Miller-Southside Residential Historic District

Just south of downtown Blacksburg, this neighborhood of 138 houses and 64 garages grew up between 1909 and 1941. Large, hedged lots and shaded sidewalks line South Main Street, Draper Road and Preston Avenue. The earliest houses are frame Foursquares and a bungalow along South Main Street. During the 1920s, brick Bungalows and Foursquares became typical, many tied to local builder Wes Gray. After 1925, Colonial Revival houses dominated, and Tudor Revival houses spread through the 1930s. Virginia Polytechnic Institute architecture professor Clinton Harriman Cowgill designed at least five Colonial or Georgian Revival houses in the 1930s, plus his own Tudor Revival home on Preston Avenue, and his detailing influenced later construction. Postwar infill, including Ranch and Colonial-style houses, is counted as noncontributing. The district was recognized for its architecture as Montgomery County's largest and most complete early twentieth-century suburb.