Onancock Historic District

Onancock is a small port town on Onancock Creek, about four miles east of Chesapeake Bay, and its historic district takes in most of the town's older homes, shops and churches. The town was established by the colonial House of Burgesses in 1680 on fifty acres and served briefly as the first Accomack County seat. Its irregular street grid and many original lot sizes still follow the early plan. No seventeenth-century buildings survive, but the district includes an 1778-era gambrel-roofed house, the Federal-style Kerr Place, now a house museum, and mid-nineteenth-century Greek Revival dwellings such as Holly House. Most buildings date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including many I-houses, foursquares, Queen Anne houses and bungalows. The brick commercial blocks along Market and North streets replaced frame buildings lost in an 1899 fire. Together, the varied streetscapes and waterfront buildings show how this Eastern Shore port grew and prospered.