sat at as a paradox of urban space. Racially and economically segregated from other parts of the city, blacks were increasingly isolated in the area. And yet conversely, this very segregation also fostered some level of autonomy and pride in the community. In the words of former resident Baba Shongo Obadina, Poindexter acted as a “stepping stone” into a better life.297 Mary Jane Patton-Day, resident of Poindexter in the 1950s, remarks that it was her

294 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 295 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 296 Columbus Bd. of Educ. v. Penick, 443 U.S. 449 (1979). For more on the history of Penick, see Gregory S. Jacobs, Getting Around Brown: Desegregation, Development, and the Columbus Public Schools (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998). 297 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 133 favorite place that she lived.298 In their recollections of the development as a positive place, residents cited shared experiences as African-Americans, including a shared pride in and respect for their collective identity.

That “stepping stone” was a common bond for Daniel Sturkey and Aminah

Robinson as well. Both credited their home for their later success. Sturkey, who grew up in Poindexter in the 1960s and 1970s, has worked for years as a licensed social worker, giving back and serving his city and community. He summarizes his thoughts this way:

A lot of good people grew up in those projects and will only do good

things because of that community. Some left, some are still around, a lot

are still around but I’m sure, I’m a hundred percent sure, where I am today

is because I got to grow up in a community. I could’ve been a lot worse.299

Aminah Robinson, MacArthur Fellowship-winning artist, is Poindexter’s most celebrated former resident. Her artwork celebrates the vibrant African-American community both experienced and researched.

Racial segregation certainly cuts both ways. But there is little doubt that a black space offered a supportive environment. In the history of education, contemporary

African-American social critics, such as Zora Neal Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois, noted the benefits of segregated schools to black pupils—in a nation dominated by hostile white supremacy.300 Another example is the wonderful musical education black students received in public schools run by black teachers in Detroit.301

298 Mary Jane Patton-Day interviewed by Is Said, Transcript, November 8, 2010, In author’s possession. 299 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 300 W.E.B. Du Bois was perhaps the most well-known social critic who highlighted the positives of black children being taught black teachers. He asked and answered, “Are these separate schools and institutions 134

Likewise, Sturkey, who learned music at the predominately black schools near

Poindexter, went on to play saxophone in the community marching band and even in college.302 And Shongo Obadina’s experience in Columbus mirrors those histories. He attended a high school in Worthington, a suburb to the north of Columbus. But he felt that he was not respected. He received that respect at the predominately black East High

School, just blocks from Poindexter Village. “They have to at least respect one another,” he says. “If one don’t respect the other then, he doesn’t have anything.”303

Sturkey also remarks that he did not have a white teacher until junior high school,

“and I can remember every one of my elementary school teachers.” He remembers nurturing, strong, women who taught him throughout his earliest schooling years. One teacher stands out in his memories: Carline Hill, “Miss Hill.” She drove him to and from school when he had a broken leg, because his family did not own a car. “That’s community,” he affirms fondly. He continues that these individuals lived in the community as well. “I could go to Carl Brown’s [grocery store], went to Carl Brown’s to get a loaf of bread and a quart of milk for my mother and run into Miss Hill there. It was

needed? And the answer, to my mind, is perfectly clear. They are needed just so far as they are necessary for the proper education of the Negro race. The proper education of any people includes sympathetic touch between teacher and pupil; knowledge on the part of the teacher, not simply of the individual taught, but of his surroundings and background, and the history of his class and group . . . .” W.E.B. Du Bois, “Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?,” The Journal of Negro Education 4, no. 3 (1935): 328–35; For one example of Hurston’s reaction to the implied slight that Brown v. Board paid to blacks, see Zora Neale Hurston, “Court Order Can’t Make Races Mix,” Teachers’ Domain, 1955. 301 Gerald Lyn Early, One Nation Under a Groove: Motown and American Culture (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco Press, 1995), 75–78. 302 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 303 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy; Likewise, Edgar Johnson, who grew up in Chicago’s Ida B. Wells Homes in Chicago during the 1940s, shrewdly remarks, “I’m old enough to remember seeing ads in the ‘world’s greatest newspapers,’ the Tribune, that said, ‘Only white need apply.’” His housing community offered an oasis from such injustices. Edgar Johnson in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 81. 135 that kind of, they lived in the community. So, you saw them all the time, and yes, she drove me back and forth to school every day now, oh my God! You wouldn’t . . . No teacher would touch that” today. Echoing the sentiments of Du Bois and Hurston,

Sturkey concludes on the topic, with significant pauses as he thinks through his carefully- worded answer: “It was that kind of nurturing that made you want to go to school. It made you . . . that was where . . . it was a good place to be. . . . Even if a delinquent could show it up, the little bad asses, there wasn’t that many of them, but they still came. They would still come because there was something there.”304

Residents referenced several instances where their black identity defined their community experience. Julie Whitney Scott, who lived in the Village for part of her childhood and in the greater neighborhood growing up, recalls that her father “would have been considered a militant.” She describes him as being involved with civil rights activism. “And my father had a lot of pride and he was not going to be called nigger,” she said. “And he was not going to have somebody tell him boy.” He was engaged politically,

Scott notes, but he also made his children listen to jazz.305 Steven Grier echoes such sentiments, noting that even though they were segregated from downtown, he found nearby locations to learn and exhibit his musical skills near the housing project.306

Calvin Hairston recalls the complicated realities of urban segregation for his lived experience in Columbus. Poindexter offered much needed institutional and neighborhood

304 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 305 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 306 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti; Housing projects in other cities produced similar outcomes. John Wilson, who grew up in the Ida B. Wells Homes in 1940s Chicago, argues, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a black person wanting to live in a black community because they feel more secure” (emphasis added). John Wilson in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 83. 136 support, despite the fact that it was a racially segregated community. Commenting on life in the 1970s, he says:

Because the whole East Side is predominantly black. . . . It was a

community of [and] to itself, because historically there were certain places

black folks couldn’t go. The freeway had isolated you. You couldn’t really

go downtown. You couldn’t go Far East. Britney Road was restricted

because Britney Road was considered white. It really was restricted as far

as where you could go. But really, there was no need to go anywhere

because everything you needed was right here in the community. And then

you had the doctors, the lawyers, the professional people, so everything

that you needed was on the Near East Side of Columbus.

Hairston remembers specific and harsh lines of racial demarcation—“certain places black folks couldn’t go” because they were not “considered white.” Hairston simultaneously reveals the double-sided nature of segregation, however, when he aligns this period with positive features of mutuality. “Everything you needed was right here in the community,” he recalls.307

Even as a child, Daniel Sturkey recognized, too, that he lived in a “different world” compared to more affluent, white areas. His mother—born in Georgia, a migrant from the South who married a Columbus construction worker—worked in Bexley as a maid for a white family. He occasionally visited the area and the family with his mother.

But he recognized the complexities of his lived experience as he looked back:

307 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 137

I kind of grew up, I ran around [in Bexley] before I went to pre-school.

She took me to work with her every day. So I grew up around this one

neighborhood in Bexley, too. So I was kind of two worlds, let me say, it’s

coming from Poindexter and one is out of Bexley, so there’s two different

worlds because you didn’t see any of those people. By those people, I

mean white people. That didn’t happen over here, so it’s two whole

different worlds for me—being around to play with kids in Bexley, then

coming back to play with [black] kids in Poindexter.308

Sturkey affirmed he was well-aware of the “two worlds” even as a young child:

Oh yeah, and older adults would remind you, too. There were things you

did and didn’t do in Bexley, and now it’s funny to me, I can drive down

Bexley. I think it’s great to drive down Broad Street or Main Street inside

of Bexley . . . kids out playing, pushing strollers, joggers, and back then

you didn’t see that. You didn’t do that, you didn’t. If you didn’t live in

Bexley, you just don’t go hang out over there.309

From his experience in the late-1960s as a young black boy in the prosperous, white

Bexley suburb, Sturkey notes, “I think over time, the neighbors, I would say even maybe some police out there, somebody, they knew who I was. I didn’t see . . . there were no other black children out there.”310 From a young age Sturkey recognized the racial boundaries of areas where blacks and whites lived—and worked. For Sturkey this was

308 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 309 Ibid. 310 Ibid. 138 intensely personal. His mother worked for the white family he socialized with, and in the process, they simultaneously blurred and sharpened the lines of segregation.311

But always at the heart of the Near East Side sat Poindexter Village, which in some way or another tied residents and the neighborhood together. After moving out of the project—when his parents got better-paying jobs—Steven Grier remembers staying in touch with all his friends in the Village, in part because he still lived nearby.312 Daniel

Sturkey remembers how he belonged to a Cub Scout troop that operated out of Union

Grove Baptist Church, which sat at the center of the housing project. He says that

“parents always wanted to do something positive with the community. They want their kids to be involved in something. And that’s . . . [how] I came to be in [the] church because we met at the church, did everything at the church.” In fact, the “church was always open, too. They didn’t lock doors. I can walk in Union Grove anytime I wanted to as a kid, it was always open.”313 Oretha Edwards, who lived in Poindexter Village for over fifty years, recalls that she and a few other residents took area kids camping. In fact, so accomplished was she at telling her ghost stories that they would pull pranks on her afterward. She also appreciates the general location of the project. “I like Poindexter because it was centrally located,” she remembers.314 Julie Scott also remembers visiting

311 For Edgar Johnson of Chicago, a similar sense of community seems to have stretched into his adult life: “I prefer living in an all-black neighborhood. There is a constant quality that exists among black folk, in spite of all the negativity that modern-day life brings. . . . But I feel a warmness in spite of that in the black community. I get up in the morning, go to get my newspaper—I see black faces and we exchange greetings. There’s just a sense of, I guess you have to call it, ‘community.’” Edgar Johnson in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 82. 312 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 313 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 314 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 139 the countryside with her family.315 Families in Poindexter were far from being isolated completely.

Calvin Hairston positions Poindexter Village as a crucial anchor institution for the black community on the east side of the city. He did not, himself, grow up in the housing project, although he did live in publicly-subsidized housing elsewhere in the city. He did have family and friends he often visited at the Village. It was, even in the 1970s and

1980s, “the premier place to be”:

Everybody in Columbus knew about Poindexter Village but I knew my

cousin lived out and she was -- she’d been there for about 40 years. Ever

since I can remember, she lived in Poindexter because Poindexter was like

the premier place to be back in the day. . . . Everybody on the East Side

wanted to move in to Poindexter. It was never like how people view it

now as public housing or projects.316

Calvin Hairston went on to recall how “everything was centered around Poindexter. . . .

Everything was right there. But Poindexter Village was the centerpiece of all the Near

East Side.”317 Similarly, Julie Whitney Scott recalls “we didn’t call it Poindexter, we called it ‘the Village.’”318 Marilyn Kendrick notes that kids from all the surrounding schools would go to the Village for dances: “It was Friday night. It was dance night,” she

315 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 316 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 317 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 318 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 140 says.319 Residents patronized nearby businesses, which in turn reinforced neighborhood common bonds.

A Sense of Safety

Shared values and common bonds of mutuality translated into recollections of safety in the public housing community. “Actually,” former Poindexter resident Leslie

Bridges remembers, “all the parents looked out for the kids. . . . [And] we would sleep with our doors open.”320 Daniel Sturkey echoes Bridge’s thoughts. When asked about the

“community atmosphere” of Poindexter Village as a place, he recalls, “Yeah, we got a lot of, other kids’ uncles, aunts, and cousins, whatever. So, I always have no fear.” And he, too, slept in safety: “I used to sleep in the summer in front of the front door,” because there was “no air-condition.”321 Another resident, Steven Grier, remembers folks leaving doors unlocked, so that a “neighbor was as responsible for their neighbor’s kids and this type of thing. We trusted one another.”322 Marilyn Kendrick, growing up prior to Grier’s time, recalls sleeping with only screen doors closed so that a cool breeze might lessen the brutality of pre-air conditioned summers.323 Similarly, in Chicago’s Altgeld Gardens,

Dorothy Sing says of her 1960s experience, “There wasn’t a lot of crime. I don’t think I remember having a key to our apartment as a teenager. You just went out and closed the door!”324 Given the job discrimination and lower pay that African Americans faced in

319 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 320 Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 321 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 322 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 323 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 324 Dorothy Sing in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 76. 141

Columbus, as in cities across the US, this sort of communal reliance and closeness developed partly out of economic necessity.325

Residents evinced mixed reactions when asked about police relations, although, as

Leslie Bridges wryly pointed out with some laughter, “It depends on who you are.” But she continued: “I didn’t have a bad relationship with them, because I understand their responsibility, you know, that is their duty because if you are a thug, you don’t like them.

They were there because if something would happen they will jump on the spot.” She notes that the police were quick in responding to issues.

Oretha Edwards recalls that CMHA security officers also conducted themselves well. And the police knew the parents and seemed to know the children, which, as residents recall, may have helped them keep order in the area.326 Daniel Sturkey recalled a complicated narrative when asked about the police. He remembers playing “cops and robbers” as a kid, and “cops chase the robbers, when the cops caught the robbers, he can beat your ass. Because that’s what cops do, I mean that’s what we thought. That’s what they did and they still do.” Knowing this, parents taught their children about the danger they might encounter with the police: “And you were taught as a child by your parents and your elders, that was the fact of life. Not so much to say, ‘those guys are bad’ . . . . It was a survival thing for you, so you didn’t . . . do stuff to bring them into your world.”327

325 Fritz Umbach and Alexander Gerould note that “most police departments simply did not keep separate blotters for public housing,” and Columbus seems to be among them. Moreover, they write, “As late as 1998, federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) researcher Harold Holzman was able to observe matter-of-factly that “valid statistics on the level of crime in public housing do not exist.” ”Fritz Umbach and Alexander Gerould, “Myth #3: Public Housing Breeds Crime,” in Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy, 66. 326 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 327 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 142

Recollections of safety may have only applied to those fortunate to be insiders to the Poindexter community. The reality on the ground was more complex than popular news stories reported. Cynthia Mastin grew up on the Near East Side but who only lived in the Village from 1999 until the demolition. When asked if Poindexter felt safe, she first replied simply: “To me it did.” But she then recalled:

There was a kid out there, and he dealt drugs. And sometimes he would

come by and check on me. There were several of them boys that did. And

they would check on me. And so one day he came and asked me, “Ms.

Cindy, would you—I’ll pay you if you’re going to take me some place he

wanted to go.” . . . It was a Chinese place up on Hudson. So I said,

“Okay.” I said, “You’re going to buy me something to eat.” He said, “Yes

ma’am.” So I took him. So we were talking, and I was telling him, I said,

“You know I went to the store one night, just before the store closed at

midnight, and there were about three or four guys out there standing

blocking the sidewalks, and I just walked through.” I said, “Excuse me

gentlemen,” and they stepped aside. And I said, “My son had called me.” .

. . He said, “Mommy, don’t you be out there. Now you can’t be out there.”

So I was telling this boy [that], and he told me, he said, “Ms. Cindy, tell

your son to rest easy, because you’ve got a ghetto pass.” He said, “Hey,

nobody is going to fool with you out there.” He said, “You rest easy . . .

everybody else, they’re not scared of you, but they respect you.” . . . He

said, “Ain’t nobody going to mess with you.” [Then] I got sick. I have

143

sciatica. And for a year . . . I couldn’t go out the house. And they didn’t

see me going to the store. And so . . . so they would come and they’d

knock on the door, “Ms. Cindy, you’re okay in there?” And you got your

pie, you got your cigarettes, and they would bring it to me, you know? . . .

And they looked out for me. They looked out for me.328

Mastin’s memory certainly complicates images of public housing residents, including drug dealers. Nonetheless, as a longtime, older resident of Poindexter, she attained an insider status that protected her.

Insider Status

Former residents made repeated delineations about what defined a member of the local community. Segregation certainly made black residents outsiders in other areas of

Columbus. And the public housing development’s design helped demarcate boundaries, which in turn helped demarcate insider status. Baba Shongo Obadina appraises the development in a positive, though not nostalgic light. He grew up in the garden-style apartments of the early generation of public housing. When asked if the construction of

Poindexter Village addressed the symptoms or root causes of poverty, he replied that “it did both. It gave a certain group of people a decent living, a decent place to live where they can raise their families. They were dealing with the cause of poverty, so that was good.” Shongo Obadina admits that the development could only aid “a certain group of people,” although he also believes that it addressed poverty directly for that group.329

328 Cynthia Mastin interview by Cristina Benedetti. 329 Chief Shongo Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 144

But for that group the benefits were truly significant. Building upon shared experience, community members looked out for one another. Daniel Sturkey recalls how his new bicycle was stolen when he went inside Carl Brown’s grocery: “And I remember being heart broken but . . . my mother couldn’t afford to get me a new one. I came off from school one day, and I had a new bike. And this lady, older lady across, she was 70 if she was a day, they lived across from us, they decided they feel I’m trustworthy,” and it was she who replaced his bike.

And I spent that whole day riding around that big square where the field is

and there’s a sidewalk all the way around. I spent that whole day riding

that, learning to ride that bike. Busting my ass all day and by the end of

the day by the time the sun went down, my knees were scarred up my

elbows and I could ride that bike. But everybody saw that, everyone saw

me out there busting my ass so, she, I think she just felt badly for me and

she bought me another bike.330

Sturkey still appreciated that act of kindness from his childhood community. And while he regretted not being able to recall her name in his memory, he presented her act as representative of Poindexter Village.

For Calvin Hairston, his close connections to acquaintances in Poindexter defined his insider status. He did not grow up in Poindexter, but knew family and friends there whom he visited often. In his interview, he recalls why he visited his people so often:

“It’s family. It’s history. When I go see my grandmother from Johnson [Street, just north

330 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 145 of Poindexter], I would just make the rounds, you know these are families, so you just check on them, and see how they’re doing.”331 He continued saying, “Poindexter was a courtyard. The buildings were [arranged around a] courtyard. You could actually go visit them, and everybody [would] sit outside because the way that [was]. . . . That’s what it’s like when you went to visit there. Everybody, you sit, eat, mingle, Friday night, everybody out and about. It was never that shooting, killing, crime, violence, no, no.”332

Hairston continues to identify strongly with the Village today. It inspired his activist work to preserve the development’s history.

For Sturkey, it was significant that he and his neighbors grew up in public—as opposed to so-called private—housing. This may have led residents to identify with their fellow neighbors, especially when placed in relation to other communities. Sturkey recalls visiting the predominately white city of Bexley that sits adjacent to the Near East

Side. Of his visits there, he recalls:

I was never afraid of my life or anything, no one’s going to hurt me but

there were certain things, you have people, property owners and stuff.

Folks over here [on the Near East Side] weren’t property owners. That’s a

different mentality, so you think about cutting into someone’s yard or just

walking up to a door or picking up something on someone’s driveway [in

Bexley], you didn’t do that, that’s personal property. So growing up on

Poindexter, it was more of communion type feelings, so you didn’t feel

that. So you have to know the rules when you went over to a private

331 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 332 Ibid. 146

property [area like Bexley]. So yeah, it was a little different, two different

worlds.333

In contrast to communities made up of private residences, public housing did not nurture a sense of private property ownership. Poindexter Village, a publicly-owned and operated housing project, did not foster the type of “mentality” that Sturkey hints at here—one where personal property is paramount. In turn, however, it instead fostered “more of communion type feelings” among the black residents.

Former residents repeatedly shared a sense that they belonged to an identifiable place, one which collectively patronized similar businesses and services in a self- reinforcing process of community building. Julie Scott’s memories connect how the community of Poindexter Village extended outward into the surrounding area, given the vibrancy of the black space of Mount Vernon Avenue and East Long Street:

And if you needed something, you just knock on the door, somebody's

door. I need some butter, I need some sugar, I'm trying to fix this corn

bread, and I need an egg. It was everybody helped out. In the summer,

people will be outside in their stoops, enjoying the times. It will be some

music might be playing over here, some music over there. And then you

had everything was going on Mount Vernon. We had everything.

Anything you needed, all you got to do was just going to Mount Vernon

Avenue and get it. I mean you need your haircut. You need fresh fruit.

You need shoes. You need clothes. There was a movie theater over there.

333 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 147

There was jazz over here, music over there. Anything you needed all you

got to do was just go out on Mount Vernon and everything was right there.

You didn't even have to really go out your neighborhood.

Asked if she felt that Poindexter was cut off from the surrounding area, Scott offers,

No, because we were from Long Street . . . that you just had everything

and people. . . . You know, Franklin Park was right there. So everything

you needed was in this area. You get [the] park over here, if you needed it.

