Houses of Tours Past: Welcome to Main Street Part I (2024)

Every December, the Danville Historical Society takes people on a tour of homes and businesses in the area, highlighting what they used to be and what they are now. Now we’re compiling all of that information here on the website, sorted by alphabetical order.

This is the first of two references for all the tour stops on streets beginning with the letter M.

Designation: Scott/Beavers, Motley & Silverman Storefronts
Address: 209 and 215 Main Street
Owners: Keith Silverman

Some portion of this commercial row may date from 1875. Around 1920, these storefronts underwent a facelift in the Georgian Revival/Craftsman style, perhaps reflecting the architectural talents of J. Bryant Heard.
Late in the 19th century, 209 was owned by a prominent local Black family, the Beavers.

Early in its history, 215 was owned by Pickett Scott, a successful African American businessman who established himself in Danville during Reconstruction. During the 1930s, toward the end of the property’s association with Scott’s heirs, a portion of these building also was used as an African American funeral home.

Scott’s heirs conveyed the property to Jacob Silverman, a menswear retailer. One of his descendants, Keith Silverman, currently owns the block. Since the early 20th century, the storefronts have been used as billiard parlors, rooming houses, barber and beauty shops and restaurants.

In 2009, the buildings were added to the Tobacco Warehouse District because they occupied lot 115 of the New Town subdivision first incorporated into Danville in 1833. Much of New Town’s footprint, just east of Danville’s orginial 1795 town plat of 41 lots along Main Street, conforms to the TWD industrial core, bounded by Patton and Lynn Streets, the railroad and the Dan River. After the Civil War, New Town emerged as the commercial/industrial heart of Danville’s robust tobacco district.

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Designation: Atrium Furniture and Design Center
Address: 310 Main Street
Owners: Judy Saunders and Alma Sparks

Among the most dramatic transformations downtown, this delightful store takes advantage of two commercial structures with “nooks & crannies” that provide a unique setting for traditional and contemporary furniture and design accessories.

To rehabilitate their buildings, Judy Saunders and Alma Sparks battled years of neglect, the aftermath of an earlier fire, and the rigors of adapting modern building codes to historic structures. Judging from the “oohs and aahs” of visitors and customers, the result — highlighted by a skylit two-story atriurn — was well worth the owners’ perseverance. Thus far, the proprietors also have refurbished the exterior of the storefront at 310 Main Street, with plans eventually to remove the aluminum “slipcover” from the adjoining building, 312 Main.

Both buildings were constructed shortly after August 1892, the date of a memorandum of agreement establishing the dimensions of a common wall between the structures that J. A. Davis and W. H. Rice were about to build. The commercial structure at 312 Main, built for J. A. Davis, was used variously in its earlier years as the Virginia Cafe, one of Danville’s first motion picture houses, and as a clothing store. Next door, 310 Main first housed a bakery and confectioners shop built and operated by William H. Rice. In 1900, Mr. Rice devised the property to E. C. Moorefield. He and L. D. Moorefield continued to operate the bakery until World War I when it was sold and became W.P. Hodnett’s clothing store.

In 1922, it was conveyed to Sol, Benjamin, and Adolph Kingoff, who for about a decade operated here one of Danville’s leading jewelry stores. To this day the Kingoff name survives in the metal parapet, which tops the third floor; although most Danvillians now best remember Kingoff’s at the corner in the Dudley Building, where it was located from about 1934 through the 1970’s. Prior to the Atrium, 310 Main housed for many years the Advance Store, as well as Lea-Lewis Furniture Company, which moved here from lower Main Street when the city’s early 19th Century canal was filled and adjacent buildings were razed to build a street in the early 1970’s.

Crossing the Dan River on the Main Street Bridge, this gateway building with the city’s recent landscaping welcomes visitors and locals to a renewed interest in the old commercial district.

