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5.14 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 6 1 for Rev. William Sheppard, a Presbyterian missionary and human-rights activist who settled in Smoketown in the early 1900s, began to serve not only military families but also low-income families. Monthly rent was about $10. Tat transition from military to subsidized public housing doesn't stick in Hyde's memory. No one wore their fnancial struggles. Sheppard Square had no stigma. Instead, the housing complex was seen as "a step up," she says. Once you earned enough income, you moved on. Every morning, fathers went to work. Some held jobs in city government. Others walked over to the Blue Bird Pie Co. on East Broadway. Te Louisville Slugger factory — then located in Smoketown — also employed neighbors. Hyde, now 65 years old, remembers shop- ping trips down Preston Street: a stop at the hardware store, the cleaners, the grocery. Over on East Broadway, husbands bought their wives fowers at Tony's Florists. Jazz clubs like the Blue Moon jostled late into the night on Hancock and Breckinridge streets. Churches dotting nearly every Smoketown block lured crowds on Sundays. Children often trekked to the Eastern Colored Branch Library, a cozy brick building with an elegant arched entrance. Tat's where Hyde used to watch a young Darryl Owens (an attorney and Kentucky state representative) balance a pile of books as he went back and forth between the stacks and the Sheppard Square apartment he shared with his sister and mother. Away from Hyde's view, though, public- housing problems were rising. A large migra- tion of black people to urban areas during World War II coincided with an inordinate amount of housing for African-Americans disappearing due to urban renewal. By the mid-1950s, African-Americans in need of public housing wound up on a long wait list. On a recent warm spring day, Hyde stands at Broadway and Hancock facing a historic marker noting the neighborhood's roots as a community settled by slaves looking for free- dom. "Tis is the gateway to Smoketown," corner claimed by some "industrious" men of his youth — drug dealers. Behind him, a vast dirt lot swallows an entire city block. "Tis (was) Sparta," he says. Kids were constantly fghting. But the man who threw and took a lot of punches as a kid at Sheppard Square only feels "mad love, mad love," he says, one fst gently thumping his palm like a baseball in a glove. A ll around him a chilly wind swirls. Leaves grip a barbed-wire fence sur- rounding a section of the old Shep- pard Square. A gust ushers them on their way. By next year, more than 300 new residents will fll apartments and townhomes that match a cluster of three-story buildings already fn- ished. It's part of a massive renovation known as HOPE VI, a federal program that replaces barracks-style housing projects with mixed- income neighborhoods. Te Louisville Metro Housing Authority has completed two other HOPE VI projects: Park DuValle in west Louisville and Liberty Green in Phoenix Hill. Sheppard Square's reconstruction will cost $96.5 million. About 20 percent of that comes from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Private invest- ment will pay for the rest. When it's complete, the place won't just look diferent. Residents must adhere to stricter rules — housing inspections, no smoking, recycle. If a potential tenant has unpaid utility bills or a criminal record, their application will likely be denied. Te story of the old Sheppard Square is impossible to tell through two people or 10. About 22,000 residents lived there over 70 years. In that time, a lot changed — po- litically, economically and socially. Quaint nicknames for sections of the complex, like "the village" and "the valley" morphed into "the chutes" and "the wire," a playground area named for the gritty television crime drama. Two men were shot there a few years back dur- ing a dice game. Still, others can point to that same playground and recall learning to ride a bike. In Building 15, a young man discovered a gift for hip-hop dance. Building 21's base- ment? Some 40 years ago kids packed in for a Halloween party, screaming at the sight of a mechanical Dracula. How do most outsiders know of Sheppard Square? Shootings, welfare, drugs. One young man who lived in the Smoketown housing projects for six years called Sheppard Square a "drive-though zone" — people sped by, eyes forward, windows up. Reputations can cheat a place out of signifcance. Home, no mat- ter where it is, packages life into meaningful chapters. What will growing up in Sheppard Square be like now? Who knows. Here's what was. I n 1956, eight-year-old Ruby Hyde ran around Sheppard Square, a blur of Bermuda shorts and tennis shoes. A Catholic school uniform mandated on the weekdays, her inner-tomboy surfaced at play- time. She'd hunt bumblebees, housing them in jars with four-leaf clovers. When her hands weren't busy with fstfuls of air, she might clasp them together to hoist her brother into crab-apple trees that surrounded Sheppard Square. Branches shaken, they'd gather their loot and deliver them to a neighbor who sopped them in sugary goop. Best candy apples ever. Hyde's father, a Navy veteran, moved his family into Sheppard Square in the 1940s. Te brand-new government housing project initially served a specifc population: African- American defense workers. All across the city and country some 700 public-housing projects were springing up in the late '30s and early '40s. Te National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933, commonly referred to as the Public Works Administration or PWA, sparked this efort. Te government wanted to create jobs. Cities longed to im- prove blighted areas, a gentler term for slum clearance. In Louisville, surveys gathered in the 1930s indicated that about 40 percent of the city's housing units were substandard — tenements where 17 people might sardine themselves into one or two rooms for $28 a month. Buildings sandwiched together had no running water or gas. Sewage and open drains plagued the narrow passageways. Steam shovels broke ground on Sheppard Square in 1941, smack in the heart of Smoketown, a neighborhood named for the ashy plumes rising from brickyards in the 1800s. Te three- and four-bedroom units impressed people: gas range ovens, refrigerators, running water. Hyde lived on Gaddie Court, not far from East Broadway, for 16 years. With eight brothers and sisters, everybody piled into bunk beds. Her parents, she says today, considered Sheppard Square "a palace." After the war, Sheppard Square, named In the summer, her alarm clock was laughter, the sound of children playing. No strangers at Sheppard Square — she knew everybody. Everybody knew everybody. 58-63 Shepard SQ.indd 61 4/21/14 12:42 PM