Nomination Form
Lee Hall is a stately Italianate plantation house built in what is now the northern part of the city of Newport News ca. 1850 for Richard Decatur Lee. The house is said to have been financed by a bumper crop of tobacco. Lee was placed in charge of the area’s civil defense at the start of the Civil War. The mansion was used as the headquarters of Maj. Gen. John Bankhead Magruder, CSA, during the Warwick-Yorktown phase of the Peninsula Campaign of April-May 1862. An earthen fort in the yard, used to launch a Confederate hot air balloon on April 17, 1862, is a relic of the military occupation. Lee’s support of the Confederate cause brought him financial ruin and the forced sale of the plantation in 1866. The surrounding Lee Hall village, started in the 1880s at the nearby rail crossing (see Lee Hall Depot), took its name from the house. Lee Hall and the fort have been developed as a museum by the city of Newport News.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia