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Designation: J.S. Davis (Business Block)
Address: 312 Main Street
Owners: Danville Industrial Development Authority

Dubbed the “Atrium” some 25 years ago, when a successful furniture dealer refurbished both 312 and and 310 Main Street and adapted their many inviting and idiosyncratic spaces for her retail showroom, the buildings today are filled — supporting not only a wine, craft beer, and cheese shop, complemented by a fashion boutique in an adjoining space, but also featuring most recently the studio of veteran Danville photographer Bobby Carlsen.

His relocation to downtown Danville in the heart of the city’s River District, marks a return to the past when the city’s heart was the destination for fine portraiture and other professional photography.

Both 312 Main, home to Mr. Carlsen’s second-floor studio, and its neighbor 310, were constructed shortly after August 1892, the date of a memorandum of agreement establishing the dimensions of a common wall between the commercial storefronts that J.A. Davis and W.H. Rice were about to build. The one at 312 Main, completed for J.A. Davis, was occupied variously in its early years as the Virginia Cafe, as well as one of Danville’s first motion picture houses, and for decades later as a clothing store.

It was long identified particularly with Moskins Clothes. Next door, 310 Main first housed a bakery and confectioners shop built and operated by William H. Rice.

Skylights that bring natural light into spaces deep within the interior are a particular feature that recommends both buildings, now owned by Danville’s Industrial Development Authority. Carlsen’s Studio also has the advantage of enormous second-floor windows, elliptically-arched, that flood the premises with light and offer dramatic views of nearby historic commercial and industrial streetscapes.

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Designation: T. McCully’s A/K/A Diamond (Saloon &) Restaurant
Address: 316 Main Street
Owners: Brandi and Agostino Pugliese

What’s past is prologue at 316 Main Street, today a popular pizza palace — and much more. In fact in the 1890s, the present brick building’s immediate predecessor, a wood-framed, weatherboarded commercial structure, was a well-patronized saloon with food and drink. Known as T. McCully’s (and sometimes Diamond), it was sought out especially by tobacco tradesmen, some of whom made fortunes in the rough-and-tumble Tobacco District nearby.

In 1908, Thomas McCully replaced his late-1880s wood building with the present handsome two-story brick storefront with Georgian Revival details. This was the second such establishment on the site since McCully and his brother purchased the 25-foot lot in 1873.

By the First World War, as sentiment against spirits and liquor increased, the old watering hole and eatery had become simply, McCully’s Restaurant. With the advent of nationwide constitutional Prohibition and the “dry” Twenties, mercantile establishments apparently found a more ready home here on Main Street. The Fair Clothing Company, specializing early on in ladies’ ready-to-wear and millinery, first hung out its shingle by the mid-1920s and remained a fixture at this address until the late-1960s.

Today, on the street level at 316 Main, Dell’ Anno’s Pizza enjoys a thriving trade, recalling the early character of the site as a good place to eat and greet. Upstairs, a spacious open-studio apartment now occupies a former dining area created by previous owners for their bagel shop. At one end of this airy space, a one-time stage has been transformed into a fully equipped kitchen for these hardworking owners of Dell’ Anno’s, who regard this comfortable second floor living space as their “home away from home.”

Wood beams “float” just below a still loftier beadboard-type ceiling, flanked by exposed brick on some of the walls. Against this handsome backdrop, the present owners’ eclectic mix of old and new, one-of-a-kind and comfortable furnishings, all coexist with ease.

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Designation: Efird & Company Department Store
Address: 413 Main Street
Owners: Maribeth and Danny Aiken; Daniel Aiken, and Sasha Dri

Virginia Furniture Gallery occupies a striking refurbished interior set behind a renewed facade sporting much of its original neoclassical detail popular when this building was completed for Efird’s Department Store, presumably after a design by Danville architect J. Bryant Heard.

The building and its facade date from the early 1920s, following the inferno which destroyed this entire block when the second Masonic Temple burned to the ground in January of 1920.

This project is just one of a rising tide calculated to lift “all the boats” downtown. In the past year, 27 downtown businesses have completed facade upgrades, with 24 enhancing their interiors — work estimated by Downtown Danville Director Liz Sater to be valued, in public and private dollars, at well over $1 million.

