Urbanna Historic District

Urbanna is a small Tidewater port town on Urbanna Creek, near the Rappahannock River in Middlesex County, Virginia. It was created after a 1680 colonial act encouraging towns, and lots were first sold in 1691. Henry Towles resurveyed it in the 1740s, and the irregular street grid on his map largely survives. The district includes the 1748 courthouse, later altered into a church and now a women's club, which is one of only eleven colonial courthouses left in Virginia. Other early buildings include Lansdowne, a fine Georgian brick mansion, Wormeley Cottage, and the 1760s Old Tobacco Warehouse, now the library. Later buildings reflect the town's commerce and religious life, including Haywood's Store, the Bristow Store, the Romanesque Revival Bank of Middlesex and the Carpenter Gothic Baptist church built in 1896 by Charles H. Palmer. Queen Anne houses, bungalows and Colonial Revival dwellings fill out the streets. Together they record Urbanna's development from tobacco port and county seat to a local commercial center.