Stanardsville Historic District

Stanardsville, the county seat of Greene County in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is preserved as a historic district of 168 contributing and 81 noncontributing resources. The town was incorporated in 1794 on 45 acres divided into half-acre lots by William Stanard. Few buildings remain from his era, among them two survey markers and a possible terraced garden. A major building campaign followed the creation of Greene County in 1838, producing the 1839 Courthouse on its two-acre square, the Lafayette Hotel, brick stores and Greek Revival houses along Main Street. Later additions include Queen Anne and Bungalow houses, four churches, five cemeteries and granite memorial obelisks. Fires and a 1979 explosion in the clerk's office affected the square, yet the townscape still resembles its late nineteenth-century appearance. The district is valued as an intact example of a Virginia courthouse town.