Even so, the project at 413 Main Street — a building last used by Butler Shoes and vacant for years — is a prototype which anticipates the goal of enlarging and retaining downtown’s retail base. It’s the first in a creative public/private partnership in which the DDA begins by renting a target building for $1 a month. Then, drawing from a trust fund dedicated only to downtown, the City picks up the tab for a quality rehab of its facade and the interior of the first floor — using adult detention labor for tearing out and simple repairs, with professionals performing skilled tasks.

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Designation: Belk-Leggett Department Store
Address: 416–430 Main Street
Owners: Daniel, Vaughan, Medley & Smitherman, PC

After refurbishing commercial structures around the corner for their professional offices in 2001, the law firm of Daniel, Vaughan, Medley & Smitherman, PC, continues its commitment to the renaissance of downtown with the rehabilitation of this former department store.

Actually, the building is comprised of several mercantile establishments dating from the first quarter of the 20th century. Belk Leggett, the department store which eventually absorbed all the storefronts now under renovation, opened its doors on Saturday, March 6, 1920.

It first occupied a former shoe store behind a 21-foot-wide facade at 430 Main Street. This was space newly-renovated after a May 1919 fire nearly gutted the entire three-story Dudley Block, which has anchored the corner of Main Street with North Union since 1901.

By the late 1920s, the store expanded three doors down into the former showroom of Clements, Chism & Parker (later Clements & Parker) which had moved to the Hotel Danville (now Danville House), built by the Clements family m 1927. Belk Leggett’s enlarged quarters at 416–424 Main
(c 1920) included all four stories of the red brick Georgian Revival-inspired commercial buildings of utilitarian traditional design popular between the world wars.

Belk Leggett’s dominance of the block was complete by the late 1930s, when Virginia Hardware left its old home at 426 Main Street, a fine example of early industrial design, c 1912, with dramatic industrial windows bordered with green tile.

Some 45 years later, after Belk Leggett relocated to Piedmont Mall in 1984, an amalgam of shops — the Downtown Mall — occupied much of the first-floor from 1986–1989. From 1991–1996, the Gingerbread House adapted the space for its lines of decorative accessories.

Now, these buildings promise to offer quality space behind restored facades in their newest incarnation as the River City Center, returning the 400 block to its historic roots as the heart of town.

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Designation: David Jones & Company, Merchant Tailors
Address: 525 Main Street — Kim Demont’s Unit
Owners: Piedmont Lands of Virginia LLC

Tapping a City Facade Grant back in 1987, Lee and Susan Stilwell brought back to life a hopelessly “remuddled” storefront and in the process the building itself, a catalyst for reviving the heart of the 500 block. Upstairs, Mrs. Stilwell opened Danville’s first-ever real estate business specializing in historic properties.

For her new office, she gutted space long-occupied by a beauty shop. Then, after removing layers of linoleum, she had the heart-pine floors pickled and installed; up top, a replica tin ceiling from W.F. Norman.

On the street level — behind a recreated late-Victorian facade — this resourceful real estate agent collaborated with her prospective tenant, graphic designer Dan Vaden, on the rehab of the space his firm would occupy for over 20 years. To eliminate the need to lower the 13-foot ceiling, they retrofitted the space with a then-novel spiral duct heat/air conditioning system, a prototype for other such projects nearby.

Such inspired choices made the refurbished workspace not just functional but also dramatic — reinforcing the image of quality, including the graphic design turned out by Vaden & Associates over two decades. In 2004, when Mrs. Stilwell decided to rehabilitate another needy building for a work/ residential complex at 301 Craghead Street, she conveyed the building at 525 Main to the Vadens.

When he moved to another design job in 2011, his veteran colleague Kim Demont relocated her new firm, Demont Design, to the bright and airy second floor open for the tour. The building itself was sold to Piedmont Lands of Virginia, LLC.

