Roanoke Downtown Historic District (Roanoke, Virginia)

Roanoke ( ROH-ə-nohk) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is located in Southwest Virginia along the Roanoke River, in the Blue Ridge range of the greater Appalachian Mountains. Roanoke is approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of the Virginia–North Carolina border and 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Washington, D.C., along Interstate 81. At the 2020 census, Roanoke's population was 100,011, making it the largest city in Virginia west of the state capital Richmond. It is the primary population center of the Roanoke metropolitan area, which had a population of 315,251 in 2020. The Roanoke Valley was originally home to members of the Siouan-speaking Tutelo tribe. However, in the 17th and early-to-mid 18th centuries, Scotch-Irish and later German American farmers gradually drove those Native Americans out of the area as the American frontier pressed westward. In 1882, the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) chose the small town of Big Lick as the site of its corporate headquarters and railroad shops. Within two years, the town had become the City of Roanoke. With a 2,300% population growth rate in the decade from 1880 to 1890, the young city experienced the advantages and disadvantages of its boomtown status. During the 20th century, Roanoke's boundaries expanded through multiple annexations from the surrounding Roanoke County, and it became Southwest Virginia's economic and cultural hub. The 1982 decision by N&W to relocate their headquarters out of the city, combined with other manufacturing closures, led Roanoke to pivot to a primarily service economy. In the 21st century, a robust healthcare industry and the development and increased marketing of its outdoor amenities have helped reverse prior declining population trends. Roanoke is known for the Roanoke Star, an 88.5-foot-tall (27.0 m) illuminated star that sits atop a mountain within the city's limits and is the origin of its nickname, "The Star City of the South". Other points of interest include the Hotel Roanoke, a 330-room Tudor Revival structure built by N&W in 1882, the Taubman Museum of Art, designed by architect Randall Stout, and the city's farmer's market, the oldest continuously operating open-air market in the state. The Roanoke Valley features 26 miles of greenways with bicycle and pedestrian trails, and the city's location in the Blue Ridge Mountains provides access to numerous outdoor recreation opportunities.

Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital (CRMH) is a private teaching hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, USA. With 703 beds, Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital is one of the largest hospitals in the state. It is part of Carilion Clinic.The region's only level I trauma center, the hospital operates three medical helicopters (LifeGuard 10, 11, and 12) to provide air ambulance transport, including one in Moneta, one in Christiansburg, and one in Lexington.

Campbell Avenue Complex, also known as the Trinkle Buildings, is a historic commercial block and national historic district located at Roanoke, Virginia. It encompasses five contributing buildings constructed between 1892 and 1909. The contiguous three-story buildings are constructed of brick over stone foundations. The buildings have a horizontal arrangement of windows above first-floor storefronts and include buildings representative of the Beaux Arts and Tudor Revival styles.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.

Roanoke High School was the first public high school in Roanoke, Virginia. Located at 211-217 Church Ave. S.W., it opened on February 6, 1899. It closed in 1924, replaced by Jefferson High School, and became a school administration building. It was demolished in February 1968 and is now the site of the Noel C. Taylor Municipal Building.

A statue of Henrietta Lacks was installed in Roanoke, Virginia, in 2024. The artwork was designed by Bryce Cobbs and completed by Lawrence Bechtel.

The Robert E. Lee Memorial was a monument commemorating Robert E. Lee, formerly installed in Roanoke, Virginia's Lee Plaza. The stone memorial was approximately 10 feet (3.0 m) tall, and was erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the fall of 1960, just as the first two black students were enrolled in the all-white school system. The monument's erection coincided with the run up to the centennial of the Civil War in 1961. In June 2020, the Roanoke City Council voted to start the legal process to remove the monument and rename Lee Plaza after the July 1, 2020 date when a new state law did away with the prohibition against removing monuments to the Confederate States of America. On just before midnight July 22, 2020, the monument was found to be torn down and broken into two pieces. A 70-year-old man named William Foreman, who was caught vandalizing the monument the night before it was torn down, was arrested on July 24, 2020, and eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. Lee Plaza was renamed Lacks Plaza after Henrietta Lacks, an African-American woman whose cells are the source of the first immortalized human cell line, and who was born in Roanoke. A statue of Lacks was unveiled in the plaza on October 4, 2023. Evergreen Burial Park submitted a proposal to the Roanoke City Council, to relocate the monument to the burial park that was accepted by the council. The proposed location for the re-erecting the statue is at the east end of the park adjacent to the flagpole dedicated to the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster.

