Olde Towne Portsmouth

Olde Towne Portsmouth. Southern Architectural Splendor. The one square block his­toric dis­trict before you is Portsmouth’s Olde Towne. The dis­trict dates to 1752 when Portsmouth was founded by William Craw­ford. Olde Towne con­tains one of the largest col­lec­tions of historic build­ings in Vir­ginia fea­tur­ing Colo­nial, Federal, Greek Revival, Geor­gian, and Vic­to­rian architec­tural styles., Olde Towne is the cen­ter­piece of Portsmouth’s Civil War his­tory. Sev­eral of the buildings found through­out the dis­trict played an impor­tant role in events that unfolded in Portsmouth dur­ing the war., The 1846 Cour­t­house was once the site of gov­ern­ment in old Nor­folk County. Before the Civil War, slaves were sold at the front of the build­ing, and it was here that a vote was taken approv­ing secession., On April 19, 1861, the day before the Fed­eral evacuation of Gosport Navy Yard, mem­bers of Portsmouth’s mili­tia com­pa­nies slept with their weapons in the cour­t­house. The build­ing was used as a hos­pi­tal by Union troops from 1862 until 1865., The Macon House Hotel knew both gai­ety and despair during the war. From its Mid­dle Street porch the Virginia Defend­ers, a local vol­un­teer infantry company, accepted a flag from the ladies of Portsmouth. After the Con­fed­er­ates evac­u­ated Portsmouth in 1862, the Fed­er­als used the Macon House as a troop quar­ters and hos­pi­tal. The names of Fed­eral sol­diers carved into the hotel’s floor are still visible., Two houses, Pass House and the William H. Peters House, played a major role in the Union occu­pa­tion of Portsmouth. The William H. Peters House served as headquar­ters for Major Gen­eral Ben­jamin Franklin But­ler while he com­manded the Union forces in Portsmouth. Local leg­end claims that But­ler earned his nick­name of “Spoons” while in Portsmouth because of the sud­den disap­pear­ance of fam­ily sil­ver­ware when homes were occu­pied by his troops. The James Mur­dough Home, known as the Pass House, took on an omi­nous air when it became the head­quar­ters of the Union Adju­tant Gen­eral. In order to leave the city, cit­i­zens first had to report here and secure a pass., These his­toric build­ings and the many oth­ers that line Olde Towne’s streets pro­vide a glimpse into what a South­ern city looked like dur­ing the Civil War.