Electric Avenue

Electric Avenue. “Carline Communities”. People need to get to work. The advent in 1889 of Collis P. Huntington's huge shipyard on the James River in Newport News meant good jobs for many Hamptonians, but transportation was difficult. Lumber, hotel, and seafood entrepreneur James S. Darling had the solution. Along with banker brothers Henry and George Schmelz, Darling organized a street railway or trolley company to fill this need., Darling's trolley tracks were laid through open fields and farms, from present day Victoria Avenue near the present Darling Memorial Stadium directly to 27th Street in Newport News, connecting with existing trolley lines. The first cars traveled the new route on Christmas Eve, 1892. Since rents and sales of houses in booming Newport News were now at premium, people found they could live more cheaply in Hampton and have room for a backyard garden., Eventually a street was built alongside the trolley line appropriately named Electric Avenue. Working-class “carline communities” sprang up along the route. Chief among these was Riverview, centered on Electric and Franklin avenues between Shell Road and Bay Avenue, with its own fire department and elementary school. Another "streetcar suburb" called Little England was developed by the Darlings on the land of the colonial plantation near Hampton, with a mix of Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, and American Foursquare homes along Victoria, Columbia, and Armistead avenues., Darling convinced the city to build Bridge Street and its bridge to link his development to downtown. A second streetcar line was laid along the waterfront next to Chesapeake Avenue, connecting to the company's coal-fired power plant on the south side of Sunset Creek. At one time more than sixty streetcars operated on the lower Peninsula's trolley lines. The trolley "car barn" was sited on Electric Avenue, where later a facility for buses was located., The great storm of 1933 destroyed the trolley tracks along Chesapeake Avenue, and in 1946 street railway service was discontinued on the Peninsula, being replaced with buses. The name Electric Avenue was in 1950 changed to Victoria Boulevard, which became a four-lane divided thoroughfare after the trolley tracks were removed., (captions) , The streetcar line was washed away during the hurricane of1933 - Courtesy of the Hampton History Museum , The trolley "Car Barn" on Electric Avenue. Courtesy of the Library of Congress , Upon J.S. Darling's death in 1900, his widow gave their son Frank land at Cedar Point, at the foot of Bridge Street and adjoining the Little England development, where he built Cedar Hall. The large Queen Anne mansion was constructed by C.T. Holtzclaw and stood until 1975. - Courtesy of the Hampton History Museum