Promises Before the Bulldozers: Wheeling Makes Its Case for Slum Clearance
Correcting the “Human Hell”: Wheeling’s Housing Plans, Part Two
On Sunday, March 15, 1959, the Wheeling News-Register devoted nearly an entire page to a question-and-answer feature titled “Slum Clearance Questions Answered.”
Its timing was no accident.
Two days later, Wheeling’s voters would decide whether to approve a special three-year property-tax levy to finance the city’s first major slum-clearance project. According to the newspaper, it would also be the first such project undertaken in West Virginia.
The proposal targeted a section of Center Wheeling containing aging houses, tenements, businesses, and a racially and ethnically mixed community that included many Black families. An earlier newspaper column had reported that approximately 287 families lived within the redevelopment area.
Now voters were being asked to authorize approximately $500,000 as Wheeling’s local contribution toward a project expected to receive an additional $1 million from the federal government.
The News-Register feature attempted to answer every major objection. It discussed taxes, property acquisition, public housing, industrial development—and the question that mattered most to the families living there:
Where would the people go?
A Campaign Presented as Questions and Answers
“Slum Clearance Questions Answered” was not a neutral examination of the proposal.
Its question-and-answer structure gave it the appearance of an informational guide, but its purpose was unmistakably persuasive. The final paragraph urged readers to go to the polls, vote for the levy, and encourage their friends and neighbors to do the same.
The feature therefore should be read as a public campaign document—a record of what urban-renewal supporters wanted Wheeling’s voters to believe before approving the money.
That does not mean every promise was insincere. Many city leaders undoubtedly believed the project would eliminate unsafe housing, stimulate employment, and improve Wheeling’s future.
But it does mean that the article’s assurances deserve careful attention. They established the standards by which the project’s later results should be judged.
Why Center Wheeling Was Chosen
The article described the proposed project area as an “eyesore” containing old, deteriorated buildings.
It argued that the neighborhood produced relatively little property-tax revenue while requiring substantial spending on fire protection, police services, and public health. Redevelopment advocates believed that converting the land to industrial use would increase its taxable value, reduce public costs, create jobs, and generate new payrolls.
The article also presented the area’s physical conditions as proof that clearance was necessary. It reported that some buildings had only cold water, inadequate sanitation, dangerous heating systems, and badly deteriorated interiors.
Those conditions were real and serious. They echoed the shocking findings of the Wheeling News-Register’s 1949 investigation, when reporter Arthur Mills toured Black neighborhoods with Dr. R. M. Hamlin and described families living amid fire hazards, broken plumbing, outdoor toilets, overcrowding, and decaying structures.
By 1959, the city was finally presenting a large-scale answer to conditions that had been publicly exposed at least ten years earlier.
Yet the language used to describe the neighborhood is revealing. Buildings, tax receipts, sanitation problems, and redevelopment possibilities received extensive attention. Far less was said about the community already living there—its families, friendships, churches, businesses, shared history, and systems of mutual support.
A neighborhood could contain inadequate buildings without being an inadequate community.
That distinction was largely missing from the city’s case.
The Central Promise: No One Would Be Left Without a Home
The most important question in the article was direct:
Would families be forced from their homes without any place to go?
The answer was equally direct. The article promised that no building would be demolished until the residents had been found another home. That replacement home, it said, would contain hot and cold running water, a bathtub, a sink, a toilet, and other basic necessities absent from much of the existing housing.
The article also rejected the idea of removing the neighborhood’s residents all at once. Instead, it promised what it called an “orderly, personal movement,” with each household assisted individually.
Several relocation resources were identified:
Lincoln Homes and Vineyard Hills would receive qualifying low-income families.
A proposed 100-unit public-housing project would provide additional apartments.
Families with somewhat higher incomes would be assisted in purchasing homes through special financing programs.
A trained, full-time relocation director and staff would help families locate suitable housing.
The federal government had reserved $117,000 for relocation-assistance payments, requiring no matching contribution from Wheeling residents.
On paper, this appeared to be a far more responsible approach than simply condemning homes and ordering families to leave.
But the promise raises questions the article did not answer.
How many families could actually qualify for the available public-housing units?
Were apartments of the necessary sizes available?
Could working families afford the private homes offered through special financing?
Would Black families be permitted to move into every neighborhood where suitable housing existed?
Would landlords accept them? Would displaced residents remain near their churches, schools, relatives, and places of employment?
