What to See in Roanoke - Top Sights and Attractions

Museum in Roanoke, Virginia. The O. Winston Link Museum is a museum dedicated to the photography of O. Winston Link, the twentieth century railroad photographer widely considered the master of the juxtaposition between steam railroading and rural culture. He is most noted for his 1950's photographs of steam locomotives taken at night, lit by numerous flashbulbs. He carefully planned the lighting and the staging of these photos, placing human subjects in many.

In downtown Roanoke, Virginia, the museum is in a restored Norfolk & Western Railway passenger train station. It opened in January 2004. The building is included in the Norfolk and Western Railway Company Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

It currently displays hundreds of photographic prints and has several interactive displays including audio that provide information on Link's photographic subjects. Also displayed are some of the equipment that Link employed to create his night time photographs.^[4]

Church in Roanoke, Virginia. St. Andrew's Catholic Church is a historic Roman Catholic church and rectory in Roanoke, Virginia, United States. It was built in 1900-1902, and is a buff brick church on a stone foundation in the High Victorian Gothic style. It has a cruciform plan and features two tall Gothic towers which flank the main entrance and are square in plan. On each tower are two small lancet windows, two large pointed-arch stained-glass tracery windows, and sets of double pointed-arch openings at the belfry. Also on the property is a rectory built in 1887. The church replaced an earlier small brick church built in 1883.

The building cost $60,000 to construct, with another $40,000 budgeted for interior appointments and trim. "The buff brick edifice with stone trimming, designed by W. P. Genter of Akron, Ohio, would become a Roanoke landmark."

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.

The church has had two major renovations since its completion. The first renovations took place after the Second Vatican Council authorized certain liturgical alterations. A freestanding altar was installed so that Mass could be celebrated versus populum, the priest facing the people. The ornate high altar was left in place and intact.

Later, the original freestanding altar was replaced with a more ornate, marble one that remains in use to this day. At the same time the interior was radically modified to remove two side altars, a long altar rail, and a select portion of iconography. The lighting of the church was also renovated to allow a brighter hue.

From 2010 to 2014, St. Andrew's saw its most expensive long-term renovation. The large pipe organ, being an object of much effort to maintain, was replaced with an electric organ. The pipes, however, were retained for decoration. In 2014, the steeples, originals from the construction of the church, were removed and renovated.^[6]

Church in Roanoke, Virginia. St. John's Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church in Roanoke, Virginia, United States. It was built in 1891–1892, and is a Gothic style blue-gray limestone church designed by Charles M. Burns of Philadelphia. It has a nave-plan with side aisles, a corner bell tower, a sacristy wing, and a transverse chapel and narthex to the rear. The nave features a hammerbeam roof and wooden arcading and is illuminated by stained glass windows in the clerestory and side aisle walls including several by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Attached to the church by a stone addition built in 1958, is a Tudor Revival style Parish House built in 1923.

A church history was printed during the centennial of the building.

"The Church in Roanoke" is a historical sermon, preached by invitation on the occasion of the opening of Christ Church, Roanoke, (the old St. John's Church on Church Avenue) 14 December 1902, and repeated in St. John's Church, Jefferson Street and Elm Avenue, February 8, 1914.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991.^[10]

Cemetery. Mount Moriah Baptist Church and Cemetery is a historic African-American Baptist church and cemetery located at Roanoke, Virginia. It was built about 1908, and is a small, one-story, rectangular frame church sheathed in weatherboard. It consists of a main sanctuary, a front vestibule, and a rear chancel bay. The frame building sits on a raised foundation of uncoursed fieldstones. The associated burial ground contains over 100 interments from the 1870s through the present.

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

Outside the entrance to the church is an historical marker that reads: "Mount Moriah Baptist Church. K-99. The members of Mount Moriah Baptist Church belong to one of the region's earliest African American congregations, originating in a Sunday school for slaves established in the mid-1800s by Dr. Charles L. Cocke, founder of Hollins College. The group gained permission in 1858 to build its first church. The present church, the congregation's third, was built about 1908. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmarks Register in 1994. The nearby cemetery was expanded from a former slave burial ground."

"There are many unmarked graves at this location. The listing of names is complete as of 19 June 2007."

Recent upgrades in the church property included a new paved driveway from the City of Roanoke, and new kitchen and bathroom facilities, donated by local churches, individuals and organizations.^[11]

Private university in Roanoke, Virginia. Hollins University is a private university in Hollins, Virginia. Founded in 1842 as Valley Union Seminary in the historical settlement of Botetourt Springs, it is one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States.