In additional to the architectural and construction expertise that made the Stilwells 1991 rehab project a success, they also mined records for the building’s history, discovering that the lot where this trim, two-story commercial building stands was part of the estate of Dr. Thomas D. Stokes, one of the city’s most esteemed early physicians.

Danville’s 1898–99 City Directory lists the first known occupant to hang out his shingle at the 525 Main storefront as David Jones & Company, Merchant Tailors. These “Artists in the Tailoring Business” remained at this location at least through the first decade of the 20th century. During the mid 1920s, the building housed Rippe’s ladies ready-to-wear, followed by Bohn Millinery into the early 1930s. Gibson’s Ice Cream Company is known to have occupied the premises in 1935. The storefront then housed two long-term tenants: Merit Shoes from 1937 to 1960; and Buddy Dale Hat Shop from 1961 into the 1980s.
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Designation: Townes Funeral Home
Address: 531 Main Street
Owners: Alice Parvin

Dating from the mid-1890s, this two-story commercial building was, for 25 years, the address of Townes Funeral Home and Crematory. Townes is Danville’s oldest such establishment, dating from 1892 when it began next door — at 533–35 Main — before relocating to 531 Main. In 1922, the business moved to 622 Main Street and in the 1960s to the current location at 215 West Main Street.

Following the departure of Townes, the storefront was leased to Barker’s Shoe Store. Through the Depression and World War II, the Budget Dress Shop was located here. Thereafter for the next 50 years, jewelry shops operated here, most recently the Jewel Box.

From the time of its construction at the end of the 19th century until 1980, the property was owned and administered by heirs of one of Danville’s early physicians, Thomas D. Stokes. In 2006, Fredericksburg-resident Alice Parvin purchased this modest storefront with an eye to bringing back its potential. Following a thorough rehab using historic tax credits, the space first attracted a bicycle shop.

After that successful enterprise moved nearer the Riverwalk in the Tobacco Warehouse District, the space attracted artist Jeffrey Seiden and his business partner and brother-in-law, Jason Liepe. They opened Dan River Art Works (DRAW). The lively DRAW fulfills their vision of a cooperative studio gallery where artist can work and sell their art.

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Designation: The Ferrell Building aka Gravely-Holland Building
Address: 533–35 Main Street
Owners: Rehab Builders

The Ferrell Building, so called for the early furniture retailer that occupied its first floor around the turn of the 20th century, is a survivor. Its roller-coaster resurrection and ultimate redemption, however, took some two decades!
In 1991, the Danville Historical Society learned that the building’s owner was preparing to raze it for a parking lot.

The DHS advanced $3,000 to secure it from destruction anticipating that the Commonwealth of Virginia would take possession of it under its revolving fund. The waters muddied however when a newly-elected governor, citing economic austerity, froze the assets of the Virginia Historic Preservation Foundation.

Members of the Danville Historical Society held their collective breath when their non-refundable earnest money to the seller was nearly lost in bureaucratic suspended- animation. At the end of the 1990s, the State resolved to divest itself of its revolving fund properties in favor of administering that program through the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities. The APVA, now Preservation Virginia, began marketing the property.

Even with the dawn of the new millennium, the outlook remained clouded — some said grim. In 2006, work renewed under an eager owner only to falter. Then a second well-intentioned buyer picked up the reins, but a family crisis prevented their moving forward. Happily, in 2010, Rehab Builders acquired this diamond-in-the-rough. The Winston-Salem based historic redevelopment firm’s vision for the Ferrell Building is mixed use — retail at the street level and apartment living above. Their sensitive makeover has turned an eyesore into one of Downtown Danville’s grace notes.

The top of its arresting facade is embellished with intricate corbels that form a heavy brick cornice. Newly recreated wood show windows, transoms, and cornice are reminiscent of an 1898 ad depicting Ferrell furniture displays.
Built by tobacconist S. H. Holland between 1877 and 1886, this landmark was home to the Gravely-Holland Insurance & Real Estate Company.

