Navy Park Historic District

The units in Navy Addition still retain their original architectural and planning integrity, and the complex is intact (less 18 units). Navy Addition still retains its significance as one of the first housing units built for World War II in this country; that it was built at the authorization and expense of the U. S. Navy; and that it housed the builders of the U. S. Navy war combatant ships built for World War II. Navy Addition still retains a high degree of historical integrity and is eligible for NRHP under Criteria A and C.

Significance Of Navy Park

Navy Addition has been an Orange landmark since 1941. The addition served as the first housing addition built in Orange to fill a desperate need for rental units immediately prior to the start of World War II, and since that time has served as housing for private citizens.

Orange has been a shipbuilding town since early in its history. Records are scant, but show that as early as 1846, repairing and building of schooners were taking place at Green’s Bluff, which is now known as Orange, Texas. During the Civil War, the Weavers Shipyard (the oldest extant shipyard in Orange) was used by the Confederacy for the building and repairing of boats. During World War I, besides repair work, the shipyard built three 700 ton steamships and a four-masted schooner (The Elmer Roberts). What is now known as the Livingston Shipyard, was started in 1918 and built barges and tugboats. In 1937, it started making ships of steel. The shipyard now known as Consolidated, also started in 1918, and in World War I, made two 3,500-ton steamships, the Arenas and the Gonzales.

In 1940, Orange was primarily a small farmer/timber town with approximately 7,500 people. It is through the shrewd political manipulations of Martin Dies, Orange’s representative in the U. S. House of Representatives, and John Nance Garner, Vice President of the U. S., that Orange was considered for a federal contract to construct ships.

In 1940, Livingston Shipbuilding Company and Consolidate Steel Corporation Ship Building Division, both occupied the same peninsula in the southeastern part of Orange, on the Sabine River. When contracts were first awarded them by the U. S. Navy in 1940 and 1941, Livingston’s was functioning as a tug and barge yard, with necessary equipment. Consolidated had merely a small steel fabricating plant and sixty-five acres of low-lying land that had to be raised three to four feet. It was on these sixty-five that the shipyard was built. Weavers Shipyard was further southeast, down the Sabine River, next to the Lutcher and Moore Lumber Company.

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