Belgian Building, Lombardy Street & Brook Road, Richmond, Independent City, Virginia

Significance: The Belgian Building was originally built as part of the Belgian exposition center for the 1939 New York World's Fair then reconstructed in 1941 on the campus of Virginia Union University in Richmond. The building's architects, Victor Bourgeois and Leo Stijnen, worked under the direction of Professor Henry van de Velde, one of the most important architects of the 20th century and a pioneer of the modernist movement. The Belgian government planned to reassemble the building as a university library back in Belgium once the fair was over. Instead, because of the risk of shipping it in the midst of World War II while Belgium was under Nazi occupation, the Belgian government donated the building to Virginia Union University, a prominent African American institution. The original architects directed its reconstruction at VUU, where it was dubbed the Belgian Friendship Building.
Survey number: HABS VA-187
Building/structure dates: 1939 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1941 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 01000439