You just had everything. . . . East High School was there. . . . Everything

was so accessible.334

Marilyn Kendrick notes that Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue held a number of theaters and eateries where she worked and also socialized with the neighborhood when she grew up in the community in the 1940s and 1950s.335 And Cynthia Mastin remarks that even in later years when she lived there after 1999, “You didn’t have to go out of the area to do anything, to get anything.”336

The Decline and Nostalgic Recollections

This chapter might be read as an overly positive presentation of public housing’s history. For many former residents, theirs is an uplifting narrative of success in the face of harsh odds. These were the types of memories that interviewees were most eager to communicate. This is perhaps understandable as all of the former residents interviewed were African American and they were speaking to a white interviewer. And yet, some

334 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 335 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 336 Cynthia Mastin interview by Cristina Benedetti. 148 memories appear to be colored by nostalgia for days long past. Poindexter Village, like so many housing projects across the nation, fell into decline. The reasons are difficult to determine. Resident recollections of the causes for decline are at times vague or overly broad, which is understandable. Columbus residents echoed the feeling of some tenants of Chicago’s public housing: that welfare-dependent families and individuals were to blame for changes for the worse. A few former residents in Columbus highlighted young single women with children.337 In the case of Poindexter Village, it did not decline until after the 1970s when the surrounding neighborhood fell victim to drugs, rising segregation, and poverty.338

Still, for several decades after it opened, the development served as a shining beacon in a neighborhood that fell under severe economic distress. President Jimmy

Carter visited the “99 percent black Mt. Vernon Ave. area” to dedicate the Mt. Vernon

Plaza in September 1978. He joined the Mayor Jerry Hammond who acted as a supporter and delegate for Carter in the 1976 election. The Plaza contained 150 townhouses, a thirteen-story tower for senior citizens, and a thirty-store shopping center strip mall.339

The project was part of a larger effort—worth some two billion dollars in total—to revitalize the center of the city through several large construction projects. Originally, proposed in the late 1950s by the Mt. Vernon Avenue District Improvement Association, and then twice more in the 1960s, the federally-funded renewal project served what

Amos H. Lynch and Associates called a “near-downtown area long ago tainted as

337 Erman Sing in Fuerst and Hunt, When Public Housing Was Paradise, 78. 338 Yonah Freemark, “Myth #5: Public Housing Ended in Failure during the 1970s,” in Public Housing Myths: Perception, Reality, and Social Policy. 339 John B. Combs, “Carter Sets Precedent,” CCP, September 23, 1978, pp. 14A. 149

‘blighted’ and for many, many years completely ignored by ‘civic leaders.’”340 The Plaza project attempted to forestall notes of decline already well under way in the area.

Earlier urban redevelopment projects had already scarred the Near East Side.

Demolition to make way for the nearby Fort Hayes Interchange removed roughly 1000 units of housing on the west side of the area in the late 1950s.341 This project split East

Long Street and Mount Vernon Avenue, cutting off the area from easy access to downtown and Columbus State Community College in the future.342

A second phase reshaped the area, too. The city cleared—and then abandoned for seven years—a large tract of land just north of where Mt. Vernon Plaza would later be built. Eventually this urban renewal project, just south of interstate 670, contained the

Sawyer Towers public housing, known originally as Bolivar Arms public housing.343 The nationally-known urban renewal consultancy firm Harland Bartholomew and Associates had declared the area as containing “probably the worst housing in the city.” The firm then proposed that the whole area be converted to an industrial development, with little word on where the displaced persons would then live.344

Still, the area became increasingly isolated as the state planned and constructed the interstate highway system in the late 1950s and 1960s. Planners gave little thought to the impact the highway would have. A Columbus, Ohio, engineer recalled, “We were

340 Amos H. Lynch and Associates, “A Case for Mt. Vernon Plaza,” Prepared for the Model Cities Neighborhood Development Corporation, Columbus, Ohio (Columbus, Ohio, December 1974), 1. 341 Today, this interchange is the crossroad of the I-71 and I-670 interstates. 342 “Fort Hayes interchange construction,” Columbus Citizen-Journal, n.d. 343 Amos H. Lynch and Associates, “A Case for Mt. Vernon Plaza,” 2–3. 344 Harland Bartholomew and Associates, “A Report Upon Housing: Columbus Urban Area,” Prepared for the City Planning Commission and Franklin County Regional Planning commission, (October, 1955), pp. 25-26, 34. 150 only concerned about helping traffic, getting traffic on the highways to get to Columbus from Cleveland a lot quicker. We didn’t even consider what would be happening around these interchanges. . . . Out in the field we didn’t have much of a feel for that.”345 Most likely speaking of this Near East Side area, another Columbus engineer recalled that “we married highway money and urban renewal money and wiped out . . . the worst slum in the state of Ohio.”346 Although developers sought to recall “displaced businesses” to the

Plaza area, it remains unclear if they were successful.347 The highway solidified racial isolation and created a starker physical divide across the city that persists into the twenty- first century.

Residents recall a sinister motive behind this construction, and it is easy to see why. Calvin Hairston, for instance, makes just this very point:

The freeway in ‘70, when they put the freeway and it isolated, it cut all of

the whole East Side from all other parts of the city. It was almost like a

plan to kill the community. The way they set it up, the freeway, it just cut

the community off from its lifetime from the other side of the city. . . .

They knew that the freeway [would] kill the whole East Side. It was also

almost like it was intentional, the way they designed it. You couldn’t come

in to the East Side. You couldn’t leave the East Side, and it’s same like

even today, the way they design[ed] the freeway.

345 As quoted in Mark H Rose and Bruce Edsall Seely, “Getting the Interstate System Built: Road Engineers and the Implementation of Public Policy, 1955-1985,” Journal of Policy History. 2, no. 1 (1990): 31. 346 As quoted in ibid., 37. 347 Neighborhood Development Corporation, “Mt. Vernon Plaza Update,” Vol. 1, No. 1, February 1976, pp. 2, in From Out of the Past . . . Mt. Vernon Plaza . . . A Brilliant New Future, Columbus Metropolitan Public Library. 151

And urban planners, he argues, have yet to learn from past mistakes—or to rectify them:

They’re not benefiting from the mistakes that they made back in the ‘70s.

Because what they did in the 70s when they—the idea, what is called,

eminent domain. They took people’s property when the freeway came in. .

. . It chop[ped] the community off, and from ‘70, ‘80, and ‘90, you could

see the community slowly dying because there was no people coming in.

People would leave at five o’clock, but they wouldn’t come back into the

community maybe until during the day then they left but there was no life

blood. The freeway cut that off.348

Steven Grier also mentions similar forces at work: “They put the freeway [in and], everything was cut off. That is how the clubs died, and it was just like I look back at that, and look back at the good times I had growing up there, all that activities, all that entertainment, all that, just like a giant vacuum, it was all gone.”349

Recollections like those above reflect the reality since businesses across the city continued to relocate out into surrounding suburbia where the majority of middle and upper-class whites moved to in the postwar years. Believing it was publicizing the city’s strong economic position, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce mapped out Franklin

County’s “industrial, research, and office park developments” in 1974. A vast majority

348 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 349 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 152 sat outside the inner ring of the urban center. Indeed, only one business center—out of sixty total—was located near the inner-city.350

Figure 20 Produced by the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, circa 1974. This map visualized the strategic placement of industrial parks (squares); office parks (cirlces); and future planned sites (triangles). All of the planned sites lie well outside central Columbus. Only one location sits within the urban core.

350 Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce, “Columbus: Headquarters City,” (Columbus, Ohio: 1974?), 9- 10, 15,The OHS. The Chamber also mapped out the city’s parks which mirrored the placement of the business centers in Map 1. 153

Changes to tenant selection policies as well as the preference for constructing high-rise towers further limited public housing’s ability to appeal and serve large populations. Bolivar Arms was CMHA’s sixth public housing project, built nearby to

Poindexter Village. The agency, however, seems not to have gleaned any lessons from its earlier successes. Residents quickly complained to the authority because it had not planned any recreational facilities for children or adults.351 Poindexter Village—a garden- style development with court yards, attractive landscaped open spaces, and a nearby recreational facility—epitomized the opposite to the Bolivar Arms high-rises. In places like Chicago, which embraced the high-rise style, the chair of the Chicago Housing

Authority argued its housing acted as “little more than warehouses for the poor.”352

America’s general derision toward public housing for the poor and working class has deep roots, so that “by the end of the 1960s, the goal of creating community rarely figured in policy discussions about low-income housing.”353 Ultimately, public housing across the United States came to be associated with the phrase “warehousing the poor.”354

While it stood against such simple stereotyping, Poindexter Village fell victim to broader these urban changes.

Residents tended to primarily blame two factors when asked if and when

Poindexter Village fell into decline. Several residents raised a very complicated issue: the breakdown of familial structure and respect. Single mothers dependent on welfare—and

351 Rhodes, “A Study of Tenants of Public Low-Rent Housing and Their Degree of Alienation and Isolation from Community Life,” 3. 352 William E. Schmidt, “Public Housing: For Workers or the Needy?: Debate on Public Housing: Should It Serve Working People, or the Needy?” The New York Times, April 17, 1990, pp. A1. 353 Roger Biles, “Public Housing and the Postwar Urban Renaissance,” in Bauman, Biles, and Szylvian, From Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 144; Vale, From the Puritans to the Projects. 354 Fleming, City of Rhetoric, Chapter 6. 154 the sometimes present, sometimes absent fathers—receive much of the blame here.

Former residents argued that a generational change took place—that today’s youth do not respect the family as an institution, nor do they respect their elders. One long-time resident remembers that young mothers began showing up more frequently in the mid-to- late 1990s.355 Residents, however, were just as likely to blame the housing authority for admitting unworthy individuals into the community. Long-time resident Oretha Edwards recalls that she was allowed to rent in Poindexter only when she was twenty-one years- old. She believes that the CMHA began allowing younger teenagers to live in the community, perhaps lowering the age to eighteen years-old sometime in the 1980s or

1990s.356

Drugs are the other major factor that former residents speak of when asked about the housing project’s decline. Leslie Bridges recalls that crack cocaine struck Poindexter

Village in the 1990s. Groups outside of Columbus brought drugs into the Village which in turn brought with it “a lot of shooting.” Bridges also notes that around the same time when crime became a major issue the CMHA management could not maintain the property like it used to. Even with such problems, she questions if Poindexter, as a public housing project, actually declined more than the surrounding area. She notes that neither hers nor her mother’s units were burglarized during their many years there. But after moving out, her car was broken into on the third day.357 Hairston said, “Crime got out of hand. Dope got out of hand, so the perception of public housing got . . . bad.” He

355 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 356 Ibid. 357 Ibid. 155 continues, “The whole Near East Side changed. It was not just Poindexter. Everything was changing.”358

Most of the residents interviewed recalled the late 1980s and even early 1990s as the turning point when Poindexter Village fell into decline. Baba Shongo Obadina, who had lived in the housing community during its most vibrant years and then went on to live on the Columbus Near East Side and who also had close family still living in Poindexter, recalls that “dope” infiltrated the community in the 1990s. From his viewpoint, he believes that the CMHA managers could have done a better job of resident selection.359

The relative lack of housing authority records makes it unclear at best what selection criteria it did utilize and whether it kept up the same level of scrutiny from earlier decades. Moreover, blaming individual morality alone has little explanatory power in the face of systemic social phenomenon.

Despite such challenges, the sense of community did not crumble entirely, however. Cynthia Mastin, who moved into Poindexter in 1999 and was one of the residents who relocated after the CMHA announced the demolition of Poindexter, recalls some positive memories of the place as has been illustrated above. But having received her Section Eight voucher from the housing authority, she moved well away from the

Near East Side community she had come to know. She notes that the people there are fine—“they’re congenial.” But, she remarks, it isn’t like it was “in the village.”360

358 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 359 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 360 Cynthia Mastin interview by Cristina Benedetti. 156

Conclusion

For the first several decades, between the 1940s and the 1970s, tenants identified several recurring themes of community life. They made Columbus’ first and all-black public housing development into an identifiable place that shared common values and bonds, including a sense of safety and a knowledge of what it meant to be hold insider status. So powerful were these ties that when asked if she and her mother chose to stay,

Leslie Bridges replied, “Oh yes, she could have. I could have. . . . You know for us, I guess we were just comfortable.”361 For Calvin Hairston who had family and friends at the project, the history and pride of the place remained paramount:

Because it was the first housing and that was state of the art, nice. It had

plumbing. It had kitchen, bathroom and heat, I mean you know. At the

time, the Near East Side of Columbus didn’t have the amenities that were

at Poindexter, because it was state of the art. Poindexter Village was the

envy at the East Side. . . . Yeah. Poindexter Village was the centerpiece of

all the whole East Side. Everybody knew about it.362

And Steven Grier fondly remembers how the area fostered his love and talent for music, specifically, how “everything we needed was right here, in this area, in this community. .

. . [O]ne reason I was influenced in my early years was the music, because there was a club on every corner. It was like 52nd Street in New York. I was never without a place to showcase my skill.”363 There is little doubt that these positive community ties,

361 Oretha Edwards and Leslie Bridges interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 362 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 363 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 157 intertwined as they were with one another and a certain sense of nostalgia, provided a strong platform from which to challenge the development’s demolition.

158

Chapter 4: Demolishing or Preserving Poindexter Village: Urban Planning, the 106 Review Process, and the Very Real Politics of Public History

The genesis of much of the neighborhood opposition comes from the cavalier way in which historic Poindexter Village is proposed for mass demolition. While developers and investors have proposed purchase and rehab of some or all of Poindexter Village, CMHA has not committed to any preservation, and seems determined to demolish the entire property. - Coalition for Responsible and Sustainable Development on the Near East Side364

Poindexter Village is as important to me as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris. - Reita Smith, local historian and former Poindexter Village resident365

The troubles besetting public housing have seeped into American popular culture.

Season three of David Simon’s critically-acclaimed television series The Wire opens with a telling conversation between Bodie and Poot, two established African-American characters. Both characters grew up in Baltimore’s public housing and for them, it represents different if not necessarily competing themes. The City of Baltimore is about to demolish a high-rise, which the mayor casts as a den of crime and inequity. At the

364 Steve Palm-Houser, “Coalition Asks City Council to Support Neighborhood Input to Poindexter Village,” Examiner.com, May 14, 2013, http://www.examiner.com/article/coalition-asks-city-council-to- support-neighborhood-input-to-poindexter-village. 365 “Poindexter Village Was Once a Godsend.” 159 ground level, however, Bodie and Poot hash out the important themes between themselves as they walk to view the demolition:

Poot: “I dunno man. I’m kinda sad. Them towers be home to me.”

Bodie: “You gonna cry over a housing project now? . . . Man, they

shoulda blew them motherfuckers up a long time ago, you ask me.”

Poot: “Some shit happened up in them towers that still make me smile,

yo.”

Bodie: “You all talking about steel and concrete man, steel and fucking

concrete.”

Poot: “No, man, I’m talking about people. Memories and shit.”

Bodie: “That ain’t the same. Look, they gonna tear this building down,

and they gonna build some new shit. But people? They don’t give a fuck

about people.”366

Their back-and-forth cuts to the heart of the tension between public history—both how the average individual on the street thinks about the past and how historians seek to engage the broader public—and public housing policy across the United States.

Poindexter Village embodied similar issues. Four days before Christmas in 2012, the bulldozers roared and began moving in. But they moved too soon. Former residents, concerned about the history of their former home, objected. Baba Shongo Obadina, a leader in the group protesting the unilateral redevelopment of the public housing community, helped halt the demolition order. He appealed to Randy Black, the city’s

366 The full text of this conversation has been selected for concision and meaning. David Simon, The Wire (HBO Video, 2002), Season 3, Episode 1. 160 chief historic preservation officer and the person overseeing the federally-mandated historic review of the property. Black ordered Bryan Brown of Columbus Metropolitan

Housing Authority (CMHA) to cease the demolition but not before several windows had been torn out and other physical features were damaged. In an opinion piece written about the conflict, Shongo Obadina argued, “What you are seeing here is no less than cultural genocide. CMHA is are [sic] wiping out the most historically and culturally significant history of Black Columbus. You wouldn’t bulldoze German Village, but somehow they feel it is appropriate to bulldoze Poindexter Village.”367 Former residents and concerned citizens—though none matched Obadina’s inflammatory rhetoric— similarly objected both to the immediate demolition plans as well as the unilateral process that led to the “redevelopment” of an institution that had come to mean much more to the black Near East Side than it currently did to urban planners or urban elites.368

Although the first generations of Poindexter Village residents found modern housing and fostered a strong sense of community, the city was not prepared to support increased public housing. Instead of welcoming new construction, some residents pushed back against project proposals, which in turn influenced not only federal funds but mayoral politics. Moreover, existing developments faced a city that experienced problems all too familiar to postwar urban America including increased racial isolation and crime. It was within this context that the housing authority declined internally.

367 Baba Shongo Obadina, “CMHA Tries to Erase Black History: Poindexter Village History Advisory Group Cries ‘Foul,’” The Columbus Freepress, December 24, 2012, http://freepress.org/departments/display/18/2012/4860; Randy Black interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, October 3, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 368 As in previous chapters, the “Near East Side” is used to denote a neighborhood area known over time as Bronzeville and the King-Linocln District. “Officials Debate How to Mark Poindexter Village,” Columbus Dispatch, June 4, 2012. 161

At the core of the dispute were radically different conceptions of what amounts to legitimate and worthwhile history. This chapter argues that local community stakeholders in Columbus rallied around public history and preservation specifically, as a partially effective tool to challenge powerful municipal redevelopment interests. In doing so, they not only helped save two original Poindexter structures; they also sparked interest in the place’s history and the history of black Columbus, which led not only to additional historical research but also a year-long museum exhibit that will largely be funded by the local housing authority.

In May of 2008, the local housing authority in Columbus submitted its “request to demolition/dispose of [sic] 1276 [public housing] units on 76.91 acres” across the city, including the Poindexter Village housing project.369 Soon after, the demolition plans were made public for the first time.370 The size of this urban planning operation suggested something much larger than the demolition of buildings, which CMHA repeatedly claimed were derelict and too small for modern purposes. Moreover, CMHA did not believe that the amount of funding it received from the federal government was sufficient to maintain its properties.371

It soon became apparent to community stakeholders and historical preservations alike, however, that CMHA held very little interest in the history or public memory of

Poindexter Village. The Authority viewed its latest redevelopment plans as part of a

369 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Portal.HUD.gov, Archived Data, http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=archived-lotusdata.xls, accessed July 26, 2015. Document also in possession of author. 370 Rita Price, “Public Housing Might be Halved,” Columbus Dispatch, May 12, 2008. 371 Qian Ma, “A Study of the Energy Efficiency Improvement of Public Housing in Columbus, OH” (Master’s Thesis, The Ohio State University, 2010), 14. 162 continuous narrative of progress—just as New Deal public housing in the 1930s improved upon that era’s housing, so too would this new mixed-income development.

Importantly, HUD already approved the demolition—counting some 1700 units, or about half of CMHA’s total—by early 2009, well before any federally-mandated historic review was conducted.372

Urban redevelopment of public housing accelerated with the passage of Hope VI legislation, also known as the Urban Revitalization Demonstration, in 1992-1993. It sought to devolve public housing decision-making to the local level in the forty most- populous US cities and other particularly troubled local housing authorities. Partnerships with the private sector were encouraged, and it placed high-rise towers predominately in its crosshairs, although garden-style projects were also torn down.373 Capturing the view of the political establishment, the Brookings Institution’s assessment was clear in its 2009 report, From Despair to Hope: HOPE VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in

America’s Cities.374 Urban redeveloping interests—from businesses to government agencies—tend to share this outlook. The demolition of Poindexter Village was not a

Hope VI project, but is nonetheless receiving a large portion of its funding and inspiration from the federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) agency’s Choice

Neighborhood Initiative Grant program. Both Hope VI and the Choice Neighborhood

372 Rita Price, “CMHA Selling Off Hundreds of Apartments,” Columbus Dispatch, April 10, 2009. 373 Abt Associates Inc. et al., “An Historical and Baseline Assessment of HOPE VI, Volume I, Prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and Office of Policy Development and Research,” July 1996, http://www.huduser.org/Publications/pdf/hopevi_vol1.pdf; “About HOPE VI - Public and Indian Housing - HUD,” accessed July 10, 2015, http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/hope6/abo ut#4. 374 Henry Cisneros and Lora Engdahl, From Despair to Hope: HOPE VI and the New Promise of Public Housing in America’s Cities (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009). 163 programs are close cousins in an era that has vilified all sixty-plus years of public housing and instead championed “affordable housing” in its place.

