North End Historic District

North End is a twenty-two-block residential neighborhood in Newport News, Virginia, lying beside the James River and the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company. It developed between 1900 and 1935 as a compact middle-class and upper middle-class area for skilled laborers, foremen, managers and shipyard executives. The district holds 325 contributing buildings and 126 contributing structures, with only a handful of noncontributing ones. Its housing ranges from modest vernacular frame dwellings to large Queen Anne, Beaux Arts and Colonial Revival houses, along with Bungalows, American Foursquares and Tudor Revival homes. Among the most notable is the 1902 Beaux Arts house at 5600 Huntington Avenue, built for Walter A. Post, the shipyard's first resident president. Wartime growth between 1910 and 1920 produced most of the houses below 58th Street, and annexations in 1920 and 1958 extended the neighborhood northward. Tree-lined streets and well-preserved houses give the area a consistent historic character, which is the basis for its listing.