Philip W. Hiden
Philip Wallace Hiden was a businessman and mayor of Newport News, Virginia.
Hiden, whose earlier ancestors from Watford, England used the spelling Hyden, was born in Orange, Virginia. He married Martha Hiden.
Philip W. 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, Hiden's daughter Woodroof divided one parcel into a residential area. This area was developed came to be known as Hidenwood. It currently borders Christopher Newport University to the west.
His widow, along with the widow of Homer L. Ferguson,, 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 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.
