Abingdon Historic District (Additional Documentation)

Abingdon's Main Street, covering about eight and a half blocks across two hilly ridges, preserves a broad range of nineteenth-century buildings in Southwest Virginia, an area that stayed frontier long after the town was founded in 1778. Federalist and revival-style houses, churches, offices, stores and the county court house show the mix of functions found on a main thoroughfare of the period. Notable buildings include the stuccoed Tavern from the late eighteenth century, the early-nineteenth-century Virginia House hotel, the Doctor Pitts House, the Abingdon Bank and Cashier's House, and the Martha Washington Inn, built in the 1830s by General Francis Preston. The Barter Theatre, founded in 1933 by Robert Porterfield, has won international acclaim. The town served as a mail clearing house for Southwest Virginia by 1793, suffered fires set during Union raids in December 1864, and was home to a Treasury Secretary, a Confederate general and three Virginia governors. Twentieth-century intrusions have affected the area, though its historic character survives.