City revitalization programs have increasingly become the center of conflicts over history and the meaning of urban spaces and places. Historians have worked hard to reframe the history of public housing. They have highlighted, as earlier chapters explored, the importance of the residents themselves, the design of the site plan, the architecture, and more.375 But historians have not yet adequately examined the tensions inherent to the preservation of and, to a lesser extent, the erasure of public housing as linked to multi-million-dollar urban redevelopment projects. In Columbus, as in locales and communities across the United States such places are clearly valued by some constituencies. And they are imbued with meaning, memory, and history.

In his conclusion to Giving Preservation a History, Ned Kaufman highlights how

“people of all kinds, in places all across America, are deeply troubled by the loss of places they love: lost of character, access, enjoyment, historical memory. . . . Many worry also about the loss of cultural identity associated with them.” He continues by building upon the language of place, which Dolores Hayden made so popular: “When people speak in this new language, they are able to take in” all sorts of locations, “but it expresses how human communities experience places, and how they feel about them.” He

375 An edited volume captures many of these inclinations as “myths” of public housing that the public ostensibly accepts. Bloom, Umbach, and Vale, Public Housing Myths; And as modern social science exposes, debates surrounding the positive or negative traits of public housing reform persist, whether inspired by HOPE VI or New Urbanism. Robert J. Chaskin and Mark L. Joseph, “Contested Space Design Principles and Regulatory Regimes in Mixed-Income Communities in Chicago,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 660, no. 1 (July 1, 2015): 136–54. 164 urges preservationists to adopt this expansive conception.376 In Beyond Preservation:

Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities, Andrew Hurley cautions against primarily emphasizing “the economic potential of aging buildings and landmarks than on their ability to foster a shared sense of belonging.”377 And although, as David Hamer points out, freezing—and limiting—a historic district in time runs against the unstoppable force of historical change and urban diversity, urban planners will create urban conflict if they do not better engage with people’s connections to place.378

In Columbus, heritage, memory, history, and planning were set on such a collision course. Several plans and commitments were made public in a short span of time after the

2008 announcement. CMHA entered into plans to redevelop Poindexter Village as part of a new partnership with Ohio State University and the city, both of which revealed new interest in the area. The three entities formed the core of Partners Achieving Community

Transformation, or PACT, officially in 2011. The housing authority received $30 million from HUD for the immediate area on which Poindexter Village sat, and with chance to leverage this amount for over $200 million in the next five-to-seven years.379 Meanwhile,

OSU announced that it would commit $10 million dollars over ten years to revitalize the area immediately surrounding OSU Hospital East adjacent to the city’s first public

376 Ned Kaufman, “Moving Forward: Futures for a Preservation Movement,” in Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2004), 314–315; Quillin, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. 377 Andrew Hurley, Beyond Preservation: Using Public History to Revitalize Inner Cities (Temple University Press, 2010), 19. 378 David Allan Hamer, History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1998), 95. 379 Housing and Urban Development, Grant Summary, “Fiscal Year 2013 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grants: Columbus, Ohio”; Penney Letrud, administrative assistant with PACT, Correspondence with the author, August 8, 2014. 165 housing property.380 On top of this, the city committed $40 million to the area and revitalization program.381 The original drafts of overarching PACT plans for the Near

East Side, published in 2013, did not include any historic preservation and mentioned the

“history and culture” of the neighborhood only once.382

Challenges to Columbus’ Public Housing in the 1950s and 1980s

Initially, after the opening of its first developments, demand for public housing in

Columbus continued into the 1950s. The Columbus Dispatch reported that “Low-Rent

Projects Have Waiting List of Needy Families.” In 1953, CMHA counted more than 2600 families on its waiting list. This was expected to swell, however, when over 5000 individuals were soon displaced by the Goodale area urban renewal project. In response, the city and the housing authority planned to build at least 2200 new units, with the first

524 units located at Woodland and Woodward Avenues.383 But while some members of the Columbus community continued to express support for public housing, others pushed back.384

Neighborhood groups worked against public housing in the 1950s. Residents near a newly-proposed project at Woodland and Woodward Avenues formed the St. Mary’s

Addition Property Owners’ Association (SMAPO) in response to new plans. They collected more than the necessary 4000 petition signatures to force a ballot referendum over the placement of the project. The petition challenged the city council’s vote to zone

380 PACT, “Columbus Near East Side: Blueprint for Community Investment,” 2013, http://eastpact.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/04/130305_DraftReport-Version2-LO.pdf. 381 “HUD’s $30 Million Grant Will Help Revitalize Near East Side," Columbus Dispatch, June 30, 2014. 382 PACT, “Columbus Near East Side: Blueprint for Community Investment.” 383 “Housing Demand Plentiful,” Columbus Dispatch, January 20, 1953, CMHA Files. 384 E.C. Harriman, “Public Housing Is Explained,” Columbus Dispatch, January 19, 1953, CMHA Files; “Robert E. Johnson, “Says Housing Project Needed,” Columbus Dispatch, February 2, 1953, CMHA Files. 166 forty-four areas for the new construction. In so doing, the group placed the 6.5 million dollars of federal funds for the city in jeopardy.385

Members of SMAPO believed that the public housing project, to be built on land that was previously zoned for industrial, not residential use, would damage their property values. The Columbus Dispatch noted that the forty-four acre piece of land “has suddenly become the most important—and controversial—real estate in the city,” despite that only

“a few shacks, two houses, and grass and weeds” occupied the spot. A week after the organization had claimed some 4000 signatures, the group garnered a total of more than

8000 signatures against the project. SMAPO’s president, Paul R. Lindimore, even claimed that only three people asked had refused to sign the petition. But the opposition was easily as much an ideological political issue as it was about real property values. The already-existing industrial zoning of the area meant that warehouses, trailer camps, car barns, bus-repair garages, and many other types of development could be built on the land.386 Ultimately, the group successfully derailed the public housing project since the petition and subsequent ballot measure undercut the millions in federal dollars devoted to the project. Even the smallest delay of 48 hours was enough to make the federal Housing

Administration funnel the money elsewhere.387

Opposition grew and reflected a trend toward rejecting public housing as a worthwhile institution. While the federal government backtracked, saying funds could be made available once again in the future, the public housing measure became the issue on

385 Gene Jordan, “Lawyer Says Petition to Force Vote,” Columbus Dispatch, January 16, 1953, CMHA Files. 386 “Tract is Hot Issue: Citizens Fight Plan For Housing Project,” Columbus Dispatch, January 23, 1953, CMHA Files. 387 “Housing Project Collapses,” Columbus Dispatch, February 1, 1953, CMHA Files. 167 the upcoming mayoral election set for August 11. None of the three mayoral candidates came out in support of public housing.388 Meanwhile, the St. Mary’s group held a well- attended mass meeting at Shepard Methodist Church to denounce the public housing plans. The opposition was soon joined by the Taxpayers Defense Committee, formed to fight along with SMAPO.389 Protestors couched their fears in the language of real estate values.390 Such fears persist today, although social science has debunked the assumption that public housing automatically lowers real estate property values.391

In later decades, problems arose within the administration of CMHA. The

Inspector General of HUD investigated the local housing authority in December of 1985, at the same time that HUD’s Columbus office conducted its own review of all operations.

The Inspector found “ineffective management over vacancies . . . excessive delays in eviction process . . . [and] improvement needed in maintenance program.”392 Importantly, the 1986 follow-up by a HUD task force found problems went back even further: “Many findings cited in the Columbus Field Office’s review of February 15, 1980, continue to be

388 Gene Jordan, “Public Housing Question May Spark City Primary,” Columbus Dispatch, July 6, 1953, CMHA Files. 389 “St. Mary’s Group Maps Housing Fight,” Columbus Dispatch, July 12, 1953, CMHA Files. 390 “Both Sides Back Stand On East Side Housing Project,” Columbus Dispatch, July 24, 1953, CMHA Files. The protest by the St. Mary’s organization threatened to derail the overall urban renewal plans the city hoped to begin, not just public housing construction. These included the construction of the interstate highway system, which necessitated more “slum clearance” zones. That, in turn, meant displaced persons, of whom at least 20 percent of would easily qualify for public housing. City planners knew that if they could not point to housing where displaced people could be moved, the urban renewal plans would be placed in jeopardy. “Tract is Hot Issue: Citizens Fight Plan For Housing Project,” Columbus Dispatch, January 23, 1953, CMHA Files. 391 A.M. Santiago, G.C. Galster, and P. Tatian, “Assessing the Property Value Impacts of the Dispersed Housing Subsidy Program in Denver,” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 20, no. 1 (2001); M.T. Nguyen, “Does Affordable Housing Detrimentally Affect Property Values?,” Journal of Planning Literature 20, no. 1 (2005): 15–26; Tighe, “Public Opinion and Affordable Housing.” 392 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “CMHA Task Force Report,” A Comprehensive Monitoring Review Report of Operations at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority (Columbus, OH, November 25, 1985), CMHA Files. 168 unresolved.” Unit vacancies still sat 7 percent, or “almost two and one-half times the 3 percent acceptable level.” Other issues included: “maintenance is not being accomplished in a timely manner”; “the Housing Authority is not following their [sic] own procedures”;

“the Authority is not aggressively pursuing evictions where warranted”; concerns over the elevator systems; issues with the waiting list; and, quite bluntly, “project management is a serious concern.”393 The task force laid the blame squarely on the shoulders of

CMHA management. The report summarized ten serious issues in all. Undoubtedly, these bureaucratic scandals hindered the organization’s ability to properly manage either the image or the day-to-day operations of their projects. That these issues arose in the late-

1970s and early-1980s correlates with the recollections of former Poindexter Village residents.394

Indeed, the lack of proper management in almost every conceivable manner may have helped necessitate increased security at a number of the public housing projects. In

1978, some sixteen guards began patrolling CMHA’s housing.395 Although they were

“trained patrol officers,” as the newspaper put it, and carried firearms, they were not an extension of the city’s police force as other cities had.396 Increased security could hardly cover the long-term managerial problems that plagued CMHA during the 1970s and

1980s, however.

Stephen J. Bollinger replaced Patrick J. Feeney in December 1976. Feeney had overseen the institution for an unhappy ten years: he “was asked to resign or be fired” for

393 Ibid. 394 See Chapter 3, “Making the Community of Poindexter Village.” 395 Because of the lack of CMHA records, it remains unclear if this was the first time that guards patrolled the housing authority’s property. 396 Stephen Berry, “16 Guards Begin Duties at CMHA Housing Sites,” March 20, 1978, CMHA Files. 169 his work. As part of the reshuffling, the CMHA board of commissioners fired 70 maintenance workers who had gone on strike. Bollinger arrived on the scene of an embattled local housing authority. “The visible signs of decay . . . the physical deterioration is obvious at Sawyer [Manor housing project that included two high-rises] .

. . . CMHA has been going downhill,” remarked William M. Potter, the executive director of the city’s Neighborhood Development Corporation.397 Although Bollinger worked to turn the struggling housing authority around, he only lasted three years.

It was not enough time to change things. HUD’s mid-1980s assessments echoed the problems of the 1970s. Bollinger had begun his tenure by giving his brother a high- ranking job at the housing authority, which led to the initial HUD probe of 1978.

Bollinger was commended for his efforts in 1981 nonetheless: he was named the assistant secretary for community planning and development at HUD under President Ronald

Reagan’s administration.398 By the end of the 1980s, management troubles still dogged the Columbus authority. One newspaper headline read: “CMHA, Police Check Alleged

Kickback Scheme to Rent Public Housing to Unqualified People: Sharon Watkins,

CMHA Section 8 Coordinator Fired.”399

Despite such internal strife, CMHA made some attempts to refurbish Poindexter

Village. In 1986, several changes were made to the thirty-five housing structures, likely

397 Michael Curtin, “U.S. Attorney Probes Composition of Housing Authority Staff, Board,” Columbus Dispatch, May 21, 1978, pp. 1, Newspaper Clippings File, CMHA Files. 398 “Columbus Man Sworn In For HUD Position,” Columbus Dispatch, June 5, 1981; Lee Stratton, “Bollinger To Find New Job Can Lead to Program Pleas,” Columbus Dispatch, June 28, 1981. 399 “CMHA, Police Check Alleged Kickback Scheme to Rent Public Housing to Unqualified People: Sharon Watkins, CMHA Section 8 Coordinator Fired,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 1990, pp. 7C. 170 with federal funds that Bollinger had requested.400 The original gutters, porch roofs, and downspouts had been crafted of handsome copper, which paired well aesthetically with the dark-red brick. The CMHA replaced much of the copper, however, with aluminum in

1986. In later decades, while the housing authority also added gabled roofs to all parts of all the housing structures that year, they replaced the attractive slate roofs with asphalt shingles, too.401 None of these changes would have added to the aesthetic value of the property. In fact, the changes threatened the future status of the project as a historical place eligible for listing on the National Register.

Columbus did not experience the urban crisis as its rustbelt brethren did. But larger forces, beyond the control certainly of Poindexter’s residents, beyond the control of the Near East Side community, and beyond the control of CMHA’s declining management, brought serious changes to the urban landscape. The Near East Side found itself more racially isolated between 1940 and 1990 (figure 1 below).402 Population density also shows a troubled area, with people initially drawn to neighborhood into the

1960s but then in decline afterward (figure 2 below).403 Vacant housing also increased between 1950 and 1990 (figure 3 below).404 The neighborhood also contained a higher concentration of families living below the poverty line. Between 1970 and 1990, poverty

400 Michael Curtin, “U.S. Attorney Probes Composition of Housing Authority Staff, Board,” Columbus Dispatch, May 21, 1978; Lee Stratton, “Bollinger To Find New Job Can Lead to Program Pleas,” Columbus Dispatch, June 28, 1981. 401 Charissa W. Durst and Benjamin M. Riggle, “Documentation Packet for Poindexter Village: City of Columbus, Franklin Township, Franklin, Franklin County, Ohio” (Hardlines Design Company, Columbus, OH, November 1, 2013), 6. 402 U.S. Census Bureau. Race: Black, 1940-1990. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed February 23, 2016). 403 U.S. Census Bureau. Population Density, 1940-1990. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed February 23, 2016). 404 U.S. Census Bureau. Race: Vacant Housing Units, 1950, 1970, 1990. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed February 23, 2016). 171 rates were also on the rise. In the neighborhood surrounding Poindexter Village, one in four residents already earned income below the poverty line in 1969. By 1989, it had risen to every other person.405 These rates compared unfavorably to state-wide averages.

In the 1970 census, Ohio families living below the poverty line rested at 7.61 percent, and

9.74 percent in 1990.406

405 U.S. Census Bureau. Income Below Poverty Level, 1970 and 1990. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed February 23, 2016). 406 U.S. Census Bureau. Families Below Poverty Level, 1970 and 1990. Prepared by Social Explorer. (Last accessed February 23, 2016). 172

Figure 21 Percent black by census tract, 1940 - 1990. Data and maps from Social Explorer.

173

Figure 22 Population density per square mile. Data and map from Social Explorer.

174

Figure 23 Vacant housing units. Data and maps from Social Explorer.

175

Scholars have noted how public housing became embroiled in bad press, which cast public housing as an urban menace that bred crime and dysfunction.407 The

American public increasingly associated public housing with crime during the 1970s and later decades. A 1978 HUD report highlighted crime as a serious, rising issue in relation to public housing. Fears about crime were on the rise in housing projects like it was across the country in the 1970s.408 A whopping 40 percent of public housing residents nationally reported it as “‘very dangerous’ to be alone in their own apartments at night.”409 “In sum,” the report concluded, “residents are fearful of carrying out a wide variety of activities that are common, everyday occurrences for most Americans.”410 The news media, however, also stressed the crime in and around public housing projects— whether or not it was actually higher than the rest of the city or the surrounding area.

Even a quick survey of Columbus newspaper headlines from the 1980s and 1990s reveals a rising concern: “The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority Will Receive a

$1.02 Mil Federal Grant to Fight Crime at Windsor Terrace, Sawyer Manor, Sawyer

Towers and Trevitt Heights” (1979); “CMHA Residents Meet To Complain About

Crime: Police Urged To Respond Quicker, Arrest Dealers” (1989); “Cols Public

Housing's ‘Crime Buster’ Gary McCants is Going After Drug Dealers” (1989); “A Grant

407 Bloom, Umbach, and Vale, Public Housing Myths. 408 Fritz Umbach and Alexander Gerould note that “most police departments simply did not keep separate blotters for public housing,” and Columbus seems to be among them. Moreover, they write, “As late as 1998, federal Housing and Urban Development (HUD) researcher Harold Holzman was able to observe matter-of-factly that “valid statistics on the level of crime in public housing do not exist.” With the paucity of records in the CMHA files, we cannot know the level of crime in the Poindexter Village development.” Umbach and Gerould, “Myth #3: Public Housing Breeds Crime,” in Public Housing Myths, 66. 409 W. Victor Rouse and Herb Rubenstein, “Crime in Public Housing: A Review of Major Issues and Selected Crime Reduction Strategies,” Prepared for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Washington, D.C.: American Institute for Research, December 1978), 3. 410 Ibid., 4. 176

By HUD to the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority Provides 2,000 Residents of

Public Housing on the Near East Side with Access to Anti-Drug Programs” (1995); “In

Columbus, 20 of the 26 Low-Income Housing Developments Plan Special Events, Like the March Against Crime, for the Nationally Organized Night Out Campaign to Fight

Crime” (1995); “Tenants and Legal Team to Work Together as Representatives of Broad

Street Management and Residents of Old Towne East Express Concern Over Crime in the Area” (1997).411 Coverage such as these articles, and many more like them, could only freeze public housing in time, reporting the negative stories as if they had always been occurring.

Former residents and community members recall that Poindexter fell victim to encroaching crime, particularly the ravages of the illicit drug trade. Most often, residents noted a marked decline in the 1980s and 1990s. Several recollections, however remain fuzzy. Calvin Hairston recalled what these negative aspects looked like. Officials, he said:

weren’t screening. They weren’t screening. They weren’t doing what they

normally [did], 30 or 40 years ago. . . Anybody that lived in public

411 “The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority Will Receive a $1.02 Mil Federal Grant to Fight Crime at Windsor Terrace, Sawyer Manor, Sawyer Towers and Trevitt Heights,” Columbus Dispatch, August 2, 1979, pp. 10B; “CMHA Residents Meet To Complain About Crime: Police Urged To Respond Quicker, Arrest Dealers,” Columbus Dispatch, June 20, 1989, pp. 2C; “Cols Public Housing's ‘Crime Buster’ Gary McCants is Going After Drug Dealers,” Columbus Dispatch, June 26, 1989, pp. 1D; “Repeat Crimes Frustrate Public Housing Residents: Resident of Sawyer Manor Tells of Living in Daily Fear,” Columbus Dispatch, July 19, 1989, pp. 6F; Felix Hoover, “A Grant By HUD to the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority Provides 2,000 Residents of Public Housing on the Near East Side with Access to Anti-Drug Programs,” Columbus Dispatch, July 28, 1995, pp. 2B; Alice Thomas, “In Columbus, 20 of the 26 Low- Income Housing Developments Plan Special Events, Like the March Against Crime, for the Nationally Organized Night Out Campaign to Fight Crime,” Columbus Dispatch, July 31, 1995, pp. 3C; Dean Narciso, “Tenants and Legal Team to Work Together as Representatives of Broad Street Management and Residents of Old Towne East Express Concern Over Crime in the Area,” Columbus Dispatch, August 13, 1997, pp. 6B; 177

housing worked, it wasn’t like [it is today]. The guidelines had changed,

the way they run it changed. So public housing got a bad reputation in the

eyes of the general public. It was mainly because it was the way they were

running the facilities just got out of hand and totally out of—crime got out

of hand, dope got out of hand.

This, in turn, shaped the public perception of public housing and Poindexter Village.

When asked about this, Hairston replies “the opinion in the eyes of the public was public housing was a nuisance, was a problem [that] anybody that lived in public housing was a problem.”412

By the 2000s, CMHA officials did not hold a positive view of Poindexter either.

