Greenwood Avenue is named after Arthur Greenwood, Minister of Health in Britain’s second Labour Government (1929-1931).

In the 1920s Hull was short of housing stock because of the First World War preventing development and because substandard slum housing needed to be replaced. The Hull Corporation undertook a large-scale house building programme in the 1920s and 30s, the earliest development was the Quadrant estate. The estate was centred on a circular road, named The Quadrant, with streets branching off, consisting of short terraces and semi-detached housing in brick, with short front and longer back gardens.