DGS-Owned Historic Properties

Virginia Capitol

Capitol Square

1000 Bank Street

Richmond, VA 23219

The Virginia Capitol Building is both a Virginia and a National Historic Landmark. The original building was designed in 1785 by Thomas Jefferson with help from Charles Louis Clerisseau and occupied by the Virginia General Assembly in 1788 and members of the Virginia executive and judicial branches in 1789. The facility was most recently renovated and expanded in 2007. The U.S. National Park Service revised its National Historic Landmark designation in 2017 to the “Virginia State Capitol” from its previous designation as “Capitol of the Confederacy.”

Executive Mansion

Capitol Square

1111 East Broad Street

Richmond, VA 23219

The Virginia Governor’s Executive Mansion is both a Virginia and a National Historic Landmark and is the country’s oldest purpose-built executive mansion still in use today. Alexander Parris, a New England builder and architect, who resided in Richmond for three years, designed the Governor’s Mansion between 1811 and 1813. It replaced an earlier house adjacent to the present mansion that Governor Thomas Jefferson leased. The Governor’s Mansion underwent expansion in 1906 and 1914. The mansion has had a number of successive renovations and expansions during the 20th century to include an extensive renovation in 1999–2000 and a 2016 addition of an accessibility ramp connecting to the south side of the first floor of the home. For more information, please visit:

Executive Mansion website

Old City Hall

1001 E Broad St.

Richmond, VA 23219

Old City Hall has the coveted designation as a National Historic Landmark and is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register. It is one of the nation's foremost examples of the High Victorian Gothic style and is built of Richmond granite quarried in Petersburg. Given up by the city for a new city hall in the 1970s, the building was sold to the state in 1981 and is slated for a significant exterior and interior restoration and rehabilitation.

Barbara Johns Building

200 North 9th Street

Richmond, VA 23219

The Barbara Johns Building, formerly known as the Ninth Street Office Building, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register. The building was originally constructed as the Hotel Richmond in 1904 with additional construction in 1911. It was purchased by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1966 and reopened after an extensive renovation in 2016. It houses the Office of the Attorney General.

Patrick Henry Building

1111 E. Broad St.

Richmond, VA 23219

The Patrick Henry building islisted on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register. It was built in 1939 as a Public Works Administration project and originally designed for the State Library and Supreme Court of Virginia. It is the first building to be renovated in Virginia’s Capitol Square as part of the Capitol Square Preservation Act of 2003. With renovation completed in April 2005, it has eight floors providing much needed state office space. The Patrick Henry Building served as the temporary location for the Virginia General Assembly in 2006, while the interior of the Capitol was renovated. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, under its former name Old State Library.

Oliver Hill Building

102 Governor Street

Richmond, VA 23219

The Oliver Hill Office Building islisted on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register. Originally built in 1894, it was expanded in 1910, remodeled in 1929, and renovated and expanded most recently in 2004. The Oliver Hill Office Building is the first building in Virginia’s Capitol Square to be named for a prominent African American and the first state-owned building renovated and restored through the Public-Private Education and Infrastructure Act of 2002. Originally called the Virginia State Library and built to house the Library collections, the Virginia Supreme Court, and the Office of the Attorney General, these functions relocated in 1939 and the building was renamed the State Finance Building. The building was officially renamed the Oliver Hill Building in 2005 and houses the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, as well as the Parking Services Division of the Department of General Services.

Washington Building

1100 Bank Street

Richmond, VA 23219

The Washington Building islisted on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register and was built in 1924 as the first high-rise building constructed solely for state government use. The building, designed by the Richmond architectural firm Carneal and Johnston, underwent a comprehensive renovation in the mid-2000s.

Bell Tower

Located in the southwest corner of Capitol Square near the intersection of Franklin and 9^th Streets

Richmond, VA 23219

The Bell Tower is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register and was designed by builder Levi Swan and erected in 1824 to serve as a guardhouse and a signal tower for emergencies such as fires. The building now houses state entities.

Reid's Row

219-223 Governor Street

Richmond, VA 23219

All three units of Reid's Row (formerly Morson's Row) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register and were built in 1853, with units 219 and 221 acquired by the Commonwealth in 1972, and unit 223 acquired by the Commonwealth in 1981. This row of bow front town houses is the only remaining evidence of the residential neighborhood that once surrounded Capitol Square.

James Monroe's Tomb

Hollywood Cemetery

412 S. Cherry Street

Richmond, VA

James Monroe’s Tomb is both a Virginia and a National Historic Landmark. This Gothic Revival structure serves as the centerpiece of Hollywood Cemetery’s President’s Circle. The James Monroe Tomb dates to 1859, a year after the former Virginia governor’s remains were relocated from New York. A native Virginian who died in 1831 at the home of one of his daughters, Monroe was returned to his home state to mark what would have been his 100th birthday. In 2017, DGS finished a major renovation and restoration project that included returning the structure, known as the "Birdcage," to its original color following decades of repairs and black paint.

Washington Equestrian Monument

Located in the northwest corner of Capitol Square near the intersection of 9th and Grace Streets

Richmond, VA 23219

The George Washington Equestrian Monument is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register. The Monument, design started by sculptor Thomas Crawford and completed by Randolph Rogers, depicts George Washington facing south in full military dress and flanked by pedestals of six Virginia patriots and their affiliated allegorical virtue and location of significant. The statue was first unveiled to the public in 1858, completed in 1869, and is the first George Washington equestrian statue in the U.S. A significant renovation to ensure the integrity of the Monument was completed in 2016.

Virginia War Memorial Carillon

Byrd Park

1300 Blanton Avenue
Richmond, VA 23220

The Virginia War Memorial Carillon islisted on the National Register of Historic Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register and was built in 1932 to serve as a lasting memorial to the heroic efforts of Virginia's World War I servicemen and servicewomen. The Carillon is both a tower and a large scale musical instrument, one of a class of instruments which are the largest on earth. The bells are played by a baton keyboard, worked by a person using feet and fists to propel the striking mechanism to sound off the individual one-note bells.