ON THIS DAY: April 15, 1940, Construction of Bedford Dwellings is completed

PITTSBURGH, Pa. — When the hammers and shovels were laid down on April 15, 1940, Bedford Dwellings stood proud as the first federal public housing development in the nation. Featuring 420 apartments on 18 acres, it was a highly sought-after address for low-income families and would remain desirable for decades until crime overtook the community, prompting changes in recent years.

As the country was emerging from the economic devastation of the Great Depression, the United States Housing Act of 1937 was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt with the goal of providing decent, affordable housing for low-income people.

The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh was formed under the provisions of the act to implement the program, with Bedford Dwellings serving as its first and largest project. The Housing Authority said of the development. "It takes natural pride in sponsoring a trend toward living where the sun shines the whole day and the pounding of the mills is only a far echo.”

The chosen site was known as Greenlee Field, a ballpark where the Pittsburgh Crawfords played. They were one of the best Negro League teams. Prior to that, a cemetery was on the property. During site clearing for Bedford Dwellings in 1938, remains that were found were re-interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in Wilkinsburg.

On July 15, 1940, the first 32 families, quite literally paraded into the complex, as the country began its first experiment in federal public housing. Demand for the first units was so strong that interviews were required of prospective residents and 460 additional units were opened 14 years later in a development known as the Bedford Dwellings Additions. The complex compared favorably among public housing complexes well into the 1990s, despite its increasing age. Recreational facilities included a playground, swimming pool, ball field and a recreational building.

The community was typical of many urban public housing complexes in the region, where minorities lived as majority stakeholders. In 1974, a demographic study of Bedford Dwellings found that 97.9% of residents were African American.

The lack of racial diversity in the community would persist throughout its history, with a survey in 2016 revealing that the neighborhood had remained 97.2% African American.

President Bill Clinton visited Pittsburgh in 1993 to promote the new Hope VI program that was intended to reform and rehabilitate distressed low-income public housing. In his speech outside the Civic Arena, Clinton tried to ease concerns that “urban renewal” would unleash another wave of massive destruction in minority neighborhoods. That the speech was given on land previously wiped clean of a vibrant minority neighborhood for the construction of the arena was not overlooked by residents of the Hill District, including Bedford Dwellings.

A Hope VI grant was awarded in 1996 for the Bedford Dwellings Additions. The buildings were razed and replaced with new housing on the other end of Bedford Dwellings, a few blocks away. This first phase of the project was completed by 2005. The new community was named Bedford Hill and included the construction of a new community center known as the Bedford Hope Center.

In 2003, the Housing Authority made plans to demolish 460 units in the complex. The Hope VI program gave the authority funds to build 600 new units in the Middle Hill and gave the authority a chance to put residents’ concerns to rest. The grant favored reintegrating housing complexes into their surrounding neighborhoods and eschewed apartments for rowhouses, duplexes and single-family homes. President George W. Bush’s administration sought to end the program, saying that it had already met its originally intended goals, but Congress merely reduced the funding, which in turn altered the authority’s plans.

The Middle Hill was being redeveloped at that time and the constant police activity in Bedford Dwellings prompted District Attorney Stephen Zappala Jr. to threaten a “nuisance property” declaration on the community. It would have been the first time a federally funded community was so labeled.

Ultimately, the city applied for Choice Neighborhood grants to demolish and rebuild some of the community. In 2016, one of the grants was earmarked for Bedford Dwellings. The program seeks to transform distressed public housing into “affordable housing” by giving residents a stake in the new construction.

HUD Secretary Julián Castro said at the time,“These grants will lay a firm foundation upon which we’ll build better, more thoughtful neighborhoods that are more connected to all the opportunities their communities have to offer.”

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By 2018, the Housing Authority was finally ready to submit a redevelopment plan for Bedford Dwellings. It was the second-largest public housing complex in the city at that time and of course, the oldest.

The plan called for a complete reimagining of Bedford Dwellings and how it blended into the fabric of a revitalized Hill District. As an interim step, current residents would be moved to new housing in the Middle Hill while the original buildings are razed and replaced with housing that is less dense and with more green space. The plan states, “The redevelopment of Bedford Dwellings will provide no less than one-for-one replacement of the current Bedford Dwellings bedroom count. The mix of bedroom types within the Replacement Housing projected in this Transformation Plan has been informed by occupancy guidelines and the bedroom count required to sufficiently rehouse the current Bedford Dwellings resident population.”

An official update on the plan was scheduled for March 2020, but ongoing concerns about public gatherings in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic led to an online presentation of the Choice Neighborhood grant instead.

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