05/11/2026
📜 Heritage Moment 📜
Have you seen the fence going up around Norton Court? 👀
Today, we officially broke ground on the new Norton Court development🥳👷🚧and in the spirit of honoring the past while building for the future, this quarter’s Heritage Moment takes a look back at the history behind the Norton Court name and neighborhood.
Heritage Moments are part of our ongoing effort to share the stories, places, and people that helped shape Fort Benning and the communities generations of military families have called home.
To help bring these stories to life, we’ve once again partnered with local historian and author Bridgett Sharp Siter, writer of Fort Benning Stories, Lies, and Legends . Below is her fascinating look at the history of Norton Court.
“In March of 1950, NCOs began moving into 80 two-story, three-bedroom apartments in the new $900,000 Norton Court housing community on Main Post near the student training area. Quarters would be allotted by date of rank, and applications were being accepted at the billeting office.
The houses, built by the Williams Construction Company of Columbus, featured stucco exteriors and oak floors. The total cost of the project was $900,000, putting the price-per-apartment at only $11,250.
Eighty additional brick apartments were build later and absorbed into the Norton neighborhood.
The name Norton Court was not new. Dating back to the earliest days of the post, Norton Court was a noted training area, part of the student training regiment, and here students trained in gr***de throwing, bayonet warfare, marksmanship, trench clearing—combat techniques specific to World War I—and later, hand-to-hand combat training. The name Norton Court was used interchangeably with the colloquial “Bayonet Court.” The original Norton Court training complex extended from where Norton Court is today to Puckett Parkway to the south.
Norton Court is named in honor of Capt. John Henry “Jack” Norton, of the 47th Infantry Regiment, who was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for the acts of extraordinary heroism on July 30, 1918, in Sergy, France. He died shortly thereafter.”
