Walking Tours of Downtown Charlottesville

Read about the beginnings of Albemarle County at the bottom of this page. The map below displays the layout of the city and identifies some of the buildings visited on a walking tour. By clicking on a name, you can see a picture and read some details about one of the buildings.

The first inhabitants of what became Albemarle County were native Americans known as Monacans, a tribe linguistically related to the Sioux. These people lived along rivers and streams, and hunted, gathered, and planted their food. One of their major towns, called Monasukapanough, was located on the Rivanna River near today's Route 29. These native Americans left the area in the late 1600s and migrated southwest into North Carolina. As a result, they never came into direct contact with Albemarle's early European settlers.

Formed from Goochland County in 1744, Albemarle County was named after William Anne Keppel, Earl of Albemarle, and the county seat was located in Scottsville on the James River. In 1761 the size of the county was reduced, and on December 23, 1762, an act was passed by the General Assembly establishing a new, more centrally located county seat. The site chosen for the new town was on the Three Notch'd Road, the main route between the Shenandoah Valley and Richmond. This new town was named Charlottesville for Queen Charlotte Sophia of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the young bride of King George III of England.

Early Charlottesville consisted of 50 acres, bounded by Jefferson Street on the north and South Street on the south. The public square, containing a wooden courthouse and jail, lay on the northeast corner just outside the designated are of the town. The surrounding county land was subdivided into lots and gradually sold.

As the eighteenth century turned into the nineteenth century, Charlottesville began to emerge as a popular business and social community. The courthouse, one tavern, and dozen dwellings of 1797 had become a bustling small town boasting tailors, milliners, a jeweler, a cabinetmaker, a gunsmith, a carriage shop, and a printer. In 1828, Court Square was the hub of town life; by then it had acquired a library, post office, liquor store, auction rooms, dry goods stores, offices, and residences.

The buildings around Court Square were the most prestigious and important in the town. This remained so until the commercial district began to shift to Main Street around 1840, and legal professionals began to dominate the Court Square area. Structures in Charlottesville were made of both timber and bricks. Bricks were readily made from the excellent local clay soil, and preferred by Thomas Jefferson and others over less durable wooden structures.

During the Civil War, Charlottesville was removed from any major action, although many local sons volunteered to fight for the Confederacy. The community's main contribution was as a hospital center for wounded soldiers. The Confederate Hospital, known as the Charlottesville General Hospital, cared for about 22,000 soldiers throughout the war. Buildings used by the hospital included the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, the Town Hall, the Courthouse, and the Delevan Hotel on West Main Street.

After the war ended Charlottesville was left to pick up the pieces of a devastated economic and social system. This period of conservative optimism is reflected in the architecture of buildings downtown. Many of these buildings are brick with basic Georgian forms, embellished with eclectic Victorian, Gothic, and Italianate details. In 1888, Charlottesville was incorporated as a city, becoming a separate governmental entity from Albemarle County, with its own court system and taxation. The city continued to grow and prosper.

Today the Court Square and historic downtown area is still the center of many legal and mercantile services. Many older buildings have been renovated and now house legal and medical offices. In 1976 the Main Street business district underwent a major facelift, with the completion of the first five blocks of a pedestrian mall designed by Lawrence Halprin and Associates. The mall was extended in 1980 and again in 1985 with the opening of a new conference hotel at the western terminus. In 1995, an amphitheater was created at the eastern end, where the community now enjoys a variety of concerts and special events.