Man on a lawnmower in front of homes on Cleveland Ave., 1958

Back in May, when the NCDHC staff went to Winston-Salem to do a day of on-site scanning with the Winston Salem African American Archive, the bulk of our scanning was over 200 slides that showed construction of public housing units built by the Housing Authority of Winston-Salem, as well as some slides that showed the areas of “urban decay” that were replaced with these developments in initial urban renewal efforts in the city that started in the late 1940s. The housing complexes photographed include Cleveland Avenue homes (built in the mid 1950s as one of Winston-Salem’s first public housing communities), Sunrise Towers, Crystal Towers, the 14th Street Community Center, Northwood Estates, and the Castle Heights neighborhood.

Woman walking with two children in Winston-Salem. The slide was included in a section that stated “conditions before redevelopment”. Ca. 1950

See all the slides we scanned from the WSAAA here. To learn more about the archive, visit their website.