What 195 Homes Revealed

This post is a part of the larger series on the housing history of Blacks living conditions in Wheeling

Black Housing in Wheeling Through the Lens of a 1935 State Survey

A home is more than a building. It is where families gather, children study, meals are shared, and hopes for the future take shape. The condition of a home can also reveal whether a community has received a fair share of public investment, economic opportunity, and basic civic protection.

In October 1935, West Virginia’s Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics published the Negro Housing Survey of Wheeling, Williamson, Kimball and Keystone. The report attempted to document a cross section of housing conditions among Black residents in four West Virginia communities.

For Wheeling, its findings were stark.

The survey examined 195 homes occupied by Black families. It found aging buildings, widespread deficiencies in basic plumbing and utilities, limited homeownership, and rental properties in serious need of repair.

These were not simply statistics about structures. They documented the conditions under which Wheeling families were building lives, raising children, and sustaining a community during the Great Depression and an era of entrenched racial segregation.

A State Agency Documented the Conditions

The Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics conducted the survey with assistance from cooperating local committees. According to its foreword, questionnaires were completed to collect detailed housing information, with residents helping the agency understand how families were housed.

The Bureau stated that its purpose was to assemble data that might encourage “constructive movements” for the immediate improvement of Black housing.

The terminology in the report reflects the language of the agency and the period in which it operated. Except when identifying the publication or quoting it directly, we use “Black” or “African American” today.

The report began its Wheeling section with an unambiguous conclusion:

“The Negro in Wheeling has been more adversely affected by bad housing than any other group.”

The investigators then presented the numbers they believed supported that assessment.

Wheeling by the Numbers

The survey covered 195 homes in Wheeling. Its classification of those properties was:

Housing classification	Homes
Rented homes in poor repair	103
Rented homes in fair repair	67
Rented homes in good repair	9
Owner-occupied homes in fair or good repair	16
Total homes surveyed	195

These figures mean that 179 of the 195 homes—nearly 92 percent—were rented. Only 16 were identified as owner-occupied.

Of the rented homes, 103 were in poor repair. That represented nearly 58 percent of all rented properties examined. Only nine rented homes were classified as being in good repair.

The report described many properties in the poorest category as so badly deteriorated that they required extensive repairs or complete demolition. It said that the houses had already served several generations of tenants and identified the unwillingness of landlords to make repairs as one cause of their condition.

The survey’s summary table added several important measures:

Wheeling housing measure	1935 survey finding
Average family size	5.7 people
Average number of rooms	3.9 rooms
Homes reported without bath, toilet, lights, or water	64%
Homes without a bath or toilet	73%
Average monthly rent	$9.25

An average of 5.7 people living in 3.9 rooms suggests that many families had little space or privacy. Even more troubling, nearly three-fourths of the homes lacked a bath or toilet.

The absence of plumbing, water, lighting, or sanitary facilities was not a minor inconvenience. It affected health, hygiene, safety, dignity, and the daily labor required to maintain a household.

Paying Rent for “Little Value Received”

An average monthly rent of $9.25 may appear low when viewed from the present. The report warned against interpreting that figure without considering family income and the quality of the housing received.

Investigators wrote that some owners placed exaggerated values on deteriorated properties and expected Black tenants to pay rent for “the little value received.” The report concluded that rent occupied a central place in already limited family budgets.

This finding points to a difficult economic reality. Black families were often paying scarce household income for old and poorly maintained homes because discrimination restricted where they could live and reduced their bargaining power in the housing market.

The survey did not provide a complete accounting of discriminatory real estate practices in Wheeling. Nevertheless, its own numbers reveal a population overwhelmingly dependent on rental housing and frequently receiving inadequate living conditions in return.

How Wheeling Compared

The survey also examined 77 homes in Kimball, 98 in Williamson, and 105 in the Keystone area.

Comparisons must be made cautiously because the report did not always use identical categories or separate renters and homeowners consistently in each community. Still, several findings help place Wheeling’s conditions in a broader West Virginia context.

