Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Norvelt, PA

Norvelt is a census-designated place in Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County, that was founded in 1934 by the federal government as Westmoreland Homesteads, a New Deal subsistence homestead project for unemployed coal miners.

Norvelt was renamed in 1937 by combining the last syllables of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt's name — EleaNOR RooseVELT — in honor of her support for the project.

Eleanor Roosevelt personally visited the community on May 21, 1937, to mark the arrival of its final homesteader.

In April 1934 the federal government bought 1,326 acres of farmland for Westmoreland Homesteads, and architect Paul Bartholomew laid out 254 homestead lots ranging from 1.7 to 7 acres each.

Norvelt's original 1.5-story Cape Cod-style houses, built with electricity and running water at Eleanor Roosevelt's insistence, are still known locally as "Norvelt Houses."

More than 1,850 families applied for Norvelt's 254 homesteads, and families rented their homes from the government for $12 to $14 a month toward an eventual purchase — by 1946 every renter had bought their home.

Within three years of its founding, Norvelt had become the largest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 92 model subsistence homestead communities.

Norvelt's population was 948 at the 2010 census and 846 at the 2020 census, spread across about 1.8 square miles of land.

Norvelt was counted together with neighboring Calumet as the Calumet-Norvelt CDP in the 2000 census, then split into separate Calumet and Norvelt CDPs for the 2010 census.

Award-winning children's author Jack Gantos was born in Norvelt and wrote two books about growing up there.