Virginia Military Institute Historic District

The Virginia Military Institute Historic District is a 12-acre (4.9 ha) National Historic Landmark District encompassing the historic central core of the Virginia Military Institute campus in Lexington, Virginia. Developed beginning in 1839, the school grew into the premiere military academy in the Southern United States, providing trained military leaders to many of the nation's wars. The district includes the Barracks, which was separately declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The historic district was designated in 1974.[2][3]

Virginia Military Institute Historic District
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark District
View of parade ground, Barracks, and adjacent buildings
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Location	VMI campus, Lexington, Virginia
Coordinates	37°47′25″N 79°26′09″W
Area	12 acres (4.9 ha)
Built	1818 (1818)
Architect	A.J. Davis; Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue
Architectural style	Classical Revival, Gothic Revival
NRHP reference No.	74002219
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	May 30, 1974[1]
Designated NHLD	May 30, 1974[2]

Description and history

The historic district includes the VMI campus's central parade ground, a roughly oval greensward that is ringed by campus roads with buildings on the other side. It includes all of those buildings, as well as those lining an eastward-extending tongue on Letcher Avenue, Burma Road, and Stono Lane. The dominant feature of the campus is the Barracks, a sprawling Gothic building with fortress-like crenellations. Its oldest surviving portion dates to 1848, and was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis; it is the only structure to survive Union attacks during the American Civil War, and was a major influence in the design of later buildings.[3]

Buildings that were influenced by Davis's work include the main Commandant's Quarters, built in 1862, and the Pendleton-Coles House, also Gothic in character but in the Carpenter Gothic style. Later architectural styles on the campus include neocolonial faculty residence buildings on the west side of the parade ground. Near its eastern end, the district includes Stono, the 1818 house of John Jordan, the lead builder of the VMI campus and Centre Hall on the adjacent Washington and Lee University campus.[3]

See also

• List of National Historic Landmarks in Virginia
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Lexington, Virginia

References

1. "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places. National Park Service. January 23, 2007.
2. "Virginia Military Institute Historic District". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. Retrieved 2008-04-10.
3. Benjamin Levy (January 14, 1974). "National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Virginia Military Institute" (pdf). National Park Service. Cite journal requires |journal= (help) and Accompanying 15 photos, exteriors and interiors, from 1972, 1973, and undated (32 KB)