Poindexter Village sign photograph   Save
Daily Diary of Poindexter Village
Description: Dated May 27, 1940, this photograph shows a sign erected at Poindexter Village in Columbus, Ohio, during construction. Opened in 1940 on the Near East Side of Columbus (bound by I-71 to the west, Nelson Road to the east, Broad Street to the south, and I-670 to the north), Poindexter Village was the first public housing development in Ohio, and the second in the country, as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Designed by architect Howard Dwight Smith, Poindexter Village consisted of 35 two-story brick townhouses, housing 333 units with monthly rent costs ranging from $18.28 to $19.25. The United States Housing Authority funded its construction and the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority managed the development thereafter. Poindexter Village was one of 700 public housing developments built to provide affordable housing to working Americans, especially Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers, recovering from the Great Migration and the Great Depression. The development was named after the first African American elected to City Council and the Columbus School Board, Reverend James Poindexter, a local barber by trade and a conductor on the Underground Railroad. Since the early 20th century, the Near East Side has been one of the most important African American communities in Columbus, with families displaced by the Civil War as its early inhabitants. Poindexter Village replaced the Blackberry Patch, a tightly-knit African American community on the Near East Side of Columbus, and became the heart of African American culture and community on the Near East Side, producing prominent artists, social justice activists, medical professionals, academics and politicians. View on Ohio Memory.
Image ID: SA1990_Vol2p151
Subjects: Poindexter Village; Columbus (Ohio); African Americans--History; Public housing; Works Progress Administration; New Deal, 1933-1939
Places: Columbus (Ohio); Franklin County (Ohio)