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Elizabeth City After World War II (1.7)Elizabeth City, like the rest of North Carolina, has undergone tremendous change during the second half of the twentieth century. In no area has this change been greater or more significant than in the area of transportation. With improved highways reaching throughout the Albemarle area and the proliferation of the private automobile, the region was no longer dependent on the canal, marine, and railroad transportation systems that had formed the basis for Elizabeth City's growth and prosperity for over 150 years. The once bustling shipyards and river front of the city were quieted by a rapidly diminishing level of activity. Likewise, the twentieth century dependence on the railroad for the movement of goods was replaced by expanding fleets of trucks and vans (Butchko 1989, 206). Correspondingly, the river front declined as a center of industrial activity and was replaced by industrial sectors along Hughes and Halstead boulevards. Following national trends made possible by the increased personal mobility afforded by the automobile, much of the commercial activity moved to outlying strip zones and shopping centers. Casualties of commercial strip zones included more than a dozen important residences--some dating from the 1830s--along Rum Quarter Road, later known as Lawrence Street and now named Ehringhaus Street. The construction in 1967 of Southgate Mall, the first enclosed mall in the Albemarle region, made a permanent change in the shopping habits of residents in five regional counties. The old commercial center downtown began to rely increasingly on its role as a governmental, professional, and financial center. As retail businesses left or closed, some buildings stood vacant and eventually deteriorated. As the vacant buildings along Water Street were demolished, however, the city rediscovered its beautiful waterfront. With development of this area as open space, boat slips and access ramps were constructed, attracting private pleasure boating activity (Butchko 1989, 206). By the 1950s, much of the area's prime forest land had been cut and the city's numerous but aging saw and lumber mills were forced from a market in which they had once been so powerful. The mills were replaced by a greater variety of industrial concerns and an expansion of the service sector. Increasingly, however, some local residents began to look to the Virginia cities of Norfolk, Portsmouth, Virginia Beach, and Chesapeake for employment. This trend began during the wartime years when acute labor shortages at the Virginia shipyards and military industries meant jobs for hundreds of workers from a city and county still recovering from the Great Depression: hundreds more left from adjoining North Carolina counties for employment in Virginia. After the war, the continued military and industrial expansion in neighboring Virginia provided stable and well-paying employment for workers from throughout northeastern North Carolina (Butchko 1989, 206). |
Educational opportunities and facilities expanded greatly during the second half of the twentieth century. Roanoke Bible College was organized in 1948 to train ministers in the Church of Christ and Christian Church denominations in North Carolina and Virginia. The school purchased and remodeled several old houses along North Poindexter Street and in the early 1970s bought the former railroad property along the river. In 1960 the College of the Albemarle was chartered to offer college and vocational courses to students in a multi-county area. The school first occupied the vacant Elizabeth City Hospital, later known as Albemarle Hospital, on Carolina Avenue, and in 1973 it moved to a modern campus north of the city. The public schools were integrated in 1964-1965, and with county-wide consolidation in the late 1960s, a large high school for the city and county was built west of the city limits; the white high school then became the junior high while the black high school (demolished 1988) became an elementary school. Also during this period, Elizabeth City State Teachers College became the region's major university, being admitted into the University of North Carolina System in 1963 as Elizabeth City State College. Another name change in 1969 to Elizabeth City State University reflected its increased role in regional education (Butchko 1989, 206). Throughout this period neighborhood development continued. Much of this construction during the 1940s took place in subdivisions platted during the early twentieth century, such as the Cabbage Patch in the Riverside neighborhood. Later subdivisions included Edgewood in 1952, which developed the Brothers farm southeast of the city (Butchko 1989, 241). During the 1960s and 1970s, an urban renewal project removed dozens of deteriorated dwellings along East Walnut, East Juniper, and Harney streets. These houses were replaced with standardized brick or frame one-story attached units. Continued residential expansion during the 1970s and 1980s included not only subdivisions north and south of the city, but also large apartment complexes (Butchko 1989, 206). | ||
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