West Virginia Independence Hall
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West Virginia Independence Hall
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| Location | 1528 Market St., Wheeling, West Virginia |
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| Coordinates | 40°3′51″N 80°43′18″W / 40.06417°N 80.72167°WCoordinates: 40°3′51″N 80°43′18″W / 40.06417°N 80.72167°W |
| Built | 1859 |
| Architect | Ammi B. Young; Alfred B. Mullett |
| Architectural style | Renaissance |
| NRHP reference # | 70000660 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | January 26, 1970 |
| Designated NHL | June 20, 1988 |
West Virginia Independence Hall is a historic government building at 1528 Market Street in downtown Wheeling, West Virginia. It was built in 1860 under the supervision of architect Ammi B. Young for the federal government as a custom house, post office, and courthouse. It is architecturally significant for its innovative uses of wrought iron as a framing material, and is historically significant for its role in the American Civil War. it housed the Wheeling Convention (1861) as well as the West Virginia Constitutional Convention (1863), which resulted in the separation of West Virginia from Virginia. The building was originally built as the custom house for the Western District of Virginia and later became the center of government for the Restored Government of Virginia from 1861 to 1863. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1988. The building is now a state-run museum, housing exhibits on West Virginia history.
West Virginia Independence Hall is located in downtown Wheeling, at the northeast corner of Market and 16th Streets, near the confluence of Wheeling Creek and the Ohio River. It is a three-story masonry structure, with an exterior of load-bearing ashlar-cut sandstone blocks. Stylistically it is an early example of Renaissance Revival architecture, with round-arch window and door openings, including an arcaded set of arches at the entrance. The ground-floor coursing has deep rusticated joints, and there are projecting beltcourses between the floors. At the roof line, there is a projecting cornice with dentil moulding and modillion blocks.
The interior of the building repeats some of the features of the exterior, notably the use of round-arch openings for doorways. The inside has a wrought iron framing system, built using rolled I-beams fabricated by the Trenton Iron Works. This usage represents one of the first uses of rolled I-beams in building construction, and the frame as a whole is one of the best-preserved early examples of wrought iron framing.
The building has gone a number of alterations since its construction, many of which have subsequently been reversed to bring the building close to the original vision of the architect, Ammi B. Young. Young's design had a low-pitch roof that was found inadequate for proper drainage, and was steepened in the late 1860s to a design by Alfred B. Mullett. The roof was raised when a fourth floor was added in the 20th century; the fourth floor was removed during restoration, but Mullett's roofline was retained.
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