National Register of Historic Places
Norwayne Historic District
Westland, Wayne County, Michigan
The record
- Listed
- July 9, 2013
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- Generally bounded by Palmer, Wildwood, Glenwood & Merriman Rds., Wayne County Lower Rouge Pkwy., Westland
- County
- Wayne
- State
- Michigan
- Contributing resources
- 1061 buildings, 4 sites
- Coordinates
- 42.29434, -83.36374
- Reference number
- 13000479
Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.
The outline is the area recorded for this listing in National Park Service map data, drawn approximately.
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
The Norwayne Historic District is a residential district in Westland, Wayne County, bounded by Palmer, Wildwood, Glenwood and Merriman Roads and the Lower Rouge Parkway. It was built in 1941 and 1942 as federal war-worker housing under the Lanham Act, with homes in the Worker Bungalow and Moderne styles designed by the firm of Lyndon and Smith.
Why it's listed
It was listed in the National Register in 2013 under criterion A, with state-level significance in community planning and development and industry. Its significance runs from 1942 to 1948, reflecting the construction of Norwayne under the Lanham Act in 1942 and the community's reaching 95 percent occupancy in 1945.
Physical character
The houses are small gable-front frame dwellings, some built as duplexes or quad rowhouses, with wood clapboard walls on concrete foundations, double-hung windows, hollow-core steel doors and vinyl-clad aluminum screen doors. In the 1990s, vinyl siding was applied over the original clapboard and flat roofs were changed to gabled ones; streets were paved in the 1950s and sidewalks added in 1973.
Historical context
Norwayne was built as housing for federal war workers, associated with the nearby Willow Run Bomber Plant, which employed a peak of 42,331 workers in 1943, and the Bendix Aviation Corporation. Nankin Township was incorporated as the City of Westland in 1966, with Thomas Brown serving as its first mayor until 1969, and individual owners began buying Norwayne's homes in 1953.