Restaurants like the Empire Cafe of the 1920s and the Tuxedo of the 1960s and beyond were a staple at the street level in addition to many other businesses. In the early 1940s, the former WPA artist Carson Davenport, who later taught at Averett, maintained a studio upstairs.

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Address: 549 Main Street
Owners: Clement & Wheatley Law Office

Constructed in 1922 as the Southern Amusem*nt Building, this Beaux Arts style structure originally was to have become Danville’s most lavish theatre, a “new and large playhouse” for road shows, vaudeville, Chautauqua and motion pictures.

Early plans showed a 2,000 seat playhouse — to be called the Palace Theatre — complete with a large stage, balcony, and gallery, as well as two stores and suites of offices. Only the stores, lobby and offices were completed however.

By 1925, the building’s businesses included:
The Palms: soda, cigars, and confections
L. B. Flora: engineering contractor
J. D. Butler: optometrist
E. J. Binkley: chiropractor
Wilson, Wickam & Thornton, Inc.: vacuum cleaner sales and service
Continental Life Insurance Company

In the decade after plans for the theatre were put on hold, vaudeville and the demand for movie palaces waned with the Depression, and in 1933 the building was sold to developers in the Jefferson Avenue Improvement Company. In 1936, this investment group which included Louis Dibrell, Albert Patton, and Alvis Starling leased the structure to Sears, Roebuck & Company which was expanding its mail order business to include more retail stores, especially in the South. J. Bryant Heard, a prolific local architect was commissioned to revamp the first-floor facade for a single tenant and to design for Sears a large rear addition for retail display — instead of the theatre proposed fifteen years earlier. Sometime during the next decade, the storefront was altered substantially to create an uninterrupted horizontal show window.

Clement & Wheatley purchased the building in 1987, restored the facade to its early appearance, and in 1988 relocated its expanding law firm from the Masonic Temple to its elegant new office at 549 Main Street.

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Designation: Heard-Waddell House
Address: 555 West Main Street
Owners: Fay and Bob Echols

Built in 1922, this elegant Georgian Revival dwelling of dark-red brick was the home of architect J. Bryant Heard, the city’s most prolific architect of the 20th century. In 1916, Mr. Heard married Bernice Sheppard of Danville and relocated here from his native Lynchburg, where he had been a colleague principally of such noted architectural practitioners as John R. Cardwell, Samuel P. Craighill, and Aubrey Chesterman.

By the time Mr. Heard constructed a grand new house for his family near the city limit, numerous dwellings based on his designs of Georgian Revival, Craftsman, or Spanish Colonial/Mediterranean inspiration, were rising all along West Main Street.

For his own home the architect took advantage of a broad lot, actually a wedge formed by West Main as it intersects with Howeland Circle. Here the house sets serenely, well back from bustling West Main Street, its Georgian symmetry emphasized by a prominent location, and enhanced today by trees at least 75 years old. Restrained moldings, mantels and other classical appointments inside belie innovations of construction “advanced” for any era — not only solid masonry walls, but also concrete floors for fireproofing.

For more than three-quarters of a century, the house remained in the builder’s family — sheltering first the architect, his wife, and their three daughters. Following the death of Mr. Heard in 1956, and his wife 25 years later, one of these daughters, Bernice, and her husband, Charles K. Waddell, continued to maintain the family home for some years. The house left the family’s estate only four years ago.

Since 2002, the venerable structure has been given a new lease on life in the capable hands of Bob and Fay Echols. Recognizing its quality, Mr. and Mrs. Echols have brought to this refurbishing project their considerable experience as real estate agents, their eye for detail, and respect for architectural tradition.

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Designation: Virginia ABC Store
Address: 563 Main Street
Owners: Ben Rippe

Opened in October 2006, Rippe’s Shoes is only the latest addition to a family legacy of retailing stretching back more than a century. The idea of featuring the store’s lines of quality shoes in a venue “right on the street,” was the brainchild of owner Ben Rippe. Early in the 20th century, his grandfather and namesake Benjamin A. Rippe moved from New York to Danville where he established in 1907 a business that quickly earned a reputation for quality focusing on that fashion essential for the would-be Gibson Girl — the hat. As business prospered, the store expanded from its origins in the city’s Warehouse District to Main Street’s 400 block.

