In 1943 MacCorkle Avenue was widened to a four lane parkway, largely to provide access to this housing development, built for workers at the Naval Ordnance Plant six miles upstream. Parkway Terrace, completed the year before, was different from its South Charleston contemporaries, Montrose ( KA15) and Rock Lake Village. Built to house blue-collar workers rather than management or office staff, it was laid out on the flat river bottom with a rigid grid plan of six east-west streets and three north-south ones. At the center of the grid, four house sites were left undeveloped to form a small park. In each of the other blocks, twenty-four asbestos-sided, one-story duplexes, twelve facing one street, twelve another, were built. All were identical.
The houses at Parkway Terrace are now sixty years old, but few are now identical. One of the fascinating aspects of the development is the many ways owners have chosen to alter and expand their houses. Practically all remain, as does the park at the center of the complex.