Hil-Dar: Wheeling’s Search for Decent Housing Reaches Elm Grove

There are moments in local history when a newspaper clipping does more than report an event. It opens a door.

The creation of Hil-Dar, the 100-unit public housing project built in Elm Grove in the early 1960s, is one of those moments. On the surface, the story reads like a familiar mid-century civic development: federal approval, bids, contracts, construction, inspections, occupancy.

A housing authority project. A new complex. A city trying to modernize.

But underneath that bureaucratic language is a much larger and more human story.

Hil-Dar was born during a period when Wheeling was wrestling with housing conditions that had been unacceptable for years. Black families, low-income white families, elderly residents, single parents, large families, and displaced tenants were all caught in a city where safe and affordable housing was not merely scarce. For many, it was out of reach.

For the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, Hil-Dar belongs inside the same story we have been telling about Wheeling’s Black neighborhoods, urban renewal, public housing, and the long fight for livable conditions. The newspaper articles do not always use the language of race. They often say “low-rent housing,” “urban renewal,” “elderly persons,” “families,” or “displaced residents.” But those phrases are part of the vocabulary of the era. They are the public words used to describe private hardship.

And when we place Hil-Dar beside the earlier stories of overcrowding, deteriorating homes, segregated opportunity, and the urgent pleas from Black civic leaders and professionals, the deeper meaning becomes clearer.

Hil-Dar was not simply a new housing project.

It was Wheeling’s housing crisis made visible in brick, pavement, applications, waiting lists, and moving trucks.

A City Already Under Pressure

By the time Hil-Dar entered the newspapers in 1961, Wheeling had already lived through decades of housing stress.

Black Wheeling knew that reality especially well. In earlier Foundation posts, we have looked at the blunt language used by local Black leaders and professionals who described the living conditions endured by many families. These were not abstract policy debates.

These were questions of damp rooms, overcrowding, unsafe structures, high rents, unhealthy neighborhoods, and the grinding insult of being told to be patient while conditions remained the same.

The postwar era added new pressure. Highways, urban renewal, industrial redevelopment, and public works projects were reshaping American cities. Across the country, the language of “renewal” often meant that older neighborhoods were cleared in the name of progress.

But clearance did not automatically mean justice. It often meant that families already living with the fewest options were told to move before the city had fully answered the most important question:

Where are they supposed to go?

That is where Hil-Dar enters the story.

The clippings make clear that Hil-Dar was tied directly to the Center Wheeling Urban Renewal area. The first families moved to Hil-Dar from that area. Later reporting stated that priority for occupancy would be given to people displaced by the Center Wheeling urban renewal project.

That single fact changes the emotional weight of the entire story.

Hil-Dar was not just new housing.

It was part of the relocation machinery of urban renewal.

“Housing Project Approved Today”

On August 17, 1961, the Wheeling News-Register placed the story on its front page under an enormous headline: “Housing Project Approved Today.”

The article reported that construction of a 100-unit public housing project in Elm Grove would likely begin by mid-October. Congressman Arch A. Moore announced that he had been advised the administrator of the Housing and Home Finance Agency had given final approval for plans and specifications authorizing the Wheeling Housing Authority to proceed with receiving construction bids.

That approval mattered because the Hil-Dar project had been waiting on federal movement connected to Center Wheeling urban renewal. The paper explained that approval of the Center Wheeling project had been a required condition before the Public Housing Administration in Washington would authorize Hil-Dar.

In other words, the projects were linked.

The clearing and redevelopment of Center Wheeling and the building of Hil-Dar were not two separate stories. They were two sides of the same civic decision.

One neighborhood would be disrupted. Another housing development would rise elsewhere. People would be moved from one part of the city’s future into another.

The same day, The Intelligencer described Hil-Dar as long delayed and “heartened” by the development fund. That phrasing is important. It tells us that the project had not appeared overnight. It had been discussed, delayed, dependent on approvals, and tied up in the complicated machinery of federal, local, and redevelopment planning.

The paper described the project as a major housing development in Elm Grove. Early coverage placed the figure at roughly $1.7 million. Later reports would describe the project cost at about $1.4 million. Either way, this was a significant public investment.

