Norvelt Historical Marker

The community of Norvelt, PA, was originally established as "Westmoreland Homesteads" on April 13, 1934. Created as part of the New Deal, the community had 250 homes, each of which was filled with a family to be given shelter and work opportunities in the middle of the Great Depression. The community's current name, Norvelt, comes from the first and last name of Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady at the time, whose interest in and devotion to homestead projects such as Norvelt endeared her to the people. Officially renamed in 1937, Norvelt continues to provide a home to hundreds of people today.

The idea to form a homestead in Westmoreland County came about in the 1930s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal were creating opportunities for Americans in need during the Great Depression. The past few decades had been hard on the working class in Southwestern Pennsylvania, and many families that had relied on the coal industry were without a source of income. Westmoreland Homesteads, then, was designed to provide shelter and work opportunities to those willing to band together and overcome the hardships being faced in southwestern Pennsylvania.

The main goal of Norvelt's creation was to allow Americans to survive hardships together. To do this, community was looked at as a resource so that those with more could give to those with less as fortunes changed for each family in the homestead. Giving to others without thought of payment was encouraged, and many groups and co-ops, such as the Mothers' Club, health club, and Co-op store, were formed to help homesteaders support each other. In order for this ideal community to function, however, it was critical that the proper residents be chosen to populate the neighborhoods. Under the leadership of project manager David Day and Paul M. Campbell, a screening team was put together to interview potential homesteaders. These potential residents of Westmoreland Homesteads would need to submit a quality application and be approved by the homestead officials. A large number of people filed applications, allowing Day and Campbell to select only the best candidates. In doing this, several traits were sought in the applying candidate, namely a strong cooperative spirit, interest in subsistence farming, and the ability to contribute on a personal level to the community. By May of 1935, 774 applicants, or 126 families, had been approved to settle in the homes of Westmoreland Homesteads, which was quickly renamed Norvelt after a contest held by the paper the Homestead Informer.

Although Norvelt's community was strong, there were some challenges facing the cooperative ethos. For example, despite homes coming with space for gardens to enrich the diets of homesteaders, not many residents actually knew how to tend a garden or can unused goods for future use. These problems were solved by setting up study groups and informative sessions to teach homesteaders how to better make use of the resources they were given. A darker problem Norvelt faced was one common in America at the time, racism. Officially, Norvelt did not discriminate based on race when considering applicants, but the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, or DSH, in charge of Norvelt's development did not accept many Black families in any of their projects. While many white families on the area were happy to integrate, few Black families would make it past the initial interviews. In fact, only five percent of Black applicants were eligible to be accepted into Westmoreland Homesteads, as opposed to fourteen percent of whites. Only one Black family was eventually accepted into Norvelt, the Whites, who wrote to the President in search or reassurance that racism would not impact Norvelt. After Roosevelt agreed that there should not be any racial discrimination in Norvelt, DSH officials and David Day worked to ensure that any homesteaders with racial prejudices would be ejected from the community. With the issue resolved, the Whites moved in to the community as a respected family. Norvelt would face many other problems throughout its years, but the members of the community learned from the early years to work together when facing obstacles.

Norvelt's homes and yards were designed with subsistence farming in mind. Each home had space for a large garden, many with room for an orchard or chicken coop as well. These gardens would help homesteaders to obtain food in the middle of the 1930s, when the Dust Bowl and raised prices left many crops in short supply. The houses themselves were modest Cape Cod-style homes along curvilnear streets, giving Norvelt a welcoming, neighborly sense. Paul Bartholomew, the architect of Norvelt, focused on building individual, free-standing houses with one of five floor plans. Each house had in between four and six rooms, and was given a designated number from 402 to 601 identifying the layout. The houses' designs were intended to make use of space efficiently, with large kitchens for family meals but little space for traditional living rooms. Homesteaders were looking for support for themselves and their families, after all, not a vacation home to wait out the Great Depression in. Interestingly, the DSH had instructions for things such as privacy, air flow, and even light in the homes. Bathrooms were to be accessible from the bedroom without passing through any other rooms, cross ventilation was to be provided, and there was to be ample lighting in all rooms. The type 402 house, to follow these guidelines, had fourteen windows positioned to allow cross breezes to blow across the homes even when doors remained shut. Overall, the small homes of Norvelt provided the former coal workers a greater sense of comfort and home than the houses previously provided to them in the coal patches. Today, most of the original houses of Norvelt still stand, with only a few being replaced or demolished. Hundreds of people still live in the community named for Eleanor Roosevelt, the first subsistence community in Pennsylvania.

Wintermantel, Mike. Norvelt, HMdb.org. May 22nd 2012. Accessed April 11th 2022. https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=55589.

United States Census Bureau. Accessed April 11th 2022. https://data.census.gov/cedsci/profile?g=1600000US4255616.

Kelly, Timothy. Power, Margaret. Cary, Michael. Hope in Hard Times. University Park, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016.

Library of Congress. Accessed May 2nd 2022. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Norvelt%2C%20PA.

Norvelt, Westmoreland County, Pa., circa 1959., ExplorePAhistory.com. Accessed May 2nd 2022. http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-10BE.