A few years ago, Kathryn Grover was out delivering meals on wheels in Windsor when she became curious about the uniform houses on Jarvis Street.
A freelance writer and editor specializing in American history, Grover began researching the cottage-style homes near the bank of the Connecticut River. She found that National Acme Co., also known by its acronym NAMCO, built nearly 70 small houses for workers in its machine tool factory between 1917 to 1918, and the area became known as “Little Warsaw,” a bit of a misnomer given its residents’ backgrounds. NAMCO left Windsor in 1933 and in the 1940s sold the houses to a holding company, which began selling them off one by one. Goodyear bought the plant, but not the houses, in 1936.
“Most of them are still there, which is pretty amazing given how close they are to the river,” Grover said of the homes.
While the neighborhood was nicknamed “Little Warsaw,” it was made up of people from many different Eastern European nations including Russia, Lithuania, Byelorussia (now known as Belarus) and Ukraine. Others were from Vermont or elsewhere in New England; many others were French-speaking Canadians. Grover has examined records from the 1920s census as well as draft cards from 1917 to try to find out where the residents were originally from.
“It’s really hard to tell because the boundaries shifted in Eastern Europe. The town names are just so obscure and convoluted,” said Grover, a published author who is also on the board of the Windsor Historical Association. “The newspapers generally call people from the neighborhood or anyone of Eastern European descent who lives in Windsor or anywhere else ‘Polanders’ even if they’re from anywhere else.”
It was common at the time for factories to build workforce housing, said Bob Haight, Windsor’s zoning administrator. They were referred to as “shotgun” houses because of how quickly they were built. He said the ones in Windsor are roughly 600 square feet and 1½ stories tall. While a handful have basements, most have crawlspaces.
“They’re kind of interesting; they were never great, super-well-built horses. They were just basic practical houses,” Haight said. “I would assume it’s like Coal Miner’s Daughter, living in those places and you paid rent to the boss and it came out of your paycheck. It’s kind of that old style of what factories did to have workers.”
Grover is also researching how workers came to the area. she speculates that some workers could have been recruited as soon as they arrived in the U.S., while others came from nearby towns.
“The movement between Springfield and Claremont and Windsor is really amazing. People are just going wherever they can get the best wage naturally,” she said. “There was as much stability in that neighborhood as there were transients.”
According to census records Grover has examined, it was not uncommon for more than a dozen people to live in one of the homes. At 22 Acme St., later known 42 Jarvis St., and which is no longer standing, there were 13 occupants, according to Grover.
The area where they were built “was not particularly desirable land,” Haight said.
“It was back in the days when all the towns used to just dump their sewage in the river,” he said.
The houses also sit in the flood plain. They survived the flood of 1927 — “the first one and the worst one” — another flood in 1936 and the hurricane of 1938.
NAMCO eventually built bigger duplexes, likely for management and apartment buildings that functioned as additional housing.
“Interestingly at this point though, that smaller kind of cottage house has become much more desirable,” Haight said.
There are views of the river, Mount Ascutney and downtown Windsor’s church steeples. Haight has lived 2½ blocks away from the houses for more than 20 years and marvels at how the area has grown.
“It’s amazing to see the beginnings of change, and there are some younger millennials who have purchased a couple buildings down there, beginning to fix them up,” he said. “I’m curious to see how it evolves over the next few years. If this was Santa Cruz, Calif., it would be a very trendy little neighborhood with all these fixed-up little houses.”
Windsor itself and the Windsor Improvement Corp. has played a role in that change. Around four years ago, the two entities purchased one of the homes and renovated it for around $165,000, Haight said. That work included lifting the house — which Haight said “had to have been the worst one on the street” — to comply with national flood plain guidelines, installing a heat pump and appliances and putting in a new floor. Windsor Improvement Corp. is now renting out the renovated building.
As the Upper Valley continues to struggle with a lack of affordable housing, Haight said neighborhoods like Jarvis Street show a way forward. Houses that are 700 to 1,100 square feet on smaller properties
Closely grouped houses “create nice little neighborhoods and you can stand on your front porch and talk across the street: ‘Oh, Mabel, oh your roses look so nice today,’ ” he said. “That’s what neighborhoods were about.”
The Windsor Improvement Corp. and Windsor have purchased other properties in the area that they’re looking to renovate.
“They’re there and there are a lot of people looking for housing,” Haight said. “It’s not totally inexpensive to do, but there’s a lot of people paying a lot more money for housing these days than it cost for us to do what we did down there.”
Grover is now compiling a history of Jarvis Street and the surrounding area. She is looking to speak to people who lived there to get a sense for what it was like. While she is most interested in the years between 1910 to 1944, she is also curious about the years surrounding that time frame and how the neighborhood changed. Those who are interested in sharing their stories or photographs can contact Grover at acmewindsor@gmail.com.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
CORRECTION: Historian Kathryn Grover is most interested in what took place on Jarvis Street in Windsor from about 1910 to 1944. A previous version of this column misstated what time period Grover wants to find information about.
