An American Dream: Home Ownership

An American Dream: Home Ownership. . , Poverty and prejudice shaped the lives of African Americans in Charlottesville. In the 1920s African Americans made up 28 percent of the town's population but owned only 6.5 percent of its real estate. Many lived crowded together in very small houses or in subdivided single-family houses. Charles B. Holt would be an exception. In 1917 Hold bought this large building lot in the area called "the western suburbs of Charlottesville." Moving away from camped neighborhoods, Holt built a house surrounded by grass and trees. With his wife, Mary Spinner Holt (1885-1953), he lived on nearly a half-acre of land in a 3,400-square-foot house.

In the neighborhood of 116 8th Street, N.W. where Holt had lived in 1900, the same parcel included three houses with nine families and thirty residents. Nearby, on Cox's Row, nine houses accommodated 37 people in 9 families. At 223 Cox's Row, three generations of the Roberts family, nine people in all, lived in a 600-square-foot house.