> > The govenment housing project at James River bridge was called Ferguson > Park. There was also housing complex covering a hundred acres or so along > 39th street called Copeland Park..They were built for workers during WWII.. > A lot of military people lived in Ferguson Park after the war.. I believe > the brick apartments on Washington Ave. were built by the shipyard but I > don't know when.. -Named after Homer L. Ferguson (see below) Copeland Park covered from 39th Street to around 48th Street. Barracks for military personnel and military workers. Converted to quad-plex and du-plex living after the war. I lived there when a 'wee-child'. Copeland Park was across the city from the James River, bordering the city of Hampton. Area buldozed in 50's and now an industrial area. Across Marshall Ave was Newsome Park - same type of housing, except for African American families. Newsome Park is still a residential area. Ferguson Park is now a parking lot - during the 70's the great plan for re-vitalizing the downtown area of Newport News. Now, 2001, plans that have have been re-done hundreds of times are coming to possible fruition with a major re-building planned. > Hilton Village along Rt. 60 in Warwick (later Newport > News) were WWI housing.. Actually, Hilton Village was a 'Planned Community' building started c. 1918 - Many pictures available at Library Virginia Photo Collections. >From a later posting -- Who was Ferguson? Homer L. Ferguson, shipyard visionary, president perhaps the most remarkable person to have lived in Newport News was Homer Lenoir Ferguson, a Naval Academy graduate who preferred building ships to sailing them. Ferguson was president of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. through two world wars and, between them, the Depression. Ferguson, a native of western North Carolina, resigned from the Navy in 1905 to join Collis P. Huntington’s shipyard as an engineer. In 1914, when Albert Hopkins, the president of the yard, died in the sinking of the Lusitania, Ferguson became president of the largest private shipyard in the world. He held that post until 1946. It was his habit to walk through the yard and stop and speak with the mechanics and pipefitters and those laboring aboard ships being repaired. Ferguson created the Apprentice School to train shipbuilders. He persuaded the U.S. Shipping Board to build housing for shipyard workers during World War I. He talked Archer Huntington into funding The Mariners’ Museum, now one of the world’s leading maritime museums. He helped set up the Virginia War Museum, a bank, a Rotary Club and countless community charity drives. He served as president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and there was talk that he ought to run for governor or even president — talk he quickly silenced. Ferguson took pride in guiding the shipyard’s wartime buildup when the workforce swelled to meet the demand for destroyers, battleships, cargo ships and aircraft carriers. His greatest accomplishment was keeping the workforce in place and busy when there was no demand for Navy ships. In 1922, when contracts for warships had been cancelled, he deliberately underbid the job to renovate a seized German liner which was renamed the Leviathan. At that time, it was the world’s largest passenger ship. The yard lost $1.2 million, but it kept its reputation intact as a builder of good ships. - The Daily Press, Newport News --- I guess that is the lot of it. Bill Lester Newport News, Virginia