What is the history of the housing developments surrounding part of Greenfield Lake?
The Lake Village, Lake Forest and Greenfield Terrace developments date from World War II. (Some parts of Greenfield Terrace are even older.) They were, however, intended for civilians — defense workers, mainly at the the N.C. Shipbuilding Co. shipyard, located where the N.C. State Port facility now is. During the Second World War, Wilmington suffered extreme crowding as workers flocked here to wartime jobs and as families followed servicemen to nearby Camp Davis (at present-day Holly Ridge) and Camp Lejeune. From a peacetime population of around 33,000 in early 1941, the city swelled to hold as many as 120,000 people at the war’s height — a total that all of New Hanover County would not exceed again until the mid-1990s. To try to meet the demand for living space, the Wilmington Housing Authority and federal officials embarked on a local building boom. Founded in May 1938, the Wilmington authority was the first municpal public housing agency organized in North Carolina; before the war,
