Gloucester County Courthouse Square Historic District

Gloucester County Court House Square is a five-acre district in the town of Gloucester, Virginia, made up of the county government buildings and the offices, shops and residences facing the square from Main Street. Its two principal landmarks are the brick courthouse, traditionally dated to about 1766, and the Botetourt Hotel, built about 1770 as John New's Ordinary. The courthouse has a T-shaped plan, Flemish bond brickwork and a Colonial Revival portico, and it remains in its original use. The hotel, one of the few large brick taverns to survive from before the Revolution, was restored in 1968 for county offices and a cultural center. Other buildings date mostly from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including law offices, the jail and clerk's office. Their modest one- and two-story scale gives the area an architectural unity that has become uncommon around county courthouses. The grouping was listed as a classic early Virginia county seat complex.