Welcome To Norfolk SAFeDATA

The following years would bring new milestones to the city including the first car of bituminous coal arriving from the Pocahontas fields over the Norfolk & Western Railway in 1883. Tracks were extending to the coal piers at Lambert`s Point generating one of the largest coal transshipment ports in the world. In 1894, classes began in the city`s first public high school. The electric street railway was introduced to Norfolk and would link Norfolk with its neighboring communities (present day neighborhoods), and the neighboring City of Portsmouth.

1907 brought both the Virginian Railway and the Jamestown Exposition to Sewell`s Point. The large Naval Review at the Exposition demonstrated the peninsula`s favorable location, laying the groundwork for the world`s largest naval base. Commemorating the 300th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the exposition brought many prominent people including President Theodore Roosevelt, congressmen, senators, and diplomats from 21 countries. The area where the exposition took would become Naval Air Station Hampton Roads, later Naval Station Norfolk, ten years later in 1917, during the height of World War I.

In 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case determined that racial segregation in public schools (and public accommodations) was unconstitutional. However, Virginia, under the leadership of U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd and the Byrd Organization, pursued a policy to avoid desegregation which came to be called Massive Resistance. Among the actions were new state laws which prohibited state funding for integrated public schools, even as some school districts began to contemplate them. This set the stage for a conflict, but it was a few years after Brown before the policy was tested.

Norfolk`s private schools had been integrated four years before as they chose to voluntarily comply with the Brown decision. However, a number of public school divisions (school districts) around the state had been reluctant to do so for fear of losing state funds. In 1958, Federal District Courts in Virginia ordered schools in Arlington County, Charlottesville, Norfolk, and Warren County, to desegregate. In the fall of 1958, a handful of public schools in three of these widespread areas opened for the first time on a racially integrated basis. In response, Virginia Governor J. Lindsay Almond Jr. ordered the schools to be closed, which included six of the Norfolk Public Schools.

Norfolk`s efforts to revitalize its downtown have attracted acclaim in economic development and citified planning circles throughout the country. Publications such as the US Planning Association`s monthly Planning Magazine, have hailed the tremendous rebound in the downtown residential populus, and Money Magazine proclaimed Norfolk as the number one city in which to live in the South in 1999. The rising fortunes of the downtown area have helped enlarge the city`s coffers which has in turn been able to direct its attention to revitalizing other neighborhoods of the city. Located just Nwest of downtown, the Ghent district of Norfolk is one of the Hampton Roads region`s premier citified residential communities.

When Norfolk was first settled, homes were made of wood and frame construct iron, similar to most medieval English style homes. These homes had wide chimneys and thatch roofs. After the town was first laid out in 1682, Georgian architecture began to emerge as it gained popularity in The South, as it had a more aristocratic feel and was built of brick laid and Flemish bond. This style would evolve to include projecting center pavilions, Palladian windows, balustraded roof decks, and two-story porticoes. By 1740, homes, warehouses, stores, workstores, and taverns began to dot Norfolk`s streets.