The Culpeper Municipal Electric Plant and Waterworks, located on the west end of Spring Street southwest of Culpeper’s downtown, is significant at the statewide level as Virginia’s first municipal electric facility funded with federal Public Works Administration financing. The facility is also significant for its association with important trends in municipal electric generation and distribution, as well as drinking water treatment, across rural Virginia during the early- to mid-twentieth-century. The complex, designed by Wiley & Wilson, a prominent architectural and engineering firm based in Lynchburg, is also locally significant as an excellent example of an early- to mid-twentieth-century Moderne-style industrial plant with Art Deco influences. The assemblage retains high levels of architectural and historic integrity from its period of significance, which ranges from the construction of the Electric Plant in 1933 to the completion of the final addition to the Waterworks building in 1966.
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