Waynesboro Downtown Historic District

Waynesboro's downtown owes its physical existence to a subdivision of the lands of Samuel Estill and James Flack completed in 1798. According to historian George R. Hawke, the nucleus of a community already existed in the vicinity of the downtown consisting of a mill, an inn, one or two churches, and presumably several dwellings. Samuel Estill acquired the town site through purchase from his mother-in-law, innkeeper Mary Teas, in 1790, and when he sold the site to James Flack in April 1798 streets and alleys had already been laid off and trustees designated. Over the summer Flack had lots laid out within the framework of the town plat and a lot sale was held on October 16-17, 1798, at which thirty-three of the original eighty-three lots were sold. In September 1800 Flack and others petitioned the

The pre-existing inn of Mary Teas presumably ranked among the town's first commercial enterprises. A French officer, the Marquis de Chastellux, visited the inn in 1782 and declared it "one of the worst in all America." From this inauspicious beginning Waynesboro's commercial distnct began to take shape in the early nineteenth century. An account of the town as it was in the 1810s lists a saddlemaker, a shoemaker, two tailors, the general store of W. B. Coalter (where the vicinity's first iron plow mouldboards were sold), and the inn of Major Thomas Wilson. An 1846 sale advertisement noted that Wilson's “Waynesborough Tavern" comprised a frame hostelry with outbuildings, an adjoining blacksmith shop, and a noncontiguous brick stable. One early merchant was Daniel Fishburne, who moved to town about 1819 to operate a branch of a Staunton store. Fishburne later went into business for himself, and a nineteenth-century account describes his business as “being that usual in those days in country stores where everything was kept and sold: silks, satins, broadcloths, cassimere, medicines, drugs, groceries, iron, grain, etc." But not liquor--Fishburne was a "strictly temperate man.” Waynesboro's economic life was bolstered by the town's location on an important regional route linking Piedmont Virginia with the Shenandoah Valley through Rockfish Gap. Nevertheless, population growth was slow during the antebellum period, the number of inhabitants increasing from 250 in 1810 to only 457 by 1860.2

Architecturally, Waynesboro's antebellum downtown possessed a remarkable degree of visual uniformity. Buildings were domestic in scale and form--even though they housed a variety of functions. They were generally two stories in height and constructed of brick, and the ridge lines of their gable roofs aligned parallel to the street. The placement of buildings contributed to the creation of a regular street frontage. Buildings usually abutted at their gable ends, and they were erected at a common setback from Main Street so that together they created a relatively unbroken building wall that continued on each side of the street for several blocks and that neatly defined the linear void of the street.

3 Historic photographs and maps illustrate the antebellum regularity of the downtown, which persisted into the late nineteenth century. See the Hotchkiss map of 1884 and Bowman, Waynesboro Days of Yore vol. 1, 117, 151 and 169.

Waynesboro was not unique in these regards. Other western Virginia towns of the antebellum era possessed a similar architectural cohesiveness as a result of cultural preferences, economics, fire prevention measures, and local building ordinances (generally in the form of deed covenants). The downtown appears to have achieved its antebellum character relatively quickly. The first generation of buildings was likely of wooden construction, chiefly log, but within ten years of the town's establishment one brick dwelling had been built--the circa 1806 Casper Coiner House, which survives--and by the 1830s most of the buildings erected near the principal intersection at Main and Wayne were of substantial brick construction. Antebellum brick buildings that stand today include the former Bruce Hotel at 405 W. Main and the Long House at 533 W. Main.

One of the best preserved is the Casper Coiner House at 330 W. Main, a small two-story brick building with a stone foundation and a delicately ornamented cornice with miniature modillions, Wall-of-Troy frets, and punch-and-dentil work. As originally constructed the house had a hall-parlor plan with a center entry, but several decades later the entry was shifted to the left-hand side and the intenor converted to a side-passage plan.*

In 1854 passenger rail service on the Virginia Central Railroad commenced between Richmond and Staunton via Waynesboro, and in 1858 with the completion of the Crozet Tunnel freight traffic was accommodated. A depot was erected just north of the district on First Street. Dunng the Civil War the iron truss bridge that carried the Virginia Central over the South River at Waynesboro was the target of a Federal raid in September 1864, and the community was directly affected by the fighting again during the Battle of Waynesboro on March 2, 1865, the last battle to be fought in the Shenandoah Valley. Prosperity returned after the war but Waynesboro grew slowly. The 1880 population of 484 was only slightly larger than the population in 1860. The 1884 Jedediah Hotchkiss map shows most development still confined to Main Street, although streets had been laid out beyond the onginal town boundaries. One important development of the post-bellum period was greater participation of the African American population in the economic life of the community. In 1884 a black man operated the Jefferson House hotel near the northeastern tip of the district, however most African Amenican settlement and commercial development occurred to the north of the railroad (then operated by the C&O) on Port Republic Road.>

