HAMPTON, Va. — Volunteers at Fort Monroe in Hampton are breathing new life into a little piece of local history.
Since 2019, Greg Siegel and others have been renovating an old streetcar that used to run through Peninsula cities like Newport News and Hampton in the early 1900s.
“We had over 40 streetcars that ran 60 miles total out of all the trackage that are have between Hampton and Newport News,” Siegel said.
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During World War 2, old streetcars were melted down for the war effort. The popularity of buses was also growing, and streetcars were being phased out.
So, if they weren't melted down, they were sold for cheap housing. One of those streetcars, dubbed Streetcar 390, was bought for cheap housing by York county resident John Anderson in 1946.
The Anderson Family turned it into a home which they occupied for about 30 years. From there, it was acquired by the Baltimore Streetcar Museum. However, in 2013, the museum offered to give the car to the City of Hampton if the city could promise to renovate it.
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“People lived in the city, and they got around how they got around. They either walked, they took their horse and buggy, or they rode a streetcar. Very few had cars. And what it did was it helped grow the two cities,” Siegel said.
So now, every Saturday morning, volunteers like Siegel get to work on renovating it. Funding for the restoration is secured through donations, then the city of Hampton matches that donation. The renovations have cost about $120,000 so far.
“We’ll probably need to raise about 50 more thousand to finish it off,” Siegel said
When fully renovated, the streetcar will sit outside the Hampton History Museum. But a due date of the completion rests upon how quickly donations come in.
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The project is about 60 percent complete right now. Siegel says volunteers are always welcome, but asks if you do want to get involved, keep coming back, as it is a big project.
“We do a great job of making history disappear, one way or the other, taking down buildings or whatever. And this is a chance at saving a piece of history,” Siegel said.
If you were like to volunteer, you can go to the Facebook page for the project and send them a message. The link to that page can be found here.