The plan called for 100 units: 50 for elderly residents and 50 for regular occupancy.

That division tells us something about the need. Wheeling was not only facing a housing shortage for young families. It was also facing a crisis for elderly residents who needed safe, affordable, manageable homes.

Elm Grove, Hillsdale, and a Project Named Hil-Dar

The site selected was in Elm Grove, near the Hillsdale section. The name Hil-Dar appears throughout the clippings as both a project name and a civic marker. The articles place it near Hillsdale, and by January 1963 a large photo showed the project from a hillside in Springdale.

That image matters.

From the opposite hillside, readers could see the buildings assembled together: not one house, not one apartment block, but an entire development. The caption described the 100-unit housing project, known as Hil-Dar, as nearly ready for occupancy. It noted that the complex included 25 buildings and that the Byrum Construction Company was the contractor on the $1.4 million project.

The photograph gave Wheeling a visual announcement: Hil-Dar was no longer a proposal, no longer a delayed plan, no longer a bid notice. It was real.

Still, the story behind that photograph was not simply one of progress. Hil-Dar stood at the intersection of public need and public power. The city could condemn, clear, build, relocate, and reclassify land. But the people who had to live through those decisions experienced them not as policy but as disruption.

For a family leaving Center Wheeling, Hil-Dar may have represented relief. A safer apartment. Heat. Plumbing. A roof that did not leak. A chance to live somewhere cleaner, newer, and more stable.

But it may also have represented loss. A familiar street gone. A neighbor network broken. A child moved from one daily rhythm into another. A family told that progress required them to leave the place they knew.

That tension is what makes Hil-Dar so important.

It was both answer and evidence.

It answered a need for decent housing. It also proved how deep that need had become.

The Name Inside Hil-Dar: Russell Mozena & His Daughters

Sometimes the smallest line in an old newspaper article changes how we understand an entire place.

For months, our Foundation has been researching Hil-Dar as part of Wheeling’s larger public housing story: the need for decent housing, the displacement caused by urban renewal, and the city’s effort to build new homes for families and elderly residents in Elm Grove. But one question remained quietly unanswered.

Where did the name Hil-Dar come from?

A newly found two-page spread in the Wheeling News-Register from October 29, 1961 gives us the answer.

Hil-Dar was named for Russell C. Mozena’s two daughters: Hilda and Darlene.

A Name With A Family Story

That discovery gives Hil-Dar a new layer of meaning.

The article, written by Al Molnar, profiled Russell Mozena, executive director of the Wheeling Housing Authority. Its headline described him as “Landlord to 1,200 Tenants,” but the tone of the article is not cold or bureaucratic. It presents Mozena as a man deeply involved in the day-to-day lives of the people living in Wheeling’s public housing communities.

By 1961, Mozena had spent more than six years as executive director of the Housing Authority. He had responsibility for the residents of Vineyard Hill and Lincoln Homes, and the new 100-unit Hil-Dar project in Elm Grove was already under construction.

The article notes that Hil-Dar was expected to be completed by the end of the following year. When finished, it would house an estimated 350 to 375 people, bringing Wheeling’s public housing population to approximately 1,600. The Elm Grove project would also be less dense than Vineyard Hill, with seven units per acre compared with 20 units per acre at Vineyard Hill.

But tucked into that practical reporting was the line that matters most for this little historical find: the Hil-Dar name came from Hilda and Darlene Mozena.

That makes the name both institutional and personal. It was attached to a public housing development, but it carried the imprint of a family.

Mozena’s View Of Public Housing

The spread also gives us a fuller glimpse of Mozena himself.

He is quoted as saying, “I like my work,” and the article describes his approach as happy, fair, and honest. He rejected the idea that tenants were “problems.” When families struggled financially, especially around holidays like Christmas and Easter, the article says he tried to connect them with civic organizations that could help.

Mozena also pushed back against the public stigma attached to Vineyard Hill. He argued that people outside the housing project often judged the whole community by a few “bad apples,” while overlooking the many good families who lived there. He insisted that most Vineyard Hill residents could move next door to him “any time.”

That detail is important. Public housing has too often been discussed as a problem rather than as a community of people. Here, in 1961, we see a local housing official trying to defend residents against lazy stereotypes.

