downtown Moline, anchored by merchants like the New York Store, Sears & Roebuck, and JC Penney. The economic reliance on the farm implement industry continued as Deere & Company emerged to become the largest agricultural machinery company in the world. Colonel Charles Deere Wiman, the President of Deere & Company, re-affirmed Deere's commitment to the Quad-Cities region by building several new factories in Moline, East Moline, Silvis, and Milan in Illinois and Davenport in Iowa. 1940s–1980s Moline witnessed a continued population increase after World War II with the completion of "Molette", a subdivision of mass-produced starter homes selling for $5,000 each. Molette was the first Moline neighborhood produced on a mass scale and one of the largest single-unit housing projects in the Midwest at the time. Near Molette on 41st Street, the Defense Department funded an $800,000 housing project known as Springbrook Courts, which served as housing for Rock Island Arsenal employees before being converted into a non-military-affiliated public housing project managed by the Moline Housing Authority. It was in this time that one of the major factors shaping the modern layout of Moline first came into play—the rough topography of the inland bluffs. As Moline grew, the traditional rectilinear grid of the downtown area gave way to smaller subdivisions containing cul-de-sacs, curvilinear roadways, and courts. As a comprehensive plan of Moline later stated, "the topography has had a decided influence upon the growth and development of the city . . . the city is literally interlaced with fingers of wooded ravines draining surface water to the north into the Mississippi and to the south into the creeks and drainage ditches tributary to the Rock River. This condition has greatly influenced the building of underground utilities, the location of thoroughfares, the selection of sites for schools and parks, the design and development of residential areas, and the location of business and industrial areas. The customary ‘grid’ type subdivision planning so common to most Midwestern cities is impractical of adaptation when looking at a map of the present city. Some streets . . . have been dedicated but never improved because of the topography and the excessive cost of construction." The layout of the city was significantly improved by the approval of the city's first zoning ordinance and the creation of a Zoning Board in 1929. Moline became the first Illinois city outside the Chicago area to adopt this tool of