Oceana Neighborhood Historic District in Virginia Beach lies two miles west of the beachfront and about 15 miles east of Norfolk. The community traces back to the 1883 completion of the Norfolk and Virginia Beach Railroad, which ran along the south edge of the emerging neighborhood, then part of Princess Anne County. The company built a depot, initially naming it “Tunis,” after the nearby landholdings of the Norfolk-based Tunis Lumber Company. By 1890, a post office was established at the stop but the name changed in 1891 to “Oceana” after it was determined that another “Tunis” already existed in Rockingham County. Although a few houses were constructed in Oceana in the early 1890s, the overall plan for the neighborhood largely took shape in 1906 when I. E. Youngblood purchased 250 acres and platted the 70-block subdivision known as “Oceana Gardens.” The district represents one of the last intact examples of Princess Anne County’s early-20th-century subdivisions, and still retains one of Virginia Beach’s best collections of residential architecture from the era, arranged within its early town plan with tree-lined streets.
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