This Week’s Historic Photo: Arthurdale Nursery, 1933
This week’s circa 1933 photograph shows children sleeping in the Arthurdale nursery in Reedsville, West Virginia. Arthurdale was a subsistence homestead project that was part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. The federally funded project was designed to house displaced and out-of-work northern West Virginia coal mining families. The project included new houses, garden areas and industries such as furniture making, metal working, tractor manufacturing, vacuum cleaner repair, and weaving. President Roosevelt’s wife Eleanor championed Arthurdale and hired Elsie Ripley Clapp, a Columbia University graduate and progressive educator, to start a community school and the nursery shown in the photograph. The nursery enabled mothers to work in the industries and learn new skills.
The need for pre-school care in West Virginia continues. According to a recent article in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Amelia Kinsley reported 260 child-care facilities have closed in West Virginia since 2024, and that more than 28,000 West Virginia children do not have access to childcare.
