Clifton Forge Commercial Historic District

Downtown Clifton Forge, Virginia, is preserved as a ten-acre commercial district centered on Main and East Ridgeway streets. It contains 72 resources, 57 of them contributing, including frame, brick and concrete block storefronts, two theaters, a post office, two railroad-related buildings and a few houses. The town grew after the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad built a roundhouse here in 1878, and Main Street became its first commercial center in the 1880s. East Ridgeway Street developed later, after the railroad added a depot, YMCA and hotel nearby. The district's early buildings include gable-fronted stores from the 1880s and a cast iron-fronted block from 1892. Its most prominent early twentieth-century buildings, including the 1905 Masonic Theatre and Alleghany Building, were designed by the Lynchburg firm Frye & Chesterman in buff-colored brick with Neoclassical detail. Other notable buildings include a 1898 design by mail-order architect George F. Barber and concrete block commercial buildings with decorative facades. Together they record the growth of a railroad town's business center.