Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, also known as the William T. Sutherlin Mansion and the Confederate Memorial, is a historic home and

museum A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

building located at

Danville, Virginia Danville is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States, located in the Southside Virginia region and on the fall line of the Dan River. It was a center of tobacco production and was an area of Confederate activity ...

. It was built for Major

William T. Sutherlin William Thomas Sutherlin (April 7, 1822 – July 22, 1893) was a tobacco planter, distributor, industrialist, Confederate quartermaster and politician. He served as mayor of Danville, Virginia (1855-1861), as its delegate to the Virginia Se ...

in 1857–1858, and is a two-story, five-bay,

stucco Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and a ...

ed building in the

Italian Villa A Roman villa was typically a farmhouse or country house built in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, sometimes reaching extravagant proportions. Typology and distribution Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) distinguished two kinds of villas ...

style. It features a one-story wooden porch, a shallow hipped roof surrounded by a heavy bracketed

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

and topped by a square

cupola In architecture, a cupola () is a relatively small, most often dome-like, tall structure on top of a building. Often used to provide a lookout or to admit light and air, it usually crowns a larger roof or dome. The word derives, via Italian, from ...

ornamented with pilasters and a bracketed cornice. While at the house, which served as his temporary residence from April 3 to April 10, 1865, on April 4, President

Jefferson Davis Jefferson F. Davis (June 3, 1808December 6, 1889) was an American politician who served as the president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865. He represented Mississippi in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives as a ...

signed his last official proclamation as

President of the Confederate States of America The president of the Confederate States was the head of state and head of government of the Confederate States. The president was the chief executive of the federal government and was the commander-in-chief of the Confederate Army and the Confe ...

. On April 10, Davis was at dinner at the house when he learned of the surrender at Appomattox. an
''Accompanying photo''
/ref> The building was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1969. It is located in the Danville Historic District. The house is owned by the city and was used as the Danville Public Library from 1928 to 1972.

This mansion, after being sold to the city, became a “whites only” public library from 1928 to 1972. In the summer of 1960, Black students would decide that they wanted the library to be integrated, and staged a sit-in. To resist desegregation efforts, the library would be shut down, and would not open again until the fall of 1960. While the library now had to allow Black people into the library, it did not have to provide comfortable accommodations; and the library re-opened without chairs.

Museum

Established in 1974, the museum focuses on art, history, and culture in the

Dan River The Dan River flows in the U.S. states of North Carolina and Virginia. It rises in Patrick County, Virginia, and crosses the state border into Stokes County, North Carolina. It then flows into Rockingham County. From there it flows back int ...

region. Exhibits include the historic home itself with period furnishings, five art galleries, and a permanent Civil War exhibit.

References

External links

Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Italianate architecture in Virginia Houses completed in 1858 Houses in Danville, Virginia Tourist attractions in Danville, Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Danville, Virginia Historic district contributing properties in Virginia Historic house museums in Virginia

Art museums and galleries in Virginia Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Common ...

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