He was especially moved by the children. The article says the younger ones often followed him through the project, waiting for his usual handout of candy. Mozena proudly noted that older children from the projects made honor rolls and earned scholarships, just like children in other parts of the city.

That sentence alone deserves to be remembered.

Before Hil-Dar, There Were Trees

There is one more layer to the Hil-Dar site that gives this story an unexpected tenderness.

Before the land became associated with public housing, relocation, inspections, and waiting lists, it was tied to one of the warmest traditions in family life: Christmas trees.

A Weelunk article on E. Black & Son Nursery notes that the family business was originally located on what is now the Hil-Dar Housing property in Elm Grove. When that location was taken by eminent domain in the early 1960s, the nursery moved to Sherrard. The family did not leave everything behind. Scott Black’s parents dug up some of the baby trees from the old location and replanted them at the new site. In that small act, there is something quietly beautiful: even when land was taken and a business was forced to move, living things were carried forward. A few young trees, rooted again elsewhere, became part of the nursery’s continuing story. Weelunk, “The Magic of Tradition at E. Black & Son Nursery”

That detail changes the feel of the Hil-Dar story.

The land had already held promise before it held apartments. It had held rows of growing trees, a family business, seasonal work, and the beginnings of a Christmas tradition that would continue for generations. It had been a place where people came looking for something to take home, decorate, gather around, and remember.

Then, through eminent domain and public planning, the land was folded into a different kind of promise.

No longer Christmas trees, but homes.

No longer the seasonal magic of picking out a tree, but the year-round hope of safe shelter.

That does not make the taking of the land simple or painless. Eminent domain always carries a complicated human cost. But it does give Hil-Dar’s story a richer emotional geography. The same ground that once sent trees into Wheeling living rooms became the ground where elderly residents, displaced families, and children from Center Wheeling would begin again.

And there is something almost poetic about the timing. By the Christmas season of 1962, Hil-Dar was nearly ready. The buildings stood in Elm Grove, waiting for final adjustments. Families who had been living under the shadow of displacement were waiting too. A few weeks later, in January and February 1963, the first residents would finally begin moving in.

The land that once helped families celebrate home was now being asked to provide one.

The Housing Authority’s Numbers Tell the Story

One of the most revealing clippings came not from a dramatic headline but from a Housing Authority report.

In February 1962, the newspaper reported on the families already living in Wheeling’s public housing developments, including Vineyard Hill and Lincoln Homes. The report broke down family composition, income, and sources of support.

The numbers are sobering.

The article described broken families, normal families, single persons, elderly couples, and adult families. It noted that many residents depended on private employment, but others relied on welfare funds, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, compensation, pensions, alimony, contributions, allotments, or similar sources.

The income figures were especially striking. The greatest number of families fell into the $901 to $1,500 annual income category, followed by families in the $1,501 to $2,100 range. Seventy-one families drew less than $900 annually. Only 16 earned $3,301 or more in a year.

That is not just data.

That is the economic portrait of people living close to the edge.

It also shows why Hil-Dar mattered. When we talk about “affordable housing” today, it can sound like a modern phrase. But Wheeling was wrestling with the same basic question in 1962: how can families survive when their income will not carry them into safe private housing?

The Housing Authority report also noted that special income limits would apply to persons displaced by the Center Wheeling urban renewal project. Again, the connection is direct. Urban renewal was creating displacement, and public housing was being used as part of the response.

Hil-Dar was not charity. It was infrastructure for survival.

Construction, Delays, and the Reality of Building

The paper trail shows the slow, sometimes frustrating path from approval to occupancy.

By October 1961, contracts were moving. The project was described as Wheeling’s third public housing development. Russell C. Mozena, executive director of the Wheeling Housing Authority, appears repeatedly in the coverage. Byrum Construction Company became central to the work.

An October 1961 article reported that construction would begin on the Hil-Dar housing project near Hillsdale. A contract had been signed with Byrum, and work at the site was slated to get underway. Another report suggested that the project could employ a significant number of workers during construction.

