Outhwaite Homes

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Outhwaite Homes is located in Cleveland, Ohio at East 55th and Woodland. The 100-plus-unit complex is presently being run by the Cuyahoga Metro Housing Authority (CMHA). It provides residential housing for low-income families in the eastern section of downtown Cleveland. Built in 1935, it was the first federally funded public housing in the Cleveland area and one of the first in the U.S.. Two famous Cleveland brothers, Louis Stokes (US Congressman for over 28 years) and Carl Stokes (first black mayor of a major US city 1967) were among the first residents of Outhwaite.

Named for an area street, which in turn had been named for a famous, early Cleveland family, the Outhwaite Homes Estate was one of the first twelve public housing projects nationwide constructed after the passage of the Federal Public Housing Act. The original segment, consisting of 557 units, was begun in 1935, while the second phase was built in 1939, consisting of 449 units. The site design of Outhwaite, like other earlier CMHA projects, represents the formal layout of a large-scale building development popular in the thirties. This plan combines low, smaller building elements into a string with façade lengths ranging up to 1,100 feet in length. To further enhance the quality of design, the buildings are rare Cleveland examples of the “art deco” movement of the thirties.