Even as Jedediah Hotchkiss portrayed a small town that differed little from its antebellum character, important changes were underway. In 1881 the Shenandoah Valley Railroad completed its line to Waynesboro and linked the town to the vast markets of the Northeast and to Roanoke and the coal fields of Southwest Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley line--soon to be absorbed into the Norfolk & Western system--actually passed east of town on the other side of the South River; nevertheless its importance and its proximity stimulated the local economy and set the stage for Waynesboro's real estate boom of the circa 1890 period. In 1888 local promoters formed the West Waynesboro Land Company with the objective of developing a large acreage to the west of town. The "Double W" concern was followed by The Waynesboro Company, chartered in December 1889, and together the two land companies gave birth to the large residential area now known as the Tree Streets neighborhood. Waynesboro's population rose to 646 individuals in 1890, and according to at least one boosterish source of the period the population reached 2,500 in May 1891. While these events were unfolding in Waynesboro, equally dramatic initial development occurred across the river in the optimistic metropolis of Basic City.‘

The breadth of change in the circa 1890 period is illustrated by the "Perspective Map of the City of Waynesboro, Va.," published in 1891. Large industrial plants sprawl along both sides of the South River in the view, each belching plumes of progressive smoke. Gracious Victorian homes dot the Tree Streets area to the south of the downtown, and a new commercial area fronts onto the C&O depot square just to the north. Main Street retained its domestic character in the view, but not for long. Soon large brick business blocks rose among the street's antebellum houses. The 1892 Fishburne Drug Store, which formerly stood on the northwest corner of Main and Wayne, typified the new breed of commercial building: two stories in height with an ornate brick parapet concealing a back-sloping shed roof, side patapets studded with stove flues for upstairs offices, and a cast-iron storefront with a recessed entry, Queen Anne transoms, and an awning supported on slender metal poles. Construction presumably slowed during the brief depression that followed the financial panic of 1893, but the town’s industrial base survived and prosperity continued into the twentieth century.’

The importance of banking during the period found expression in sumptuously appointed bank buildings. The First National Bank operated out of a corner of an antebellum house on the southeast

corner of Main and Wayne during the 1890s, but in 1908-09 the bank raised a Classical Revival stone-columned edifice at the same location (420 W. Main/100 S. Wayne). Across the corner the Waynesboro National Bank erected a similarly grand colonnaded building next to the Fishburne Drug Store about 1911. (The First National Bank survives as the Waynesboro Heritage Foundation Museum, the Waynesboro National Bank was torn down in 1979.) The modest taverns of the antebellum period were soon joined by larger hotels such as the 1906 Neese Hotel, which stood on the 500 block of Main Street until its demolition in 1981. Movie theaters made their debut in the 1920s, beginning with the 1922 Star Theatre in the converted Presbyterian Church at 544 W. Main, the 1926 Wayne Theatre at 521 W. Main, and the 1929 Cavalier Theatre, which formerly stood at 307 W. Main. The 100 block of N. Wayne--the quickest route to the C&O depot from Main Street--also witnessed considerable construction during the period. A fire devastated half of the block on December 21, 1924, but merchants quickly rebuilt at the same location.®

Waynesboro participated in the nationwide building boom of the 1920s, as the account above indicates, and construction remained strong through 1929. On January 2, 1930 a News-Wingntan headline proclaimed "City Enjoys Greatest Building Year" with over $600,000 spent on construction, $176,000 of it for commercial work. The flagship project of the year was the Lambert, Barger & Branaman (LB&B) Building, a three-story Art Deco business block designed by architect C. H. Hinnant and erected on the southwest corner of Main and Wayne. The building features a smooth Indiana limestone street level with broadly segmental-arched storefronts, two upper stories of beige brick, chevron and geometric designs in the cornice, and panels over the Wayne Avenue entrance depicting such icons of progress as a locomotive, an airplane and an ocean liner. As business tenants began to move into the LB&B Building in November 1929 they were probably nervous about the stock market crash of the preceding month. Local economic reportage acquired a note of barely concealed panic, and indeed the effects of the downturn were soon felt. C. H. Hinnant had been tapped to design for the town a Colonial Revival hotel of brick and stone construction (his rendering was published in the November 15, 1929 issue of the Waynesboro News), but the project was placed on indefinite hold as the economic situation worsened.”