In 1947, the firm’s second generation, Murray Rippe, moved the store uptown, relocating to its present site at 559 Main Street. In 1965, that retail space took in an adjoining storefront, nearly doubling again the size of the store.

Pushing the premises all the way to Main Street’s corner with Floyd Street became possible when Ben Rippe, a third-generation family clothier, acquired the former c 1950 Virginia ABC store. Here, Rippe launched his idea to adapt, very subtly, the old ABC store, tying its Art Moderne style to his existing apparel departments nearby. Preserving the ABC’s classic cast-stone and glass block exterior, Rippe and his designer succeeded in retrofitting into its interior, sleek early modern-style shelves and alcoves to complement stylish footwear. These new functions and forms now respond seamlessly to the character of the historic building.

During the tour, visitors also will have a chance to peek behind the showroom at other untouched features of the former ABC store; notable are early fluorescent fixtures hanging from a snappy mid-20th-century patterned tin ceiling.

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Designation: Hotel Danville
Address: 600 Main Street
Owners: Danville House

For more than half a century, the Hotel Danville at 600 Main Street, was the address for thousands of visitors to this community. Most were tourists and business men and women, but the hotel also numbered among its guests such luminaries as Eleanor Roosevelt.

Since 1984, this solid structure, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, has continued to serve the community as Danville House, a handsome adaptive reuse as apartments for area citizens, especially older people on moderate or fixed incomes.

When completed in 1927, it was hailed as a modern facility that added many new guest rooms to those already available at the Burton, Stonewall, and Leeland hotels, also on Main Street. Of these, only the Leeland — just across from the Danville House — still stands. The new hotel rose to eight stories to become the city’s second “skyscraper”, joining the ten-story Masonic Temple completed just a block north in 1921.

Its first two floors, like most of the Masonic Temple, are sheathed in architectural terracotta glazed to resemble light-colored granite or limestone. The old hotel’s warm red brick is also accented with quoins and a parapet of the same material. This balustraded parapet with its immense classical urns adds great dignity to the mid-rise Classical Revival building, which was situated so that its principal elevations on a wide corner at Main and Floyd Streets face the Dan River at the foot of Main Street hill.

A revolving door leads to one of the building’s most striking features, a two-story lobby of streamlined Classical design, almost Art Deco in appearance. This beautiful space has been repainted in its original hues for use as a Commons for Danville House. Originally, the hotel also shared much of the first floor with Danville’s leading furniture store of the era, Clements & Parker.

The remainder of the first floor was occupied by the Capitol Theater, which opened during the silent era showing such classics as “A Hero on Horseback,” starring Hoot Gibson. It remained Danville’s premier first-run theater for many decades until it closed in the early 1970's.

In 1983, Allen Management Company, Boston, Massachusetts, rehabilitated this sound structure of steel and reinforced concrete construction. Using the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for Historic Preservation, they were able to qualify this sensitive adaptive reuse as a Federal Tax Act project, and provide the city with one of its first quality facilities for senior citizens — as well as a first venture into downtown housing.

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Address: 633 Main Street
Owners: Excaliber Design

Once owned by John W. Holland and his wife Mary, this parcel at the top of Main Street hill was later bequeathed by will in 1899 from Lucretia Voss to her daughter, Lou Olivia Lindsey, widow of A.C. Lindsey. By that time Mrs. Lindsey had married T.L. Sydnor.

In 1915, Mrs. Sydnor conveyed land just north of this property to E.C. and K.C. Arey, who built the Leeland Hotel. Known as Lots 23 & 24, this land with a large wooden building was valued at $7450 from 1915 to 1920, after which the reassessment raised the value to $14,175.

