Medfair Heights Apartment Historic District

Medfair Heights is a wartime housing complex on the edge of Medina, Ohio, built in 1943 for workers at the nearby Permold aluminum castings plant. Nineteen one-story concrete block buildings, eighteen with four apartments each and one community building, face inward toward each other across open lawns that cover about 75 percent of the site. Built on a tight Lanham Act budget to Federal Housing Administration standards, the buildings are plain, with gabled roofs, brick chimneys, one-over-one wooden windows and small canopies over the doors. Inside, the concrete block walls remain unplastered. Two buildings were lost to fire around 1977. The complex is significant for its planning, its modest architecture and its social history. Many residents were African American workers, and Jamaican workers were housed in trailers beside the apartments. Local leaders, the newspaper and federal staff helped Medina accept the newcomers, and residents formed their own social club and held dances and classes in the community building.