In one of Petersburg’s four original wards, the Centre Hill Historic District is an architecturally distinctive enclave of residential buildings surrounded on all sides by commercial, industrial, and municipal development. The district takes its name from the 1823 mansion of Robert Bolling, a noted Petersburg landmark. Centre Hill‘s grounds were sold by Charles Hall Davis in 1910 to the Centre Hill Development Corporation. The setting of the stately Bolling residence was thus radically changed. Between 1914 and 1923, the estate’s front lawn was transformed into a tightly-knit residential development, called Centre Hill Court, a visually lively collection of primarily bungalow-style houses. The houses contrast architecturally with the great Federal mansion and reflect the early-20th-century interest in creating small planned neighborhoods. The district also includes a collection of earlier dwellings east of Centre Hill Court.
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