In 1921, 43 1/2 feet of the land was sold to T.A. Fox and R.M. Fox and the tax value was reduced to $5435, which probably reflects demolition of any existing structure. The 1923 land book lists $10,000 in value added for a house built on the site. In fact, this “house” was a funeral home constructed of stucco over building tile in the exotic Spanish Mission style, a commission of the area’s leading architect of the day, J. Bryant Heard, who in 1922 designed for F.W. Townes & Son the Georgian Revival style brick funeral home next door, now Danville’s Chamber of Commerce.

T.A. Fox & Company was listed in the 1879 City Directory as an undertaker and cabinet maker at s.s. Main 6 w. Market. An ad in the 1898 City Directory noted: “coffins and caskets of all description on hand; also Robes for Children, Ladies, and Men. Open all the year.”

In 1935, Fox Funeral Home moved to 609 Loyal Street when their Main Street building was sold to Charles L. Giles, who operated Giles Flower Shop at this location until 1954. In 1950, the structure was renamed the Giles Building with these tenants: Modern Beauty Shop; Carl W. White, M.D.; Robert L. Kushner, Dentist; Sol Holsveig, Optometrist; John H. Neal, M.D.; Giles Flower Shop.

By the mid-1960s, city directories noted several vacancies, and in 1975, eleven offices were vacant. In 1976, the facility was sold to George and Jennie Martin and renamed the Downtown Office Building. In 1989, R. Frank Meador purchased the property at auction to house Danville Printing Company.
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Designation: Danville Visitor Center
Address: 635 Main Street
Owners: Danville Area Chamber of Commerce

Although a commercial structure since it was built in 1923, this fine Georgian Revival building more closely resembles many of the houses then being designed by a Danville architect, J. Bryant Heard. The structure is just one of over 900 of Heard’s commissions, which included hundreds of houses, as well as commercial and public buildings and churches.

It was home to F.W. Townes and Son, Inc., from 1923 to 1967. After Townes Funeral Home, as it is now known, left this building for its present location on West Main Street, the Danville Area Chamber of Commerce moved here from a building, since demolished, which stood across the street. Like all the products of Heard’s architectural career, the Chamber building is beautifully detailed inside and out. The trellis work with classical “urns” on the arched porch and the fanlight doorway are typical of such handsome motifs popular during the World War I era and into the 1920s.

This year’s Holiday Open House at the Chamber is special as it marks the recent relocation of the Danville Visitor Center to the Chamber, where travelers have been coming already for years for information on the community, its lodgings, restaurants, and tourist attractions.

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Designation: Former Site of James Schoolfield House
Address: 750 Main Street
Owners: YWCA

Described as archetypes, labyrinths are divine imprints found in religious traditions around the world. Unlike a maze with its many choices, entrances, cul-de-sacs and dead ends, a labyrinth instead is a spiritual journey — offering one path.

Inspired by the resurgence of enthusiasm over the past dozen years or so for this ancient tool for meditation and prayer, Danville’s reenergized YWCA offers community “pilgrims” an experience patterned after the classic eleven-circuit labyrinth laid into the floor of Chartes Cathedral, near Paris, around 1220.

The YW labyrinth, only a bit smaller than the one at Chartes, spans a 36-foot diameter in the YW’s Great Room. It was carefully executed in paint under the direction of Outdoor Designs. This Danville-based hardscaping/landscaping firm, owned by Fred and Laura Meder, also has wide experience elsewhere installing labyrinths in traditional unit pavers, not unlike the stone-paved labyrinths of Medieval Europe.

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Designation: Main Street United Methodist Church
Address: 767 Main Street
Owners: Danville Preservation League

The landmark former Main Street United Methodist Church — one of a handful of Danville buildings listed individually on the National Register of Historic Places — now is poised to serve in new capacities as a community resource and preservation center.

This striking Romanesque Revival edifice, which served its congregation and the community from the time charter members founded the church just after the Civil War until it closed in 2007, is being reborn. Today it enjoys a new life of service — thanks to Danville preservationists, friends and former members of the historic church.