Officials overseeing the PACT revitalization process usually cited Poindexter’s small room size as well as general deterioration as the core reasons for demolition, all which made CMHA conclude that renovation was prohibitively expensive. But HUD inspections show a more mixed picture. In 2009, only after the demolition announcement did Poindexter’s HUD physical inspection scores begin to dip just below 60 into a “poor” rating (anything between 60 and 89 is considered “good,” with 90 and above equaling

“excellent”). Moreover, many of CMHA’s other properties have recently scored similarly or worse.413 Prior to 2009, Poindexter’s units received mixed reviews ranging from above

90 (or “excellent”) as recently as 2002 (that is, only six years previous) to scores of 48 and 30 in 2007 and 2008 respectively. The scores vary so wildly, in fact—suspiciously

412 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 413 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Public Housing Inspection Scores 2011,” http://www.huduser.org/portal/datasets/pis/public_housing_physical_inspection_scores_2011.xls, accessed July 26, 2015. 178 nose-diving just when CMHA planned to announce Poindexter’s demolition—that they become useless as objective measures. Ultimately, Poindexter hardly fared any worse than other housing projects during those earlier years as well.414

In the aftermath of the 2008 announcement, however, CMHA faced backlash from former residents of the Village and some community stakeholders. And to back up its position in the face of protests, CMHA reached out to engineers and architects to assess Poindexter Village only after it had already submitted its plans for the demolition to HUD. Three years after. Both contracted professionals, perhaps unsurprisingly, found the structures wanting. The language used in each memo from the summer of 2011 is strikingly similar, leaving no room for doubt that the engineer and architect agreed fully with CMHA’s assessment of the aged property. Both assessments were documented three years after the demolition plans were made public and amidst the protests against

Poindexter’s redevelopment. Some of the issues cited were entirely legitimate (a complete lack of disability accessibility for instance). Others were astoundingly subjective (the “inappropriate and inadequate building design,” for instance).415 In the end, parallels to negative national attitudes toward public housing could be found in

Columbus even among the institution charged with managing it—all that in spite of the city’s relatively stable economic climate.416 News coverage in the midst of the urban revitalization controversy continued trends from the 1980s and 1990s. It highlighted

414 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Public Housing Property Physical Inspection Data,” http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=DOC_4416.pdf, accessed July 26, 2015. 415 George D. Berardi to Bryan Brown, “Poindexter Village--Columbus,” CMHA Architect Memo, (August 1, 2011), -–, PACT Files; Larry Brehm to Bryan Brown, “Poindexter Village--Columbus,” CMHA Engineering Memo, (August 1, 2011), PACT Files. 416 Especially when compared to rustbelt cities in geographic proximity. 179

Poindexter Village as “a haven for crime” and a boarded-up “eyesore.”417 The redevelopment was planned, but residents would have their say first.

Residents Taking Charge of Their History Through Public History Activism

In opposition to the planned demolition of Poindexter, residents both current and former described an affordable place of dignity. The “Blackberry Patch” is the historic label almost always referenced along with any discussion of Poindexter. The prejudicial attitudes of whites and subpar housing conditions defined the space on the Near East Side roughly from 1900 to the 1930s, but these were not the only factors. Though urban planners at the local and federal level classified this neighborhood as a “slum,” strong memories remain despite the multiple physical demolitions and redevelopments of the area. These memories recall a community which endured and struggled and which black residents made a home. Struggle, particularly collective struggle, seems to forge the strongest of collective memories.

The memories of the Blackberry Patch reflect this phenomenon. While the occasional individual is cited as contributing to the neighborhood’s cultural and social life, remembering life before Poindexter seems to always circle back to a group struggle.

This process of memory continues to shape urban space on the Near East Side. It illustrates a primary way that African Americans formed a strong community identity.

This layer of remembering recalls vibrant past lives that live on today in the folklore, fiction, and art of the black individuals who called Poindexter Village home. The Near

East Side community remembered and celebrated Poindexter as place where history and

417 “Residents Fight to Restore Historic Poindexter Village,” NBC4 Columbus, May 15, 2013, online. 180 the present swirl together, living but passing before the eyes of the participants. Thus, the actions of community stakeholders have worked to ensure that the memory of Poindexter

Village lives on through structural preservation and a museum exhibit.

This memory has remained so strong because similar memories are held collectively across Columbus’ black community. They are embodied in the exceptional work of Aminah Robinson. It is fitting that she was born in 1940, the year Poindexter opened, since she, more than anyone else, has popularized the community spirit embodied in the place’s memory. She lived there until she was seventeen, and

Her art is grounded in her memories of growing up there and in the stories

she lovingly recorded from her Uncle Alvin Zimmerman . . . . His stories

included those about growing up in the Blackberry Patch, the area that was

razed to make way for Poindexter Village, as well as those handed down

to him about the farmlands that existed even before the Blackberry Patch.

Aminah believes these old neighborhoods are hallowed by the presence of

the ancestors and that the transmission of the stories to future generations

through her work is a sacred obligation.418

Figures from her early childhood and from the stories told to her can be found throughout

Robinson’s artwork depicting Poindexter Village. These include Iceman, Chickenfoot

Woman, BreadMan, Scissor Grinding Man, Butcher Man, and Ragman, all “who peddled

418 Carole Miller Genshaft, “Symphonic Poem: A Case Study in Museum Education” (The Ohio State University, 2007), 58–59; Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson and Carole Miller Genshaft, Symphonic Poem: The Art of Aminah Brenda Lynn Robinson (Columbus, Ohio: Columbus Museum of Art in association with Harry N. Abrams, 2002), 113–117. 181 their wares [and services] on the street.”419 But it is important to remember that Robinson left Poindexter Village. However much the place influenced her life’s work and worldview, and however much it may have served as a stable base for her later success, her memories are primarily based upon the development’s earliest years and, indeed, folklore of times before the Village.

Robinson created a series of paintings depicting a vibrant community life in the

Blackberry Patch and Poindexter Village. They showed a bright, vibrant space busy with people, shops, and activity. One work celebrates Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 visit.420 And another, a “Halloween Block Party” at Beatty Recreation Center and the Village in

1950.421 Her “Memory Map” from 1992 features a cacophony of people and places in the

Near East Side. Several of the “Memory Map” pages feature lively street scenes, packed with shops, markets, peddlers, and activity.422 The cloth painting “Poindexter Village—

First Families in 1940” captures the nearby schoolyard, children playing in between units where vehicular traffic could not travel, Union Grove Church, a mother cradling a child.

The work is subtitled “Near East Side of Columbus, Ohio,” and presents an area teeming with life and people.423 Her artwork embodies how Columbus’ black community remembers Poindexter Village and the surrounding area. Featured in public spaces such as the main branch of the Metropolitan Public Library, her art also bridges the era

419 Genshaft, “Symphonic Poem,” 62. 420 “Plate 38: President Roosevelt in Poindexter Village, Columbus Day, October 12, 1940” Robinson and Genshaft, Symphonic Poem. 421 Aminah Robinson, “Beatty Community Center - Halloween Block Party, Oct. 31st 1950,” cloth painting, 1997. 422 Genshaft, “Symphonic Poem,” 62. 423 “Plate 37: Poindexter Village--First Families in 1940” (1995) Robinson and Genshaft, Symphonic Poem, 110. 182 between the housing projects decline in the 1990s and the years following the revitalization plans.

In the spirit of Robinson (who was often interviewed about Poindexter Village since it featured so prominently in her work), community stakeholders also organized a history festival in the fall of 2010 centered on the housing development and its people. As part of the festival, community members collected and recorded oral histories. A group of university students known as Columbus Housing Justice assisted in organizing the event.

Laura Tompkins helped lead this effort and recalls, “From an organizing standpoint, I realized at that event, like that huge constituency for this place is former residents who lived there, and [they] knew it, many of them when they were younger, to be a really great, beneficial site.”424 An “Oral History Circle” collected videos of former residents and people who knew former residents, helping to preserve personal histories that may have likely been lost otherwise.425 Tompkins concludes how “history became a sort of unifying theme” among the festival goers and community members who reacted against the announced demolition.426

For community members and outsiders interested in helping organize against the redevelopment project, Poindexter Village represented something much more than one specific housing project. Once again, they reveal how the housing community that took root there grew as an interconnected part of the surrounding area. Reflecting on the history festival, Tompkins says, “during the history festival and after the history festival .

424 Laura Tompkins interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, June 19, 2015, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 425 Oral History Circle Recording, Video, October 9, 2010, Author’s Possession. 426 Laura Tompkins interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy. 183

. . people were coming out to tell those stories . . . . [A]nd I think the nostalgia and the investment in that place is also connected to the nostalgia and investment that people have about the Near East Side in general and the strength of the black community at that time [in the past].”427 And Reita Smith, a local historian and former resident of

Poindexter who joined in efforts to preserve the threatened structures, supported this view. During a meeting with representatives of the Columbus History Connection

(formerly Society), she was asked why the newly renovated and revived Lincoln Theater

(on East Long Street) did not represent or capture the history she was advocating on behalf of. She answered that Poindexter represents a connected history to the Lincoln

Theater—both capture aspects of the black experience. But she continued that Poindexter better encapsulates the greater Near East Side neighborhood, including that of the working-class history embodied there.428 Outsiders joined with community members in any case to draw attention to the conflict and to actively protest the demolition. This included picketing in front of CMHA headquarters, going door-to-door to organize resistance, drawing media attention, recording video testimony and sending it to the

Columbus City Council, and publicizing their work on the internet.429 Out of the festival, community members continued to meet and eventually formed the Coalition for

427 Ibid. 428 Meeting attended by the author. See also, Patrick Potyondy to Deidre Hamlar, Memo, “Reporting insights from meeting with Ohio History Connection staff: Discussion of MOA, CMHA, and preservation of two buildings,” August 7, 2014. Copy in possession of the author. 429 Laura Tompkins interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy; Mark Ferenchik, “Voices Raised against Planned Razing of Poindexter Village,” Columbus Dispatch, April 27, 2013; Shongo Obadina, “CMHA Tries to Erase Black History”; NBC4i Columbus, “Community Members Oppose Demolition Of Poindexter Village,” WCMH-TV Columbus, April 26, 2013, 4, http://ww2.wcmh.com/story/22088136/protestors- opposed-to-demolition-of-poindexter-village; Columbus Housing Justice, “CHJ Testimony to the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing,” Columbus Housing Justice, November 7, 2009, https://housingjustice.wordpress.com/2009/11/07/chj-testimony-to-the-un-special-rapporteur-on-housing/. 184

Responsible and Sustainable Development on the Near East Side (Coalition).430 Positive, possibly nostalgic memories, helped drive a commitment to honoring a community which former residents thought of as “the village” rather than “a project.” The group eventually coalesced into a lasting unit to focus on a breadth of issues, including a shared valuing of

Poindexter’s history.

Forcing the Preservation Issue

Other than the festival, the most tangible, practical effect the Coalition produced was to force the CMHA to conduct a federal 106 review, which is required by federal law under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. Section 106 requires a review of all federally-funded projects that might impact sites or structures listed on or which might be eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places under the National Park

Service. CMHA had not conducted such a review in violation of the law and, it appears, had never planned to.431 Activists, however, with the aid of the Ohio Historical Society, the African American and African Studies Department at Ohio State, and the Historic

Preservation Office of the city of Columbus called for the official review. This stopped the demolition plans in their path, quite literally. Randy Black, head of the city’s historic preservation office, had to phone CMHA representatives just days before Christmas Eve of 2012 when community members alerted him that bulldozers had begun demolishing buildings before the conclusion of the legal review.432

430 Laura Tompkins interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy. 431 Moreover, it may be worth investigating if CMHA conducted 106 reviews in the past when it demolished or sold other public housing projects using federal dollars. 432 Chief Baba Shongo Obadina, “CMHA tries to erase black history: Poindexter Village History Advisory Group cries ‘foul’,” Free Press, December 24, 2012, online: http://freepress.org/departments/display/18/2012/4860 185

Public history activists from both the community and the Coalition supported and pushed for the review process. This was in large part because they believed it would stop

CMHA’s demolition plans. The Coalition, for instance, sent a letter to CMHA President and CEO Charles Hillman in November 2012 to express their dismay at the way the authority planned the demolition, how it had not taken the history of the housing community seriously, and finally that historic preservation (in some form) was financially viable. The Coalition also expressed its intent to pursue the 106 process fully, seeing it as the best hope to preserve the structures.433 For its part, the CMHA sought to control the ad hoc 106 review. But community stakeholders made historic preservation an issue that redevelopment had to deal with.

The 106 process even when completed, however, does not have the regulatory power to stop demolitions.434 Justin Cook, then the history reviews manager for the

Historic Preservation Office of Ohio under the Ohio Historical Society (now

Connection), helped manage the review process along with Randy Black. Both sought, as much as they were able, to guide and communicate the process to the general public, including the Coalition. In some sense, they acted as a legitimate counterweight to the pressure placed on the process by the CMHA. And it is worth noting, through what turned into a contentious, bitter process, both Cook and Black came out of the entire conflict with sterling reputations among both CMHA employees and the community.

Cook notes that the community’s misunderstanding about the power of 106 is nothing

433 “The Coalition for Responsible and Sustainable Development of the Near East Side to Charles D. Hillman,” Correspondence, (November 15, 2012), Ohio History Connection. 434 National Historic Preservation Act, Code of Federal Regulations, vol. 36 CFR Part 800, 2004, http://www.achp.gov/regs-rev04.pdf; Justin Cook interview by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, February 5, 2015, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 186 unusual. “This is a fairly common thing in the preservation world,” he says, “where the general public assigns a greater level of protection to National Register listing than the law actually assigns to it.” He continued, “So there’s this belief that if you get a property listed on the National Register, it’s going to prevent it from being demolished. . . . I don’t mean to downplay it or, you know, shortchange it, but it does not prevent a property from being demolished. It gets it consideration in the Section 106 process.”435

The community, primarily through the Coalition, not only placed its hopes in the

106 process; it sparked the review process in the first place. The first time CMHA had anything to do with the 106 review was when the National Register of Historic Places questionnaire was submitted to the Ohio Historical Society in late 2010.436 Cook recalled the goals of community activists in doing so: “And so my guess and hindsight is that

National Register questionnaire came in as a way to try and force Columbus Metropolitan

Housing Authority to pay attention to the fact that there are people who are concerned about the potential loss of the property, who value its historic importance.”437

So, only in 2012, some four years after the demolition announcement, did CMHA begin the 106 review. This was because public history activists, first, coalesced around historic preservation and, second, turned to the National Historic Preservation Act to help prevent or at least reshape the redevelopment project. The Coalition’s November 2012 letter capped off a year’s worth of agitation and protest to make the housing authority reconsider the history of the place.

435 Justin Cook interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 436 “Barbara Powers to Nancy Recchie,” Correspondence, (December 8, 2010), Columbus Landmarks, http://columbuslandmarks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Poindexter_Village_NRQ_ohpoltr.pdf. 437 Justin Cook interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 187

Despite the fact that the community made CMHA begin the 106 process (HUD was absent from the entire process although it had legal responsibility to oversee it and was contacted by Ohio’s historic preservation office), the local housing authority tried to make it appear that it—and not the public history activists—started the review.438 In response to the Coalition’s November 2012 letter, Hillman wrote, “As you know, the

Section 106 Review process began with our invitation to members of the Near East Side community to join the Poindexter Village History Advisory Committee who began meeting in May of this year and who have been actively participating, as volunteers, for the last six months.”439 Under 106 guidelines, it should have started during the very earliest planning sessions to decide what was to be done with Poindexter Village, that is at least in 2008 if not before.

Hillman’s position was hardly accurate. Nancy Reechie turned in the National

Register of Historic Places Questionnaire (a sort of precursor draft to the full nomination form) in the fall of 2010—almost two full years prior to the actions taken by CMHA to address historic preservation. Moreover, community members were putting public pressure on CMHA since 2011 at least.440 And in February 2012, the Columbus Dispatch reported that Hillman “said CMHA doesn’t plan to save any of Poindexter Village’s residential buildings.”441 In June, Bryan Brown, CMHA’s senior vice president for business development, said, “The housing authority recognizes and is proud of the

438 Ibid. 439 “Charles D. Hillman to Charles Beard, Willis Brown, and Nancy Recchie,” Correspondence, (November 19, 2012), Ohio History Connection. 440 Mark Ferenchik, “Near East Side Residents Want Say on Neighborhood Renewal Plans,” Columbus Dispatch, December 12, 2011. 441 Mark Ferenchik, “Poindexter Village: Neighbors Fear What Will Follow,” Columbus Dispatch, February 12, 2012. 188 historic significance Poindexter Village has played in the African-American community.”

But at the same time, the Dispatch reported that “CMHA still has plans to tear down all the buildings.” It was only in that summer of 2012 that CMHA earnestly began the 106 review process and created an “expert” review panel. Thus, it is perhaps unsurprising that housing activist Laura Tompkins called the review “an afterthought.”442

Given the tardiness of the historic review, CMHA successfully directed the process. It selected Randy Black as the legal “Responsible Entity” (an official designee per federal requirements to oversee the process). But the issue here was that Black worked for the City of Columbus, which was a member of Partners Achieving

Community Transformation, or PACT, whose goal was to demolish and develop

Poindexter Village along with CMHA. This placed Black in an awkward position to say the least. He could not act as a completely disinterested third party—although he did his best. Nonetheless, he made the most of his post, diplomatically conferring with all parties successfully throughout the process. Over the summer of 2012, the housing authority pulled together a “CMHA Poindexter Village History Advisory Group” (HAG) comprised of Coalition members from the community, OHS professionals, city officials, and CMHA representatives.

Ohio State University professor Horace “Ike” Newsum had also become interested in what was happening on the East Side. Realizing that Ohio State was a core partner in the redevelopment plans, he pushed the OSU administration to support both public policies to help the local community find employment as well as the historic

442 “Officials Debate How to Mark Poindexter Village.” 189 preservation efforts. Newsum recalls, “For a long time, members of the community knew or had known that Poindexter Village qualified in several areas to be considered a site for historical preservation. . . . There were others who I think had that same knowledge and wondered why PACT had not followed the 106 process. So we forced them to do that.

We forced them to do” the historic review. Professor Newsum knew that Poindexter held historic value and hoped that the 106 process might have helped mitigate the damage done to the property. Moreover, he mentions that the executive director of PACT Trudy

Bartley worked in good faith with the Coalition activists to make sure historic preservation was seriously considered once she was called upon to enter the process.443

Despite the support of individuals within OSU and PACT, CMHA set the official meeting times and agenda’s for the History Advisory Group. It worked with the city and the Ohio Historical Society to draft a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to outline future steps so that the housing authority might consider historic preservation of the structures. Although, what exactly the MOA was—crucial as it was to dictating the terms of the following process, which CMHA knew—was never made clear to the History

Advisory Group invitees. Meanwhile, in the wake of the MOA, Bartley continued meeting with Coalition representatives (including Newsum) to pursue preservation.444

CMHA, as part of PACT, invited individuals to officially join its History

Advisory Group. Rick Livingston, associate director of the Humanities Institute at Ohio

443 Horace “Ike” Newsum interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy, Transcript, August 19, 2014, Poindexter Oral History Project (Ohio History Connection). 444 It was at this point in December 2013 that I began meeting with Bartley, Newsum, and Coalition members with an interest in researching the history of Poindexter Village including the contemporary controversy. I also began attending meetings and aiding the preservation effort with the hope of finding a feasible way of meeting the goals of the public history activists. 190

State University, was one of the invited parties to join the panel. “So out of the blue, I got this letter asking me to be part of an advisory committee, and if agreed, some date to call up and respond,” he recalls. “So before getting the invitation, I had only a dim sense of

Poindexter Village, and I've never been over there. And so I finally took the occasion to go over and drive around, and see what was going on.” And although he suspects his invitation arrived because of his connections with OSU’s African American and African

Studies Department or his board membership on the Ohio Humanities Council,

Livingston illuminates how CMHA viewed the expert review process, while choosing his words carefully:

It quickly became evident that this was an effort to backtrack some and to

fill in some gaps in a process that had been going for a long time. So there

were a number of people in the room who had been part of the

conversation for quite some time, and there were a number of us who were

really new to it and didn’t quite know what our role should be. Clearly,

there was sort of an effort to have a broader public discussion. What was,

became, well, I should say that who was actually running these meetings

and who had called them was very opaque at best. So nominally, [PACT]

said that they were convening this, but it was not their meeting.