By April 1962, the newspapers described “rapid progress.” The framework and outer shell of buildings were going up. Footers had been poured. Brick work had begun. The article stated that the $1.4 million project was slated for completion later that year.

But construction was not smooth.

By October 1962, completion had been delayed. Newspaper coverage blamed a lengthy carpenter’s dispute and bad weather. The project, once expected earlier, was now being pushed toward partial occupancy in the new year.

This is another reason the story feels so human. Behind every delay were waiting families.

Behind every labor dispute, inspection, and weather setback were people whose housing future remained uncertain.

When officials discussed schedules, they were talking about more than construction.

They were talking about when real people could finally move.

“Nearly Ready for Occupancy”

On January 8, 1963, the Wheeling News-Register published the large photograph of Hil-Dar under the caption: “New Housing Project Now Nearly Ready for Occupancy.”

The caption said the project might be ready by the end of the month, with first preference going to elderly persons. It noted that an inspection by Wheeling Housing Authority officials had found only minor adjustments remaining.

That phrase, “minor adjustments,” feels almost ordinary. But in this story, ordinary is the point.

For families waiting for decent housing, ordinary things mattered: a working door, a finished wall, a safe stair, a reliable heating system, a clean apartment, a place where children could sleep without the anxieties of deteriorating housing.

The article made visible what had been promised since 1961. Hil-Dar was finally reaching the point where people might live there.

The First Fifty Units

On January 25, 1963, the News-Register reported another major step: “WHA Takes Over Half of Hil-Dar Project.”

The Wheeling Housing Authority had officially taken over possession of one-half of the 100-unit project. Byrum Construction turned over the keys to 50 units.

Of those first 50 units, 38 were for the elderly and 12 were for non-elderly residents. The paper reported that the WHA office already had applications and that some families were expected to take possession by the end of the month.

Most importantly, the article stated that first priority for occupancy would be given to those who filed applications because they had been displaced by the Urban Renewal project in Center Wheeling.

There it is again.

The story comes back to displacement.

This is where Hil-Dar moves from civic development to moral history. The city was not merely filling apartments. It was sorting human need. It was determining who moved first, who waited, who qualified, who was displaced, who counted as elderly, who counted as a family, and who had already been waiting since 1961.

The article also reported that more than 300 applications had been waiting for housing accommodations since June 1961.

That number should stop us.

Three hundred applications in a city the size of Wheeling represented a major need. Hil-Dar’s first 50 units were a beginning, but they could not possibly answer the whole crisis.

The First Families Move In

Then came February 1, 1963.

The headline was simple: “First Families Move Into Hil-Dar Homes.”

The first two families from the Center Wheeling Urban Renewal area were moving into the new 100-unit public housing project in Elm Grove. The article named them: Mrs. Jeanette Fuller and her nine children, and Mrs. Robert Javey and her five children. They were moving from 2651 Market Street into new apartments in Hil-Dar.

That detail gives the story a human face.

Not “families” in the abstract.

Mrs. Jeanette Fuller and nine children.

Mrs. Robert Javey and five children.

Imagine that day.

Boxes. Children. Furniture. A new address. The emotional exhaustion of leaving one place and entering another. Relief, perhaps. Uncertainty, surely. A sense that the city’s decisions had finally arrived at the front door.

The same article noted that the first elderly unit had been occupied the day before. So Hil-Dar’s opening was not one moment but a sequence: elderly residents, families, displaced households, waiting applicants.

The article also reported that the $1.4 million project gave Wheeling a total of 441 public housing units.

That figure is important. Hil-Dar was not a small addition. It was a major expansion of the city’s public housing system.

And yet the need remained.

A Solution That Proved the Problem

Just days later, another article made clear that Wheeling was already looking beyond Hil-Dar.

On February 7, 1963, the News-Register reported that more low-rent housing would be sought. The article discussed Housing Authority payments made to the city and county school board in lieu of taxes and summarized the agency’s view of its public housing work.

The report argued that low-rent housing had taught families “what good living conditions are like.” It also made the broader point that without such housing, many families would have been left in unsafe or unhealthy private dwellings.

That is one of the most important ideas in this whole set of clippings.

Hil-Dar was not only a roof over heads. It was a standard. It showed what safe housing could look like. It gave families a lived comparison between what they had endured and what they deserved.

