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Elizabeth City during World War II (1.6.7)During the late 1930s, as the United States was beginning to prepare for the possibility of war, the residents of Elizabeth City and Pasquotank County took steps that quickly brought the local economy out of the Depression and resulted in a tremendous influx of residents to the area. On July 25, 1938, the voters of both jurisdictions approved the issuance of bonds for the purchase of land several miles southwest of town for the site of a Coast Guard Air Station; funding was also received from the Works Progress Administration. Upon completion in 1939, the facility became headquarters for marine search and rescue operations along a large section of the North Carolina coast. In 1940 the United States Navy selected a nearby site for a Naval Air Station at which to base airships, more commonly known as blimps. With the erection in less than nine months of two enormous blimp hangars, Elizabeth City also became the base for a fleet of blimps that patrolled the coastal shipping lanes off the Outer Banks which were being threatened by German U-Boats (Pasquotank Year Book 1975, 88, 104). |
The rapid build-up of these two bases before and during World War II brought many servicemen and their families to Elizabeth City. This influx created a severe housing shortage that was met by the construction of numerous modest housing units and the division of older residences into apartments. Among these developments were repetitive one-story dwellings on Tuscarora and Bartlett avenues in the so-called "Cabbage Patch" of the former Fearing farm in the Riverside area. It also brought to the city the largest migration of people from other parts of the country since the arrival of northern businessmen after the Civil War. Foreign nationals from Allied countries added to the sudden diversification of the city's population. These newcomers of different backgrounds brought fresh ideas to the traditions of Elizabeth City and to all of northeastern North Carolina. Many of these newcomers resided in the Enfield Apartments in the 800 and 900 blocks of West Ehringhaus Street. The Enfield Apartments consisted of over ninety cement block buildings--each containing six units--that were hastily erected in the early 1940s as a Federal housing project. The vast majority of these utilitarian buildings were demolished during the 1950s; only fourteen buildings remain today (Miller 1949-1950, 390-393; Sanborn map 1959 appendix; Fearing 1983, 3). | ||
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