Pulaski Historic Commercial District

Downtown Pulaski, Virginia, developed as a railroad and industrial town after an 1888 plat laid out commercial lots on a grid north of Peak Creek. The historic district covers most of that commercial center and includes one hundred buildings and one site. Most are two-story brick commercial blocks from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a few with original storefronts. Main Street, also called Second Street North, forms the heart of the district, with Washington and Jefferson avenues as secondary commercial streets. Notable buildings include the 1896 county courthouse of rough-cut granite, designed by Chamberlin and Co. of Knoxville in Richardsonian Romanesque and Queen Anne styles. Others are the Classical Revival Elks Theatre of about 1911, the 1908 Gothic Revival Christ Episcopal Church, a 1907 freight depot, warehouses along First Street and a former high school. Some landmarks, including the Maple Shade Inn and Hotel Pulaski, have been demolished, but the district keeps the greatest concentration of the town's historic structures.