Altavista Housing Corporation Houses

The Public Works Administration (PWA) Housing Division funded these fifty one-story frame houses for workers. The construction schedule called for all of the houses to be built between March and June 1935. The houses are set on typical company housing lots, 60 × 140 feet, long enough to have vegetable gardens in the rear. Back alleys bisect the blocks. The houses were built to four models (A, B, C, and D). The more desirable corner lots were generally reserved for the larger A and B models with the smaller C and D models alternating along the interior lots of the streets. These architect-designed houses all had a front porch, a living room, a dinette and kitchen (except Model C that had a combined living room and dining room), two bedrooms, and an interior passage. The houses included several closets and an indoor bathroom fitted with a bathtub, commode, and basin. In contrast, even ten years later, few of the smaller company-built mill houses at Schoolfield (PI65) had indoor plumbing. The houses here had concrete steps from the street level, front walks of crushed stone, privet hedges on the front and sides of the houses, and two trees in the front yards of those on Park Street but none on 10th Street because those lots were covered with native trees.