Philip W. Hiden

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Philip Wallace Hiden (April 5, 1872 – October 25, 1936) was a businessman and mayor of Newport News, Virginia.

Hiden, whose earlier ancestors from Watford, England used the spelling Hyden,^[1] was born in Orange, Virginia. He married^[when?] Martha Woodroof (1883–1959), daughter of Jesse Alphonso Woodroof and Susan (Graves) Woodroof. She was, in her own right, a researcher, genealogist, and historian who established the city library system's Virginia collection.^[2] The couple had three children children.

Philip Hiden owned the Hiden Storage and Forwarding Company and was a local land baron, owning most of the land in and around Nutmeg Quarter in Warwick County, Virginia.

He served as the mayor of the independent city of Newport News from 1920 to 1924. He was the first mayor to serve under a new City Council-City Manager form of government, as opposed to being directly elected.

Hiden was also an organizer and director of the James River Bridge Corporation, a privately owned company which funded and built the new James River Bridge and two other toll bridges along U.S. Route 17 between Newport News and Portsmouth which opened in 1928.

In combination with the separately owned Norfolk and Portsmouth Bridge, later renamed the Jordan Bridge for founding South Norfolk businessman Carl Jordan, they formed a land and bridge route for automobiles as an alternative to several ferry systems.

About 15 years after his death, one of Hiden's daughters, divided one 200-acre (0.81 km²) parcel into a residential area. This area was developed came to be known as Hidenwood.^[3] It currently borders Christopher Newport University to the west.

His widow, along with the widow of Homer L. Ferguson (who had been a President of Newport News Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company and is credited with imitating development of Hilton Village), were the guests of honor as they cut a symbolic ribbon at the ceremony that marked the consolidation of the cities of Newport News and Warwick (the latter formerly Warwick County from 1634 to 1952) on July 1, 1958.

The newly created much larger city assumed the better-known name of Newport News, and, in the early 21st century, is one of the major cities of Hampton Roads which are linked by the Hampton Roads Beltway encircling the harbor.

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