When a growing town needed homes for families

Con­tin­ued from last week

A most encour­ag­ing note in Bellevue’s acute hous­ing short­age hap­pened when four busi­ness­men banded together to con­struct and offer for sale 10 homes in the choice res­i­den­tial dis­trict on Euclid Ave. and Hoff­man St.

The group, which includes the three DeLuca broth­ers, Joe, Jake and Eurico (Pete), and John Schae­fer, have plot­ted 11 lots on the two streets. They planned to begin con­struc­tion of 10 homes by spring and have the units ready by early summer.

They had con­tacted The Lewis Co., Bay City, Mich., nation­ally known builders of attrac­tive pre-fabricated homes. They have been assured mate­ri­als will be sup­plied. The com­pany at that time com­pleted a new set of government-approved plans for the houses which were said to be the last word in mod­ern design. The local group selected their plans for the new drawings.

A good exam­ple of the type of home pro­duced by the Lewis Co. was the one owned and occu­pied by Jake DeLuca at 415 Euclid Ave.

The new devel­op­ment con­sti­tuted a whole new addi­tion to Bellevue’s res­i­den­tial sec­tion in the attrac­tive city play­ground dis­trict. The homes were laid out in a sort of court on 50 foot by 150 foot lots, all of which will have garages in the rear and rear drives.

“These will all be good homes and will be priced from $7,500 and up,” Jake DeLuca said. “They are not being erected as low cost units for the pri­mary pur­pose of reliev­ing today’s hous­ing short­age, but to pro­vide the best in hous­ing for Bellevue’s homeowners.”

Another group was orga­nized when incor­po­ra­tion papers were granted to the Belle­vue Hous­ing Co. Tem­po­rary offi­cers were W.S. Nyerges, pres­i­dent; William LaSalle, vice-president; Oliver Over­meyer, secretary-treasurer; and W.M. LaSalle, Allen Kistler and Lloyd Loudenslagel, directors.

The acute hous­ing short­age in Belle­vue and the impor­tance of cor­rect­ing the sit­u­a­tion as a spur to com­mu­nity growth prompted the for­ma­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion whose pri­mary aim is to pro­vide hous­ing. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the cor­po­ra­tion made trips to an Indi­ana fac­tory cur­rently turn­ing out pre-cut houses to see what they have to offer.

The group was espe­cially encour­aged in their efforts when a recent sur­vey showed between 75 and 100 local fam­i­lies were in des­per­ate need of imme­di­ate housing.

A short time later, the Nickel Plate Rail­road revealed their inten­tions of mov­ing nearly 100 addi­tional fam­i­lies here with in a year or two. Other indus­tries were known to be con­tem­plat­ing expan­sion as soon as ade­quate hous­ing can be furnished.

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Belle­vue His­to­rian Bill Oddo writes a weekly col­umn for The Belle­vue Gazette.

Posted by Becky Brooks on Jan 7 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.