Yorkship Village

Yorkship Village was a Federally funded World War I planned community of approximately 1000 homes located near New York Shipbuilding of Camden, New Jersey, and intended to provide housing for the shipyard's workers and their families. New York Shipbuilding had more than tripled in size due to war contracts, and the influx of shipyard workers was overwhelming the Camden housing market.

The site chosen was just upstream from the shipyard on the South Branch of Newton Creek. The convert|225|acre|km2|sing=on parcel, then located in Haddon Township, had formerly been the Old Cooper Farmstead. The village was designed by Electus Darwin Litchfield, who was influenced by the "garden city" developments popular in England at the time.

Litchfield envisioned Yorkship Village as "a place of light rooms and clean yards, with adequate playgrounds and amusement fields; a place of beauty and appropriateness and cleanliness so great that a man returning from his daily toil would receive new strength and recreation; a place where the man who could save a fraction of his income would be able to obtain with it, for himself and for his children, a share of play and education, literature and music, and other uplifting things."

Litchfield's plan for Yorkship Village included narrow, winding residential streets (soon to be tree-lined), a central village square, broad green boulevards, and brick duplexes and row homes with both front and back yards. Architecturally, the village is now considered an example of American Federal style. The "village" character would be further emphasized by physical isolation, since it was bordered on three sides by Newton Creek.

Construction began with ground-breaking on May 1, 1918. The United States Housing Corporation bore the estimated $11 million cost of construction, but required the local community to provide utilities, fire hydrants, and fire and police protection. The cost of those services was beyond the means of Haddon Township, which ceded Yorkship Village to the City of Camden on July 8, 1918. It became Camden's 14th Ward. Though Yorkship Village was renamed Fairview in 1922, the original elementary school located near the square is still operating as Yorkship School, and all of the original streets are still named for famous naval vessels.