Alton, Ill
General Description (1919 report):
"The city of Alton is in the southern part of Illinois on the Mississippi, at the apex of the alluvial plain where the high land touches the river bank. In the town the industries are generally located on the plain, the residences on the higher and more healthful land. The population of the city is about 30,000. The chief industry needing housing help was the Western Cartridge Co. in the eastern part of Alton, employing about 3,000 and expecting to employ 4,500, all on war work. The people especially needing housing were women workers and skilled men with families. There were three developments proposed in Alton by the Housing Corporation..."
Three developments were planned in the town; the Milton Hill site progressed the furthest before the project was discontinued.
1919 excerpt describing the design of the Milton Hill site in Alton:
Area planned: 36.67 acres. Housing planned:
Detached houses. 17 families; semi-detached houses, 82 families; row houses, 86 families; apartment houses, 15 families; total 20 families; 485 single workers in convertible dormatories.
"The buildings proposed at Milton Hill comprised, besides detached and semidetached houses, 21 dormitories, each convertible into four-six-room houses, a building containing a fire-engine house, a waiting room and public comfort station, stores with apartments over them, and a recreation building or community house, with reading rooms, meeting rooms, and large auditorium...
"A characteristic of the layout was the placing at street corners of houses designed with the main wall at 45 degrees and the ends following the street lines. This arrangement makes the street-intersection area more ample, and faces good house-fronts upon it. In the store-apartment buildings a clever arrangement of stairs to the second floor permits of access to the apartment from the store, or from the street by a possible tenant not connected with the store."
The Milton Hill site today
Renderings, 1919
