Although the street addresses are in Claremont, portions of many of the parcels in the district lie within the city of Montclair in San Bernardino County.

Konstanty Stys (1894-1961[4]) was born in Poland, immigrated to the United States and settled in Youngstown, Ohio.

He bought the land on the east side of Mills Avenue and began building his houses.

The local residents nicknamed these houses the "Russian Village", assuming that Stys came from Russia.

[3] Stys[5] and the other people who built homes in the district had no formal training in the design and construction of houses.

[3] The homes were built of local field stones from the alluvial plains around Claremont, as well as salvaged and recycled materials including the sides from railroad cars, debris remaining after the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and materials from wrecking yards.

Stys sold off portions of his land for low prices, often asking for no down payment, and helped them build inexpensive houses out of salvaged and recycled materials.

The interior framing of studs, rafters and joists are made up of used materials, some of the wood was previously painted and some had existing square-head nails.

The buildings are made of the Lay-Mor blocks, local river rock in the hearth, and various salvaged materials including sidewalk concrete and telephone poles.

The first structure was the garage, where Stys and his family lived while he built the main house.

The house was built of stone as well as concrete forms from construction sites of Pomona College.

The interior walls and cupboards of the studio were made of wood recovered from a railroad car.

Stys misread the plans, and started building the house in the wrong part of the lot.

Stys began construction of this house, then gave it to his niece and her husband, Clarence Michael, as a wedding gift.

The exterior was made of stone, the tiles for the roof came from a school in Placentia that was damaged in the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, and the interior walls and framing came from salvage and wrecking yards.

The exterior is made of up concrete blocks taken from San Antonio Avenue and Holt Boulevard during repairs of those streets.

The interior materials include pavement, railroad ties, and oil cans filled with cement.

[3] A satellite of Russian Village is the present-day Cask 'n Cleaver[11] restaurant in Cucamonga, originally an orchard house[12] designed and built by Stys.

Adjacent and north of the Cask 'n Cleaver buildings, a low-lying stone wall and seven redwood bungalows,[13][14] built by Stys, and made from lumber recovered from wreckage in the Long Beach earthquake were demolished for the new Los Amigos city park,[15][16] reusing lumber for a shade structure, and river rocks to ornate some structures.

Rancho Cucamonga Redevelopment Agency was awarded a Proposition 84 grant in 2011, acquired the property, construction began in March 2016, and opened in Spring 2017.

During the Great Depression, Stys sold portions of his land to friends and acquaintances for low prices and loans that incurred little to no interest.

[10][21][22][23] The district was listed in the National Register of Historic Places because of the unique nature of the folk architecture and also because of the social and economic setting during the Great Depression that allowed for these 15 houses to be built.

[7] Media related to Russian Village District (Claremont, California) at Wikimedia Commons