The Port Norfolk Historic District was built on a 175-acre parcel in the Downtown area of the City. The land was originally part of Colonel Crawford’s landholdings and was donated by him to serve as the glebe (in British, a piece of land belonging to a church) for Portsmouth Parish and Trinity Church. After 1815, the former glebe parcel passed out of church ownership and was operated as a successful private farm through most the nineteenth century. In 1890 the land was purchased by the Norfolk Land Company. This former farmland was platted into thirty city blocks and advertised as “healthful and attractive” housing for railroad and shipping facility workers. The name Port Norfolk is derived from the combination of the words Portsmouth and Norfolk. Between 1890 and 1920 approximately 740 houses were built in Port Norfolk. This relatively fast-paced development resulted in a cohesive collection of middle-class housing from the turn-of-the-century period. The majority of residences date to between 1890 and 1910 and are compatible in design, scale, and materials. These houses in the Queen Anne, American Foursquare, Colonial Revival and Bungalow styles were the typical middle-class residential housing of the period. Higher-style Queen Anne dwellings are found along Bayview Boulevard overlooking the Elizabeth River.
