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Beyond the Border: Norvelt, Westmoreland County

5 min read
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Eleanor Roosevelt visiting her namesake Norvelt on May 21, 1937.

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A Depression-era home that was built in Norvelt.

In a commencement address at Atlanta’s Oglethorpe University just a handful of months before he was elected president, Franklin Roosevelt exclaimed that the country demanded “bold, persistent experimentation.”

Roosevelt continued, “It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.”

Two years after Roosevelt laid down that marker, shovels went into the ground for what became Norvelt. Now a quiet, pleasant Westmoreland County crossroads that can be reached after traversing winding back roads that dip and rise and pass farms and churches, Norvelt epitomized the spirit of determination and testing that characterized the New Deal.

With at least 30 percent – nearly one in three – of U.S. workers sidelined by the Great Depression at the dawn of 1934, Roosevelt’s year-old administration was dealing with multiple knotty problems caused the country’s economic meltdown. With many families lacking a steady paycheck, regular meals or a place to lay their heads at night, Roosevelt refashioned the federal government as a wellspring of fervent activity and urgently needed relief. Jobs were created through public works projects, Social Security helped alleviate destitution among the elderly, and the livelihoods of farmers were stabilized through subsidies and loans.

And the federal government also got in the housing business.

Public housing projects began to sprout in large metropolitan areas, but efforts were also made to assist families in the countryside who not only lacked their own four walls, but also had been bereft of such conveniences as indoor plumbing and electricity. Norvelt was one of them.

It was born on rolling farmland in Mt. Pleasant Township on April 13, 1934, when the Federal Subsistence Homestead Corporation purchased almost 1,500 acres of land from the heirs of farmer James P. Hurst. The aim was simple: Provide a place to live and jobs for displaced coal miners.

Michael Cary, a professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, talks about some of the memorabilia surrounding Norvelt. Cary co-authored a book on Norvelt.

It’s “an important story to tell,” according to Michael Cary, a professor of history and political science at Seton Hill University in Greensburg and the co-author of the book, “Hope in Hard Times: Norvelt and the Struggle for Community During the Great Depression,” which was published in 2017 by Penn State University Press.

While most communities in America developed organically, usually due to their proximity to waterways or other natural resources, Norvelt was planned from the get-go, not unlike a subdivision would be today. About half of the property purchased by the federal government was divided into land for homesteaders, while some of the property was set aside for things like barns and a post office. It was initially christened Westmoreland Homesteads, and Greensburg architect Paul Bartholomew – who designed the YMCA and Troutman’s Department Store in Greensburg, and the Citizens National Bank building in Latrobe (which later wound up on the National Register of Historic Places) – set to work designing its houses and layout.

Other New Deal homestead communities sprouted in such places as Maryland, Mississippi and Arkansas, with a community in the latter being the home of Johnny Cash. Another in Pennsylvania, Penn-Craft, was located in Fayette County. The first, Arthurdale, 15 miles southeast of Morgantown, W.Va., provided lessons for the makers of Norvelt – the abodes in Arthurdale were not properly insulated, the cost of building them went well over budget, and the whole development was panned by critics as an example of rampaging socialism. Male Norvelt residents were paid to help build their homes, and rather than having a communal garden, each family was given their own plot of earth to tend.

Norvelt represented “a middle way,” Cary says.

“There’s a long strain of American individualism that had to be accommodated,” he continues. Along with its homes, Norvelt was outfitted with a garment factory and co-op store.

In May 1937, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt visited Westmoreland Homesteads. She summoned up the suffering that happened at the onset of the Depression and proclaimed that communities built along the same lines could “provide equality of opportunity for all and prevent the recurrence of a similar disaster in the future.” Shortly thereafter, Westmoreland Homesteads was renamed Norvelt, using the last syllables in the first lady’s name. The fire hall there also bears the Roosevelt moniker.

A lamp modeled after a home in Norvelt, on display in the “Norvelt Room” in the Norvelt Business Plaza.

The New Deal started to wind down in the early 1940s due to World War II, and the federal government’s involvement in Norvelt ended in 1944. Most of the original settlers are now dead or living elsewhere, but many of their descendants still live in Norvelt. The Rev. David Greer, the minister at Norvelt Union Church, is a third-generation Norvelt resident. He said his forebears “had a work ethic, they had pride.”

Today, most of the Cape Cod houses originally built in Norvelt are still there. It also has a BP gas station, a newly opened Subway restaurant and a room within the Norvelt Business Plaza that contains memorabilia from its 84-year history.

Cary says Norvelt still holds lessons for us today.

“We are our brother’s keeper,” he says. “We need to do the kinds of things that enable us to provide the help that the people in Norvelt got.”

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