Company Towns Built in Red Brick and Hope
You're passing through what remains of a classic Appalachian company town, and if you look carefully at the buildings still standing, they tell you everything about the particular brand of industrial paternalism that shaped this valley. The red brick storefronts along the main street, the uniform workers' houses marching up the hillsides, even the layout of the streets themselves—all of it was planned by coal company architects in the early twentieth century.
Most of these structures date from around 1910 to 1930, that peak era of King Coal in West Virginia. The brick came from local clay, fired in kilns right here in the valley, which gives these buildings their distinctive warm orange-red color that's slightly different from the harder reds you see in northern industrial towns. The company store buildings typically featured those generous display windows on the ground floor, built with cast iron columns supporting the upper stories where the management offices sat. Notice how substantial they are—two and three stories of solid masonry. The companies wanted permanence, wanted you to believe they'd be here forever.
The housing stock is particularly revealing. You'll see rows of what they called double houses or duplex cottages, each side a mirror image, usually four rooms per family. Simple frame construction, but not cheap—these had proper foundations, real plaster walls, front porches. Some even had decorative Victorian bargeboard in the gables, a little gesture toward gentility.
Here's what makes Jamestown different: in 1923, the local mine superintendent, a man named Charles Hendricks, convinced the company to build what they called a Community Hall, a beautiful brick building with limestone trim and big arched windows. Hendricks had lost his own son in a mine accident the year before, and he pushed hard for a place where miners' families could gather for something other than funerals. The company resisted—said it was extravagant—but Hendricks threatened to quit, and good managers were hard to find. That building still stands, now repurposed as a community center, and it represents something rare: a moment when human need won out over the bottom line in a company town.
As you drive on, watch for those orange-red bricks climbing the hillsides—each one a small piece of a much larger story.
| 01 | You're passing through what remains of a classic Appalachian company town, and if you look carefully at the buildings still standing, they tell you everything about the particular brand of industrial paternalism that shaped this valley. The red brick storefronts along the main street, the uniform workers' houses marching up the hillsides, even the layout of the streets themselves—all of it was planned by coal company architects in the early twentieth century. | 0:28 | |
| 02 | Most of these structures date from around 1910 to 1930, that peak era of King Coal in West Virginia. The brick came from local clay, fired in kilns right here in the valley, which gives these buildings their distinctive warm orange-red color that's slightly different from the harder reds you see in northern industrial towns. The company store buildings typically featured those generous display windows on the ground floor, built with cast iron columns supporting the upper stories where the management offices sat. Notice how substantial they are—two and three stories of solid masonry. The companies wanted permanence, wanted you to believe they'd be here forever. | 0:41 | |
| 03 | The housing stock is particularly revealing. You'll see rows of what they called double houses or duplex cottages, each side a mirror image, usually four rooms per family. Simple frame construction, but not cheap—these had proper foundations, real plaster walls, front porches. Some even had decorative Victorian bargeboard in the gables, a little gesture toward gentility. | 0:24 | |
| 04 | Here's what makes Jamestown different: in 1923, the local mine superintendent, a man named Charles Hendricks, convinced the company to build what they called a Community Hall, a beautiful brick building with limestone trim and big arched windows. Hendricks had lost his own son in a mine accident the year before, and he pushed hard for a place where miners' families could gather for something other than funerals. The company resisted—said it was extravagant—but Hendricks threatened to quit, and good managers were hard to find. That building still stands, now repurposed as a community center, and it represents something rare: a moment when human need won out over the bottom line in a company town. As you drive on, watch for those orange-red bricks climbing the hillsides—each one a small piece of a much larger story. | 0:48 |