Buchanan Historic District

Buchanan Historic District occupies both banks of the James River at the foot of Purgatory and Cove mountains in Botetourt County. It combines two earlier villages, Pattonsburg, established in 1788 on the north bank, and Buchanan, established in 1811 on the south, which merged into one incorporated town in 1882. The district includes the Pattonsburg street grid shown on an 1818 map. Ferries and later covered bridges crossed the river here, and the James River & Kanawha Canal reached the town in 1851. Railroads followed in the 1870s and 1880s, bringing industry such as the 1903 Virginia Can Company. Surviving buildings include Flemish bond brick churches, hotels and houses from the antebellum period, Italianate commercial blocks, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival homes, and an Art Deco theatre. Three African American neighborhoods and several cemeteries are also part of the district. Its period of significance runs from 1818 to 1948, and later buildings are mostly counted as noncontributing.