Hollins enrolls about 800 undergraduate and graduate students. As Virginia's first chartered women's college, undergraduate programs are female-only. Men are admitted to the graduate-level programs.

Hollins is known for its undergraduate and graduate writing programs, which have produced Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Annie Dillard, former U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, and Henry S. Taylor. Other prominent alumnae include pioneering sportswriter Mary Garber, 2006 Man Booker Prize winner Kiran Desai, UC-Berkeley's first tenured female physicist (and a principal contributor to theories for detecting the Higgs boson) Mary K. Gaillard, Goodnight Moon author Margaret Wise Brown, author Lee Smith, photographer Sally Mann, and Ellen Malcolm, founder of EMILY's List.^[15]

Belmont Methodist-Episcopal Church is a historic church building, located in the Belmont neighborhood of Roanoke, Virginia. The building currently belongs to the Metropolitan Community Church of the Blue Ridge, who acquired the building in 2003 and use it as their sanctuary.

It was built as a Methodist Episcopal church between 1917 and 1921, and is a three-story, brick, late Gothic Revival-style church. It features a tall bell tower, complex roof form, steeply-pitched gables and parapets, large pointed arch windows, crenellated corner towers, buttresses, cast-concrete quatrefoils, and other detailing. Capacity within sight and hearing of the pulpit is 1,000, as the original auditorium (seats 440) was enlarged with an adjoining parlor (75), an adult assembly room (260), and a gallery (225).

In a notice from 1917, H. L. Cain is named the architect of the church building, and the cost of the building was initially budgeted at $50,000.00.

It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.^[16]

Bridge in Roanoke, Virginia. The Memorial Bridge is a two-lane, 785-foot-long bridge spanning the Roanoke River along U.S. Route 11 in Roanoke, Virginia. The bridge serves as a connection between the southwestern areas of the city with central Roanoke. Built by contractor W.W. Boxley, the bridge consists of five 120 feet spans, with construction commencing in summer 1925. The bridge officially opened to traffic on May 6, 1926, at a final cost of $282,750.

Although officially open to traffic for over four months, its official dedication occurred on August 30 with U.S. Representative Clifton Woodrum in attendance. The delay in its dedication was attributed to delays involving the creation of the bronze, dedication plaques. It is officially dedicated to Roanoke's veterans of World War I.

The bridge features five plaques, with their contents determined by the Roanoke City Council. Four of them feature quotations from notable historic figures: Patrick Henry, Theodore Roosevelt, Stonewall Jackson and Thomas Jefferson; with the fifth containing the names of all the soldiers from Roanoke who died in World War I. Although dedicated to the veterans who fought in World War I, many did not attend the dedication ceremony due to its not being originally conceived as a monument to former servicemen. The bridge was officially rededicated on November 11, 1991, sixty-five years after its original dedication.

Due to its deteriorating state as a result of corrosion from salt used for deicing in the winter, in April 2002 a major restoration of the span commenced. Costing $1.17 million and completed by spring 2003, the restoration included the replacement of corroded elements, removal of the original Roanoke Street Railway Company streetcar tracks from the roadbed and a resurfacing of the pavement. Additionally, the restoration project incorporated traffic calming principles in reducing the number of vehicular travel lanes from four to two. In addition to the removal of a pair of lanes, both a median and two bike lanes were incorporated onto the bridge.^[17]

Roanoke City Market Historic District, also known as City Market District, is a national historic district located in the Downtown Roanoke area of Roanoke, Virginia.

A recent article about the city market said: "It’s been 135 years since Roanoke’s downtown farmers market, a city symbol, opened with 25 hucksters, otherwise known as vendors. In the market’s early days, including this view from 1936, there were more meat vendors compared with today’s seller mix.. Today’s market includes an approximately 60 percent farmer mix, alongside crafters and others vendors. Martin Farms of Fincastle is the oldest continuous market vendor. It has been on the market since 1904."

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, with an area "Roughly bounded by Williamson Rd. Norfolk Ave. S. Jefferson St. and Church Ave. The district area was increased to include 302 Campbell Ave. SE, and 9 Church Ave, SE, in 2002. The district encompasses 51 contributing buildings and 1 contributing object. The focal point of the area's grid-plan is the City Market Building (1922) set in the middle of the central Market Square. Other notable buildings include the Lampros Building (1909), the McGuire Building (1914), Goria Brothers Grocery Building (1924), and the E & M Market (1946). Located in the district is the separately listed Fire Station No. 1.^[18]