Mountain Road Historic District

Mountain Road in Halifax, Virginia, runs west from the county courthouse for about half a mile and holds thirty buildings, including two churches, a Masonic hall, a parish hall and many private houses. The oldest are the 1828 Masonic Lodge and the 1831 church now used by the Methodist congregation. St. John's Episcopal Church followed in 1844, built by Dabney Cosby, Jr., whose father helped build the Halifax County Courthouse. Cosby also built three brick houses on the street in the 1840s, noted for fine brickwork. After a pause in the mid-century, a building boom in the 1880s added Queen Anne and Eastlake houses, and early 20th-century Colonial Revival and Bungalow dwellings followed. The district is valued as much for its landscape as its buildings. Spacious, tree-filled yards preserve plantings from the mid-19th century, and six very old oaks known locally as the Indian Trees stand near the western end. Eight newer buildings are counted as noncontributing.