Construction of this Masonic temple, St. Alban’s Hall, began two years after central Richmond burned at the end of the Civil War. Its completion marked part of the city’s return to normal life. A prototype for later Masonic buildings in Richmond, the hall contained shops and a concert hall as well as Masonic meeting rooms. The commodious facility quickly became a center of postwar Richmond’s social and political life. Long abandoned by the Masons, the building was sympathetically renovated for commercial use in 1982. Its tall ceilings give the building an exaggerated verticality. Its stuccoed walls, pedimented windows, and rusticated corners show the influence of the Renaissance Revival or Tuscan Palazzo mode, a style popular in the North in the 1860s but rarely found in the war-ravaged South. St. Alban’s Hall contributes to the Fifth and Main Downtown Historic District.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia