{"nrhp_refnum":"90002002","name":"Cambria Historic District","other_names":["DHR file # 154-48","See Also:Christiansburg Depot"],"category":"district","location":{"address":"500--600 blocks Depot St., 500--600 block Montgomery St., 900--1000 blocks Cambria St., and railroad depots","address_restricted":false,"city":"Christiansburg","county":"Montgomery County","state":"VA","lat":37.14178814850004,"lon":-80.40573470239784,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1991-01-10","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Transportation","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A railroad-era commercial and residential district of about 34 acres in Cambria, roughly a mile from downtown Christiansburg, Montgomery County, Virginia. It centers on a square beside the railroad tracks and includes 34 contributing and 15 noncontributing buildings dating from the 1850s onward.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the district is significant under criteria A and C as a well preserved town built to take advantage of the railroad. It contains one of the region's finest and earliest depots, the Surface-Lee Block and the Dew Drop Inn (site of the county's first hospital), and houses showing change from the 1850s to the 1910s, including mail-order homes and precut lumber.","narrative":"Cambria is a railroad-oriented neighborhood about a mile from downtown Christiansburg, on the north side of Zion Hill beside the Norfolk-Southern tracks along Crab Creek. Commercial buildings and houses surround a square that was reserved for public use in the 1860s. The earliest landmark is the 1869 Italianate depot, built of board-and-batten with a hip-roofed central tower. Opposite it stands the three-story brick Surface-Lee Block, built in 1908 as a wholesale grocery. The Dew Drop Inn, a pair of joined brick commercial buildings, housed the county's first hospital upstairs. Nearby are concrete-block commercial buildings from the 1920s, a 1928 Gothic-detailed Baptist church, a 1906 brick depot, Queen Anne and vernacular houses, and a small log house likely from the 1850s. The district was listed for architecture and for its role in the area's transportation and commerce between 1854 and 1930, when the railroad shaped the town's growth and its building forms.","period_of_significance":"1854-1930","architect_builder":"Unknown","architectural_style":"Italianate, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Bungalow","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"The Dew Drop Inn building is described as vacant on the first floor and owner-occupied on the second, in good repair. Other buildings are described as well preserved and in use, and the 1906 depot serves as railroad offices.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:00.443638-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/46/6788/41678846/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/90002002.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90002002/803d8152bc-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/90002002/803d8152bc-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"AstaPro5","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Church_on_Montgomery_Street.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">AstaPro5</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Church_on_Montgomery_Street.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41678846","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambria_Historic_District","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14712124"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/montgomery-county/cambria-historic-district-90002002/"}