By the time the United States entered the Second World War, the economy had suffered the devastating effects of ten years of depression. When it emerged at the end of the war, it was a victorious, prosperous world leader. America was growing. Like other post-war neighborhoods around the country, Norfolk’s post-war neighborhoods express the values of that time through their form. Speed, progress and production had become synonymous and American builders rapidly developed neighborhoods with the needs of a growing nation in mind. Since automobiles allowed people to live farther apart and still commute to work quickly, house lots grew larger, streets grew wider, and the construction of houses became a streamlined system of mass production.