The monumental Louisa County Courthouse is a symbol of the civic pride that permeated many rural counties across America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. For many such counties, the courthouse was the county’s only significant work of architecture. The porticoed structure was built in 1905 and is the third courthouse associated with the site, replacing a courthouse of 1818. Its architect, D. Wiley Anderson of Richmond, specialized in monumental classical designs, and gave the building prominence through the use of a large octagonal dome. Typical of Anderson’s works, the courthouse has an exaggerated verticality, emphasized by unusually slender Ionic columns. Other buildings in the Louisa County Courthouse complex include the old jail (now a county museum), and the R. Earl Ogg Memorial Building, formerly a bank and now seat of the General District Court.
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