46 Fun Facts About Charlottesville

Which two US presidents lived in Charlottesville?

Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe were neighbors on purpose: Jefferson urged his friend to buy the farm beside Monticello in 1793. James Madison's Montpelier lies in neighboring Orange County.

Charlottesville honors Queen Charlotte, the wife of which British king?

George III had married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1761, and the new Albemarle County seat, established the following year, was named for the new queen.

What is Charlottesville's common nickname?

C'ville is how locals shorten Charlottesville, and the city's alternative weekly took the nickname for its own title, which it styles C-VILLE Weekly.

What is Charlottesville's Downtown Mall?

A car-free Main Street, not a shopping center: the city closed East Main Street to traffic to revive its fading downtown, and the brick-paved mall opened in 1976.

Around 1784, Thomas Jefferson carried out one of America's earliest archaeological digs on what near Charlottesville?

A Native burial mound drew Jefferson after Indian visitors were seen paying respects there; he cut a trench through it and published what he found in Notes on the State of Virginia.

Who rode 40 miles in June 1781 to warn Jefferson at Monticello of a British raid?

Jack Jouett spotted Banastre Tarleton's cavalry near Louisa and outrode them overnight to Monticello. Jefferson and most legislators escaped, and Jouett became the Paul Revere of the South.

Which Union general's 1864 raid on Charlottesville was turned back at Rio Hill?

George Armstrong Custer surprised a Confederate horse-artillery camp at Rio Hill and was driven off. He came back with Sheridan in March 1865, and the town surrendered to them.

Which downtown African American neighborhood did the city raze in 1965 as urban renewal?

Vinegar Hill was the city's Black business hub; voters chose to raze it by just 36 votes, in a referendum held while a poll tax kept many Black residents from the polls.

Which architect designed Old Cabell Hall at the south end of UVA's Lawn?

Stanford White of McKim, Mead & White designed Old Cabell Hall after the Rotunda fire of 1895, closing off the south end of the Lawn that Jefferson had left open to the mountains.

What did Jefferson put at the head of UVA's Lawn instead of a chapel?

A library filled the Rotunda at the head of the Lawn, and Jefferson left a chapel out of his plan altogether; the university added one only late in the nineteenth century.

Jefferson modeled the University of Virginia's Rotunda on which ancient building?

The Pantheon in Rome was Jefferson's model, built at a much smaller scale. A fire that began in the annex in 1895 gutted the Rotunda, which had to be rebuilt.

Which poet enrolled at the University of Virginia in 1826, the year Jefferson died?

Edgar Allan Poe spent February to December 1826 at the university, excelling in Latin and French before gambling debts ended his stay; the Raven Society preserves his room, 13 West Range.

Jefferson's epitaph names the Declaration, his university and what else?

A religious freedom law, Virginia's 1786 statute, made the stone. Jefferson asked for three achievements and 'not a word more', so his two terms as president went unmentioned.

The name Monticello comes from Italian words meaning what?

Little mountain is what monticello means in Italian, a diminutive of monte, and it fits: Jefferson built the house on the leveled summit of a small peak outside town.

Monticello appeared on the reverse of which US coin every year from 1938 to 2003?

The Jefferson nickel carried Monticello on its reverse from 1938 through 2003; the 2004-05 Westward Journey designs interrupted the run before Monticello returned in 2006.

Which Italian Renaissance architect's principles did Jefferson follow in designing Monticello?

Andrea Palladio's Four Books of Architecture shaped Jefferson's eye: Monticello's portico and symmetry follow the Italian's rules, and the same pages guided his designs for the University of Virginia.

Which organization bought Monticello from the Levy family in 1923?

The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, now the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, paid Jefferson Monroe Levy $500,000 for Monticello in 1923 after the Levy family had preserved the house since 1834.

James Monroe's estate near Monticello, long called Ash Lawn, was renamed what in 2016?

Highland was Monroe's own name for the farm. A later owner rebranded it Ash Lawn, and the College of William & Mary, his alma mater and the estate's owner, restored the original in 2016.

Which famous rock group formed in Charlottesville in 1991?

Dave Matthews Band formed in Charlottesville in 1991, when bartender Dave Matthews, urged by lawyer friend Ross Hoffman, recorded demos and recruited local jazz players.

Jefferson struggled for decades at Monticello to make which product, now a specialty of the countryside around Charlottesville?

Wine defeated Jefferson: he replanted his Monticello vineyards again and again, in an age when rot and pests doomed European vines. The surrounding hills became the Monticello wine appellation in 1984.

Charlottesville-raised Boyd Tinsley played which instrument in a hometown rock band until 2018?

Violin came to the band for one song only: in 1991 Tinsley, who led his own group, was asked to guest on a single demo track, and by 1992 he had joined full time.

Which comedy writer and actress earned a drama degree from the University of Virginia in 1992?

Tina Fey studied playwriting and acting in Charlottesville, graduated in 1992 and left for Chicago's Second City; by 1997 she was writing for Saturday Night Live.

Which small area a few blocks from the Downtown Mall is the original center of Charlottesville?

Court Square's courthouse doubled as the town's church: with no church building in early Charlottesville, congregations held services in the courtroom, and Jefferson sometimes attended.