Upon receiving a packet of information provided by PACT and CMHA, Livingston and the group were scheduled for several follow-up meetings.

We tried to come to some kind of consensus statement because technically

we were all supposed to sign off on something. It was made increasingly

191

clear as we went down the line that we were an advisory group and that

they could proceed with their plans with—they didn’t need to have our

consent to proceed with their plans. So it was always a kind of not to say

somewhat farcical situation in that some people felt like it should be a

negotiation. The CMHA in particular had no interest in it being a

negotiation. It was simply a consultation. . . . The more it went on, the

more it seemed clear that what they wanted was a rubber stamp.

Legitimize is to dignify it too much. I mean, because increasingly, as it

went on, it was clear that they were going to do what they wanted to do.

Even the advice the city preservation officer, the state preservation officer,

and all these things, in the end, made no difference to their plans.445

The MOA was the document which Livingston and others were to “rubber stamp.” It essentially outlined a 106 review process and created steps to ensure that CMHA completed the process, all in language which did not require the housing authority to preserve any structures if it decided not to.446 One key provision was the organization of an “Expert Group” to offer public recommendations as to what should be done with the

35 Village buildings. Importantly, several of the former Coalition members continued to meet on their own to pursue historic preservation on their own terms, in the hopes of pressuring CMHA from another direction.

445 Rick Livingston interview by Patrick Potyondy, Transcript, August 19, 2014, (Ohio History Connection). 446 This is how things stand at the start of 2016. CMHA has not committed to any plan for the remaining two structures. 192

In the meantime, the MOA’s Stipulation II “required the documentation of

Poindexter Village including a narrative report, current photographic documentation, historic photographs, copies of existing historical drawings of the buildings, and paper copies of Ohio Historic Inventory (OHI) forms for each of the eight row house types in

Poindexter Village.” The CMHA hired Hardlines Design Company to do this. The company conducted its research in June, July, and November of 2012 and published its report in November of 2013.447 It devoted only a few pages to the historic “narrative report.” The vast majority covered photographs and architectural details, only some of which were of historical significance. It did report, however, that the Department Head of

Inventory and Registration of the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, Barbara Powers, found Poindexter Village historically significant under Criteria A of the National Register of Historic Places. Additionally, it seems that Powers thought the property might qualify for other criteria, especially its connection to the African-American community.448

Criterion A is a common area of significance for public housing properties officially listed on the Register.449

In fact, in 2010, Barbara Powers, as Department Head of Inventory and

Registration of the Ohio Historic Preservation office, explained in a letter that Poindexter

Village qualified as historically significant under Criterion A and C of the National

Register of Historic Places. She argued that Poindexter Village was significant not only because of its association with New Deal public housing but also because of its

447 Durst and Riggle, “Documentation Packet for Poindexter Village, City of Columbus, Franklin Township, Franklin County, Ohio,” i, 4. 448 Ibid., 1; National Register of Historic Places, “National Register of Historic Places Brochure,” July 11, 2001, http://www.nps.gov/Nr/publications/bulletins/brochure/. 449 See Chapter 5. 193 association with the African-American community on Columbus’ East Side. Moreover, it is also considered significant because it spanned the entirety of twentieth-century public housing, representing the era’s architecture and urban planning.450

In any case, the MOA mandated the creation of an “Expert Group” (EG) to offer historic preservation recommendations. Randy Black, as the city’s historic preservation officer, was to “convene a group of architects, developers, and historic preservation experts/consultants with experience in the successful rehabilitation of historic properties in central Ohio.” Volunteers from across the city made up the panel which conducted the

106 review. No academic historians were asked to be members. And, as with the 106 review process as a whole, the MOA did not imbue the Expert Group with any legal or official powers to force CMHA to do anything. It could only offer recommendations. The

MOA pre-identified a group of ten buildings which the EG would consider the feasibility of preserving.451 Given these limitations, public history activists branched off to conduct its own meetings to pressure and persuade CMHA to preserve the structures.

The EG produced its final report in June of 2013, with Aminah Robinson’s

“Poindexter Village – First Families” painting featured on the cover. The EG consisted of five members, including guidance from Randy Black and Justin Cook.452 All five members—including two architects, a preservationist with Columbus Landmarks, a vice

450 Barbara Powers, “Letter Redarding National Register Eligibility of Poindexter Village, Columbus, Ohio” (On file at the Ohio Historic Preservation Office, Columbus, OH, 2010). 451 “Memorandum of Agreement Between the City of Columbus, The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and the Ohio Historic Preservation Officer Regarding the Demolition of Poindexter Village,” January 24, 2013, Columbus Landmarks and City of Columbus Historic Preservation Office, http://columbuslandmarks.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Poindexter-MOA.pdf. 452 “Poindexter Village Expert Group,” ca 2013, City of Columbus Historic Preservation Office; Econsult Corporation, “Assessing the Economic Benefits of Public Housing, Final Report,” Submitted to The Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (Washington, D.C., January 2007), i, http://www.clpha.org/uploads/final_report.pdf. 194 president of Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, and a historic preservation consultant—volunteered their time. They were to “prepare a report outlining whether rehabilitation is feasible, and if so, identifying the likely costs of rehabilitation and financing options that demonstrate a feasible and prudent alternative to demolition.”453

The ten buildings under consideration where on the northwest corner of the property and were “selected because it represents an excellent example of the types of residential buildings in the complex . . . that are arranged on a common green space and which retain the identifying design intent of the original complex.”454 In other words, the ten buildings could represent a historic district for listing on the National Register.

The EG advised that ten of the buildings be saved, hoping that this number would be sufficient to gain Poindexter’s official place on the NRHP. The EG knew the wishes of the public, specifically as represented by the History Advisory Group which drafted the

MOA. In a vote finalized in August of 2012, eighteen out of nineteen voting members of the HAG did not “support the demolition of 100% of Poindexter Village.” Sixteen voters did not believe that “the preservation of one building for the future is sufficient,” and fifteen out of nineteen voters wished to preserve 50 percent or more of the structures

(meaning at least eighteen buildings).455

The Expert Group Final Report hoped, as did Randy Black in an oral history interview, that the process “can serve as an example of successful neighborhood, city,

453 “Memorandum of Agreement Between the City of Columbus, The Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and the Ohio Historic Preservation Officer Regarding the Demolition of Poindexter Village,” Stipulation I.A.7. 454 Cathy D. Nelson et al., “Poindexter Village Expert Group Final Report,” June 27, 2013, 3, City of Columbus Historic Preservation Office. 455 Poindexter Village History Advisory Group, “Preservation Vote Results,” August 24, 2012, Columbus Landmarks, http://columbuslandmarks.org/?attachment_id=1492. 195 and state collaboration/consultation with regard to historic preservation outcomes.”456

CMHA, not legally bound by the panel, saved only two buildings. This was unsurprising.

The MOA stipulated that CMHA was to consider whether the structures could be rehabbed into financially-feasible affordable housing or for other purposes. But every public and private quote offered by CMHA’s Bryan Brown argued that the structures could not be allowed to compete with the newly planned affordable housing units, nor could they contribute to what CMHA might consider concentrated poverty. This stance made any proposal to sustain Poindexter Village as housing unviable. Moreover, CMHA remains the property owner of the structures, meaning it can choose to demolish the buildings at any time. Preservationists hope, nonetheless, that the remaining two buildings will become the site of the public museum and/or cultural center.457

Thus, while the protests and organizing largely failed, this was not necessarily due to the fact that activists emphasized historic preservation as their primary grievance. In the end, the game was decided by CMHA and PACT redevelopers before they knew what was happening. Whether or not one believes that one or more of the original housing structures could successfully be run as a cultural center or museum, that is not the only end game of historic preservation. Although costs are debated by each side, a preserved historic district of brick structures might have been renovated into attractive, modernized affordable housing. This seems all the more possible if ten structures had been saved

456 Nelson et al., “Poindexter Village Expert Group Final Report,” 5; Randy Black interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy. 457 As of March 2016, these remained standing. It is unclear what will happen to the structures. They are still owned by CMHA. 196 instead of all thirty-five or only two. Instead, developers chose to level much of the area for the second time in seventy years.

Problems concerning the oversight and lack of teeth in the 106 review process played a substantial role in the process. The Department of Housing and Urban

Development did not take up its responsibilities to oversee its local Columbus housing authority. The national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation declined to take part when Randy Black contacted them as well even though Columbus mayor, Michael

Coleman, had been appointed to the council by President Barack Obama.458 The CMHA appears to have taken full advantage of this power vacuum to manage the process as it saw fit. Although the 106 process recommends that reviews are conducted as early as possible any project involving federal funds or buildings, the legislation only offers the mirage of actual protection. In the end, activists could not stop bulldozers from demolishing all but two of the housing structures.

A final victory for the public history activists rested in a combination of consistent public pressure external to the MOA agreement and Stipulation IV of the

MOA. This Stipulation dictated that “CMHA shall produce an interpretive exhibit documenting the history of Poindexter Village.” No doubt about it, the very presence of this requirement was a victory for all those interested in preserving the history of the city’s first public housing community. Former Coalition members and others interested in preserving and exhibiting Poindexter’s history used this part of the agreement to continue pushing for a robust museum-quality feature, even one which might include the

458 Justin Cook interview by Patrick R. Potyondy; Randy Black interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy; “LaShavio Johnson to Randy Black,” November 28, 2012, Ohio History Connection. 197 preservation of the original housing structures. Conversely, the language of the MOA was noncommittal. As one doubtful community member put it, a single glass case featuring some photographs might fulfill the MOA. The newly created James Preston

Poindexter Legacy Foundation continued to propose a meaningful and large museum exhibit by allying with the Columbus Historical Society.459 After years of regular meetings, and after bringing together collaborating partners from Ohio State departments of history, art, technology services, Columbus State Community College, and the Ohio

History Connection, a year-long museum exhibit is set to open at the end of April 2016.

A Community Remembers Its Connections to Poindexter Village

Memories and history are muddled. The public engages with history through a variety of means.460 The past, present, historical fact, legacy, and memory often intermingled at specific places. I have heard several residents of Columbus remark that

Poindexter Village was the first public housing project built in the United States, or at least in Ohio. This point is often raised to defend the status of the project as historically significant.

And the confusion is understandable. Chalmers P. Wylie, former Congressman from Ohio, claimed as much in 1990: “It is my distinct pleasure to inform you, the

Members of the House, and, indeed, the world,” claimed Wylie, “that Poindexter Village,

240 North Champion Avenue, Columbus, OH, the first low rent public housing community completed in this Nation, is celebrating its 50th Anniversary today, June 19,

459 The author has worked with the Foundation on the museum proposal since 2012. 460 Roy Rosenzweig and David P Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 198

1990.” Unfortunately, Wylie got not only that specific piece of information wrong (it was far from the first), he also claimed something much grander. He concluded by declaring,

“Over the Nation, public housing has played an extremely important role in the lives of many people in the past 50 years, and it will continue to help shape the lives of

Americans as we move into the 21st century.”461 Poindexter Village, and places like it across the country have indeed played an important role in people’s lives by offering affordable, modern housing options when too little existed, but many public housing projects would not continue their mission “into the 21st century.” This, in spite of the objections of former Poindexter Village residents and Near East Side community members.

Former residents and community members offer powerful, emotive responses when asked why Poindexter Village, and specifically why the physical buildings themselves, should be preserved. They believe the structures represent the history of black Columbus. And to them—if not the news media and general public—the history and memory of a predominately African-American public housing community is as valuable as any number of other, more prominent places. Their recollections not only illustrate a deep, abiding connection to history, they force a reconsideration of what and who the American nation values:

461 Chalmers P. Wylie, “Commemorating The 50th Anniversary Of Public Housing in The United States,” Congressional Record, 101st Congress (1989-1990), Extension of Remarks - June 19, 1990, Page: E2013. 199

Quote: “When I drive down Long Street anymore, I don’t even turn to the right— it’s just an emotional thing for me. Like I said, I grew up there, my parents raised me there.” Paco Grier, former resident.462

Quote: “I put it in the same category as this Sphinx or Taj Mahal or the Vatican or whatever. I mean if you don’t get the physical thing there, they don’t mean [anything] then. I mean we can talk about these places, but if we got nothing left from it . . . that we can see and touch, it don’t really mean nothing.” Baba Shongo Obadina, former resident.463

Quote: “Architecture tells a story. When you tear down buildings, you get rid of the story. . . . No, here’s what I tell my kids. If you don’t save your history and know your history, you’re going to be doomed to make the same mistakes that others have made in history. . . . [T]here are some repercussions behind [destroying the buildings], because you are talking about people’s history. If you destroy people’s history, there are repercussions behind that. There really are.” Calvin Hairston, friend and family of former residents.464

Quote: “One thing that has been one of my pet peeves as far as Poindexter Village is concerned is down through the years, you know I hate to hear them call Poindexter a

‘project,’ because Poindexter came as a village. . . . And one thing you felt in the Village was love. You knew you were loved.” Sybil Edwards, former resident.465

462 Steven Paco Grier interview by Cristina Benedetti. 463 Chief Shongo Obadina Obadina interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 464 Calvin L. Hairston interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 465 Oral History Circle Recording, Video, October 9, 2010, Author’s Possession. 200

Quote: “History is important. That what you do in your life is important. That when you do something, or you see something, it can last. It’s significant. If you tear away and take everything away from people that they have and if they have pride in, you leave them with nothing.” Julie Whitney Scott, former resident.466

Quote: “I’d love to be able to go to there and say, ‘Well, see that over there, I had a place I grew up. It looks just like that. They tore it down, but that’s what’s left of it. And

Roosevelt came here and dedicated this.’ Yeah, I wanted a piece of it to be there.” Daniel

Sturkey, former resident.467

Quote: “I cried. I was shocked. Because there had been a lot of issues on the voting thing to improve Poindexter [rather than demolish it], and we all voted for that.

All of a sudden, now here they are going to tear it down.” Marilyn Kendrick, former resident.468

Quote: “Poindexter Village is as important to me as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris.”

Reita Smith, local historian and former resident.469

These are just a few of the answers from former residents when I asked them why they wanted Poindexter Village to be preserved. During the oral histories I conducted, interviewees never became as passionate as when asked directly about the value of historic preservation. They expressed everything from joy to anger depending on how they interpreted the question. What came across in every instance is that they care deeply

466 Julie Marie Whitney Scott interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 467 Daniel Sturkey interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 468 Marilyn A. Kendrick interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 469 “Poindexter Village Was Once a Godsend.” 201 about a place which the public and CMHA in all likelihood have dismissed as simply

“the projects.”

Even with potential interest as high as this, it is noteworthy that this entire process was conducted without any input from academic historians, even though Ohio State

University has been a core member of PACT since its inception. Part of the blame may lie with ivory-tower academics. In the end, academic historians should find ways to engage with the communities they study and serve. Through this, they will remain relevant. The public historian must walk delicately, however, making sure that community voices are heard while tempering nostalgia. For instance, through the oral histories I collected as part of the research for this project, the history and memories of public housing residents were captured (oral histories being only one in numerous ways professionals can contribute to a community-led process). Those quotes above illustrate, perhaps better than anything else, why conflict erupted and why they value Poindexter

Village as a place. Their remembering challenges lazy stereotyping of public housing communities and, along with others who have preserved public housing across the United

States, helped redefine the historic national identity of the nation.

Although CMHA may well have had plans to conduct the 106 review, which is required under federal law, it appears that community members forced its hand. In this way, the culture illustrated through the public history community festival and the artwork of Aminah Robinson expressed itself into practical, policy-oriented ways. The cultural memory embodied in Robinson’s artwork and the festival drove the public history activists to force CMHA to comply with the federal 106 historic preservation review

202 process. A host of community members organized the Coalition which then helped to steer the History Advisory Group even though CMHA successfully managed the meetings and process as a whole.

Without their pressure, however, none of the original structures would have been preserved, nor would the 106 review process have taken place. Moreover, representatives from the Ohio Historical Society, Columbus’ Historic Preservation Office, and Ohio

State University, specifically Justin Cook, Randy Black, and Horace “Ike” Newsum respectively, helped to guide the public through the process and helped give it meaning despite the outcome. The actions of these three individuals, and many more beside, illustrate the active role that their institutions should take in mediating between large urban redevelopment projects and local community stakeholders who are attached to the historic memory of places that they reshape.

The buildings and community were things the African-American community was and is proud of. So strong are these memories that some Near East Side community members dismiss other histories of the city. The leader of one of the neighborhood associations in the area remarked in 2012 that, “none of those other public housing properties sold by CMHA were historic,” referring to several other projects that the authority had already sold or demolished.470 For many residents and community members well beyond the property’s border, Poindexter Village certainly qualified as a historical place, worthy of preservation. And its importance as a black place persisted. In 2004,

470 Shongo Obadina, “CMHA tries to erase black history.” It is unclear at this time if CMHA conducted 106 reviews of these other properties. 203

Poindexter remained 97 percent black.471 But only 14 percent of the Poindexter Village residents were on welfare, thus countering views expressed by some interviewees that welfare dependents made the Village decline.472

One might wonder if a majority of the public history activists sought to preserve the housing community solely because it was their heritage or because of misplaced feelings of nostalgia.473 Former residents and community activists did not seek to preserve Poindexter solely out of racial pride, which might imply a positive view of racial segregation.

Instead, they sought to preserve the public housing buildings because it represented a triumph of the black community. Race continues to be important to historic preservation whether it is visibly so or not. Therefore, preserving an African-American place holds different meaning than preserving a place used and valued primarily by whites. Given the outsider and marginalized status of black Americans throughout US history, attempts to preserve locations that are significant to their community is understandable and important for the whole nation. It recognizes the humanity and dignity of African-American history, which helps define American nationhood as democratic.

Moreover, the preservation activists also acknowledged the role of big government in fashioning and building Poindexter. They proved quite willing to preserve

471 Data set retrieved from U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Picture of Subsidized Households for 2004-2007,” http://www.huduser.org/portal/picture/query.html, accessed July 26, 2015. 472 Ibid.. 473 On the dangers of “heritage” see, David Lowenthal, “The Heritage Crusade and Its Contradictions,” in Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States, ed. Max Page and Randall Mason (New York: Routledge, 2004), 19–43. 204 the memory and history of the New Deal at the same time as honoring their culture’s own contributions.474 They did not strike out against ideals of integration or “mixed-income housing” per se as proposed by CMHA. Instead, they questioned the way redevelopment proceeded and wished to preserve the complex history of Poindexter as a place, while allowing some level of reinvestment to continue. For if Poindexter Village was completely erased from memory, the history of the black community would not only be lost, so would the history of racial exclusion and struggle that the community experienced, the racial and economic inequalities that New Deal planners sought to remedy and solidify, and that the African-American community faced on a daily basis.

Beyond shaping the multi-million dollar redevelopment project led by HUD and CMHA

(worth well over 200 million dollars), historic preservation also holds the potential to communicate the contentious history of public housing to the broader public. This is all the more important because CMHA has not archived or saved the vast majority of its historic files like many other housing authorities.475 In a sense, the history of CMHA and

Poindexter Village has been in danger of being forgotten or, worse, erased without the key intervention of grassroots activists—and historians willing to act as archivists as well as analysts. There remains a chance that the public history activists can do Aminah

Robinson proud. For though it was fitting that Robinson was born in 1940, the same year the Village opened, and was also among the first families to move into the village, it is

474 The author often tried to bring up larger contextual connections in meetings with the historic preservation activists. 475 Indeed, some books on a city’s public housing can be written almost exclusively with housing authority sources, see Bloom, Public Housing That Worked. 205 perhaps also fitting that she recently passed away in 2015, following the demise of her beloved public housing community.

206

Chapter 5: Rethinking Historic Preservation to Include Working-Class Public Housing

Local Chicago residents and urban redevelopers are battling over the historic

Lathrop Homes. In 2015, Cheryl Corley, on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, reported on how residents there are resisting the redevelopment of that public housing project which they call home. In the news report “A Chicago Community Puts Mixed-

Income Housing To The Test,” Corley examined the competing visions of that historic place. The current black, Latino, and white residents did not accept the stereotype that they live in a “distressed neighborhood.”476 Another news headline, from 2010, read,

“Lathrop Homes: Once under the threat of demolition, now in line for a National Register listing?” The article on this prominent Chicago Housing Authority development continued, “The National Register listing could mark a stunning change of fortune for

Lathrop.”477 Lathrop Homes, at just three-stories high, did not qualify as a tower or high- rise, which the Hope VI legislation from the 1990s sought to tear down. Design, dating back to the New Deal era it would seem, has played some part in Lathrop’s success. It, like Poindexter, has been public housing that worked. Memory and history, once again then, sit at the apex of this conflict.

