Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company Housing

On a hillside above the Mahoning River Valley and the Briar Hill steel mill, a village of 281 two-story concrete houses was built between 1917 and 1920 for Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company workers. The houses stand in units of two to five, arranged in hollow squares with trees, playgrounds and garden spaces across about nine acres. Walls and floors were cast as precast slabs in a nearby yard, then lifted into place by a patented derrick, with only the gables and roofs framed in wood. St. Louis architects Herding and Boyd designed the project, and the Unit Construction Company built it. The site's slope led to stepped floor levels between adjoining units. The company created the community after the 1916 worker riots and set aside $250,000 for construction. Described as the first major American attempt to apply unit concrete construction to large-scale housing, it drew coverage in Engineering News-Record. A southern section was demolished in 1976, and many remaining houses are privately owned.