Of Virginia’s courthouses influenced by the architecture of Thomas Jefferson, none has a more elegant formality than Mecklenburg County’s courthouse of 1838-42 in the town of Boydton. It is the only temple-form building of the group employing a Roman Ionic order and having a hexastyle portico. With its brick walls now painted white, the building has a striking resemblance to Jefferson’s Virginia State Capitol, both using similar Ionic capitals. The courthouse was built by the area master builder William A. Howard, who also built the Cumberland courthouse and helped build the Lunenburg courthouse. Boydton was established as the county seat in 1811. The county outgrew its first structure and in 1838 voted to erect the present Mecklenburg County Courthouse building.
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