Nomination Form
Buena Vista Colored School stands today as a little-altered brick building for the segregated education of African American students. One room was constructed in 1914 on land owned by First Baptist Church (African American), and an almost identical room was added in 1926. The building housed grades one through seven until 1957, when a more modern facility was erected closer to the center of Buena Vista’s African American community. The 1914 portion of the school replaced an earlier frame building. The 1926 schoolroom was added after black residents formed an Improvement League in 1924. That organization petitioned the Buena Vista School Board “for the benefit and improvement of the colored school.” Secondary education for Buena Vista’s black community was not available until desegregation began in 1965.
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
