Hilton Village: An enduring sense of place for 100 years

 By Mark St. John Erickson
via the Newport News, Virginia Daily Press web site

In the months after America entered World War I in April 1917, few places saw such dramatic change as Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Though already home to the Army’s biggest coastal fort and the Navy’s most vital shipyard, the region was reshaped by the birth of pioneering Langley Field in Hampton and a mammoth new naval base in Norfolk.

Hilton Village under construction in 1918.Then there was the new Hampton Roads Port of Embarkation in Newport News, which drew hundreds of thousands of soldiers from across the country for the war in Europe, plus thousands of additional officers, men and women to run the giant staging camps and keep the pipeline flowing.

More change swept through the Norfolk Navy Yard — which added not just one but three new dry docks — and the nation’s largest private yard in Newport News — which ramped up to meet contracts worth $2 billion in today’s dollars.

So feverish was the pace at Newport News that its ranks of shipbuilders rocketed from 7,600 to 12,512 during the war, while the city’s population city leapt from 26,246 to 47,013.

Yet even after erecting a small city of tents and barracks and opening his home to boarders, shipyard chief Homer L. Ferguson couldn’t hire the thousands of extra hands he needed.

Not until he dressed down a Senate subcommittee in early 1918 did Washington grasp the depth of the housing crisis, leading in hours to the funds for historic Hilton Village.

Designed and built for workers, the pioneering neighborhood was the first federal housing project — and 100 years later it has been cited by planners and architectural historians as a landmark achievement.

“Newport News was just so fortunate that all these visionaries showed up and made something like this happen,” says John V. Quarstein, author of two new books on the groundbreaking streetcar suburb. “These were forward-thinking people — all trying to create what they saw as a perfect place to live.”

Read the entire article on the Daily Press web site here:

External Web Site Notice: This page contains information directly presented from an external source. The terms and conditions of this page may not be the same as those of this website. Click here to read the full disclaimer notice for external web sites. Thank you.