The house is one of 250 sandstone cottages built during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a part of his “New Deal.” This federal housing project was designed to retrain unemployed miners and farmers hit hard by the depression and put them back to work during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. The houses were built by unskilled men, who were learning new skills to become stone masons, electricians, carpenters, and plumbers. This alone made each of the houses unique. However, it made repairs hard to perform, because everything in the house was hand made by unskilled workers. The new skills the men learned on the job proved to be invaluable just a few short years later, with the construction of the nearby “secret city” of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Many of the retrained men found jobs after the depression at Oak Ridge during World War II. Crossville also became an area where captured enemy soldiers waited out the war before they were released. History buffs will find many other things of interest in the area!
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