The Lewisburg Historic District [†] encompasses most of the City of Lewisburg as it had developed by the early twentieth century, including both its commercial core and surrounding residential neighborhoods, over an area of roughly 350 acres. The district illustrates the evolution of settlement in the Greenbrier Valley from the late eighteenth century frontier era through the railroad and timber boom of the early twentieth century, with approximately four hundred buildings of which only about twenty are considered nonconforming intrusions. Architecture, education, and politics/government are identified as the principal areas of historical significance, supported by strong associations with roads, courts, schools, river and rail transportation, and resource-based industries like timber and coal.
Lewisburg began at Lewis Spring on the Big Levels as a frontier encampment known as Fort Savannah (c. 1770) and then Fort Union, serving as the mustering ground for Andrew Lewis’s 1,100‑man army in Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774; this military role drew tradesmen, farmers, and camp followers who seeded a permanent settlement. The Virginia Assembly created Greenbrier County in 1778 and designated Lewisburg as the county seat in 1782, ordering a forty‑acre town to be surveyed into sixty‑four half‑acre lots with required dwellings, thereby formalizing the community’s role as the region’s political and commercial center. Roads from Warm Springs over the Allegheny front (completed 1782–83), later turnpikes like the Staunton–Lewisburg and James River and Kanawha roads, and eventually stage lines made Lewisburg a key crossroads between the Shenandoah and Tidewater regions and the Kanawha and Ohio valleys.[1]
Early buildings were one‑room log cabins and double log houses with large stone end chimneys, followed by substantial stone structures such as Col. John Stuart’s 1780 clerk’s office, the Market Street Stone House, and the Old Stone Church, which established local limestone as an important material. After 1800, brick construction expanded under craftsmen like John Weir and John W. Dunn; between about 1820 and 1860 some thirty‑seven brick buildings—residences, stores, and public buildings with Georgian plans, Greek Revival details, and refined woodcarving by Conrad Burgess—were erected within the district. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prosperity from timber, coal, and railroads produced large frame “Carpenters’ Gothic” and Victorian houses, irregular‑plan dwellings with wrap‑around porches and prominent dormers, and substantial institutional buildings such as Carnegie Hall (1902) and turn‑of‑the‑century commercial blocks rebuilt after the 1897 fire.[1]
Lewisburg emerged early as an educational center: John McElhenney’s co‑educational academy, incorporated in 1812 in the town’s first brick building, evolved into Greenbrier College for Women and the Greenbrier Military School, whose campuses and associated buildings remain major features of the district. Religious institutions include the Old Stone Presbyterian Church, early Baptist and Methodist congregations (such as Rehoboth in the wider county and Mount Tabor Baptist Church in town), and later church complexes with manses and parsonages, all reflecting the central role of religion and education in town life. Civic and commercial landmarks range from the Greenbrier County Courthouse and early jails to the Old Lewisburg Bank–Elks Building (c. 1897), the Greenbrier Valley Bank, taverns and hotels like the Long Ordinary and later Lewisburg Hotel, and post‑fire commercial structures such as the Greenbrier Hotel block, book and drug stores, and specialty shops.
Throughout the nineteenth century Lewisburg’s prosperity rested on rich bluegrass pasture lands supporting cattle, hogs, sheep, and fine horses, with drovers and wagoners moving livestock, hemp, hides, butter, and other products east to Staunton, Richmond, Baltimore, and beyond. Handcraft industries—tanneries, chair and spinning‑wheel making, glove and boot shops, cabinet and furniture makers, and mills—flourished well into the mid‑nineteenth century, and later were complemented by newspapers, banks, hotels, carriage factories, marble yards, and other urban services described in period gazetteers.
>After the Civil War and the arrival of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in the 1870s, large‑scale timber operations (such as the St. Lawrence Boom and Manufacturing Company and later Meadow River Lumber) and coal‑land development brought new wealth, while the Lewisburg and Ronceverte Electric Railway (1907–1931) linked the town directly to mainline rail service.[1]
Lewisburg hosted multiple courts—including county, circuit, superior, and the Supreme Court of Appeals of Western Virginia—by the 1830s, with a dedicated library and study building constructed in 1834, reinforcing its role as a regional legal and governmental hub. During the Civil War the town repeatedly changed hands as both Union and Confederate forces sought control of roads to the Kanawha salt works; the 1862 Battle of Lewisburg ended with Union control of Greenbrier County, contributing to the creation of the new State of West Virginia later that year.
>In the later twentieth century the town weathered the Great Depression, post–World War II changes, suburbanization, and traffic growth, yet retained its historic building stock, open spaces shaped by sinkholes, and the distinctive small‑city character that underlies its listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
† Adapted from: C. E. Turley, Field Research Assistant, Historic Preservation Unit, West Virginia Department of Culture and History, Lewisburg Historic District, nomination document, 1978, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Street Names
Arbuckle Lane • Austin Street East • Bell Drive • BrownDrive • Burdette Street • Chestnut Street • Church Street • Court Street North • Court Street South • Courtney Drive • Davis Street • Echols Lane • Edgar Drive • Foster Street East • Foster Street West • Green Lane • Greenbrier Avenue • Greenbrier Road • Jefferson Street North • Jefferson Street South • Kirkpatrick Lane • Lafayette Street North • Lafayette Street South • Lee Street North • Levisay Street • Lightner Street • Mason Drive • McClung Street • McIlhenney Road • Oak Terrace • Preston Boulevard • Randolph Street East • Randolph Street West • Terrace East • Terrace West • Van Sickler Drive • Walnut Street • Washington Street East • Washington Street West