But the same article also reminded readers that public housing turnover was high and that many families still needed help. Some stayed briefly. Others, especially elderly families, broken-home families, or families with many children, remained longer.

This is the honest ending to the Hil-Dar story.

Hil-Dar mattered tremendously.

But it was not enough.

A Modern Civil Rights Coda at Hil-Dar

Hil-Dar’s story does not end with the optimism of new construction, the need for affordable housing, or the language of public progress. Decades later, Hil-Dar also appeared in the federal civil rights record.

In 2012, the United States resolved a Fair Housing Act case against the Wheeling Housing Authority involving allegations of race-based harassment at Hil-Dar Apartments. The case was brought on behalf of Kathy Green and her children, Anias Lawrence and N.L., a Black family that had lived at Hil-Dar from 2006 through December 2010. According to the consent order, the United States alleged that beginning in November 2007, the family became the target of racial harassment by a neighboring family, also residents of Hil-Dar, because the Green family was Black. The alleged harassment included verbal abuse, racial slurs, threats, assaults, or attempted assaults.

The case did not end with a trial finding that the Wheeling Housing Authority was liable. The Authority denied wrongdoing and stated that it had taken reasonable and legally required steps in response to Ms. Green’s complaints. The matter was resolved by consent order, without an admission of liability. That distinction matters. But the filing still belongs in the story because it shows that Hil-Dar, a public housing development born from the city’s stated effort to address housing need, later became the site of a federal fair housing enforcement action.

The United States alleged that Ms. Green repeatedly complained to the Authority, orally and in writing, and that there was a detailed record of those complaints. The government further alleged that the Authority knew or should have known of the harassment, including because of a police visit to Hil-Dar, and that the Authority had the power under its lease to terminate the tenancy of a tenant who threatened or harassed another tenant because of race.

According to the United States, the Authority failed to terminate the harassing tenant’s tenancy in a prompt and consistent manner.

The consent order required more than money. It required the Wheeling Housing Authority to adopt and distribute a nondiscrimination policy, create a written complaint policy, provide Fair Housing Act training focused on race discrimination, submit compliance reports to the United States, preserve records, notify federal counsel of race-discrimination complaints during the term of the order, and allow monitoring that could include fair housing testing. It also required the Authority to establish a policy of contacting the Wheeling Police Department monthly to collect reports of police visits to Hil-Dar and to review related surveillance footage.

The settlement also required monetary payments: $10,000 to Kathy Green, $4,250 to Anias Lawrence, and $4,250 for N.L., whose payment was to be placed in an interest-bearing account until she reached adulthood. In approving the portion of the settlement involving the minor child, the court noted that the settlement reflected not only damages, but also the need to address perceived discrimination and what appeared to be inaction by the Authority.

For the Foundation, this is an important and sobering addition to the housing story. Public housing history cannot be told only through groundbreaking ceremonies, federal funding, construction costs, ribbon cuttings, or administrative structures. It must also be told through the lived experiences of residents and the continuing duty of public institutions to protect fair housing rights.

Hil-Dar began as part of Wheeling’s answer to poor housing conditions. But the 2012 case reminds us that housing justice is not achieved once a building opens. It has to be maintained in daily practice: in management decisions, tenant safety, complaint handling, staff training, nondiscrimination policies, and accountability when residents say they are being harmed.

That is why this record belongs in the larger Wheeling Housing Authority story. It connects the old promise of public housing to the modern obligations of public housing. It reminds us that affordable housing is not only about roofs, rent, and units. It is also about dignity, protection, equal treatment, and whether Black families can live safely in publicly supported housing without being left to fight alone.

Why Hil-Dar Belongs in the Foundation’s Story

At first glance, Hil-Dar might seem like a general housing story rather than an African American history story.

But that would miss the point.

The history of Black Wheeling cannot be separated from the history of housing. Where families were allowed to live, what they could afford, which neighborhoods received investment, which neighborhoods were labeled “blighted,” which homes were cleared, which families were displaced, and which residents were forced to rely on public systems: all of these questions shaped Black life in Wheeling.

