New Helvetia Historic District

Occupied housing with a civil-rights story

New Helvetia Historic District is a public housing complex within Sacramento’s Alder Grove community, California, its edges set by Broadway, Muir Way, Kit Carson Street, and Kemble Street. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 4, 2014. The address of record on the nomination is 752 Revere Street; the community center sits at 816 Revere Way. People live here. It is not a vacant museum campus or a free architectural walkthrough of private courtyards.

The district contains 62 contributing buildings on about 26 acres: 61 apartment buildings with 310 units and a central community center. Buildings are wood-framed, one and two stories, with brick veneer (including random clinker brick), gabled roofs with clipped eaves, composition shingles, metal windows and doors, and concrete foundations. Five unit plan types (A–E) vary bedroom counts and massing. Open lawns, trees, and concrete walkways define a garden-like superblock with little private fencing. The architectural character is simple Modern Movement / International Style work shaped by wartime economy and federal housing standards. Architects Charles Dean, Harry Devine Sr., Ed Flanders, and Leonard Starks worked together under the banner of a Board of Architects; New Helvetia was the sole project that brought this foursome together as a team. Campbell Construction Co. built the complex. Completed and dedicated in 1942, New Helvetia began as low-income housing under the Housing Act of 1937, shifted to defense housing for World War II-era workers tied to Sacramento’s military-industrial activity, and afterward returned to low-income public housing use.

Social history and Nathaniel Colley

The nomination lists Criteria A, B, and C at the local level under the Multiple Property Submission Public Housing in the United States, 1933–1949. Areas of significance are social history, ethnic heritage (African American), and architecture. Period of significance is 1942–1949.

Criterion A covers the federal–local partnership that produced New Deal and wartime public housing: Sacramento’s housing authority, USHA financing, site planning with open space and a community center, and conversion from low-income to defense housing when war industry surged. Criterion C covers the standardized brick garden-apartment design by Sacramento’s master architects under federal cost constraints.

Criterion B centers on Nathaniel Colley, the first African American attorney in Sacramento and a major figure in fair-housing work. After World War II service and Yale Law School, Colley opened practice in Sacramento and became legal counsel to the local NAACP. He found that New Helvetia was operated under de facto segregation: of 310 units, 16 were set aside in two buildings for Black tenants, who waited years while white applicants filled vacancies elsewhere in weeks. Colley and community allies pressed the Housing Authority, City Council, and courts. In 1952 he filed suit that forced integration of Sacramento public housing, including New Helvetia, and a permanent injunction against racial separation in housing. He extended similar challenges across California and the western states. The nomination identifies New Helvetia as the most pertinent surviving site of that early phase of his career.

How to treat the place

Alder Grove / New Helvetia remains public housing. Stay on public streets. Do not enter courtyards, laundry rooms, or units. Do not photograph residents or treat the complex as a scenic drive-through. Windows and doors have been replaced; the overall site plan and brick massing retain integrity. The historical importance of the district is tied to people who still need housing—and to a documented fight against segregation that began on these blocks.