476 Cheryl Corley, “A Chicago Community Puts Mixed-Income Housing To The Test,” Morning Edition, National Public Radio, February 5, 2015, http://www.npr.org/2015/02/05/381886102/a-chicago- community-puts-mixed-income-housing-to-the-test. 477 Lee Bay, “CHA’s Lathrop Homes: Once under the Threat of Demolition, Now in Line for a National Register Listing?,” accessed May 25, 2015, http://www.wbez.org/blog/lee-bey/chas-lathrop-homes-once- under-threat-demolition-now-line-national-register-listing. 207

The two pieces implied a commonly-held assumption that listing on the National

Register of Historic Places protects a place from threats of demolition. It does not. But this example is not alone. It mirrors public perceptions across the United States.478 Even after listing, Lathrop Homes still faces demolition as of September 2015, with powerful municipal and business interests looking toward redevelopment of a quickly changing area, in what some might label “gentrification.” Lathrop’s demolition may in fact lead to redevelopment of the neighborhood into an upscale housing market. But residents are resisting the changes, citing positive histories that while perhaps partly nostalgic in nature, nonetheless, echo historical realities.479 The listing does indeed publicly signify a degree of historic value that has often overlooked vernacular places like public housing projects. Lathrop’s story parallels that of Poindexter Village. The historical value of each place—and indeed, those preserved, redeveloped, or demolished public housing projects across the country listed on the National Register—flies in the face of those who otherwise dismiss or stereotype public housing and its working-class residents.

Given assumptions about the failure of public housing and the elite-dominated arena of historic preservation, these places might not have been considered worthy of listing on the National Register at all. Chicago, for instance, boasts more than 300 listings total, but until 2012, the list excluded any public housing sites. Properties are usually only considered for listing when they are at least fifty years-old, however. This means

478 Bloom, Umbach, and Vale, Public Housing Myths. 479 Corley, “A Chicago Community Puts Mixed-Income Housing To The Test”; An application for redevelopment of the area has been turned into the city: “O2015-6430 - O2015-6430.pdf - Lathrop-Homes- PD-Submission-092415.pdf,” accessed January 4, 2016, http://ward32.org/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/Lathrop-Homes-PD-Submission-092415.pdf; Lolly Bowean, “At Lathrop Homes, Anxiety over Transformation Plan,” Chicago Tribune, January 8, 2012; Lolly Bowean, “Lathrop Homes Residents Push Officials to Keep Site as Public Housing,” Chicago Tribune, December 8, 2013. 208 that the earliest public housing developments should have become eligible in 1983. And yet the first listings began to appear seven years prior, hinting at the worth local communities put into these places. Historic preservation has often been dominated by elites with an understandable amount of attention paid to architectural features.480 The

National Register public housing listings upend this conventional wisdom. The listings continue a tradition of valuing architecture while also highlighting the social history represented in the structures including issues of race, ethnicity, and economic class. They also continuously weave in histories of urban and community planning.481 The case of

Poindexter Village exhibited many of the same characteristics as successfully-listed developments, thus reconfirming the value placed in history by community members and former residents. Ultimately, what a nation chooses to preserve illustrates not only what it values. It reveals who it values as well.

This chapter highlights what local communities value in urban places. The public housing developments examined in this chapter make larger connections to broad, national-scale themes, in large part because of NRHP guideline requirements. Each listing’s registration form makes consistent arguments for historical importance and value based on local-level topics, showing that communities across the nation connect through history just as often through specific place-based topics. History remains a primary delineator of identity for individuals and nations alike. The NRHP embodies these identities in the United States. The decentralized nature of the listing process has also

480 Max Page and Randall Mason, Giving Preservation a History: Histories of Historic Preservation in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6–7. 481 For more on the significance of places of the working-class and people of color, see Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History. 209 allowed local communities—some with relatively little power or influence—to help define the Register, and thus American identity. And public housing is a type of place which expands the historical identity of the US. The language of the historic preservation process is inclusive rather than exclusive. Local communities have taken advantage of this fact to include properties that have not often been lauded for their architectural or even historical significance. This orientation has created the space for an inclusive and democratic conception of historic preservation, and thus American national identity, that local communities have enacted.

Historians think about places just as much as they do about time, while urban planners tend to favor place to the detriment of time. Thus, Kevin Lynch posed a pertinent and pressing question for urban planners in 1972 with his book What Time Is

This Place? Writing relatively shortly after the passage of the Historic Preservation Act, he correctly claimed, “The resistance to the loss of historical environment is today becoming more determined as affluence increases and physical change itself is more rapid. And no wonder, since the past is known, familiar, a possession in which we may feel secure.”482 That rapid change he references surely included urban renewal policies.

Dolores Hayden expands upon Lynch’s work in The Power of Place, wherein she highlights “the power of ordinary urban landscapes to nurture citizens’ public memory, to encompass shared time in the form of shared territory.” And upon arguing that “identity is intimately tied to memory,” Hayden notes that the “power of place . . . remains untapped for most working people’s neighborhoods in most American cities, and for most

482 Kevin Lynch, What Time Is This Place? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972). 210 ethnic history and most women’s history.”483 This chapter utilizes Hayden’s historical framework of place’s power to build an analysis of the registered public housing locations. Public housing is one such “ordinary urban landscape” that served working- class communities.

The arguments in favor of preservation documented in the registered forms may be myriad, but this also means communities have been able to utilize multiple avenues to gain recognition of the place they view as their own. These successful nominations illustrate that public housing history is valued for it social, architectural, political, racial, and planning history. That a relatively high number of locales have chosen to trudge through the long process of gaining official listing further refocuses the traditional retrenchment narrative of American public housing.484 As such, the NRHP listings directly challenge attacks on publicly-funded housing. People across the United States have spoken: these places matter.

Reviewing Official National Preservation

In the Euro-American tradition, as Kevin Lynch puts it, “the idea of preservation first appeared about 1500, in the form of an esoteric attraction to relict buildings, even to the point of the construction of sham ruins.” But “by the eighteenth century an affection for the structures of the past was a widespread upper-class fashion, and by the nineteenth century it became part of the intellectual baggage of all middle-class travelers.”485 As historians have charted the rise and rise of historic preservation in the United States, they

483 Hayden, The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History, 9. 484 D. Bradford Hunt, “Review Essay: Rethinking the Retrenchment Narrative in U.S. Housing Policy History,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 6 (2006): 937–51. 485 Lynch, What Time Is This Place?, 29. 211 primarily present two anecdotal narratives, both instructive. The first is the case of

George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Starting in 1853, preservationist Ann Pamela

Cunningham (along with a number of colleagues) worked tirelessly to rebuild and preserve his neglected estate. Secondly, historians reference the groundswell of anger over the destruction—at the hands of urban renewal—of New York City’s Penn Station.

In this narrative, that 1963 act led directly to another: the Historic Preservation Act of

1966, an oft-overlooked piece of Great Society legislation. While it remains important to detail the many roads historic preservation has taken across the centuries, they should not overshadow the centrality of urban redevelopment politics to historic preservation that is represented in the Penn Station fight.

A longer history certainly predates the 1966 act. This history stresses the leadership of social elites even as grassroots forces have often pushed for preservation, too. The public historians Page and Randall “complicate” the history of historic preservation, citing several laws prior to 1966: the 1906 Antiquities Act, Charleston’s

1931 historic districting law, the New Deal’s 1935 Historic Sites Act and Historic

American Buildings Survey, and President Truman’s 1949 National Trust for Historic

Preservation. Page and Randall raise an even more significant point in all of this: that the overarching narrative of historic preservation is one where upper-class elites are the ones who really know how to value history; they drive the story and preservation efforts.486

But we should not be too quick to downplay the importance—or even the centrality—of the Great Society’s preservation legislation. The Historic Preservation Act

486 Page and Mason, Giving Preservation a History, 6–7. 212 of 1966 remains a vitally important mile marker. In comparison to regional efforts like

Charleston’s 1931 law, the 1966 act stands much taller. The ties between public housing and twentieth-century historic preservation run deep. Public housing legislation, in fact, helped lead to the 1966 legislation: the one-two punch of the 1949 Housing Act and the

Urban Renewal Act of 1954 remade America’s urban landscape and set a precedent of demolition and new construction that local housing authorities follow today. The 1949 and 1954 acts have been the two main culprits leading to vast demolition of urban landscapes.487

The scale and reach simply cannot be overstated. Hamer outlines the sheer breadth of urban renewal: “By 1962, 588 communities had urban renewal projects. It was predicted that by 1964, 750 cities would be engaged in more than 1,500 projects.”488

Once again illustrating the links between the physical environment and society, massive urban renewal had contemporary effects beyond building destruction. The US

Commission on Civil Rights argued in April 1966 that urban renewal was a major cause of the decay and poverty that existed in Cleveland, Ohio. As a member of the

Commission, Reverend Theodore Hesburgh stated, “In these federal programs to rebuild the cities has happened is that people in the worst condition find their houses bulldozed from under them. The total program is immoral.”489 Along with displacing people— primarily people of color—urban renewal also flattened blocks and blocks of structures.

And while many urban planners enthusiastically sought to emulate the reconstruction

487 Hamer, History in Urban Places, 12. 488 Ibid., 13. 489 As quoted in: Martin Anderson, The Federal Bulldozer (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Copmany, 1967), xvii. 213 seen in postwar Europe, others were working toward a smarter type of urban revitalization.

A 1965 report With Heritage So Rich laid the groundwork for the new federal role that massive demolition inspired. And by any measure, it has been widely embraced.

“Indeed,” as David Hamer writes, “in few areas of modern urban life is history being applied in such a direct way” as it has been by the Historic Preservation Act of 1966.490

Robert E. Stipe echoes these sentiments writing, “For all practical purposes, the [historic] surveys that count the most today are those that in one way or another can be related to the National Register.”491 Many locations are expected, even popular: Thomas Jefferson’s

Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia; the “Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National

Historic Site” in Hodgenville, Kentucky; Washington DC’s National Mall; Colonial

Williamsburg in Virginia; or a total of eleven places with the Rockefeller name attached.

Fittingly, the new Great Society legislation was also built to last. As historian

John M. Fowler writes, “One might argue that little new has been added to that original vision [of 1966] and that progress since then has largely consisted of fleshing out the details of that vision and adapting it to the evolving circumstances of American society.”492 While the National Park Service and the Advisory Council on Historic

Preservation both have direct oversight of the NRHP, a number of other agencies and

490 Hamer, History in Urban Places, vii. 491 Robert E. Stipe, “Some Preservation Fundamentals,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 30. 492 John M. Fowler, “The Federal Preservation Program,” in A Richer Heritage: Historic Preservation in the Twenty-First Century (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 35. 214 listings often come into play.493 By roughly the turn of this century, the Register contained more than one million individual properties, and today houses more than

90,000 listings. (The discrepancy is because some listings comprise historic districts that can be large areas of a city that contain numerous structures.) And while in the popular imagination, estates of presidents or the rich and famous are most likely to come to mind,

“a large proportion are less obvious” such as “ranger stations, fish hatcheries, traditional cultural places, technical facilities, and a wide range of properties associated with the nation’s military history.”494 Public housing fits into this lesser-known category of historic preservation efforts.

The two key components of the 1966 Act are the National Register and its 106 review requirement, both of which owe its origins to the authors of With Heritage So

Rich. The application for Registration listing produces a final registration form. These vary in length and detail. The shortest of the thirty-three public housing development forms clocks in at only nine pages long, while the longest is a whopping 125 pages. Each form provides a historical narrative along with detailed explanations as to which criteria the property fulfills to qualify for NRHP listing. When listed after 1987, the forms also indicate which of four “criteria of evaluation” the place fulfills as part of the Register:

a. that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution

to the broad patterns of our history; or

493 These can include, but are not limited to, the National Historic Landmarks program, the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record, the National Maritime Initiative, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the National Archaeological Database, the Land and Water Conservation Fund, National Heritage Areas, the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training, the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers, the Federal Highway Administration, and Community Development Block Grants. Ibid., 36–41. 494 Ibid., 42–43. 215

b. that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past; or

c. that embody the distinctive characteristics of a type, period, or method

of construction, or that represent the work of a master, or that possess high

artistic values, or that represent a significant and distinguishable entity

whose components may lack individual distinction; or

d. that have yielded, or may be likely to yield, information important in

prehistory or history.495

A historic place is most often a physical building but can also include sites (such as the location of an event) or an object (often a natural phenomenon or a monument).496 These forms ultimately occupy a blurry space between primary and secondary sources. They are primary because I analyze them as documents in and of themselves: preservation documents which provide insight into how the public engages with and values the past.

They are also secondary sources, because each offers historical interpretations of the history and memory of which they lay claim.

The authors of A Heritage So Rich also wished to force redevelopers to consider their impact on historic properties. The 106 review legal procedure is outlined in the 36

Code of Federal Regulations, Part 800, known in short as 36-CFR-800. As part of the

National Historic Preservation Act, this legal statute requires that any development by public or private actors which A) touches any type of federal building, property, oversight, or funding and B) which may affect any historic property—listed on the

495 National Register of Historic Places, “National Register of Historic Places Brochure.” 496 National Endowment for the Humanities, “Frequently Asked Questions about Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act,” n.d., http://www.neh.gov/grants/manage/frequently-asked-questions- about-section-106-the-national-historic-preservation-act. 216

Register or not—must consider that impact as part of its development process. The federal agency involved or related to the development project holds the responsibility to designate a local “responsible entity” who will oversee this review.

In the case of public housing, for example, the Housing and Urban Development agency (HUD) is responsible for designating that status. Then, the federal agency, the local responsible entity, and the state historic preservation office organize the review in tandem. The 106 review is also supposed to take local community stakeholders into account as well (called “consulting parties”). Once the possible effect on a historic structure is taken into account through this process, the redeveloping agency can check off that legal box, and the development can continue unabated—whatever the findings of the review. At times, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) can be established between the interested parties in an attempt to avoid “adverse effects” on the historic properties in question. There are no real consequences, however, if a developer does not properly follow the 106 review process, or if a MOA is not followed by the developer.497

For the most part, however, 106 forces redevelopment to consider history at some level as part of its process. It does not, though, stipulate anything beyond this. In large part, this is due to the derivative and decentralized nature of the American federal system of government. As Robert E. Stipe outlines, this “explains why National Register property owners are generally free to do whatever they want to their buildings so long as no federal money, permit, or other federal program is involved.”498 But as 106 review

497 For more, see Fowler, “The Federal Preservation Program,” 47–50; Justin Cook interview by Patrick R. Potyondy. 498 Stipe, “Some Preservation Fundamentals,” 29. 217 illustrates, even when federal funds, agencies, properties, or oversight enter the equation, a redeveloper must only consider historic preservation as one of numerous criteria in its process. Nothing more. Despite this gloomy assessment, “Listing in the National

Register,” in the words of the NRHP website, “honors the property by recognizing its importance to its community, state, or the Nation.”499 The symbolic importance remains even if the legislation is hindered in its enforcement abilities.

Honoring the Nation’s New Deal Public Housing

Recognition of public housing history has benefitted from a shift away from the late-1950s pro-urban renewal attitude and to the pro-preservation outlook of the mid-

1970s. As Baltimore’s mayor said in 1977, “Urban renewal was a total concept, a concept of removing everything. . . . I think we’re in a new era now where preservation is paramount, and you only build something when you can’t save the old.”500 The thirty- three developments discussed below span the United States, mirroring the first wave of

New Deal public housing development. Despite criticisms of public housing’s aesthetics, architecture is the most commonly cited “area of significance.” Next in prominence, the listings cite social history and related themes including issues of race, ethnicity, and economic class. Third, these successful listings reference government history, including the history of the New Deal and urban planning. And fourth, many of the thirty-three places go out of their way to highlight the significance of the property as local history. All of these legitimated historical significances can be found in the case study of Poindexter

499 National Register of Historic Places, “National Register of Historic Places Brochure,” last accessed May 30, 2015. 500 As quoted in Hamer, History in Urban Places, 15. 218

Village, which lends credibility to the public history activism of the former residents and community members in Columbus while also further calling into question the process of demolition. Just as Poindexter embodied these themes, the registration forms interweave the historical significance of architecture, social history, and urban planning.

Homes are an oft-preserved type of building on the NRHP. Public housing was one unique style of home to many communities across the country. Many of them housed people of color, particularly African Americans but also Asian and Mexican Americans.

By its very nature the institution sought to affordably house working-class and poor

Americans, whites included. The majority of the listed properties, therefore, highlights and, depending on how one interprets the purpose of the NRHP, possibly even honors racially segregated housing.

The thirty-three places examined in this chapter span all regions of the United

States and were listed across thirty-eight years. The NR listings correlate with the construction and expansion of public housing between 1933 and 1949 (see maps below).

The Northeast, South, and Midwest are all well-represented in both maps. The first properties were listed in 1976. Both are in Atlanta, Georgia: Techwood Homes and

University Homes.501 Other southern states with listed properties include Alabama,

Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Washington DC and

Oklahoma also boast one listed property each. There are less listed properties in the West generally (excluding Texas, which can be considered both southern and western). Several

501 National Register of Historic Places, Atlanta University Center District, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, National Register #76000621; National Register of Historic Places, Techwood Homes Historic District, Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia, National Register #76000632. 219 cities even boast multiple listings including Atlanta, Georgia; New Orleans, Louisiana;

St. Louis, Missouri; New Bern, North Carolina; and Memphis, Tennessee. And several states list multiple locations: California (2); Louisiana (2); Missouri (2); Tennessee (2);

Georgia (3); New York (3); North Carolina (3); Ohio (4); and Texas (4). Absences are just as significant, however. Several cities lack any public housing listings, despite the historic presence of the program in the city.502 Several states even lack any registration despite the number of New Deal public housing projects.503

502 The following cities had at least four public housing projects built between 1933 and 1949. Los Angeles is notable since, including those project built in LA County, it boasted fifteen projects: Birmingham, Alabama; Montgomery, Alabama; Fresno, California; Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Denver, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Tampa, Florida; Augusta, Georgia; Columbus, Georgia; Macon, Georgia; Savannah, Georgia; Louisville, Kentucky; Boston, Massachusetts; Baltimore, Maryland; Detroit, Michigan; Meridian, Mississippi; Jersey City, New Jersey; Newark, New Jersey; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charleston, South Carolina; Corpus Cristi, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Alexandria, Virginia. 503 The number of developments given in parentheses: Arkansas (5); Arizona (6); Colorado (4); Connecticut (15); Delaware (2); Hawaii (2); Kentucky (16); Massachusetts (18); Maryland (16); Maine (1); Michigan (9); Mississippi (14); Montana (3); Nebraska (3); New Jersey (35); Oregon (3); Rhode Island (6); South Carolina (14); Virginia (16); Washington (8); Wisconsin (3); and West Virginia (11). 220

Figure 24 Map of locations of public housing listed on the National Register of Historic Places, 34 in total. Visit the online map for more info on each: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zz_8eROqXVK0.kQoFcs6Ke9RM&usp=shar ing

Figure 25 Map of every public housing project built between 1933 and 1949. Visit the online map for more info on each area: https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=zz_8eROqXVK0.kaOZnAB8Rn4M&usp=sha ring

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Table 1 Public housing in order of listing on National Register of Historic Places

