Established in 1918, Hilton Village was the first public housing project
built in the United States. Spurred on by Newport News Shipbuilding
president Homer Ferguson, it was created to house shipyard workers
during World War I. The village was the city's first planned community
and its first National Register of Historic Places district. Hilton's
distinctive cottage-style architecture, reminiscent of an English
village, is one of the first examples of the New Urbanism and Garden
City movements in America. Along the tree-lined streets are homes and
shops that might have been pulled from a Dickens novel. The vision of
the leaders who crafted Hilton Village--the shipyard's Ferguson, Harvard
University town planner Henry Hubbard, and world-renowned architect
Francis Joannes--remains apparent.