Self-guided Sightseeing Tour #1 in Portsmouth, United States

Downtown Portsmouth Historic District, also known as the High Street Corridor Historic District, is a national historic district located at Portsmouth, Virginia. It encompasses 229 contributing buildings, 1 contributing site, 4 contributing structures, and 1 contributing object in the central business district of Portsmouth. The district encompasses the original 1752 plan of the Town of Portsmouth and includes portions of expansions of the original boundaries dating to 1763 and 1909. It includes a variety of commercial, government, and institutional buildings, with most dating to the years around the turn of the 20th century. Notable buildings include the Captain Baird House, Vermillion Manor (1840), City Hall Building (1878), former United States Post Office (1907-1908), First Presbyterian Church (1877), First United Methodist Churches (1882), St. James Episcopal Church, Ebenezer Baptist Church, YMCA building, Tidewater Building, Southern Aid Building, Colony Theater, Lyric Theater, Blumberg's Department Store, Mutual Drug Company (1946), the New Kirn Building, and the Professional Building. Separately listed are the Commodore Theatre, Portsmouth Courthouse, Pythian Castle, St. Paul's Catholic Church, and Trinity Episcopal Church

Wikipedia: Downtown Portsmouth Historic District (EN)

St. Paul's Catholic Church is a historic Roman Catholic church located in Portsmouth, Virginia, United States. It is a compact Gothic Revival style, cruciform plan church. It is constructed of load-bearing masonry walls clad in quarry-faced granite. The church was designed by John Peebles (1876-1934) in 1897, and dedicated in 1905. It is the fifth church on the site. Also on the property is a contributing rectory constructed in 1913.

Wikipedia: St. Paul's Catholic Church (Portsmouth, Virginia) (EN)

Commodore Theatre is an historic movie theater located at Portsmouth, Virginia. It was built in 1945 in the Streamline Art Deco style, and originally sat 1,000 people. The theater closed in 1975 and sat empty until a change in ownership and extensive renovation beginning in 1987. It reopened two years later, and as of 2023 was in operation displaying first-run films accompanied by a full kitchen.

Wikipedia: Commodore Theatre (EN), Website

Trinity Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church located in Portsmouth, Virginia. It was built between 1828 and 1830, and is a stuccoed brick building. It has an attached bell tower. Also on the property is the contributing parish house, built in 1887. During the American Civil War, the church was used as a hospital.

Wikipedia: Trinity Episcopal Church (Portsmouth, Virginia) (EN)

The Children's Museum of Virginia is the largest children's museum in the state of Virginia. It is located in Olde Town Portsmouth at 221 High Street. The museum has a planetarium and two floors of exhibits. Its antique toy and model train collection is one of the largest on the East Coast. Highlights of the museum include a life-size tug boat and house, as well as a real Hampton Roads Transit bus, the cab of a real fire truck from the Portsmouth Fire Department, and a real motorcycle from the Portsmouth Police Department.

Wikipedia: Children's Museum of Virginia (EN), Website

Seaboard Coastline Building, also known as Old City Hall, is a historic train station located at Portsmouth, Virginia. The original section was built in 1894-1895 by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad. It is a six-story brick and concrete structure, with the 4th and 5th floors added in 1914. The front facade features a distinctive half-round or semicylindrical profile intended to recall the imagery of the streamlined locomotives of the late-19th century. The building served as the northern terminus and office headquarters of the Seaboard Air Line until 1958.

Wikipedia: Seaboard Coastline Building (EN)

The Hog Island Light was a lighthouse roughly marking its eponymous island, and thus the north side of the Great Machipongo Inlet on the Virginia coast. Originally, no light existed between Cape Henlopen, Delaware and Cape Charles. In 1830 the United States Congress appropriated money for a coastal beacon in the general vicinity of Chincoteague Island. The following year, the Collector of Customs in Norfolk selected Assateague Island.

Wikipedia: Hog Island Light (EN)

United States Lightship 101, now known as Portsmouth as a museum ship, was first stationed at Cape Charles, Virginia. Today she is at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Museum in Portsmouth, Virginia. Portsmouth never had a lightship station; however, when the vessel was dry docked there as a museum, she took on the pseudonym Portsmouth. A National Historic Landmark, she is one of a small number of surviving lightships.

Wikipedia: United States lightship Portsmouth (LV-101) (EN), Website, Heritage Website

Portsmouth Olde Towne Historic District, is a national historic district located at Portsmouth, Virginia. It encompasses 89 buildings. It is located in the primarily residential section of Portsmouth and includes a notable collection of Federal and Greek Revival style townhouses, known as "basement houses." Other notable buildings include the Watts House (1799), Grice-Neeley House, Ball-Nivison House (1752), Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church (1857), St. John's Episcopal Church (1898), Court Street Baptist Church (1901-1903), and Union Machinist Home. Located in the district is the separately listed Monumental Methodist Church.

Wikipedia: Portsmouth Olde Towne Historic District (EN)

Monumental United Methodist Church, formerly known as Dinwiddie Street Methodist Church, is a historic Methodist church located in Portsmouth, Virginia. It is a five-bay brick and stucco, Victorian Gothic style church. It is features a 182 feet tall, two part central tower. The church was built between 1871 and 1876 on the foundations of an earlier 1831 building that had burned in 1864.

Wikipedia: Monumental Methodist Church (EN)