Roanoke Warehouse Historic District, also known as 'Wholesale Row," is a national historic district located at Roanoke, Virginia. It encompasses five contributing buildings constructed between 1889 and 1902. All the buildings are constructed of brick, two-to-four stories in height and three-to-eleven bays in length. Two of the buildings have exceptional corbeled stepped gables in a Dutch-vernacular tradition. The buildings were erected for wholesale food storage.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.

First National Bank, also known as People's Federal Building and Liberty Trust Co., is a historic bank and office building located at Roanoke, Virginia. It was built in 1910, and is a seven-story, granite and buff-colored brick building in the French Renaissance style. It features a Roman Ionic columned main entrance and Doric columns in the main banking hall derived from the Temple of Apollo at Delos.The first director of the bank was Tazewell M. Starkey (1829-1901). In 1926 the bank merged with the National Exchange Bank, and took that name. "When the community opened up, there were a lot of members of the Jewish community who have served on various organizations. For instance, Arthur Taubman was on the board of the First National Exchange Bank, on the board of trustees. When that became Dominion Bank, his son, Nicholas F. Taubman, served on that board of trustees, too."It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Norfolk and Western Railway Company Historic District is a national historic district located in Roanoke, Virginia. It encompasses three contributing buildings constructed by the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W). They are the Neoclassical Revival style General Office Building–South (1896, 1903); the Art Deco period General Office Building–North (1931); and the Moderne style Passenger Station (1905, 1949).

Roanoke station is a train station in Roanoke, Virginia, the current southern terminus of Amtrak's Northeast Regional line. Built in 2017, it follows several other Roanoke passenger stations that operated from the 1850s to 1979. The unstaffed station consists of a single high-level platform with no station building or waiting room available for passengers. All tickets must be purchased in advance; there is no Quik-Trak kiosk at the station.

The Boxley Building is a historic commercial building located in Roanoke, Virginia. It was built in 1922, during a wave of post-World War I construction in the city. The building is eight stories, and follows a pattern set by other skyscrapers of the time in consisting of three sections similar to a classical column. The bottom section, or pedestal, is one story fronted with granite; the middle section, or shaft, consists of the next six stories built with beige enameled brick; the top section, or capital, is the eighth story fronted with richly decorated terra cotta panels topped with a finely detailed copper cornice.The building was commissioned by William Wise Boxley, a local builder and developer who was Roanoke's mayor at the time of construction. Boxley was an influential figure in the city, having played a significant role in the founding of the Shenandoah Life Insurance Company and Colonial American Bank as well as sitting on the boards of both Roanoke College and Virginia Military Institute. Boxley was elected to the Roanoke City Council in 1918, and the following year was appointed the city's first mayor under its new council-manager form of government.: 552  The building's architect was Edward G. Frye, whose firm had previously erected the Roanoke Times building, the city's municipal building, and would complete Roanoke's new market building in the same year as the Boxley.: 500, 504, 586 Boxley's building materials company was one of the original tenants of the building, and remained headquartered there until vacating in 2005. The building was empty from the late-2000s until being purchased by a local developer in 2016. The building's offices were converted into residential space, with the bottom four floors used as dormitory housing for international students of two Roanoke-area parochial schools, and the top four floors converted into luxury apartments.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984, and it is a contributing structure to the Roanoke Downtown Historic District.

The Patrick Henry Hotel is a Colonial Revival former hotel listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register in Downtown Roanoke, Virginia, United States. Located at 617 South Jefferson Street at the southern end of Downtown, the Patrick Henry was designed by William Lee Stoddart and opened in 1925. The building now serves as apartments, office space, and a restaurant in the former lobby rebranded simply The Patrick Henry. It is located in the Roanoke Downtown Historic District.