The Downtown Mall in

Charlottesville, Virginia Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city (United States), independent city in Virginia, United States. It is the county seat, seat of government of Albemarle County, Virginia, Albemarle County, which surrounds the ...

is one of the longest

pedestrian mall Pedestrian zones (also known as auto-free zones and car-free zones, as pedestrian precincts in British English, and as pedestrian malls in the United States and Australia) are areas of a city or town restricted to use by people on foot or ...

s in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

. Located on Main Street, it runs from 6th St. N.E. to Old Preston Ave., where it extends to Water St., for total length of eight blocks. It is laid with brick and concrete, and home to an array of

restaurants A restaurant is an establishment that prepares and serves food and drinks to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in app ...

, shops,

offices An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform administrative work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific dut ...

and

art galleries An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

. On Fridays in the spring, summer and fall, the Downtown Mall is host t
Fridays After Five
a weekly concert series. Several side streets are also paved in brick and likewise closed to traffic. On the east, the Mall ends at th
Ting Pavilion
an outdoor concert venue, while the west end of the Mall features an

Omni Hotel Omni Hotels & Resorts is an American privately held, international hotel company based in Dallas, Texas. The company was founded in 1958 as Dunfey Hotels, and operates 51 properties in the United States and Canada, totaling over 20,010 rooms and ...

. It is also home to the newly renovated Paramount Theater and the historic Jefferson Theater.

History

In 1976, East Main Street was converted into a pedestrian mall designed by landscape architect

Lawrence Halprin Lawrence Halprin (July 1, 1916 – October 25, 2009) was an American landscape architect, designer, and teacher. Beginning his career in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, in 1949, Halprin often collaborated with a local circle of modernist ...

. In 2007, Charlottesville planned a comprehensive rehabilitation and renovation of the Downtown Mall. Construction on the Mall Renovation began on Sunday, January 7, 2009 and was completed that summer. The 2017

Charlottesville car attack The Charlottesville car attack was a white supremacist terrorist attack perpetrated on August 12, 2017, when James Alex Fields Jr. deliberately drove his car into a crowd of people peacefully protesting the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesv ...

, in which a car was deliberately rammed into a crowd during a peaceful protest occurred on Market Street, only one block away from the Downtown Mall. Portions of the Mall and adjacent streets were listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

as the Charlottesville Downtown Mall Historic District in 2024.

Features

Daedalus Books (Virginia) Daedalus Books is a used bookstore based in the Downtown Mall of Charlottesville, Virginia. It was established in 1975. It contains more than 100,000 books and is a quirky institution in the city. A reviewer for ''The Washington Post'' describe ...

Jefferson Theater (Virginia) The Jefferson Theater, a former movie palace, is a performing arts venue located at 110 East Main Street in Charlottesville, Virginia, and is the centerpiece of the Historic Downtown Mall. Built in 1912, this combination vaudeville house/cinema ...

Paramount Theater (Charlottesville, Virginia) The Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, was designed by Rapp and Rapp and opened in 1931 as a movie theater. The Paramount continued showing movies until it closed in 1974. In 1990, a group of community members purcha ...

History

Features

References

Further reading