The newspaper clippings do not always name Black residents directly. But the Foundation’s work is to read local history with enough care to see what polite civic language often hides.

“Urban renewal” often meant removal.

“Low-rent housing” often meant families boxed out of private opportunity.

“Displacement” meant children changing streets, schools, neighbors, and routines.

“Public housing” meant the government stepping into a crisis that private markets and local inequities had failed to solve.

Hil-Dar therefore becomes part of a much longer arc: from the deplorable housing conditions documented in earlier decades, to the voices demanding change, to the public housing developments that attempted to answer the need, to the continuing struggle over whether every family in Wheeling could live with dignity.

The Human Meaning of a Housing Project

It is easy to reduce Hil-Dar to numbers.

100 units.

25 buildings.

$1.4 million.

441 total public housing units.

More than 300 applications.

38 elderly units in the first turnover.

12 non-elderly units in that same group.

Those numbers matter. They give the story shape.

But the heart of the story is not the numbers. It is the people behind them.

The elderly resident who moved in first.

The families from Center Wheeling.

The mothers carrying household burdens through a city changing around them.

The children who may have looked out from Hil-Dar and seen Elm Grove as unfamiliar territory.

The applicants who waited since 1961.

The families still waiting after the first units were filled.

The residents who learned, perhaps for the first time in years, what safe, decent, modern housing could feel like.

That is why Hil-Dar deserves our attention.

It is a story about housing policy, yes. But more than that, it is a story about the meaning of home in a city where home was never equally protected.

A Foundation Lens

The Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation exists to preserve stories like this because the official record is often incomplete without interpretation.

The newspaper articles tell us what happened: approvals, contracts, delays, inspections, occupancy. But our job is to ask what it meant.

What did it mean for Center Wheeling families to be moved because of urban renewal?

What did it mean for public housing to become the safety net for those displaced?

What did it mean for elderly residents to receive first preference?

What did it mean that hundreds of applications were already waiting?

What did it mean for Black Wheeling, whose history is so deeply tied to segregated neighborhoods, restricted opportunity, and the constant fight for dignified housing?

Hil-Dar gives us a way to ask those questions.

It also reminds us that housing history is not only about buildings. It is about who was protected, who was moved, who was counted, who waited, and who finally received a key.

In February 1963, the first families moved into Hil-Dar.

But the story had started long before that.

And for Wheeling, the question of decent, affordable, dignified housing would continue long after.

-T

Sources and Notes

• This post is based on a collection of 1961-1963 Wheeling newspaper clippings documenting the approval, construction, delayed completion, and first occupancy of the Hil-Dar public housing project in Elm Grove. Key articles include “Housing Project Approved Today” from the Wheeling News-Register, August 17, 1961; “Long Delayed Hil-Dar Project Heartened by Development Fund” from The Intelligencer, August 17, 1961; construction and bid notices from fall 1961; progress reports from 1962; “New Housing Project Now Nearly Ready for Occupancy,” Wheeling News-Register, January 8, 1963; “WHA Takes Over Half of Hil-Dar Project,” Wheeling News-Register, January 25, 1963; “First Families Move Into Hil-Dar Homes,” Wheeling News-Register, February 1, 1963; and “More Low-Rent Housing To Be Sought,” Wheeling News-Register, February 7, 1963.

• Additional context on the earlier use of the Hil-Dar property comes from Kelly Strautmann’s Weelunk article, “The Magic of Tradition at E. Black & Son Nursery,” which notes that E. Black & Son Nursery was originally located on what became the Hil-Dar Housing property in Elm Grove before moving to Sherrard after the land was taken by eminent domain in the early 1960s.

• United States v. Wheeling Housing Authority, Consent Order, Civil Action No. 5:11-cv-00009, United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, April 26, 2012.

  United States v. Wheeling Housing Authority, Order Confirming Pronounced Order of the Court Approving Settlement and Dismissing Case, Civil Action No. 5:11-cv-00009, United States District Court for the Northern District of West Virginia, April 26, 2012.

• Al Molnar, “He Is Landlord to 1,200 Tenants But He Says They’re No Problem!,” Wheeling News-Register, Sunday, October 29, 1961, Part V, pages 10-11.