One clause stated that the previous owner could repossess the house after a single missed payment. Another required a hefty balloon payment at the end. After five years of making steady payments of $ 70 each month, the“ entire unpaid balance,” a sum of approximately $ 2,700, would all“ become due” at once.
The property records indicate that the Revises struggled to meet these terms. At the five-year mark in 1955, the prior owner began foreclosure proceedings to recover the missing balloon payment. It appears, however, that the Revises negotiated an extension, because they eventually paid off the mortgage in 1960. Through untold sacrifices, they managed to scrape together enough to keep their home.
While individual families used unconventional mortgages to buy older houses, builders did the same to construct new ones. Large-scale builders such as Levitt & Sons had skipped over the patchwork of lots in Roosevelt, preferring to acquire big chunks of undeveloped farmland. After the farms were plowed over and the market for white homebuyers became increasingly saturated, smaller builders found ways to monetize the empty lots.
Classified advertisement for Roosevelt, published in the February 21, 1959 issue of New York Amsterdam News.
These companies leveraged debt to build houses for Black customers. Greenview Estates offers a representative case, and property records reveal how its operation worked. First, an investor assembled land by purchasing lots one by one. Next, they sold the lots to Greenview Estates, and the company took out mortgages for all the properties. Once construction began, the company solicited buyers with promises of“ New 5-Room Cape Cods.”
The fact that the company advertised exclusively in the New York Amsterdam News, a historic Black newspaper, suggests the operation was designed for Black buyers. The company was essentially betting on Black desperation because if buyers could not be found, it would still have to pay the mortgages. If all went to plan, a buyer would make a cash down payment, which became the company’ s profit, and then assume the mortgage from Greenview Estates. In this way, a buyer never had to apply directly for a loan; the company acted as both homebuilder and mortgage broker. Greenview Estates built dozens of houses following this procedure.
The financial end-around allowed Black buyers to acquire brand-new houses. In 1958, Zeno and Alvis Richardson bought a two-story Cape Cod at 41 Jefferson Avenue. They assumed the mortgage from Greenview Estates, taken out by the company three months beforehand, and picked up the monthly payments where the company left off. A World War II veteran born to sharecroppers in Kentucky, Zeno had migrated to New York after the war, and Greenview Estates allowed him and Alvis to realize their suburban dream.“ I came here because I wanted to buy a house,” he later reflected,“ and there was nothing available to us any place else.”
Theron and Jonnie Banks purchased an identical Cape Cod four blocks away at 12 Andrews Avenue. High school sweethearts from Hempstead, they assumed the mortgage from Greenview Estates in 1960. Both couples eventually paid off their mortgages, and both stayed put for decades. Speculative builders offered yet another path to homeownership in the age of redlining. But without the backstop of federal mortgage insurance, Greenview Estates and then the buyers shouldered all the risk. Entire Roosevelt blocks were thrown up as gambles.
The very factors that made Roosevelt accessible also created frightful living conditions. As residents recognized, the lack of a water system left their homes without adequate fire protection. The waterless southeast section did not have fire hydrants, and the elementary school serving the area, which opened its doors to 500 children every morning, was protected by just one hydrant. The Utopia Community Civic Association, an organization of Black homeowners, protested these conditions. As chairman Martin L. Markham declared,“ We feel it is the duty of the government to supply us with water and hydrants to fight fires in this community.”
Water pipelines were the sort of basic infrastructure that developers installed when plotting subdivisions or that local governments built after there were a sufficient number of houses. Yet because Roosevelt embraced so many vacant lots, its residents were left to fend for themselves. Throughout the 1950s, Utopia members knocked on doors asking for down payments to finance a water system, but they never gathered enough signatures. Most homeowners already struggled to pay their bills. Few had enough savings for another major expense.
As many had feared, the lack of fire hydrants led to preventable tragedies. On a Sunday evening in February 1960, a fire broke out at an abandoned house in the waterless section. A total of 14 people had been living in the four-room bungalow, which lacked electricity. The blaze was reportedly started by someone using candles for light. All the occupants escaped except for 33-year-old Rosalie Taylor, who remained trapped inside.
Upon arriving, the Roosevelt Fire Department could not initially fight the flames because the nearest fire hydrant was several blocks away. They had to drag their hose lines through the woods and across debris-strewn lots. By the time the firemen reached the house, they discovered Taylor’ s charred corpse in the basement.
The horrific death sent shockwaves through the community, in part for its lingering mysteries. The property records listed no owner for the house, and Taylor had no known relatives. Still, for many the lessons were clear.“ That building undoubtedly constituted a fire hazard,” charged Markham.“ We do not want a recurrence of what happened to Rosalie Taylor.”
18 FINANCIAL HISTORY | Winter 2026 | www. MoAF. org