2 S Main St

From the National Register nomination

Classical Revival six-story building of brick with Indiana limestone facing on the first and second stories. The brickwork is stretcher-bond buff brick on the street elevations and mostly American-bond red brick on less visible sides. The first-story stonework consists of paneled wide pilasters and unpaneled narrow pilasters that rise to a heavy cornice. The stone has banded treatments between the pilasters. On the front (west) elevation are Doric columns and round pilasters in antis flanked by paneled pilasters. The first-story entry and windows are replacement tinted plate glass. The second story has paneled pilasters aligned with the ones below and a frieze with paterae and stylized floral designs. The second story and those above have 1/1 windows that may be original. The third through sixth stories have paneled brick façade piers with lighter brick in the panels. These rise to a metal cornice with modillions, dentils, and panels. At the fifth-story floor level is a limestone string course and carved stone panels with cartouches, dolphins, sea shells, and other ornaments and the inscription "Anno Domini MCMXVI." Windows on the more utilitarian south elevation have segmental heads. New York City architect Alfred Charles Bossom, who designed a number of high-rise bank buildings for Virginia cities, designed this one too. People's Bank opened in an earlier building on the site in 1908. The building served as the headquarters of the Valley National Bank (a successor to People's Bank) until the late 1960s. In 1955 the upper level offices were occupied by physicians, an optometrist, a dentist, an attorney, an accountant, and a realtor. Now Rockingham County Office Building and Public Schools offices. ("Journey into the Past;" Wells and Dalton, Virginia Architects, 37)