What is the name of the commercial strip of bars and eateries along University Avenue next to UVA?

The Corner began as a literal corner, a few businesses at the entrance to the university's grounds, and the name spread to the blocks of shops and bars that grew up around it.

Charlottesville lies along which river, a tributary of the James?

Rivanna is the river on the city's eastern edge; it meets the James at Columbia. The Jeffersons owned land along it, and a young Thomas Jefferson pushed to have it cleared for boats.

Charlottesville is closest to which of these cities?

Richmond, the state capital, lies about 70 miles southeast, near enough that Virginia's government fled from there to Charlottesville when British troops advanced in 1781.

Which two major highways pass through Charlottesville?

Interstate 64 and US Route 29 cross here, though I-64 nearly missed the city: Virginia chose a southern route through Lynchburg in 1959, and federal officials overruled it in 1961.

Which Amtrak long-distance train links Charlottesville with Chicago and New York City?

The Cardinal nearly vanished: Amtrak cancelled it in September 1981, and a congressional mandate put it back on the rails the following January, three days a week.

Which scientific institution has its headquarters in Charlottesville?

National Radio Astronomy Observatory headquarters sit on Edgemont Road beside the university, a long way from its telescopes, which include the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

UVA's men's basketball team, the 2019 national champion, plays under which nickname?

The Cavaliers beat Texas Tech 85-77 in overtime for the 2019 title, a year after becoming the first men's No. 1 seed ever to lose to a 16 seed, UMBC.

Which coach led Virginia to its first NCAA basketball title in 2019?

Tony Bennett turned down the raise that came with his contract extension months after the title, asking Virginia to spend the money on his staff and program instead.

Which seven-foot-four Virginia center went first overall in the 1983 NBA draft?

Ralph Sampson, a three-time national player of the year at Virginia, went first to the Houston Rockets in 1983 and later paired with Hakeem Olajuwon as the original 'Twin Towers'.

In which summer collegiate league do the Charlottesville Tom Sox play?

Valley Baseball League owners voted in 2013 to add a Charlottesville club. The Tom Sox, named in a public contest, began play in 2015 on the Charlottesville High School field.

The Foxfield Races, held near Charlottesville each April and September, feature which sport?

Steeplechase horse racing arrived in 1978: Mariann de Tejeda had bought the land where huntsman Grover Vandevender once ran a riding school, and she built the race course on it.

Which of these events takes place at Monticello every Fourth of July?

A naturalization ceremony turns Monticello's West Lawn into an outdoor courtroom each July 4. For more than 60 years, new citizens have taken their oath at the home of the Declaration's author.

What became of the Confederate statue behind the Unite the Right rally?

Melted down: the bronze was cut into pieces and liquefied in October 2023 under a local group's proposal to recast the metal as new public art.

The Unite the Right rally was organized to oppose the removal of a statue of which Confederate general?

Robert E. Lee's statue was wrapped in black after the rally turned deadly: the council voted to shroud it in mourning, and a judge ordered the covers off in February 2018.

Zyahna Bryant, who wrote the 2016 petition to remove a downtown Confederate statue, was what at the time?

A local high school student, Zyahna Bryant was a 15-year-old freshman at Charlottesville High when she wrote the petition in March 2016, and the council voted the following year to take the statue down.

Which of these novelists has made a home in Charlottesville's Albemarle County?

John Grisham, the Mississippi lawyer turned novelist behind The Firm, makes his home near Charlottesville, where he built a $3.8 million youth baseball complex.

A gift of Albemarle Pippin apples so pleased which British queen that their import duty was dropped?

Queen Victoria got the basket in 1838 from the American minister in London, whose wife's home in Albemarle County, around Charlottesville, supplied the apples. With the duty gone, the pippin became an important export to Britain.

Which Nobel-winning novelist became the University of Virginia's first writer-in-residence in 1957?

William Faulkner held the post in 1957 and 1958. The Mississippian fielded questions from students and townspeople, and recordings of those sessions can still be heard today.

Two Charlottesville schools were shut in fall 1958 rather than integrate, under which Virginia policy?

Massive Resistance took the form of the 1956 Stanley Plan, under which the governor closed any school ordered to integrate; Lane High School and Venable Elementary were shut in September 1958.

The Blue Ridge Parkway meets Skyline Drive at the southern entrance of which national park?

Shenandoah's southern entrance at Rockfish Gap is where Skyline Drive hands over to the Blue Ridge Parkway. Virginia bought or condemned the park's land in the 1930s, and the mountain families living on it were moved out.

What did Thomas Jefferson call his design for the University of Virginia's grounds?

Jefferson planned the university as an 'Academical Village', with professors' pavilions and student rooms flanking the Lawn below the Rotunda so that teachers and students lived side by side.

On July 10, 2021, the city removed two Confederate statues and one honoring which expedition's leaders?

Lewis and Clark came down too: the 1919 bronze showed Sacagawea crouched below the two explorers, a pose her descendants objected to, and it left the same day as the Confederate monuments.

Which University of Virginia secret society names its members only after they die?

The Seven Society stays hidden for life. A member is revealed only at the funeral, where a wreath of black magnolias shaped like a 7 appears and the chapel bell tolls in sevens.