What to See in Virginia - Top Sights and Attractions

Church building in Virginia. The Church of St. John the Baptist was a historic church building in Virginia, Minnesota, United States. It was built in 1924 by a Polish American congregation of Roman Catholics. In 1980 the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places under the name Church of St. John the Baptist for its local significance in the themes of religion and social history. It was nominated for serving as the center of religious and social life for Virginia's Polish Americans.

The parish moved to a new building on the same block, the Holy Spirit Catholic Church, in the 1970s. The Church of St. John, little used for years, was demolished in December 2018 to make room for a playground and expanded parking lot for the adjacent parochial school.^[2]

Synagogue in Virginia, Minnesota. B'nai Abraham Synagogue is a former synagogue in Virginia, Minnesota, United States. It was constructed in 1909 as the first purpose-built synagogue on the Iron Range. It served as the heart of the local Jewish community in the early 20th century. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 for its local significance in the themes of religion and social history. It was nominated for attesting both to the ethnic diversity of the Iron Range and to the commonality of its immigrant groups maintaining cohesion around religious centers.

A declining congregation forced the synagogue to close its doors in the mid-1990s. However, community support and renovations have preserved B'nai Abraham as a museum and cultural center.^[3]

The Virginia Recreation Building is a former community center in Virginia, Minnesota, United States, that was later converted into a factory. It was built in 1923 as an ice hockey and curling rink to provide a public venue for physical development to the working class men largely employed in Iron Range mines. A generation later, as the gender balance of the city's population evened out, the building was converted into a shirt factory in 1947 to create jobs for women. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 for its state-level significance in the themes of industry and social history. It was nominated for encapsulating the social welfare of the Progressive Era and the robust public spending funded by the mining boom, and the transition to a more gender-balanced population and need to diversify the economy.

The St. Louis County government acquired the building in 2003 and repurposed it as the Northland Office Center. As of 2018 they are planning to demolish the building to construct a modern government service center.^[5]

County court in Virginia, Minnesota. The St. Louis County District Courthouse is the seat of government for the northern district of St. Louis County, Minnesota, United States, located in the city of Virginia. The St. Louis County District Court is held in three locations: Duluth, Hibbing and Virginia.

The Virginia courthouse was built in Beaux-Arts style in 1910 and expanded with an architecturally sympathetic addition by the firm of Croft & Boerner in 1921. St. Louis County is large—some 6,860 square miles (17,800 km2)—and Duluth, the county seat, is at the southern end of the county, far removed from the communities of the Iron Range. Local advocacy succeeded in having a second county court district established in 1904, with cases heard in a small frame building. It was replaced by this present courthouse in 1910.

The St. Louis County District Courthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992 for its local significance in the themes of architecture and politics/government. It was nominated for being the long-serving center of government on the Iron Range, a symbol of the drive for local self-governance in Minnesota and one of Virginia's best examples of Beaux-Arts architecture.^[6]