Hilton Village

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Coordinates: 37°01′46″N 76°27′39″W / 37.02944°N 76.46083°W / 37.02944; -76.46083
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For other uses, see Hilton Village (disambiguation).

Hilton Village
Colonial revival
NRHP reference No.69000341[1]
VLR No.121-0009
Significant dates
Added to NRHPJune 23, 1969
Designated VLRNovember 5, 1968[2]

Hilton Village is a planned English-village-style neighborhood in

Newport News Shipbuilding & Drydock Company. It is recognized as the United States
' first Federal war-housing project.

History

Founding

The planned community was jointly sponsored by the

Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company
. It was built on the site of J. Pembroke Jones' farm "Hilton."

Hilton Village was opened July 7, 1918. The street names in the 100-acre (0.4 km2) tract of former pine woods honor government and shipyard officials. The 500 English village-type houses were sold to private owners after the war.

Impetus for creation

In 1917, during World War I, the war effort was in full swing. Newport News Shipbuilding had many contracts to build naval ships and was hiring thousands of employees. Shipyard workers were being housed in overcrowded and/or temporary quarters. The emerging community of Newport News faced a severe housing shortage. This led to the construction of Hilton Village. The housing shortage was so severe that Newport News Shipbuilding president Homer L. Ferguson traveled to Washington to emphasize to Congress the impact of lack of housing on ship construction and thus the war effort. Immediately after his appearance, the United States Shipping Board was provided funding of $1.2 million and authorization to create a comprehensive emergency housing program. Hilton Village was the first project of the emergency housing program.

Planning

About three miles (5 km) north of the Newport News city limits, in

James River, the pre-Civil War homestead was named "Hilton". The planning for Hilton Village was conducted using a team approach, highly innovative for the time.[3] Initially landscape architect Henry Vincent Hubbard was hired as town planner, Joseph D. Leland, III as architect and Francis H. Bulot as sanitary engineer.[3] Leland was unable to finish the assignment because of other obligations, and Francis Y. Joannes was hired as the architect to work on the Project.[4] The planners met with the wives of shipyard workers. Based on their input, 14 house plans were designed for the projected 500 English-village-style homes.

Hilton Village, 1920

The location of the neighborhood was several miles away from the urbanized areas of Newport News.

James River were included in the plan directly behind Hilton Elementary.[5]

Architecture

Hilton was modeled after an early-English village, a decision which was probably influenced by the

clapboards. All of the houses are wood-frame construction with steeply pitched slate roofs. Roofing styles are varied as well and include gambrel, hipped, clipped gambrel, gable
, and clipped gable.

Construction

Clearing the wooded site began on April 18, 1918. By the time of the

Hilton Elementary School
was completed in 1919. Scaled back to 473 homes after the end of World War I, by the end of 1920 all the homes had been completed and were occupied.

Costs

The cost estimate for site development and building each house was $3,200.

Post-War to Present

In 1921, Hilton Village was purchased from the United States Shipping Board by Henry E. Huntington, chairman of the board at Newport News Shipbuilding. He formed the Newport News Land Company, which ran Hilton as an adjunct of the company. In 1922, many of the houses were put up for private sale, and Hilton Village gradually became a community of homeowners.

Streets named after shipyard and government officials

Of the currently laid out streets in Hilton Village, Hopkins Street, Ferguson Avenue and Post Street are named after three of the earlier past

Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company
Presidents:

  • Walter A. Post - Mar. 9, 1911 to Feb. 12, 1912, earlier, a builder of the C&O Railway's terminals and first mayor of Newport News
  • Albert L. Hopkins - Mar. 14, 1914 to May 7, 1915, the young New Yorker who was traveling to England on the RMS Lusitania on shipyard business when he died after the ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat [6]
  • Collis P. Huntington
    .

Listing on National Register of Historic Places

To build the new village, the U.S. Shipping Board hired one of the finest urban planners of the era, Henry Vincent Hubbard of Harvard University. Recognized as a pioneering development in the area of urban planning, Hilton Village was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.[1]

Historic Marker

The text of the historical marker that appears on Warwick Boulevard in Hilton Village reads as follows:

The nation's first Federal War Housing project, this planned community was sponsored by the U. S. Shipping Board and the Newport News Shipyard on the site of J. Pembroke Jones' Warwick County farm "Hilton". It was opened July 7, 1918, and sold to private owners after World War I. Street names in the 100-acre (0.40 km2) tract of former pine woods containing 500 English village-type houses honor government and shipyard officials.[7]

Notable residents

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. July 9, 2010.
  2. ^ "Virginia Landmarks Register". Virginia Department of Historic Resources. Retrieved March 19, 2013.
  3. ^ a b NRHP Nomination Form, Hilton Village, Item 8, p. 2.
  4. ^ NRHP Nomination Form, Hilton Village, Item 8, p. 3.
  5. ^ a b c NRHP Nomination Form, Hilton Village, Item 7, p. 1.
  6. ^ "Mr. Albert Lloyd Hopkins". July 25, 2011.
  7. ^ Hilton Village Historical Marker
  8. ^ J.J. Lankes, Wells Book Arts Center Archived 2007-06-14 at the Wayback Machine

External links

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hilton_Village&oldid=1209957210"