Wheeling reported an average household of 5.7 people living in 3.9 rooms. Williamson’s rented homes averaged 5.8 people and 3.7 rooms. Rented homes in Kimball averaged 4.7 people and 4.6 rooms, while Keystone averaged 6.7 people and 5.1 rooms.

Wheeling reported that 73 percent of surveyed homes lacked a bath or toilet. The corresponding figure was 70.6 percent among rented homes in Kimball and 43.6 percent among rented homes in Williamson.

Average monthly rents were relatively close in three communities: $8.90 in Williamson, $9.25 in Wheeling, and $9.59 in Kimball. Keystone’s reported average was higher at $13.29.

The comparisons show that inadequate Black housing was not confined to Wheeling. It was a statewide problem that appeared in industrial, railroad, and coal-mining communities. The particular conditions varied, but deteriorated structures and missing modern conveniences appeared repeatedly.

Wheeling’s exceptionally low level of homeownership and high percentage of homes without a bath or toilet remain among the survey’s most significant local findings.

Reading the Report Critically

The 1935 survey is valuable evidence, but it must also be read critically.

It was a sample of 195 Wheeling homes, not necessarily a complete census of every Black household in the city. The surviving pages do not fully explain how individual homes were selected or how investigators applied categories such as “poor,” “fair,” and “good.”

The report also reflects some of the paternalistic attitudes of its time. Alongside the age of the houses and landlords’ unwillingness to make repairs, it identified what it called the “carelessness of tenants themselves” as a cause of deterioration. Its recommendations emphasized training residents in home maintenance and encouraging awards for attractive homes.

That judgment placed some responsibility upon families who often had limited housing choices and little control over the age, construction, or major repair of rented buildings. We should not repeat such conclusions without recognizing the unequal power between landlords and tenants and the broader system of racial segregation.

At the same time, the report did not excuse property owners or municipal government. It urged landlords to make good homes available to Black tenants instead of offering numerous dilapidated structures. It also recommended better zoning protection for Black neighborhoods, enforcement of health and building ordinances, and public action to eliminate unhealthy living conditions.

The report therefore contains both valuable documentation and the limitations of the institutional perspective that produced it.

Housing Was Part of the Larger System

The conditions recorded in 1935 did not exist separately from the rest of segregated life.

Black Wheeling residents faced restrictions in education, employment, public accommodations, and housing. Families could work hard, maintain strong homes, and contribute greatly to the city while still being confined to neighborhoods with older buildings and fewer services.

That is why this survey belongs within the larger history of African American life in Wheeling.

The students attending Lincoln School did not leave their housing conditions behind when they entered the classroom. Some returned each afternoon to overcrowded homes without indoor plumbing or other conveniences. They completed assignments, practiced music, prepared for examinations, and planned their futures within the conditions documented by this report.

Their accomplishments become even more meaningful when we understand the environments in which many of them lived and studied.

From Statistics to People

The 195 households in the Wheeling survey contained hundreds of people. Based on the reported average family size, the homes may have represented the living conditions of more than 1,100 residents.

The report does not give us all their names.

We do not learn which parents worried about a leaking roof, which children carried water, which families shared crowded rooms, or which tenants repeatedly asked a landlord to make repairs. The statistics record the conditions, but family histories are needed to restore the people.

That is part of the work before us.

The Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation seeks to preserve evidence like this survey while connecting it to photographs, property records, city directories, newspapers, school records, oral histories, and family memories.

If your family lived in Wheeling during the 1930s, we invite you to share what you know. Where did they live? Did they rent or own their home? What were the neighborhood and house like? What challenges did they face, and what do you remember about the community they built?

The 1935 survey documented deprivation, but it also points toward perseverance. Within these homes, Black families cared for one another, educated their children, supported churches and organizations, and helped sustain Wheeling through some of the nation’s hardest years.

Their homes may have been neglected by property owners and public institutions.

Their lives must not be neglected by history.

-T

Source and Citation

Bureau of Negro Welfare and Statistics, Negro Housing Survey of Wheeling, Williamson, Kimball and Keystone (Charleston, WV, October 1935).