Navy Housing

Bonnie Schmidt shared a photo from 1972. “This is one of my favorite pictures of JoAnne and me when we lived in Long Beach navy housing.”

Her memory is faint. She recalls ” We lived on Grove street near Signal Hill. There was a golf range not far from us. When the weather was dry and windy, our apartment would be covered in sand from the range…lol! I believe the nearest big street was Bellflower Blvd. “

Long Beach’s Naval Shipyard presence spanned 1938 to September 30, 1997. I won’t address this right now, as the subject is too broad.

Here’s a photo of some Navy housing at Santa Fe Ave & West Hill Street in Long Beach. It’s not the same location, but one might imagine that there were several places where the Navy was housed in Long Beach.

Here is the description from the website:
“Photograph of an aerial view of a United States Navy housing area in Long Beach, 1940-1950. The houses are laid out in a large rectangular area at center. All of the homes are small, two bedroom structures. A paved road encircles the development, and two roads intersect in the middle. The houses are arranged in an orderly fashion, with most lined up parallel to the streets. The land around the housing development is filled with trees and bushes. Picture file card reads: “U.S. Navy housing. 400 Units, 2 bedroom size on a 40 acre site at Long Beach, Calif. Completed in 85 working days at a cost of $1,300,000. Duplex houses were of stranded steel frame construction, concrete floors, stucco exterior, topped by a colorful fire-proof composition shingle roofing. Circa 1940’s. From: McNeil Construction Company History Album”.

The photo is public domain and was digitally produced by the University of Southern California Library from the California Historical Society Collection at the University of Southern California. You can find it here.

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