A replacement structure was not necessarily a replacement community.
The article discussed relocation primarily as a matter of finding a habitable dwelling. For the families involved, relocation could also mean the loss of neighbors, routines, social networks, and a familiar sense of place.
The Promise to Property Owners
The feature also addressed fears that powerful private interests would benefit from the project.
It declared that claims of “special interests” were untrue. According to the article, 118 individuals owned property within the redevelopment area, and no single person, family, or business owned more than five percent of the land. Most owners, it stated, simply wanted a fair price and a decent place to live.
The proposed land-acquisition process would therefore affect many small property owners rather than a few large corporations.
That detail is historically important. Urban renewal was not only a program affecting renters. It also involved families who had invested their savings in homes and small properties, sometimes despite discriminatory lending and real-estate practices.
The article promised owners fair compensation. But “fair price” is not a self-defining term.
Did an appraisal account for the value of remaining near work and family?
Could the payment purchase a comparable home elsewhere?
Would Black homeowners have access to mortgages and neighborhoods equal to those available to white homeowners?
What happened when the market value assigned to a deteriorated building was insufficient to purchase a sound replacement?
Those questions cannot be answered by this clipping alone. They require examination of appraisals, acquisition files, relocation records, Housing Authority documents, and the testimony of the people displaced.
An Industrial Future for a Residential Neighborhood
The proposed redevelopment area was not intended to remain residential.
The city planned to clear the land and restrict it to light industry. The article claimed that several companies had considered locating there but had gone elsewhere after the earlier slum-clearance proposal failed in November 1958.
Urban-renewal supporters argued that industrial development would create employment and strengthen Wheeling’s tax base. Because portions of the site were vulnerable to flooding, new buildings would be specially designed to meet those conditions.
The promise was straightforward:
Remove deteriorated housing, relocate the families, prepare the land, attract manufacturers, create jobs, and generate more revenue for public services.
It was an appealing vision for an industrial city worried about economic decline.
But it depended upon employers actually coming.
Later history shows that this prediction was only partially fulfilled. After Center Wheeling was cleared in the early 1960s, redevelopment officials struggled to attract the industrial tenants they had envisioned. The Urban Renewal Authority eventually obtained a new post office and a trucking company for portions of the land—uses that fell short of the hoped-for industrial transformation. Historian Allen Dieterich-Ward discusses that outcome in “The Wheeling Renaissance, Part 2”.
The homes and neighborhood could be removed with government authority. Replacing them with the promised economic revival proved far more difficult.
How Much Would the Levy Cost?
The article attempted to reassure property owners that the levy would be modest.
The federal government was expected to pay approximately two-thirds of the project’s net cost. Wheeling would provide the remaining third—approximately $490,000, or about $163,333 annually for three years.
A chart showed the projected full-year cost of the slum-clearance levy:
Assessed property value | Cost of the levy |
$3,000 | $2.10 |
$5,000 | $3.50 |
$10,000 | $7.00 |
The article emphasized that these figures were based on assessed values rather than sale prices. It estimated that the average property owner would pay less than four dollars annually—roughly a penny a day.
It also reminded voters that an existing levy for the new City-County Building was ending. As a result, the article argued, taxpayers could approve the slum-clearance levy and still pay less in total city taxes than they had paid in 1958.
This was a carefully constructed financial argument: Wheeling could receive two federal dollars for every local dollar, remove unsafe housing, attract employment, and accomplish it without increasing the overall city tax burden above the previous year’s level.
Still, voters remained unconvinced.
The Voters Say No—Again
On March 17, 1959, Wheeling voters rejected the special levy.
It was the proposal’s second defeat in approximately five months. A report published the following day noted that voters had once again turned down the measure. The Morgantown Post reported the defeat on March 18, 1959.
The result tells us that the newspaper’s assurances had not resolved every concern.
Some voters may have opposed any additional tax. Others may have distrusted city government, feared misuse of federal funds, objected to public housing, or doubted that the redevelopment promises would be fulfilled. Property owners within the project area may have feared condemnation. Other residents may simply have felt detached from the problems of Center Wheeling.
Race also formed part of the larger context. Although Center Wheeling was not exclusively Black, urban renewal threatened a long-established African American neighborhood at a time when housing discrimination sharply limited where Black families could live.
The surviving article gives extensive space to the assurances of project supporters. It does not give equal space to residents who opposed the proposal or distrusted its promises.
