Accomac Historic District

Accomac is a compact county-seat town on Virginia's Eastern Shore, and its historic district covers about 130 acres and roughly 150 buildings. Most are white-painted frame houses of one or two stories, set along narrow, irregular streets, with commercial buildings along Front Street and a courthouse complex near Jail Road. The settlement grew around a tavern where court was first held in the 1670s. A 1786 petition to the Virginia Assembly led to the establishment of the town of Drummondtown, later renamed Accomac in 1893. The district includes Federal, Greek Revival, Victorian and Colonial Revival buildings, among them a Romanesque Revival courthouse of 1899, the Debtors' Prison of 1783 and St. James Episcopal Church of 1838. The town was listed because of its architecture and its long role as a government and commercial center. Steady economic conditions, continuity of family ownership and the rerouting of Route 13 around the town in the early 1960s helped preserve its nineteenth-century character.