Posted: Friday Mar 30, 2012
March 30, 2012
Dr. Timothy Kelly, professor of history at Saint Vincent College, gave a talk, “Building a Better Life: Domestic Architecture in Norvelt, Pennsylvania, 1934-1941,” at the Appalachian Studies Association national conference, hosted by the Center for Northern Appalachian Studies at Indiana University of Pennsylvania March 22.
“This presentation examined the built environment in Norvelt, Pennsylvania, a subsistence homestead community that the federal government financed to offer dignified life to the unemployed during the Great Depression,” Dr. Kelly explained. “Many of Norvelt’s residents came from coal patch towns, and my presentation compared the life in coal company houses and towns to that in Norvelt. It explored the ways that Norvelt homes shaped their residents’ lives and the ways that the residents negotiated life in a federally constructed community.”
The presentation was based on a chapter in a book that Penn State University Press will publish. The book has two additional co-authors, Michael Cary from Seton Hill University and Margaret Power from the Illinois Institute of Technology (Chicago), and is entitled: Norvelt: Community and Hard Times in Depression Era America.
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