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A look at 50 years of Warwick, NN merger: The consolidation of the two cities in a 1958 referendum, to be celebrated Tuesday, brought profound...
(Daily Press (Newport News, VA) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Jun. 29---- Leaving downtown after church on Sunday to drive with her dad to the Yoder Barn in Warwick County remains a vivid childhood memory for Lillian Lovett.
"It seemed so far," said 77-year-old Lovett, who grew up on 30th Street in Newport News but went to the Yoder Barn to watch cows getting milked.
Attending the first City Council meeting after Warwick consolidated with Newport News in 1958 remains a watershed moment -- of sorts -- for then-15-year-old Joe S. Frank.
"They took more than an hour to talk about whether or not to install a half-inch or a 1-inch waterline," said Frank, who is now mayor of Newport News. "And I left the council meeting, thinking, 'adults should have better things to do with their time than that.'
"I thought this kind of setting was not for me. And here I am. I guess I did not learn very well."
On Tuesday, the city will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the consolidation of Warwick City and Newport News.
But for many, the true meaning of the merger for Warwick and Newport News residents is as controversial today as it was five decades ago.
"It was a wonderful move," said Billie Millner, a local attorney and Newport News native who was elected to the City Council in 1966. "It permitted Newport News to grow."
After Newport News incorporated in 1896, it outgrew its boundaries by leaps and bounds, according to census data.
By 1900, 19,635 people lived in the city, and residents soon began to crowd the 4-square-mile city. By 1940, the population had more than doubled to 37,067, and by 1955 the number had reached 59,326.
Soldiers returning after World War II wanted jobs. Businesses expanded. People demanded larger and more modern homes.
Lovett said she saw signs of a city bursting at its seams every Monday morning at Booker T. Washington Elementary School. In the 1940s, with the shipyard working three shifts around the clock, Lovett remembers seeing yet another new child in her class every Monday.
"Their fathers were looking in the city for work," she said. "They would rent a room in downtown. Every Monday there came another family and you just put up another chair."
The influx of people brought a wave of new public housing to Newport News, places like Newsome, Copeland and Ferguson parks. And Newport News desperately needed one thing -- land.
"It was crowded," said Arthur Keyes, a Warwick County native, retired assistant principal at Dozier Middle School, and former president of the North Newport News Civic League. "They needed all the space they could get."
Early supporters said it just made economic sense to consolidate government services, transportation and industrial development. Newport News had better schools, the shipyard as its economic anchor, the boat harbor, and the coal terminal.
Warwick had land -- and plenty of water. "There was no water in Newport News," said Keyes, referring to the reservoirs. "They didn't have a bucket of water."
By state law, a city can annex a county, but not another city.
In the early 1950s, several municipalities on the Peninsula -- Warwick County, Newport News, Phoebus, Elizabeth City and Hampton -- began to get increasingly infatuated with the idea of becoming one metropolitan area. Eventually Hampton, Elizabeth City County and Phoebus embarked on their own consolidation efforts.
In 1952, Warwick County petitioned the Virginia General Assembly and became a city.
"They did not want to become overrun by Newport News," Millner said.
By 1955, a group of community leaders was brainstorming the idea of consolidating Warwick City, Newport News and Hampton.
Voters defeated that consolidation attempt on Nov. 6, 1956.
Finally, in a referendum on July 16, 1957, Newport News residents endorsed consolidating with predominantly agricultural Warwick in a landslide vote. And while the northern part of Warwick strongly opposed the merger, most county residents also backed the consolidation, making Newport News -- covering 64-square miles -- the largest city in Virginia at the time.
"It wasn't an easy task for the politicians," Millner said. "They had two of each. Two treasurers, two city councils, two city managers. There was a natural reluctance."
Location, location
Once the cities consolidated, more political wrangling was just around the corner. Where, for example, should they put the administrative heart of the city -- City Hall?
For years, the seat of Warwick County had been at the courthouse complex in Denbigh; while Newport News City Hall was a two-story building at 26th Street and Washington Avenue.
Newport News City Council members, including Millner, made their case for keeping City Hall downtown to revitalize an area in a downward economic spiral.
