Occupying the lower part of the central business district and the High Street and Grove Avenue residential areas in the city of Petersburg, the large Petersburg Old Town Historic District incorporates approximately 250 buildings on 190 acres. One of Virginia’s oldest cities, Petersburg began as a fur trading post in the mid-17th century. The district possesses a diversity of residential, commercial, and industrial architecture, mostly of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Of special interest is the stylistically varied progression of 18th- and 19th-century houses lining High Street. A group of early workers’ cottages is clustered in the southwest portion of the area. Railroad buildings, factories, tobacco warehouses, an ironworks, and a variety of mercantile buildings are in the low areas near the Appomattox River. Although it has suffered fires, Civil War bombardment, commercial redevelopment, and a devastating tornado, the Petersburg Old Town Historic District preserves one of Virginia’s richest assemblages of historic buildings.  Six properties within the district were individually listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register and National Register prior to the historic district’s listing in 1980: the National Historic Landmark Exchange Building; and the Appomattox Iron Works, City Market, Farmer’s Bank, Nathaniel Friend House and the McIlwaine House.

The Petersburg Old Town Historic District boundary was increased in 2008. The expansion was contained in the city’s oldest area and enlarges the district to include four former manufacturing buildings built between 1897 and 1930. Located at the southeast corner of the district, the buildings are typical in style and detailing of commercial and industrial buildings constructed in Petersburg during the time period. Formerly housing a candy factory, peanut factory, auto repair shop, and apartments, the four buildings illustrate the industrial evolution of Petersburg during the early 20th century.
[VLR Listed: 6/19/2008; NRHP Listed: 9/12/2008]

In 2012, the Petersburg Old Town Historic District boundary was extended east to Interstate 95 between the Norfolk & Western Railroad line and East Bank Street. The majority of the buildings in the expansion area largely consist of warehouse and light industrial forms. Until the early 20th century the expansion area was occupied by a combination of working class residential units and food storage warehouses. The houses are no longer extant, but the warehouses at 409 Fifth Street and 427 Bollingbrook Street remain from this period, as does the brick foundation of a former peanut warehouse which is integrated into the cinderblock warehouse at 317 East Bank Street. The remaining buildings in the expansion area fall into two main types: mid-20th-century warehouses and small light industrial/commercial buildings. The exception is a ca. 1925 former service station on the corner of Henry Street and Third Street.
[VLR Listed: 9/20/2012; NRHP Listed: 12/28/2012]

Additional documentation was approved by the National Register of Historic Places in 2025 that updated the original district’s inventory of contributing and noncontributing resources and to expand upon the original 1979 nomination’s discussion of the Petersburg Old Town Historic District’s local significance in the areas of Community Planning & Development and Commerce. With this additional documentation, the period of significance was extended to end in 1973 when Old Town became the City of Petersburg’s first locally designated historic district and subject to historic overlay zoning and design review by the local architectural review board. The nominated boundary of the district was not changed with the 2024 update.
[NRHP Approved: 1/3/2025]