This housing project, shown here looking southwest from the corner of Central and East 55th, was built just north of the older Outhwaite Homes in the early 1940s by the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority. The caption on the reverse side of this postcard reads: "This once slum area is now the living area of thousands of Negroes in comfortable family and apartment units." Of course, as was too common nationally, white leaders saw slums where black residents saw communities, and the "slums" they redeveloped usually offered fewer housing units than were demolished, a sure recipe for housing insecurity even it supposedly made for more healthful urban environments. The House of Wills was but one casualty of this particular instance of "slum clearance." | Date: ca. 1952 | Source: Cleveland Memory Project, Cleveland State University Library Special CollectionsDownload Original File
Source
Cleveland Memory Project, Cleveland State University Library Special Collections