® Bowman, Waynesboro Days of Yore, vol. 1, 19, 144, 150; Wells, "A Distant Past," parts 1 and 2; and News-Virginian, February 26, 1935. Despite losses of building stock from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the district retains many buildings from the period as demonstrated in the section 7 inventory.

Despite local concerns, Waynesboro fared relatively well during the Great Depression. In 1929 the DuPont Rayon Company began the construction of a large acetate plant on the Basic City side of the river (Basic City and Waynesboro merged in 1923), and although production at the new plant was intermittent during the worst years of depression, in 1933-35 the facility underwent a major expansion and Waynesboro's economic well-being was assured. A degree of prosperity had returned by 1937, especially in the home construction sector, and at the beginning of the year a local corporation announced plans for the General Wayne Hotel, a gracious Colonial Revival hostelry erected at 620 W. Main, The General Wayne presumably represented the delayed realization of the 1929 hotel project.!

The 300 block of W. Main underwent a dramatic transformation in 1950-1951, following a devastating fire at the nearby Gardner Mill that also damaged the Corner Hardware Company building at 307-309 W. Main. When the decision was made to not rebuild the mill, city leaders saw the opportunity to rationalize the street system in the area by closing Mill Street on both sides of W. Main and extending Arch Avenue north to intersect with Broad Street. The street closure introduced new building lots with Main Street frontage to the downtown, led Leggett's to expand from its small store that predated 1939 into a much larger complex (320 W. Main), and encouraged additional new construction on the east end of the street by the close of 1951.

In 1951 Directory Publishers, Inc., publishers of the Waynesboro City Directory, introduced a new feature: an extensive photograph section. The two hundred views of Waynesboro buildings and scenes contained in the 1951 directory provide a barometer of architectural trends in the city, especially in the commercial district. The crisp modernism introduced by the LB&B Building had become the standard for storefront design, with architectural glass, neon signage with sans serif lettering, and complex display window steppings common. Often the modernist detail represented reworkings of older storefronts, but the traditional modulated transparencies of display window and entry recess were preserved, and the remodeling rarely altered or concealed upper-story facades. Unfortunately, later modernizations were less sympathetic, and included wholesale fagade remodeling in some instances. By the early seventies improvements to storefronts typically involved solid walls with domestically scaled door and window treatments. Some buildings received coverings, fortunately often reversible of metal or plywood paneling.

The downtown also endured a rash of demolitions during the late 1970s and early 1980s. A series of articles by News-Vingiman staff writer John Wells with titles such as "City's progress has left its past in a cloud of dust" and "Waynesboro history ‘vanishing’ in the face of progress" chronicled the devastation. Losses during the period included the Waynesboro National Bank and Fishburne's Drug Store at the northwest corner of Main and Wayne, and the Neese Hotel at 526 W. Main.!!

Even as the downtown lost some of its more impressive buildings, steps were taken to acknowledge and preserve other landmarks. In the early 1970s The Waynesboro Bicentennial and Historical Commission placed historic plaques on key buildings, and although the commission was not empowered to prevent demolitions, its efforts helped foster an appreciation for the downtown's historic character. In 1971 efforts to revitalize downtown included the completion of a pedestrian mall between the 300 and 400 blocks of W. Main and the introduction of public parking facilities. The following year, the Quesenbery family preserved the deteriorated Casper Coiner House, thus successfully completing one of the downtown's first historic rehabilitations. By 1986 new efforts to enhance the downtown's character, using community-posed suggestions, were being implemented, including the burial of overhead power lines on Main Street. The 1995-1998 Comprehensive Plan review process identified preservation of the historic downtown as a leading community priority, and empowered a Downtown Improvement Task Force to develop a strategic plan that City Council adopted in 1998. In doing so, the City committed program and financial support to the downtown's redevelopment, leading to the formation of Waynesboro Downtown Development, Inc. The city has also committed funds to a rehabilitation grant program that has been utilized for at least two downtown buildings to date. Waynesboro's commitment to the preservation of its community appears to be an ongoing effort, as evidenced by several recent successes--in mid-2000, the City was named a participating community in the Virginia Main Street Program, and received matching funds from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources to undertake a survey and historic district nominations for the downtown and two adjoining residential areas, the Port Republic Road and Tree Streets neighborhoods.'”

! Wells, "Waynesboro history ‘vanishing’ in the face of progress,” News-Virginian, August 17, 1981; Wells, "City's progress has left its past in a cloud of dust," News-Virgnian, August 18, 1981.