What to See in Newport News - Top Sights and Attractions

Building in Newport News, Virginia. Lee Hall or Lee Hall Mansion is a historic brick plantation house that was built during the period from 1848 to 1859. The community of Lee Hall, Virginia is named for it. The house and village are located near the junction of U.S. 60 and VA 238, in Newport News, Virginia.

The current 12.29-acre (4.97 ha) property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The listed property includes two contributing buildings: The Main House (open to the public) and the former Kitchen (closed to public, used as staff offices).

The house as well as the nearby community of Lee Hall were named for Richard Decatur Lee the original owner and builder of Lee Hall Mansion. Lee was a prominent local planter. Despite having the same last name as Virginia native and Confederate general Robert E. Lee, a direct lineage to General Lee cannot be traced. Lee Hall Mansion was used as headquarters for Confederate generals Joseph E. Johnston and John B. Magruder during the Peninsula Campaign of the American Civil War in 1862. Nearby is Endview Plantation, a 238-year-old house. Endview was used as a hospital during the Civil War and as a campground during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 and the Civil War.^[5]

Lift bridge in Newport News, Virginia. The James River Bridge is a four-lane divided highway lift bridge across the James River in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Owned and operated by the Virginia Department of Transportation, it carries U.S. Route 17, US 258, and State Route 32 across the river near its mouth at Hampton Roads. The bridge connects Newport News on the Virginia Peninsula with Isle of Wight County in the South Hampton Roads region, and is the easternmost such crossing without a tunnel component.

When completed in 1928, the 4.5-mile (7 km) bridge was the longest bridge in the world over water. The original two-lane bridge was replaced from 1975 to 1982 with a wider four-lane bridge that could handle increased traffic volumes. In 2005, the bridge carried an annual average daily traffic of about 30,000 vehicles per day.^[8]

Reservoir in Virginia. The Mariners' Lake is a reservoir which was created as part of the natural park on the grounds of the Mariners' Museum and Park located in the independent city of Newport News in the Hampton Roads region of southeastern Virginia.

The museum was founded in 1932 by Archer Milton Huntington, son of Collis P. Huntington, a railroad builder who brought the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway to Warwick County, Virginia, and who founded the City of Newport News, its coal export facilities, and Newport News Shipbuilding in the late 19th century.

Archer and his wife, the sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington, acquired 800 acres (3.2 km²) of land that would come to hold 61,000 square feet (5,700 m²) of exhibition galleries, a research library, a 167-acre (676,000 m²) lake, a five-mile (8 km) shoreline trail with fourteen bridges, and over 35,000 maritime artifacts from around the globe. After acquisition took place, the first two years were devoted to creating and improving a natural park and constructing a dam to create a lake that the Board of Trustees named "Lake Maury", after the nineteenth-century Virginian Commodore Matthew Fontaine Maury, who was nicknamed the "Father of Modern Oceanography".

The Museum's collection is of an international scope and includes 35,000 artifacts. There are 10 permanent galleries, changing and traveling exhibits, and virtual galleries available through the museum website. The Mariners' Museum is home to the U.S.S. Monitor Center, which officially opened on March 9, 2007, and includes display of a full-scale replica of the ironclad warship Monitor, the original recovered turret, and many artifacts and related items. The famous Union ironclad USS Monitor fought the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia in the Battle of Hampton Roads in March 1862 during the American Civil War.

On June 19, 2020, during the George Floyd protests, as references to Confederate figures were being removed from names, The Mariners' Museum's Board of Trustees voted to rename the lake from "Lake Maury" to "The Mariners' Lake".^[12]

Catholic church in Newport News, Virginia. St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church is a historic Catholic church complex in Newport News, Virginia, United States. It was built 1916–1917 and is a 1+1⁄2-story, brick, Classical Revival style longitudinal-plan church. It was designed by the Carl Ruehrmurd of Richmond, Virginia. The front facade features a pedimented portico with four fluted Corinthian order columns. Associated with the church are the contributing rectory, garage, and prayer garden. The parish was established as a mission of the St. Mary Star of the Sea Church at Old Point Comfort in 1881. St. Alphonsus, an African American parish established in 1944, was merged with St. Vincent de Paul in 1970. This made it the first historic church in downtown Newport News to be racially integrated.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.^[16]

Warwick County Courthouses, also known as the Warwick County Courthouse and Clerk's Office, is a historic courthouse and clerk's office located at Newport News, Virginia. The original courthouse was built in 1810, and is a one-story, three-room, T-shaped plan Federal-style brick building. It has a slate-covered gable roof and exterior end chimneys. The building was later enlarged by a side and rear addition. The later courthouse was built in 1884, and is a two-story, Italianate style brick building. It has a rectangular plan and a shallow metal-covered hipped roof with three shallow cross gables. It features a square wood bell cupola that rises above the central projecting bay. Also on the property is a contributing Confederate monument dedicated in 1909. The buildings housed county offices until 1958, when Warwick County, Virginia was annexed by Newport News.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988.^[18]