"We had to stabilize it," Millner said. "With the City Hall came the courthouse and the offices." In 1972, the city dedicated the 10-story City Hall on Washington Avenue.
After consolidation, sign makers had a field day. Homes began to go up on former county farmland. Long distance phone calls became local calls. People saw public sewer and water and street lights.
"It was about consolidating a city and county, about two different styles of living coming together," said 76-year-old Effie Ashe, a former Warwick County resident who lives in Jefferson Park in the southeast community.
And there were some drawbacks, mostly for former county residents. The loss of the political clout. More taxes. More people. More traffic. More trouble.
"My father-in law was against consolidation," said Ashe. "And he would say today, 'See, here you have it....' It drew a different breed of people to the county."
Promises and changes
For some Warwick County neighborhoods, the promises of the consolidation remained hollow for decades. "We fought for so many years just to get sidewalks, curbs and gutters, just to look like the rest of the city," said 80-year-old Wilbert Ashe, Effie Ashe's husband.
In North Newport News, which used to be the southern tail of Warwick County and a tightly knit neighborhood nestled around South, Center and North avenues, people waited for more than 30 years for the city to get rid of the deep roadside ditches.
"But considering what we have today and what we had then, I guess it was a good move," said Keyes, the former president of the North Newport News Civil League. "It was for the betterment, but not everything got better."
Downtown Newport News and the East End, now called the southeast community, were once known for their diversity. Blacks and whites, Greek immigrants and Jewish business owners lived next to each other. Washington Avenue used to be all white, so were the 600 and 800 blocks between Jefferson and Marshall avenues. White residents lived at Stuart Guardens, today a predominantly black Section 8 housing complex. Whites and blacks shared the block around Newsome House on Oak Street. The area at and around 28th Street was called Jewish town.
Shortly after the consolidation, mostly white residents began to abandon downtown and the East End for more land and more modern homes.
The Hilton Shopping Center had opened its doors in 1952, followed three years later by the Warwick and Newmarket shopping centers. More modern subdivisions such as Brandon Heights, Warwick on the James, Hidenwood and Riverside began to dot Warwick County's farmland.
"They were getting out of there as fast as they could," said Lovett, who remembers white real estate agents -- sometimes called "Blockbusters" -- going door to door to tell white residents to leave for better deals up north.
Many white businesses closed shop. In 1975, Sears Roebuck and Co. moved to Newmarket North. The closure of downtown's Nachman store and the Paramount Theater followed, turning downtown into what some still refer to as a ghost town.
"Washington Avenue died," Lovett said.
Where to go next?
Today the 20-plus-mile-long city, which Lovett calls "a string bean," is almost completely built out.
There are still a few bits and pieces of undeveloped land in the former Warwick County, leaving space for the city's largest subdivisions yet -- Huntington Pointe, which will add 2,550 new homes to the city's northern corner.
But 50 years after the wrangling over consolidation, some political dreams still seem to die hard.
With the emergence of City Center, where some city offices have already found a new home, the discussion about the perfect spot for City Hall has flared up again in recent years.
"I love City Center," said Effie Ashe. "But why move the city seat there when you have a perfectly good City Hall in downtown?"
And more consolidation talk might loom large in the future. If it were up to Millner, Newport News and Hampton would merge sooner rather than later.
"Our political force is divided because we don't go to the federal and state government as a unified body," Millner said. "And they could call it Hampton. I couldn't care less. The advantages are so overwhelming."
A history
--1637 -- Warwick River shire becomes Warwick County
--1896 -- City of Newport News becomes independent from Warwick County
--1952 �Vote fails to consolidate Elizabeth City County, Hampton, Phoebus, Newport News and Warwick City
--1952 -- Warwick County becomes a city
--1956 -- Warwick City, Newport News and Hampton consolidation effort fails
--1957 -- Warwick City and Newport News referendum held
--1958 -- Warwick City consolidates with Newport News
Source: Newport News:
A Centennial History
City plans commemorations on Tuesday
--10 a.m. -- Huntington Avenue and 64th Street, re-enactment of the ribbon cutting in 1958
--11 a.m. -- Midtown Community Center off Jefferson Avenue, renaming ceremony for the community center
To see more of the Daily Press, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.dailypress.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, Daily Press, Newport News, Va.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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