Their efforts, in cooperation with the Danville Preservation League, promise to maintain the building for posterity, using it also as a clearinghouse for” best preservation practices,” and outreach for preservation throughout the community and well beyond. To that end, in its role as the Preservation Resource Center at Main Street, this landmark is headquarters for a southern Virginia regional satellite of Preservation Virginia (APVA), another strong advocate for historic preservation. The facility is available on a rental basis for weddings, concerts, conferences, and special occasions.

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Designation: Education Annex for Main Street United Methodist Church
Address: 769 Main Street
Owners: Dr. and Mrs. Daniel Addis

Located near downtown Danville’s historic heart, the Danville Education, Arts & Cultural Center (DEACC) also is next door to the area’s recently-designated Main Street Preservation Center, housed in the landmark former Main Street United Methodist Church. Not only is the DEACC facility the rehearsal hall for the Danville Symphony Orchestra, it also offers other groups board and meeting rooms for luncheons, business meetings and small gatherings.

A beautiful ballroom, available for weddings, special events, birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions, has been adapted from a portion of this historic building. Additional arts venues, as well as spaces for theatre and concerts remain in the works. This renaissance at 769 Main Street is the brainchild of Dr. Daniel Addis. His enthusiasm for reclaiming historic spaces is a family affair; his wife Nami has adapted the historic Dr. Beadles House at 1050 Main Street as Yene’s Restaurant.

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Designation: Episcopal Church of the Epiphany
Address: 781 Main Street
Owners: Episcopal Church of the Epiphany

A three-level corner tower with octagonal spire, and lancet-arch windows and doors alternating between buttressing, are united in a simple, sturdy design that makes this church one of the city’s most outstanding buildings architecturally. Built between 1879 and 1881, the stuccoed Gothic Revival structure follows the lines of the original wood edifice erected here in 1844, a church where Confederate president Jefferson Davis worshipped during the final days of the Civil War.

The present sanctuary is distinguished by an ark-like ceiling of mellow beaded-board, lighted by a number of stained-glass windows attributed to the New York firm of J.& R. Lamb. This is the only church in the area to house two pipe organs — a 1928 Skinner, and an Andover tracker instrument built and installed in celebration of the 1979 centennial of the historic structure.

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Designation: Lawson-Overbey House
Address: 782 Main Street
Owners: Cynthia Castle and Danny Liles

The imposing silhouette of this house, with its monumental semicircular portico, makes it unique among the eclectic architectural forms of Millionaires Row. It began more simply as one of about a half-dozen lavish brick Italianate mansions built for local tobacconists and textile industrialists in the 1880s by the contractor T.B. Fitzgerald.

This home for R.W. Lawson was completed in 1881. After he died three years later, it was purchased by a descendant of one of Danville’s early families, Sallie E. Shepherd, who lived here until 1904. Thereafter, William Daniel Overbey, one of her grandsons who had spent much of his boyhood here, acquired the property. It was Mr. Overbey and his wife, the former Mae Hutchinson of Mississippi, who in 1911 gave the house a Georgian Revival face-lift, restyling the cornice and roofiine, and adding the semicircular Ionic porch. The Overbeys made this their home for more than 50 years.

In July of 1972, a permit to raze the massive dwelling was obtained just hours before passage of the Historic District ordinance drafted to protect the neighborhood. One month later the demolition permit had not been exercised. Instead, the heirs sold the house to Mr. and Mrs. John DeAlba.
No strangers to old houses, the DeAlbas began a loving five-year stewardship of the property, continued in 1977 and for many years, by Mr. and Mrs. William T. Fowlkes, Jr.

In little more than a year since their purchase of the house, recent newcomers to Danville from North Carolina — Cynthia Castle and Danny Liles — have refurbished the house not only as their home but also as a bed-and-breakfast inn.

Want to get in touch with us? You can send us an email at danvillehistorical@gmail.com. You can also send us snail mail at P.O. Box 6, Danville VA 24543.