The Patrick Henry Building is a historic building located in

Richmond, Virginia Richmond ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), U.S. commonwealth of Virginia. Incorporated in 1742, Richmond has been an independent city (United States), independent city since 1871. ...

. Formerly designated simply as the Old State Library or the Virginia State Library and Archives and Virginia Supreme Court, it was renovated, then rededicated and renamed for the

Founding Father The following is a list of national founders of sovereign states who were credited with establishing a state. National founders are typically those who played an influential role in setting up the systems of governance, (i.e., political system ...

and former Virginia Governor

Patrick Henry Patrick Henry (May 29, 1736 ld Style and New Style dates, O.S. May 18, 1736une 6, 1799) was an American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Virginia Conventions, Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty or give m ...

on June 13, 2005.

Description

The limestone-sheathed steel-core building was built in a modernist style for government buildings sometimes called

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

Stripped Classicism Stripped Classicism (also referred to as Starved Classicism or Grecian Moderne) Jstor is primarily a 20th-century classicist architectural style stripped of most or all ornamentation, frequently employed by governments while designing officia ...

. Three teams of architects designed the building: Baskerville & Son; Carneal, Johnston and Wright; and consulting architects Githens & Keally. The minimal exterior ornamentation was intended to direct attention to the nearby

Virginia State Capitol The Virginia State Capitol is the seat of state government of the Commonwealth of Virginia, located in Richmond, the state capital. It houses the oldest elected legislative body in North America, the Virginia General Assembly, first established a ...

.Alfred Morten Githens and

Francis Keally Francis J. Keally (December 3, 1889 – 1978) was an American architect and pioneering preservationist, based in New York City. Keally's design credits include the Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Oregon in 1938, in a one-time association with Tr ...

, "An Example in Library Design" Commonwealth (October, 1941) Vol. VIII No. 10, p.7 The two main entrances refer to its original two functions, as do the quotations from famous Virginians inscribed on the four sides (all-caps removed; periods for original colons): *The judicial department comes home in its effects to every mans fireside. It passes on his property his reputation his life his all.

John Marshall John Marshall (September 24, 1755July 6, 1835) was an American statesman, jurist, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth chief justice of the United States from 1801 until his death in 1835. He remai ...

(north elevation) *Liberty and learning: both best supported when leaning on each other.

James Madison James Madison (June 28, 1836) was an American statesman, diplomat, and Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who served as the fourth president of the United States from 1809 to 1817. Madison was popularly acclaimed as the ...

(east elevation) *Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error. They are the natural enemies of error and of error only.

Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson (, 1743July 4, 1826) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was the primary author of the United States Declaration of Indepe ...

(south elevation) *A knowledge of books is the basis upon which other knowledge is to be built.

George Washington George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...

(west elevation) The extensive 2003-2005 renovation retained the original entrances and many inside Art Deco details (such as wood paneling, marble features and copper light fixtures), but modernized the plumbing, HVAC and electrical systems (removing hazardous materials). It also replaced the library stacks which had served as supportive core for the steel-frame building with modern core amenities. Some elements of the building's expansion in 1970 were also removed.

History

Constructed by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; from 1935 to 1939, then known as the Work Projects Administration from 1939 to 1943) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to car ...

during the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

, the building served as the home of the

Supreme Court of Virginia The Supreme Court of Virginia is the highest court in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It primarily hears direct appeals in civil cases from the trial-level city and county circuit courts, as well as the criminal law, family law and administrativ ...

(formerly known as the Supreme Court of Appeals per the inscription above the Broad Street entrance) until it moved to the renovated former Federal Reserve Building in 1978. The entrance facing the capitol refers to the Virginia State Library, now known as the

Library of Virginia The Library of Virginia in Richmond, Virginia, is the library agency of the Commonwealth of Virginia. It serves as the archival agency and the reference library for Virginia's seat of government. The Library is located at 800 East Broad Street, tw ...

, which moved to a new building at Ninth and Broad Streets (as well as an offsite storage annex) in 1996. The Supreme Court and Library had moved from the Virginia State Library-Oliver Hill Building in 1939. This building's former reading rooms also temporarily housed

Virginia General Assembly The Virginia General Assembly is the legislative body of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the oldest continuous law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, and the first elected legislative assembly in the New World. It was established on July 30, ...

sessions in 2006 and 2007, during renovations to the capitol. The building was added to 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 ...

in 2005, under its former name. , the building housed the Governor's office as well as other government offices.

Historical marker

In 2017, the

Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States between the East Coast of the United States ...

dedicated a state

historical marker A commemorative plaque, or simply plaque, or in other places referred to as a historical marker, historic marker, or historic plaque, is a plate of metal, ceramic, stone, wood, or other material, bearing text or an image in relief, or both, ...

outside the building. It tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving, the plaintiffs in the 1967 Supreme Court case ''

Loving v. Virginia ''Loving v. Virginia'', 388 U.S. 1 (1967), was a landmark civil rights decision of the U.S. Supreme Court that ruled that the laws banning interracial marriage violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to ...

'' which overturned Virginia's law against

interracial marriage Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different "Race (classification of human beings), races" or Ethnic group#Ethnicity and race, racialized ethnicities. In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United Sta ...

. The building was chosen as the site of the marker because it housed the Supreme Court of Appeals, where the Lovings' case was heard. The marker reads: :"''Loving v. Virginia'' :Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter, defined under Virginia's

1924 Racial Integrity Act In 1924, the Virginia General Assembly enacted the Racial Integrity Act. The act reinforced racial segregation by prohibiting interracial marriage and Definitions of whiteness in the United States, classifying as "White Americans, white" a pers ...

as an interracial couple, married in June 1958 in Washington, D.C., and returned home to Caroline County. Arrested in July for violating Virginia's laws against interracial marriage, the Lovings were convicted and sentenced to one year in jail, suspended on the condition that they leave Virginia. In 1963 they obtained help from the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit civil rights organization founded in 1920. ACLU affiliates are active in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The budget of the ACLU in 2024 was $383 million. T ...

, which unsuccessfully sought to reverse their convictions in the state courts of Virginia and then appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which, in the case Loving v. Virginia (1967), overturned all state laws restricting marriage on the basis of race."

References

{{National Register of Historic Places Buildings and structures in Richmond, Virginia Government buildings in Virginia Government buildings completed in 1941 Government buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia Libraries on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Richmond, Virginia 1940s architecture in the United States Neoclassical architecture in Virginia PWA Moderne architecture Stripped Classical architecture in the United States Library buildings completed in 1941 1941 establishments in Virginia