Historic Courthouse Square

This courthouse, in continuous use for more than 200 years, stands among America’s most historic public buildings and is unique as the only courthouse used at the same time by three early American Presidents. The original wood-frame courthouse was erected on a two-acre lot in 1762 when the city was founded by Dr. Thomas Walker. Local elections were held here, and the County Court conducted business with the help of young attorneys and magistrates such as Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe; these men, together with James Madison, later became Presidents and could at times be seen here together. After a patriotic sermon by Rev. Charles Clay on a public Fast Day in 1774, the freeholders of Albemarle County met here and resolved to petition the Virginia House of Burgesses for a boycott of trade with England and for a meeting of a Continental Congress. When the British attacked Richmond in the summer of 1781, the Virginia General Assembly made Charlottesville its temporary emergency capital and met here for deliberations, including Patrick Henry, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Richard Henry Lee, John Tyler, and Daniel Boone. The courthouse also served as a place of worship, and Jefferson helped organize an independent congregation led by Rev. Clay beginning in 1777 called the Calvinistical Reformed Church. A member of this church, Col John Harvie, introduced Jefferson’s Bill for Religious Freedom to the Virginia legislature that same year. Many years later Jefferson called the courthouse the “common temple” and spoke proudly of its Sunday use by four Protestant denominations in turn. The square was enclosed with a railing in 1792, and a second building of brick was built in place of the wooden structure in 1803; it now forms the north wing. It faced a public square with taverns and shops on today’s Park Street, where a whipping post, stocks, pillory, and stone jail stood in what was also the town’s commercial center. The south wing was built in 1860 in the Gothic Revival style and was modified to its current appearance in the 1930s during an extensive renovation that restored Colonial features of the original building and remodeled the portico in the Colonial Revival style.

Charlottesville, Virginia · United States