King and Queen Streets

King and Queen Streets. The "Cross-Streets". , A "sleepy village" before the Civil War and a charred ruin after it was set afire, Hampton slowly recovered. Thanks to oysters, crabs, hotels, saloons, and the military, prosperity began to appear at these cross-streets again.

By the mid-1890s, horse-drawn buggies and wagons shared dusty, unpaved streets with trolleys that ran throughout Hampton, connecting Queen Street to Newport News in one direction and to Old Point Comfort and Buckroe in the other.

At the dawn of the new century, banks were established on three of these corners, a sign of economic progress. In 1917, in an upstairs office of one of the bank buildings, the headquarters for Langley Field and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics was opened. Public works, roads, bridges, and trolley construction, would reverberate around Hampton for years to come.

Steamboats called daily at the wharf at the south end of King Street. Automobiles jostled with patrons of numerous grocery stores, millineries, drug stores, and tonsorial parlors, where, in at least one location, you could get a shave in the front room or shoot pool in the back. Movie theaters sprang up: the Langley and the Basie on Queen St. and the Rex on King st., not far from the crossing.

Several banks closed or consolidated during the Depression. One of them, on the northwest corner, gave way to Woodward's Drug Store, which became a place of fond memories for a generation of Hamptonians. They could buy a grilled cheese sandwich and a soft drink for 10 cents or drop by for a cherry ice cream soda after church. The corner of King and Queen, "the cross-streets," has been the cultural and commercial hub of Hampton for three centuries.