Name City, State NRHP Listed Techwood Homes Atlanta, Georgia 1976 University Homes Atlanta, Georgia 1976 First Houses New York City, New York 1979 Harlem River Houses New York City, New York 1979 Lockefield Garden Apartments Indianapolis, Indiana 1983 Neighborhood Gardens Apartments St. Louis, Missouri 1986 Langston Terrace Dwellings Washington D.C. 1987 Laurel Homes Cincinnati, Ohio 1987 San Felipe Courts Houston, Texas 1988 Cedar Springs Place Dallas, Texas 1991 Tindall Heights Macon, Georgia 1993 Griffin Park Orlando, Florida 1996 Lauderdale Courts Memphis, Tennessee 1996 LeMoyne Gardens Memphis, Tennessee 1996 Carl Mackley Houses Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1998 Magnolia Street Housing Project New Orleans, Louisiana 1999 Cleveland Court Apartments Montgomery, Alabama 2001 Atchison Village Defense Housing Richmond, California 2003 Trent Court New Bern, North Carolina 2003 Vladeck Houses New York City, New York 2004 Council Plaza St. Louis, Missouri 2007 Boylan Apartments Raleigh, North Carolina 2007 Cole Avenue Housing Project Akron, Ohio 2007 Medfair Heights Apartments Medina, Ohio 2008 Santa Rita Courts Austin, Texas 2008 Cedar Square West Minneapolis, Minnesota 2010 Butler Place Fort Worth, Texas 2011 Julia C. Lathrop Homes Chicago, Illinois 2012 Westerly Apartments Lakewood, Ohio 2013 Cherokee Terrace Apartments Enid, Oklahoma 2013 New Helvetia Sacramento, California 2014 Iberville Public Housing New Orleans, Louisiana 2014 Development Craven Terrace New Bern, North Carolina 2014

222

Table 2 Place by National Register Historic Criteria

Name NRHP Criteria Techwood Homes Arch, CP, Ed, Eng, SH University Homes Arch, Ed, LA, SH First Houses Arch, CP, SH Harlem River Houses Arch, CP, SH Lockefield Garden Apartments Arch, P/G, SH Neighborhood Gardens Apartments Arch, CP Langston Terrace Dwellings Arch, Art, EH, CP, SH Laurel Homes Arch, CP, G, SH San Felipe Courts Arch, CP, SH Cedar Springs Place CP, SH Tindall Heights Arch, CP Griffin Park Arch, CP, EH, SH Lauderdale Courts Arch, G, SH LeMoyne Gardens Af-Am, Arch, G, SH Carl Mackley Houses Arch, G, SH Magnolia Street Housing Project SH Cleveland Court Apartments EH, G Atchison Village Defense Housing G Trent Court Arch, Comm, CP, EH, T Vladeck Houses Arch, EH, R, EH Council Plaza CP, SH Boylan Apartments Arch, CP, SH Cole Avenue Housing Project Arch, CP, SH Medfair Heights Apartments Arch, CP, SH Santa Rita Courts CP, G, SH Cedar Square West Arch, CP Butler Place Arch, G, SH Julia C. Lathrop Homes Arch, CP, LA Westerly Apartments Arch, SH Cherokee Terrace Apartments Arch, CP New Helvetia Arch, EH, SH Iberville Public Housing Development SH Craven Terrace Arch, CP, EH Key: African-American History = Af-Am; Architecture = Arch; Art = Art; Commerce = Comm; Community Planning and Community Planning and Development = CP; Education = Ed; Engineering = Eng; Ethnic Heritage = EH; Landscape Architecture = LA; Politics/Government and Government = G; Religion = R; Social History and Social/Humanitarian = SH; Transportation = T

223

Cumulatively, architecture features prominently in twenty-four of the thirty-three places. Even the normally-plain aesthetic of public housing has been brought under the umbrella of the “buildings as history” ideology so dominant in mainstream historic preservation efforts.504 Thus, as Stipe highlights, although numerous criteria and themes of significance can be considered, architecture remains a “bedrock” value of historic preservation.505 This is surprising here because a common lament about public housing has been its very architectural indistinctiveness. This is certainly the case when compared to other, better-financed architectural projects.

But the New Deal public housing program went through several phases, and this is embodied in the listed properties. This fact represents the tensions inherent in public policy compromises as well as the experimental development of the New Deal. The later stages of housing which spread across the United States were simpler because they had to become more cost-effective than earlier PWA examples. The case study of Poindexter

Village in Columbus, Ohio, a later-phase USHA project, was one of hundreds of examples of that process. This was not the case with several of the earlier PWA-run projects, which tended to cost more per square foot. Closer examinations of Santa Rita

Courts in Austin, Texas; Langston Terrace Dwellings in Washington, DC; the Iberville

Public Housing Development in New Orleans, Louisiana; and Lathrop Homes illustrate how architecture and social history add up to national historical significance.

504 Melinda J. Milligan, “Buildings as History: The Place of Collective Memory in the Study of Historic Preservation,” Symbolic Interaction 30, no. 1 (February 1, 2007): 105. 505 Stipe, “Some Preservation Fundamentals,” 29. 224

Santa Rita Courts, Austin, Texas

At first glance, Santa Rita Courts appears unique among public housing National

Mexican Americans. While significant in its own rights as a piece of social history of the

American Southwest, this place shares more history in common with the other listings than not. The fact that New Deal planners segregated the housing project stands as the first case in point. The listed properties reflect the segregation that real estate practices and New Deal government policy created or solidified. Fourteen of the thirty-three projects were for whites only and are located in the North, South, and West. Eleven were set aside for blacks only and also include all regions, but have a higher proportion of southern listings. Two properties segregated whites and blacks but while living within the same project. The segregation of two projects remains unclear.

The project in Austin, Texas, is the sole listed property that housed Mexican

Americans only. Three projects did not uphold racial segregation. These places were built later and belong to a different era of public housing development. Two of these properties, however, were built in the 1960s for elderly tenants, and the third, while for working-class residents, was built in the 1970s.

225

Figure 26 Santa Rita Courts pictured in 1950

And while the registration forms do not always go out of their way to emphasize racial segregation, or mention it at best in passing, the narratives often highlight the historical reality nonetheless. Significantly, both African-American and white-only locations are preserved. Listed housing that was built for blacks exclusively is quite likely to explicitly cite black “ethnic heritage” as a qualifying historical criteria. Still, other ethnic groups, notably Mexican Americans and especially Asian Americans, remain largely overlooked.506 Preserving developments like Santa Rita go some distance toward highlighting the power of place of nonwhite and working-class communities.

506 This cannot necessarily be generalized to the whole National Register. 226

Figure 27 Children at Santa Rita Courts in 1950

227

Table 3 Properties listed by segregation type

Name City, State Race Butler Place Fort Worth, Texas Blacks only Cleveland Court Apartments Montgomery, Alabama Blacks only Council Plaza St. Louis, Missouri Blacks only Craven Terrace New Bern, North Carolina Blacks only Griffin Park Orlando, Florida Blacks only Harlem River Houses New York City, New York Blacks only Langston Terrace Dwellings Washington D.C. Blacks only LeMoyne Gardens Memphis, Tennessee Blacks only Lockefield Garden Apartments Indianapolis, Indiana Blacks only Magnolia Street Housing Project New Orleans, Louisiana Blacks only Medfair Heights Apartments Medina, Ohio Blacks only University Homes Atlanta, Georgia Blacks only Atchison Village Defense Housing Richmond, California Whites only Boyland Apartments Raleigh, North Carolina Whites only Carl Mackley Houses Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Whites only Cedar Springs Place Dallas, Texas Whites only Cherokee Terrace Apartments Enid, Oklahoma Whites only First Houses New York City, New York Whites only Iberville Development New Orleans, Louisiana Whites only Julia C. Lathrop Homes Chicago, Illinois Whites only Lauderdale Courts Memphis, Tennessee Whites only Neighborhood Gardens Apartments St. Louis, Missouri Whites only San Felipe Courts Houston, Texas Whites only Techwood Homes Atlanta, Georgia Whites only Tindall Heights Macon, Georgia Whites only Trent Court New Bern, North Carolina Whites only Vladeck Houses New York City, New York Whites only Santa Rita Courts Austin, Texas Mexican- Americans only Laurel Homes Cincinnati, Ohio Whites / Blacks segregated in project New Helvetia Sacramento, California Whites / Blacks segregated in project Westerly Apartments Lakewood, Ohio Non-segregated* Cedar Square West Minneapolis, Minnesota Non-segregated* Cole Avenue Housing Project Akron, Ohio N/A** (white likely) * Project built after the 1933 – 1949 period when segregation was no longer policy ** War worker housing 228

Furthermore, Santa Rita Courts in Austin illustrates excellent application of

Criterion A and B, embodying history both of events illustrating broad patterns and of significant persons.507 Built in 1939, Santa Rita Courts’s one-story structures embodied the modern English garden city and German Zeilenbau architectural styles. The forty units on the project site became the first to be completed under the new 1937 housing legislation. Just as the USHA and the Austin Housing Authority (AHA) built Santa Rita

Courts distinctly for Mexican Americans, the two organizations built another project for whites (Chalmers Courts) and a third for blacks (Rosewood Courts) under the same New

Deal programs.

Santa Rita’s construction was in no small part due to the efforts of a new and vigorous rising Democratic US Representative—Lyndon Baines Johnson. Historians often invoke Johnson’s early years teaching poor Mexican-American children as an early influence on his later Great Society legislation and as an example of his commitment to people of color as President. His advocacy of quality, modern housing fits perfectly into this narrative.

Santa Rita’s registration form notes his “involvement with the project [which] stands as a remarkable achievement in his early political career, and foreshadows his active role in the passage of civil rights legislation as a Senator, Vice President, and

President of the United States.” Upon passage of the 1937 housing act, he rounded up local decision-makers and told them (in typical Johnson style), “Now look, I want us to

507 Criteria A are for places “that are associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history,” and criteria B is for places “that are associated with the lives of persons significant in our past.” See National Register of Historic Places, “National Register of Historic Places Brochure.” 229 be the first in the United States if you’re willing to do this, and you’ve got to be willing to stand up for the Negroes and Mexicans.” But this is certainly no “great man” historical narrative, however. The registration form presents an unvarnished picture of a nation solidifying its residential segregation at the same time, even noting the national influence of southern congressmen, and that the three local AHA projects kept “with the City of

Austin’s 1928 master plan which segregated the city by race.” On the one hand, the listing celebrates the success of the public housing program. On the other hand, and potentially problematically, this listing may be interpreted as celebrating that very state- sanctioned form of racial segregation.

On one side of this coin is that in a fashion similar to that of Poindexter’s former residents who hoped their housing development would preserve black history, Santa Rita

Courts “serves as an enduring physical reminder of President Johnson’s early political career, of the political ideals embodied during the late New Deal period that found later expression during Johnson’s Great Society initiatives, and as an early example of

Johnson’s advocacy for civil rights and social justice.” Johnson’s commitment to enact realistic legislation—to make other officials “willing to stand up for the Negroes and

Mexicans”—provides a nuanced history of a special public housing development. At the same time, however, it conflates “civil rights and social justice” with the racial separation of Anglo Americans and Mexican Americans.

230

Figure 28 Representative Lyndon Johnson at Santa Rita Courts in 1939

The place’s social history intertwines with the architectural, design, and political histories. Realtors and fellow politicians pushed against the proposed development, arguing it was a socialistic project. But Johnson fired back, not only pointing out that 61 percent of the housing in East Austin was substandard (no running water, no plumbing, or in major disrepair) but also calling the slum lords “rent hogs” in a face-to-face meeting.

Residents proved Johnson’s faith. They made use of the modern housing to build positive lives. The landscaping matured as residents “reinforced [it] with community enhancing vegetation by tenants over the years.” Residents enjoyed modern conveniences such as a gas range, hot water, and gas heaters. Johnson made sure not to miss the final photo-op.

Above, he poses with the five children of a seven-member family who were the first to 231 move into Santa Rita. They would pay fifteen dollars per month to the housing authority.

They had been paying that amount for one room without plumbing or electricity.

The development that Johnson championed also embodies the history of the era’s design principles. In sharp contrast with the previous era’s poor design, these eight structures were placed in “four parallel rows aligned north-south to allow all units to receive morning or afternoon light.” Also in a similar fashion to Poindexter Village, to

San Felipe Courts in Houston, and many other projects across the country, Santa Rita featured large courtyards between the buildings, including a “children’s play area that bisect the housing development along an east-west axis” to form “the primary social space.” So representative was Santa Rita, that the USHA used it as one of four showpiece developments in a January 1940 issue of Architectural Forum. That all of the project’s architects were affiliated with the University of Texas’s school of architecture further tied it into the architectural community and its history. The introduction to the nomination’s form proudly declares that

Like other first generation American public housing, these buildings were

designed and constructed of materials of such a kind that the local housing

authority would be able to maintain and operate them efficiently over a

period of years. Santa Rita Courts still functions as much needed public

housing almost seventy years after its construction.508

Langston Terrace Dwellings, Washington, DC

508 National Register of Historic Places, Santa Rita Courts, Austin, Travis County, Texas, National Register #08000319. 232

Langston Terrace Dwellings in Washington, DC, is first noted for its architectural design: “The significance of Langston Terrace derives from its architectural quality, historical importance and the prominence of its architect in the specialized field of housing design.” Lewis Mumford thought very highly of Langston Terrace noting a “high standard of exterior design and the use of sculpture . . . more conspicuously successful here than anywhere else I can recall. . . . It looks better than the best modern work in

Hamburg or Vienna that I can recall.” So impressive, in fact, was this property that the

United States Housing Authority showed it off via weekly tours transported by shuttlebus.

Its architecture, however, reveals historical significance intertwined with aesthetics and form, with the realms of social history and even art history—various criteria for historic registration status. The Langston Terrace Dwellings are valued in the registration form for its “terra-cotta frieze which adorns the arcade terrace.” It depicts a work of art “entitled ‘The Progress of the Negro Race,’ [and] it depicts a series of Black family groups being led by the prophetic likeness of John Mercer Langston,” whom the project commemorates—just as Poindexter Village commemorated its namesake, a major black figure in the city’s history. John Mercer Langston, a social reformer, “was the first black to hold elective office in the United States.” The artwork opened up onto a raised platform and the courtyard, which made it an ideal place for residents to hold parties and events. For instance, in December 1938, shortly after the project opened, residents

233 gathered to light a communal Christmas tree.509 This work of art and its accompanying design is an example that captures several levels of historical significance above and beyond the place’s architecture.

Figure 29 Langston Terrace

509 Quinn, “Making Modern Homes: A History of Langston Terrace Dwellings, a New Deal Housing Program in Washington, D.C.,” 171–172. 234

Figure 30 Langston Terrace510

The development and its art embody two of the aspects listed in the registration form, both for the places “ethnic heritage – black” and its “social history.” A federal survey in 1940, just two years after it opened as a PWA project, reported that the community without any infant deaths, compared to a city-wide rate of 70.8 deaths per

1000 births. Langston Terrace’s architect, the African-American Hilyard Robert

Robinson, exemplifies the transnational character of Progressive era and New Deal era

510 “Langston Housing Project. General view of Langston Housing Project,” and “Langston Housing Project. Rear of building at Langston Housing Project,” Washington, D.C. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Theodor Horydczak Collection, ca. 1920 - ca. 1950. 235 reform. After graduating from Columbia University, he spent eighteen months touring

European public housing and used what he learned there in his designs of Langston.

Robinson made sure the design connected well with the surrounding area. Covering fourteen city blocks and made up of two, three, and four-story units, planners placed the complex next to both a public school and a city park. The development built upon traditions of public works, while keeping residents connected to central social institutions.511

Reflecting later interest in preserving the structures as a historically-significant place, contemporary community members were eager to make this housing into a home.

The local authority received over 2,200 applications for its residence of only 274 units.512

Eloise Greenfield and Lessie Jones Little recalled,

For us, Langston Terrace wasn’t an in-between place. It was a growing up

place, a good growing up place. Neighbors who cared, family and friends,

and a lot of fun. Life was good. Not perfect, but good. We knew about

problems, heard about them, saw them, lived through some hard ones

ourselves, but our community wrapped itself around us, put itself between

us and the hard knocks, to cushion the blows.513

In her concluding chapter of a close study of the development’s history, Kelly Anne

Quinn argues that “Langston’s success depended on the residents whose placemaking

511 National Register of Historic Places, Langston Terrace Dwellings, Washington, District of Columbia, National Register #87001851. 512 Quinn, “Making Modern Homes: A History of Langston Terrace Dwellings, a New Deal Housing Program in Washington, D.C.,” 4. 513 Eloise Greenfield and Lessie Jones Little, Childtimes: A Three-Generation Memoir (New York: Harper Collins, 1979), 135 as quoted in ibid., 165. 236 strategies and tactics animated and enlivened the speckled concrete and the buff and brown bricks and mortar.”514

Iberville Public Housing Development, New Orleans, Louisiana

Public housing certainly is not the first thing to come to mind when describing

New Orleans’ famous French Quarter and its adjacent Tremé neighborhood. But the

Iberville Public Housing Development has rested just on the edge of each area since

1941—up until the city and the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development planned its partial demolition and redevelopment. Urban planners designed the development to integrate into the city’s architectural culture while also addressing substandard housing conditions.

As with the case of Poindexter Village and hundreds of other New Deal housing developments, Iberville countered the so-called “slum” housing conditions of the early- twentieth-century city. The Times-Picayune reported in 1910 just how bad things were.

Referencing a public health report on Louisiana’s premier urban center, the article highlighted 267 city blocks dominated by tenements. Physical conditions were poor, but densities were even more staggering: the report put the average occupancy at thirty people per house.515 In all, 95 percent of the area’s housing stock was classified as substandard.516 The identified areas corresponded to the future location of many of the future’s public housing projects, including Iberville.517

514 Ibid. 515 “Tenement House Commission Year,” The Times-Picayune, January 2, 1910. 516 “Project Slated Below Canal Street,” The Times-Picayune, March 18, 1938. 517 National Register of Historic Places, “United States Housing Authority (USHA)-Funded Public Housing in Louisiana, 1935-1950,” Louisiana, National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form, 2014, p. 9. 237

Given the tenement situation, Iberville’s construction was set to follow many familiar patterns of New Deal public housing development. First, the area before the project was set to become part of the slum clearance policy of public housing construction. The first chairman of the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO),

Colonel L. Kemper Williams, applied for PWA funds for what was planned to be the city’s first project. When the HANO obtained a loan from the USHA (which had taken over the housing program from the PWA), it was the first in the country signed by

President Roosevelt.518 While it was built third, the HANO codified racial segregation, hiring two separate architects—one for the all-white Iberville development and another for the all-black Magnolia development.519 HANO’s slum clearance did not mean new housing for the displaced, a population which the authority portrayed as “streetwalkers” affiliated with “houses of prostitution” and dubious “underworld characteristics.”520 Then again, the demolition making way for Iberville did replace the area known as Storyville—

“the notorious red-light district that existed along Basin Street between 1897 and 1917.”

In cooperation with the USHA, however, HANO did follow a one-for-one replacement of demolished housing units. In all, the first six developments that HANO built during this period resulted in almost 5,000 units.521 Ultimately, Iberville’s architectural design fit well with the city’s cultural aesthetics. Its “porches and galleries exhibited iron columns

518 Ibid. p. 17. 519 Magnolia, which became known more popularly as the C.J. Peete project, is listed on the National Register as of 1999. National Register of Historic Places, Magnolia Street Housing Project, New Orleans, Orleans County, Louisiana, National Register #99001038. 520 National Register of Historic Places, “United States Housing Authority (USHA)-Funded Public Housing in Louisiana, 1935-1950,” p. 9. 521 Ibid. p. 18. 238 and decorative cast iron railing, which mimic those found in other areas of New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter.”522

Figure 31 Iberville’s community looks on during a foot race in 1942.523

Iberville’s transition from an all-white housing development presented the place’s first challenge. In a process too familiar to urban America, “as public housing and other

522 National Register of Historic Places, Iberville Public Housing Development Historic District, New Orleans, Orleans County, Louisiana, National Register #14000692. 523 WPA Photograph Collection, Series 36.109, “Recreation; Recreation Project for Whites. Regular recreational activities are conducted by WPA recreation leaders at the Iberville Housing Project. Shown here is a track meet in which boy residents of the project participated. Exterior,” June 15, 1942. 239 public services were desegregated and middle-class white inhabitants moved to the suburbs, the concentration of poor African American residents at Iberville increased.”

More familiar still, highway construction worsened conditions as well.524 Shifting funding calculations that lessened local authorities’ resources, not only in New Orleans but across the country, helped send Iberville into real or perceived decline from the 1960s onward.525

Overshadowing a history of racial inequality and urban redevelopment, the

National Registration form stresses descriptions of the development’s architecture. The form records incredibly detailed accounts of the building types, such as the number of windows, the types of doors, and the layout of the rooms. Five pages are devoted to the place’s architectural significance, while only two pages describe the history behind the physical structure. The form nods in the direction of greater historical significance, but illustrates the value placed on physical architecture, even for public housing developments.526 The slum clearance and dispersal of what were primarily black residents that preceded Iberville’s construction in the late 1930s and early 1940s was only the first salvo of even more urban renewal projects in the 1950s and 1960s.527 Nevertheless,

Iberville’s partial preservation and its NR form highlight the possibility of incorporating these locations into present-day urban planning, rather than simply demolishing them.

