Danville Tobacco Warehouse and Residential District

Danville's tobacco warehouse and residential district covers about 260 acres on the south bank of the Dan River in Virginia. Roughly 585 structures remain, among them some 37 tobacco factories, prizeries, auction warehouses and storage buildings put up between 1870 and 1930. Most are three- to five-story brick buildings with repeated window openings and stepped fire walls, and the larger turn-of-the-century complexes have patterned brick cornices. The district also holds the 1899 Southern Railway Passenger Station by Frank P. Milburn, small commercial blocks on Craghead and Lynn Streets, a 1927 neo-classical Municipal Building, and Riverside Cotton Mill No. 1 of 1882. North of Jefferson Street, modest frame houses built between 1880 and 1910 housed railroad, tobacco and mill workers, both black and white. The area matters because it shows how Danville grew as the home of the auction "Danville System" for loose-leaf tobacco and then as a textile center. A 1978 survey also recorded its earlier Native American and colonial land use.