Wythe (Hampton, Virginia)


Wythe is a neighborhood in Hampton, Virginia, along the water's edge of Hampton Roads, at the end of Virginia's Lower Peninsula. It is named after one of the signers of the United States Declaration of Independence, George Wythe. The oldest historic portion of the Wythe neighborhood became known as Olde Wythe.
When it was developed in the first half of the 20th century, Wythe was part of rural Elizabeth City County, one of the first eight Colonial Virginia counties, Its seat was Hampton. Settled in 1610, Hampton is the oldest continuously inhabited English-speaking city in the United States. In 1952, Wythe, and the rest of Elizabeth City County merged with Hampton.

Wythe District

The name "Wythe" was first applied to a portion of the county after the Civil War, when new district lines were drawn dividing the country into three districts, Wythe, Chesapeake, and Southfield. The Wythe District was the Western portion of the county and included George Wythe's birthplace, Chesterville, on the Northwest Branch of Back River. By 1900, these were reduced to two, Wythe and Chesapeake with all of the county west of King Street outside the town of Hampton in the Wythe district.

Wythe Neighborhood

In the first half of the twentieth-century "Wythe" came to refer to only a portion of the Wythe district. Because of its proximity to Newport News, the current Wythe neighborhood gradually became the most populated portion of Wythe district. The George Wythe Elementary School opened here at the corner of Clairmont Ave. and Kecoughtan Road in 1909. In the 1930s the Wythe Shopping Center and Wythe Place and Wythe Crescent subdivisions were developed about a half mile toward Hampton on Kecoughtan Road. It was in this period that Wythe came to refer specifically to the neighborhood along Kecoughtan Road east of the town of Kecoughtan and stretching westward toward LaSalle Avenue and Church Creek.
The Civil War Battle of the Ironclads happened right off Wythe's shores. Newport News railroads and shipyard and Hampton Seafood industries and military installations fueled growth in the Lower Peninsula from 1880 through World War II. Residential development began in Wythe in the 20th century with the streetcar and continued through the social and business heyday of the 1950s. Today it is a neighborhood of charming architecture, lovely waterside views, and a promising future as new generations take up the challenge of preserving a rich heritage.
In 1993 the section of Wythe between Kecoughtan Rd. and Chesapeake Ave. created a private neighborhood association that split Wythe in two sections. Wythe and Olde Wythe. The Olde Wythe Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.