524 National Register of Historic Places, Iberville Public Housing Development Historic District, New Orleans, Orleans County, Louisiana, National Register #14000692. 525 Ibid.; Nicolai Ouroussoff, “To Renovate, and Surpass, City’s Legacy,” The New York Times, April 6, 2011. 526 National Register of Historic Places, Iberville Public Housing Development Historic District, New Orleans, Orleans County, Louisiana, National Register #14000692. 527 Alecia P. Long, “Poverty Is the New Prostitution: Race, Poverty, and Public Housing in Post-Katrina New Orleans,” Journal of American History 94 (December 2007): 795–803. 240

In facing redevelopment and demolition, Iberville is not alone. In fact, a majority of public housing developments in New Orleans have seen new construction or been demolished. Other than Iberville, as of 2014 these included St. Thomas, C.J. Peete,

Lafitte, B.W. Cooper, and St. Bernard.528 But despite such attitudes, the National Register acknowledges that for Iberville and St. Thomas “where a larger cohesive building stock does remain” there is a certain “increased importance” of the place.529

Although Iberville’s NR listing was approved in mid-2014, this was after the New

Orleans Housing Authority had demolished 59 of the development’s 75 structures in

2013.530 As The New York Times reported, “In the view of several local housing advocates Iberville, which sustained only minor damage in the hurricane and its aftermath, survived because dozens of families managed to move back in before housing officials could lock them out.”531 In a model showing just how possible the aims of

Columbus’ public history activists were in their advocacy for Poindexter Village, a large portion of Iberville has been incorporated into the contemporary redevelopment. New

Orleans City Business reports that “Determining what should be saved during the rebuild proved a complicated process involving Iberville residents, the Housing Authority of

New Orleans, city officials and the project development team.”532 But instead of demolishing the development almost completely like Columbus’ housing authority,

528 National Register of Historic Places, “United States Housing Authority (USHA)-Funded Public Housing in Louisiana, 1935-1950,” p. 24. 529 Ibid., p. 25. 530 Richard A. Webster, “Demolition of Iberville Housing Development Begins,” The Times-Picayune, September 10, 2013, http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/09/demolition_of_iberville_housin.html. 531 Ouroussoff, “To Renovate, and Surpass, City’s Legacy.” 532 “Top Construction Projects: 8. Iberville Redevelopment,” New Orleans CityBusiness, February 16, 2015, http://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2015/02/16/top-construction-projects-8-iberville- redevelopment-2/. 241

Iberville retains much of its historical integrity, and therefore achieved listing on the prominent National Register of Historic Places.

Figure 32 Iberville Public Housing photographed after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina

Figure 33 Iberville Public Housing photographed after the 2005 Hurricane Katrina. The photos capture the detailed railing and sturdy, attractive brick design.533

533 “Sample housing, neighborhoods” and “New Orleans, Louisiana public housing, after Hurricane Katrina,” National Archives photo nos. 207-DP-10014_Iberville_8857 and 207-DP-10015_Iberville_8870; 242

New Orleans’ public housing stock faced increased pressure after Hurricane

Katrina. Louisiana Republican congressman Richard H. Baker represented the spirit of those thankful for the chance offered by the storm. Citing Katrina, he crowed in 2005,

“We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.”534 But sixteen of Iberville’s buildings stand today as an exception. Of the ten public housing projects across New Orleans, only one—Iberville—is planned to redevelop in such a way as to sustain the same number of public housing units. All of the other redevelopment-demolition projects are planned to replace only a fraction of the units that the sites originally offered.535

Architecture critic James Russell highlighted the sturdiness and attractive design of HANO developments in a 2007 editorial: “In New Orleans, public housing doesn’t mean bleak high-rise towers. The city has thousands of units with Georgian brickwork and lacy ironwork porches that came through Hurricane Katrina barely scathed.”536 Not a one-off, he echoed a commonly-held sentiment, such as New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff’s take on New Orleans public housing: “Solidly built, the buildings’ detailed brickwork, tile roofs and wrought-iron balustrades represent a level of craft more likely found on an Ivy League campus than in a contemporary public-housing

Record Group 207: General Records of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, College Park, MD. 534 Long, “Poverty Is the New Prostitution: Race, Poverty, and Public Housing in Post-Katrina New Orleans.” 535 Even in the case of Iberville, roughly half of the units will be public housing while the second half will be part of a place-based voucher program. Dan Swenson, “Then and Now: Interactive Map of New Orleans Housing Developments,” The Times-Picayune, August 20, 2015, http://www.nola.com/katrina/index.ssf/2015/08/housing_developments_then_now.html. 536 James Russell, “This Will Destroy Housing,” The New York Sun, December 18, 2007. 243 complex.”537 Despite intense opposition from the community (tasers and pepper spray were used in abundance against protestors), the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously to demolish the four largest developments. Iberville was spared but is included in plans for the wholesale redevelopment of what is called the Iberville-Tremé area as part of a HUD Choice Neighborhood Grant—the same grant that demolished

Poindexter Village and is redeveloping the surrounding area.538 As Ouroussoff argues, however, “Given the high quality of the existing buildings’ construction, it is unclear that so many of them need to be demolished.”539

Conclusion

The examples above highlight how public housing development National Register listings intertwine the themes of architecture, planning, and social history. The forms represent the local connections that communities developed with place, while also illustrating how these local projects were shaped by national dynamics. Social history and the history of urban planning feature prominently across regions and date of listing.

These point to the influence of the community on larger historical processes such as the

New Deal or international urban planning. The historical rationales for Register listing includes a breadth of geography (with listings in every region); time (spanning 1976 to

2014); and historical rationale (including social history, ethnic heritage, art, education, politics, and more). For instance, the especially well-drafted historical narrative of

Cherokee Terrace Apartments in Enid, Oklahoma, notes several of the first tenants who

537 Nicolai Ouroussoff, “All Fall Down,” The New York Times, November 19, 2006. 538 Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Choice Neighborhoods Project Summaries FY 2010/2011,” August 31, 2011, http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/documents/huddoc?id=CNFY2010-2011.pdf. 539 Ouroussoff, “To Renovate, and Surpass, City’s Legacy.” 244 occupied the residences—a painter, photographer, police captain, truck driver, mechanic, and even company managers.540 Such historical facts help flesh out how deeply intertwined federally-funded public housing became with local communities in the mid- twentieth century. The listed properties capture the breadth and many of the complexities these themes represent. Likewise, the NRHP listings parallel the history of Poindexter

Village and how it came to be valued by Columbus’ community, proving that former residents held a strong case to list and preserve the first public housing development in

Ohio’s capital.

540 National Register of Historic Places, Cherokee Terrace Apartments, Enid, Garfield County, Oklahoma, National Register #13000939. 245

Epilogue: Public Housing, Urban Redevelopment and the Role of Public History

In an urban landscape, you know who you are by where you are. At the same time, you understand the nature of the terrain by who lives where. – Historian Sarah Deutsch

I discovered that Poindexter Village’s story reflects the changing fate of

America’s public housing, both in its history and in its symbolic place in collective memory. As I delved deeper into the case study portion of my research, it turned out that

Poindexter once boasted a vibrant community life, steeped in the legacies of the Great

Migration, the New Deal, neighborhood formation, the politics of historic preservation, and more. Prior to its construction, in fact, Columbus’ African Americans formed a neighborhood. They created a socially supportive environment, despite their racially segregated circumstances. They built up businesses. They created their own institutions.

Eventually, social scientists and urban reformers identified that Near East Side as a

“slum,” which placed it on a path for its first wave of urban redevelopment.

New Deal policymaker and planners either could not or would not challenge the racial segregation well under way by the time they made public housing a physical reality for urban America. Still, some of the ideals of architect Howard Dwight Smith’s

“socialized architecture” were realized. Facing a nation out of work, in the grips of fear, and tenants who lived in housing without modern heating or plumbing, reformers pursued

246 housing that offered material improvements for at least a small portion of Americans, white and black. Public housing, taken as a whole, certainly has had its share of failures.

But the earliest generations embodied many successful ideals that present urban planners should emulate, not least because demand for affordable housing is at record highs.

This manuscript finishes at the intersection of public history and urban redevelopment. In doing so, it offers a blueprint of sorts that other cities should use to prevent and arbitrate potential conflict over urban historic meaning and preservation— albeit as long as the urban planning entity engages the historic review process from the beginning as it is legally mandated to do, and not as an afterthought as CMHA did. Quite aside from the worry that historic preservation efforts lead to “gentrification,” the opposite can, in fact, be true. This is especially accurate when those advocating for preservation of their history are less powerful or influential than the redevelopers. The economic disparities that define urban America, I suggest, are one of a slew of factors that led to the controversy in Columbus. Nearby land prices are rising, but most of the redevelopment so far does not appear to be improving the lives of former Poindexter residents.541 And former residents appear to have scattered far and wide, effectively dismantling any sense of community.542 But by considering the grassroots level, interviewing key participants, and examining the effectiveness of the preservation review

541 Mark Ferenchik, “Columbus pays premium for former grocery near Poindexter Village,” Columbus Dispatch, February 24, 2014. 542 Residents who still resided in Poindexter at the time of the demolition announcement were given vouchers by CMHA. During my time collecting oral histories, I have had the privilege to be invited into the homes of former residents. At one of these locations I spotted cockroaches. At another, the resident was being foreclosed upon. “Voucher Users Scatter in County after Housing Projects Close,” Columbus Dispatch, November 21, 2011. 247 process, we find economic power, the past, history, memory, and nostalgia all at the heart of the matter.

From the start of the protests against the proposed redevelopment, activists concentrated on a shared history as a uniting issue. Historic preservation quickly became the housing activists’ main focus and the area where they were most likely to succeed.543

For most, this has meant saving as many of the buildings as they could so that a museum, a cultural center, or even renovated housing could be established in the original

Poindexter structures. Mixed up in all of this public history activism are issues with what history has been erased and what a historically-neglected community can achieve in the face of multi-million-dollar interests. The Village occupies a special place in the hearts of many of the former residents.

The Poindexter case study and the final chapter on national listings reveal that historic preservation is debated and valued not only at the federal or institutional levels but very much at the local community level also. Because of the conflict that arose, parts of Columbus, Ohio’s Poindexter Village preservation negotiations offer lessons for other communities, cities, and federal agencies. Community stakeholders should be included from the start of demolition proposals, especially when they focus on large tracts of land.

City officials and professional historians should follow the examples of Randy Black and

Justin Cook in their laudable efforts to mediate the review process. Federal agencies should be held accountable for the duties assigned to them under the 106 review process.

If HUD and the CMHA had included community concerns prior to their 2008

543 Dr. Horace “Ike” Newsum interviewed by Patrick R. Potyondy. August 19, 2014. 248 announcement, conflict might have been avoided and the redevelopment plans might have better included historic preservation. Both steps then might have contributed the neighborhood revitalization goals of the redevelopment organization Partners Achieving

Community Transformation Together.544

For professional historians, the case study offers insights into how the public engages with urban history and what it values and why. For urban planners, it illustrates how understanding and taking very seriously the history of the places to be affected by urban redevelopment can aid and improve the process as well as the finished product.

Demand for its preservation in Columbus and thirty-three other places across the United

States is just one manifestation of people’s interest in the historical significance of public housing.

Waitlists for access to public housing and affordable housing programs are as long as ever across the country. In 2013, 28,076 residents were on the waitlist for traditional public housing in Philadelphia (another 54,368 were waiting for publicly- funded Section 8 housing vouchers). Fewer than 500 units were becoming available each year. And the local housing authority managed just over 14,000 units total, meaning it would have to triple its capacity to meet only the active demand on the traditional public housing list.545 New York City has more than 220,000 names on its list as of 2013.546

And Chicago, a city with one of the most negative public housing records, boasted its

544 Comprised of CMHA, OSU, and the City of Columbus. 545 “Traditional public housing” here denoting the housing units and structures owned and operated by the public housing institution. Daniel Denvir, “Philly’s Poorest Face a Never-Ending Wait for Affordable Housing,” Philadelphia City Paper, October 24, 2013. 546 Mireya Navarro, “227,000 Names on List Vie for Rare Vacancies in City’s Public Housing,” The New York Times, July 24, 2013. 249

“largest waitlist registration” in its history, with over 280,000 people.547 Although stigma still tarnishes the image of public housing, demand for affordable housing has not waned—if anything, it has increased. This may be the case because Americans across the country struggle to find any affordable housing. Historian Gail Radford has argued that had it not been for the very effective negative campaign against public housing in the early twentieth century, many Americans would have been more than happy to choose to live in communal public housing.548 Nonetheless, her assessment is likely true.

Not only that, many Americans remember that these places once offered not only modernized housing to underserved neighborhoods for the first time but also that they fostered vibrant communities. This is a lesson public policymakers should take to heart:

Just as the New Deal initially offered, reviving the nation’s commitment to providing modern housing to the working class (and, hopefully, the poor) would not only meet the needs of what should be a basic human right; it would help create jobs in communities that have too often been left behind. Poindexter Village thrived, after all, for many decades. Only in the late 1980s and the 1990s, did drugs, entrenched racialized poverty, and a lack of equal opportunity overwhelm the ability of the entire Near East Side neighborhood community and CMHA to cope. This timeline suggests not that big government often or always fails; instead, it suggests when and how it can very much succeed.

547 Chicago Housing Authority, “CHA Waitlist Lottery Officially Closes as More than 282,000 Households Register for Affordable Housing - Press Releases - News | The Chicago Housing Authority,” November 25, 2014, http://www.thecha.org/cha-waitlist-lottery-officially-closes-as-more-than-282000-households- register-for-affordable-housing/. 548 Radford, Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era. 250

Finally, the public history community activists also showed me in a very practical sense that “new” urban redevelopment and historic preservation do not have to be adversaries—as long as those doing the redeveloping acknowledge the historical importance of the places they are forever changing. Although public housing’s image is less than stellar, Columbus’ black community still feels a deep attachment to Poindexter

Village. I began working with community members in late 2013. By that point, members of the Coalition for Responsible and Sustainable Development on the Near East Side were working closely with the official redevelopment umbrella organization Partners

Achieving Community Transformation (PACT) (later, some members of the Coalition branched off to form the non-profit James Preston Poindexter Legacy Foundation in pursuit of the museum exhibit). I became the sole academic historian to join the group, and the conflict was already well underway.

It was telling, I think, that until I made contact with the group, no academic historian had become involved—either by invitation or from their own initiative. One of my goals was to breach that wall. From the start I made it clear that I had my own professional goals to pursue—completing my dissertation research—but I also knew that my efforts were not in opposition to theirs. In fact, they could contribute. First, I collected oral histories. Finding participants proved exceptionally difficult since by that time,

CMHA had already moved tenants out of Poindexter and, citing privacy issues, would not give me any contact information whatsoever. Once I did make contact with potential interviewees, they generally proved amenable to, as I saw it, preserving their history and contributing to the historic preservation of Poindexter’s past. A few individuals, after

251 initially agreeing to be interviewed, backed out suddenly, and I never was able to discover why. Second, I helped think through and research the viability of creating a cultural museum and center in the remaining two Poindexter structures. And third, I have helped design and research a virtual reality reconstruction application for the year-long museum exhibit that is going to run on Poindexter Village at the Columbus Historical

Society. I entered into this collaborative community work with an open mind and was eager to contribute whatever I could. Former residents, community members, and official organizations were pleased to see interest coming from Ohio State and were happy to have me—and those other OSU academics I brought along—contribute. I hope academic historians emulate such work in future. The public welcomes it.

In Women and the City, Sarah Deutsch wrote, “In an urban landscape, you know who you are by where you. At the same time, you understand the nature of the terrain by who lives where.”549 The stakes are higher than this, however. In urban environments, the meaning of “who” and “where” are constantly redefined both by redevelopment and memory. Arguably, more than anything else, what a nation chooses to commemorate, memorialize, and preserve represents the core being of what it strives to be and not just what but who it values. We certainly already understand urban terrain by who lives there and where we are now. But we should understand it just as much by who lived there before. And many communities already do. Urban development has been and still is a conflict, and a political one, too. And history sits at its core.

549 Sarah Deutsch, Women and the City : Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940: Gender, Space, and Power in Boston, 1870-1940 (Oxford University Press, 2000), 286. 252

References

Archived Collections

Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority

2 boxes containing historic miscellaneous photographs, newspaper clippings, and documents

Journal of Proceedings, 1934 - 1974

Columbus Landmarks

Correspondence, Memos, and Records

Columbus Public Library

Colored Men's Business Association of Ohio. The Ohio Business Directory and Information Guide of Ohio's Colored Business Men and Women. Columbus, OH: 1913.

McWilliams, W.A., ed. Columbus Illustrated Record. Columbus, OH: 1920.

———. Columbus Negro Directory, 1929-1930. Columbus, OH: 1930.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Presidential Library

United States Housing Authority files, Poindexter Village and Columbus, Ohio

The Ohio History Connection

Champion Avenue Project No Ohio 1-1, architectural drawings

Daily Diary of Poindexter Village, 1939 - 1942

Poindexter Village Demolition documents, State Historic Preservation Office

Vanguard League Papers

Library of Congress 253

Theodor Horydczak Collection

National Archives

Photographs of Public Works Administration and United States Housing Authority Projects

WPA Photograph Collection

Partners Achieving Community Transformation (PACT) Files

Correspondence and Memos and Reports

Newspapers and Media Sources

Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL) Cleveland Call and Post (Cleveland, OH) Columbus Citizen Journal (Columbus, OH) Columbus Free Press (Columbus, OH) The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, OH) Examiner.com Morning Edition, National Public Radio NBC4 Columbus TV (Columbus, OH) The Ohio Sentinel (Columbus, OH) New Orleans City Business (New Orleans, LA) New York Sun (New York, NY) The New York Times (New York, NY) Philadelphia City Paper (Philadelphia, PA) The Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA) WCMH-TV (Columbus, OH) WBEZ Chicago Public Radio (Chicago, IL)

Oral Histories

The Ohio History Connection

Randy Black Leslie Bridges Justin Cook Oretha Edwards Steven “Paco” Grier 254

Calvin L. Hairston Marilyn A. Kendrick Rick Livingston Cynthia Mastin Horace “Ike” Newsum Chief Baba Shongo Obadina Julie Marie Whitney Scott Roland Stepney Daniel Sturkey Laura Tompkins

Other Oral Histories in Possession of the Author

Gloria Carpenter Lorraine Hinton Mary Jane Patton-Day Oral History Circle Recording

National Register of Historic Places Nomination and Registration Forms

Atchison Village Defense Housing Project (Richmond, CA) Atlanta University Center District (Atlanta, GA) Boyland Apartments (Raleigh, NC) Butler Place Historic District (Fort Worth, TX) Carl Mackley Houses (Philadelphia, PA) Cedar Springs Place (Dallas, TX) Cedar Square West (Minneapolis, MN) Cherokee Terrace Apartments (Enid, OK) Cleveland Court Apartments (Montgomery, AL) Cole Avenue Housing Project Historic District (Akron, OH) Council Plaza (St. Louis, MO) Craven Terrace (New Bern, NC) First Houses (New York City, NY) Griffin Park Historic District (Orlando, FL) Harlem River Houses (New York, NY) Iberville Public Housing Development Historic District (New Orleans, LA) Julia C. Lathrop Homes (Chicago, IL) Langston Terrace Dwellings (Washington, DC) Lauderdale Courts Public Housing Project (Memphis, TN) Laurel Homes Historic District (Cincinnati, OH) LeMoyne Gardens Public Housing Project (Memphis, TN) Lockefield Garden Apartments (Indianapolis, IN) Lower East Side Historic District (New York, NY) 255

Magnolia Street Housing Project (New Orleans, LA) Medfair Heights Apartment Historic District (Medina, OH) Neighborhood Gardens Apartments (St. Louis, MO) New Bern Historic District (New Bern, NC) New Helvetia Historic District (Sacramento, CA) San Felipe Courts Historic District (Houston, TX) Santa Rita Courts (Austin, TX) Techwood Homes Historic District (Atlanta, GA) Tindall Heights Historic District (Macon, GA) Westerly Apartments (Lakewood, OH)

“United States Housing Authority (USHA)-Funded Public Housing in Louisiana, 1935-1950.” Louisiana. National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation Form.