H.B. Smith purchased the old village of Shreveville in 1865 and renamed it Smithville. A map accompanying the notice of sale showed three rows of houses. Soon after buying the property, he razed the houses on Park Avenue and replaced them with new dwellings in 1870 that included a sitting room, dining room, kitchen, and two bedrooms. He kept the existing houses along Maple Avenue that matched this style, including the entire row on the north side, but removed most houses on the south side, perhaps because they had deteriorated. He did not replace those homes, allowing the Park Avenue houses to have considerably larger back lots. These changes left Smithville with fewer workforce accommodations than Shreveville had once had. By 1883 Smith’s model industrial village covered nearly 500 acres and had about 300 residents, with an average of five persons per house. The company rented homes mainly to married men with families, while eight families in the village provided room and board for about 22 men. The company employed few women and no children under the age of 16.