Folly Castle Historic District (Boundary Increase II)

This twelve-block area of Petersburg, Virginia, lies southwest of the city's original commercial and residential core and west of the existing Folly Castle district. It holds 120 contributing buildings, including 109 dwellings, a school, a church, two factories and seven commercial buildings. The larger houses along West Washington Street show Italianate, Queen Anne and Colonial Revival styles, while the cross streets of Pine, Jones and South contain plainer working-class housing, including some of the oldest dwellings. Double houses, a type also called a double tenement locally, are the most numerous special form, with twenty-four identified. Jones Street appears to have been an African-American neighborhood from just after the Civil War, and it contains the only shotgun-type house. Other notable buildings include the 1850s Couch House, an Italian Villa-inspired house on Pine Street, and the 1911 Robert E. Lee Elementary School. The district was recognized for its architecture and its ethnic heritage between 1840 and 1945.