Fifth Street Historic District

Fifth Street Historic District covers about 23 acres along eight blocks of a corridor that adjoins downtown Lynchburg, Virginia. The street grew from a colonial-era road leading to Lynch's Ferry on the James River and was part of the town by the early 1800s. Its densest stretch, the 600 and 700 blocks, holds one-to-three-story brick buildings built directly at the sidewalk, mostly in the early twentieth-century Commercial style, with some Federal, Art Deco and Modern examples. Eight resources date to the early nineteenth century, among them the Kentucky Hotel and the Western Hotel, two of the city's three surviving early taverns. Frame and brick stores at 708 and 612 Fifth Street are rare survivors of pre-1830 commercial building. Nineteenth-century tobacco factories, a former fire station from 1883 and Federal-period houses near Sixth Street add to the mix. The district includes 58 contributing and 8 noncontributing resources, and its integrity underlies its local significance.