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SEE ALSO: • Encyclopedia of Norfolk, Virginia: History & Geography
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Transportation and Suburban Norfolk (For more Norfolk geography tidbits, click here.) In his series on Norfolk’s development, Robert C. Smith discusses the role of the development of transportation on the development of suburbs in Norfolk (Virginian-Pilot, June 28, 1955, pp.17): "...While the street car had tripled the area of Norfolk, its effect was minor compared with  changes commanded by the appearance of the automobile. By 1910 there were hundreds of these ‘motor machines’ in the area and new suburbs like Colonial Place, Lamberts Point, Park Place, and Larchmont came into being. The street car system’s enmeshing rails had already stretched the suburban web to Sewell’s Point, Ocean View, Willoughby Spit, South Norfolk, Berkley, Portsmouth, and Pinners Point. Steam engines and then an electric line had begun developing Ocean View and the same combination applied to Virginia Beach.
The speed with which these areas began to fill in with houses and commercial establishments of their own prompted Wertenbaker to write prophetically in 1932, ‘The northward sweep of the city must eventually come to a halt when it fills in the area south of Willoughby Bay and Ocean View, but it still has space to advance over the county line of Princess Anne.’ …As the automobile began to make its effect felt, the suburbs of the 1920’s extended. Winona came into being and there was a buildup on Cottage Toll and in Gowry Park and Ballentine Place. In the later 1920’s Bellamy began to handle much of the Margaret L. Watts property on Granby Street roughly between Taussig Boulevard and Mason’s Creek. When the vast Minton Talbot property holdings north of the Lafayette River began to be released for construction, Harvey L. Lindsay, Sr., began developing Belvedere in 1938 and later Riverpoint...." |