The Blacksburg Town Council held its regular meeting on February 25, 2025, at the Blacksburg Municipal Building. The meeting included a presentation on the St. Luke and Odd Fellows Hall restoration, approval of consent agenda items, public comments regarding a proposed development at 801 North Main Street, an appointment to a regional commission, and discussion of streaming work sessions.
Will the council come to order and will the clerk please call the roll. Anderson, present. Oliver. Absent. We'll say absent. Ford? Here. Smith is absent. Mattingley? Here. Set Finn? Here. Watson. Present. And Mayor Harry Smith is out of town, so I'll be chairing tonight's meeting. We will start tonight with a presentation on the St. Luke and Oddfellows Hall. We want to say the flight first. I think that's the meeting of the month. We don't. We only do it once a month. Or do it on the first month. Yep. Yep. This is technically the continuation of the first meeting. That's what I was told at some point. So yeah. So Carol Davis will have the presentation on the St. Luke and Oddfellows Hall. Okay, good evening, Council. I know I presented this to you at our work session, but I do have a handful of very small updates. I'll wait for Councilwoman Calliver to get to her seat. You're fine. So as you know that this the this is the St. Lucan Oddfellows Height site is a building located in the former um African American community of Newtown. The first plot of land in that community was purchased by Gilbert Bahn, who had been formerly enslaved in 1874. And then the community of Newtown grew up around that over time. In 1905, the site was purchased where the St. Luke and Oddfellows Hall was construction began that same year on that building. And that also starts the period of time that was established by both the state and national historic registration of the period of significance, so 1905 to 1955. Here is a map that was created by our town's GIS director in collaboration with some members of the community who are doing volunteer genealical research. And then you can see all of the other original new town property owners shown on both sides of that of that older alignment of Gilbert Street. And that was again made in collaboration with our our GIS director who who did a lot of work to try to get that overlay properly situated on this modern landscape so people can have a better sense of where that community was. So beyond that initial beginning history, um so it was it was in operation as a community center gathering space and the the home of the Order of St. Luke and Oddfellows. Um after those organizations became defunct in the 1960s, the building was semi-vacant and alternately used for storage and or as a woodworking shop. We don't have precise dates for this, but roughly the 1960s to the 1990s. Um in the end, because it drew a lot of attention to the building and renewed interest in and how and what it meant to the community historically and and also how to perhaps pr preserve it. So again, because the um the Oddfellows who owned the hall was was defunct as an organization, there was not clear ownership of the building. And so in order to rectify that the local judge, Montgomery County judge established three trustees who were descended from members of the community who had originally built the hall or who were members of the Oddfellows Hall, um, or Oddfellows order, and so that was Beatrice Walker, uh Walter Lewis, and Aubrey Mills Sr.