Their voices must be sought elsewhere.
Defeat Did Not End the Project
The failed vote delayed the project, but it did not preserve the neighborhood permanently.
Wheeling eventually secured access to federal urban-renewal funding through a mechanism that did not depend upon the same kind of local bond or levy referendum. Acquisition and demolition proceeded during the early 1960s.
By then, the original plan had been altered and reduced. Nevertheless, houses disappeared, families relocated, streetscapes changed, and part of Center Wheeling ceased to exist as the residential community its inhabitants had known.
Later accounts describe Black families moving into East Wheeling, Lincoln Homes, Grandview Manor, and other parts of the city. Some families left Wheeling entirely. The dispersal of residents did not simply eliminate unsafe buildings. It changed the geography and social structure of Wheeling’s Black community.
That outcome gives the promises of March 1959 even greater significance.
The newspaper had said relocation would be personal and orderly. It had promised adequate housing, individual assistance, fair compensation, new employment, increased tax revenue, and benefits for all of Wheeling.
The historical task now is to determine how fully those promises were kept.
Improvement and Displacement Could Occur Together
It would be too simple to describe the project as entirely good or entirely harmful.
Many families desperately needed safe housing, indoor plumbing, dependable heat, and protection from fire. No one should romanticize buildings in which people were forced to live without basic sanitation.
Lincoln Homes, Vineyard Hills, and later housing developments gave some residents access to better physical conditions. Stronger housing codes could prevent landlords from allowing properties to deteriorate unchecked. Public investment was necessary after decades of neglect.
At the same time, replacing unsafe housing did not require treating an entire neighborhood as expendable.
The city could improve a family’s physical dwelling while weakening its social world. A resident could receive indoor plumbing and still lose proximity to relatives, a familiar church, trusted neighbors, or a home-based business. A clearance program could remove genuine hazards while also reinforcing residential segregation.
Both realities can be true.
That is why urban-renewal history must be told from more than one perspective. Official plans and newspaper campaigns reveal what authorities intended—or wanted the public to believe. Relocation files, oral histories, family photographs, church records, business directories, and personal memories reveal what redevelopment meant to the people who experienced it.
The Questions Beneath the Answers
The newspaper declared that the public’s questions had been answered.
History tells us that many of the most important questions had only begun to be asked:
Were all displaced families offered housing they could afford?
How many families entered public housing?
How many purchased new homes?
How many moved outside Wheeling?
Were Black and white families given equal relocation choices?
What compensation did homeowners receive?
Which churches and Black-owned businesses were displaced?
Did the promised industrial jobs materialize?
What happened to the social networks created over generations?
Who benefited most from the land after its residents were removed?
These are not arguments against safe housing or responsible redevelopment. They are questions about who participated in defining progress—and who was required to sacrifice for it.
The March 15, 1959, article preserves the city’s promises before the bulldozers arrived.
Our responsibility is to preserve the voices of the families who lived through what came next.
Their homes may have been labeled deteriorated. Their neighborhood may have been marked for clearance. But their lives, relationships, achievements, and memories were never blight.
They were Wheeling.
-T
Sources and Research Notes
Primary source: “Slum Clearance Questions Answered,” Wheeling News-Register, March 15, 1959, Part IV, p. 8; full newspaper scan p. 50.
Earlier installment source: Harry Hamm, “Where Will Relocatees Find Homes?” Wheeling News-Register, October 5, 1958, p. 21. This column reported approximately 287 families living within the proposed Center Wheeling redevelopment area and discussed public housing, home-purchase assistance, and the planned appointment of a relocation officer.
Post-election source: “Slum Clearance Levy Defeated in Wheeling,” Morgantown Post, March 18, 1959, p. 20. View the archived newspaper record.
Later historical context: Allen Dieterich-Ward, “The Wheeling Renaissance, Part 2: The Fort Henry Mall—‘Bold and Exciting’ or ‘Reckless Schemes’”, Archiving Wheeling, April 22, 2016.
Interpretive caution: The March 1959 feature was explicitly written to secure approval of the levy. Its statements about relocation, compensation, industrial development, and future benefits should be understood as promises made by project supporters—not as proof that every promised outcome occurred.
Terminology note: “Slum clearance” is retained because it was the official historical term used for the program. The label often reduced established communities to the condition of their buildings and obscured the discriminatory housing practices, absentee ownership, limited financing, and unequal public investment that helped produce those conditions.
