West Jefferson Historic District

Centered on Jefferson Avenue in downtown West Jefferson, North Carolina, this district spans roughly twelve blocks and holds 50 contributing and 19 noncontributing buildings. Most are one- and two-story brick commercial buildings sharing party walls, built between about 1915 and the 1950s. Styles include the Commercial Style, modest Classical Revival, the Art Deco Parkway Theater of 1939, and a few Modern buildings. Other resources include the 1929 Neoclassical Revival First Baptist Church, a railroad foreman's house, the relocated board-and-batten depot, a service station, and light industrial buildings such as the Dr. Pepper bottling plant and the Kraft-Phenix cheese plant. The town grew after the Virginia-Carolina Railroad arrived in 1914-1915, carrying timber and livestock and drawing merchants, bankers and lumbermen. The district was recognized as the county's largest surviving collection of early to mid-twentieth-century commercial architecture. Alterations such as replacement windows and applied facades affected some buildings, but the district keeps a good degree of integrity.