The plot of land on the northwest corner of Jefferson and Loyal Streets was first the home of the private Danville Female Academy.  The school was established in 1831 – before Danville became a city.  The school’s founders – George Townes, Benjamin W. S. Cabell, William Tunstall, William R. Chaplin, James Lanier (later Danville’s first mayor), Nathaniel T. Green, John W. Chew, Samuel D. Rawlins, Samuel Stone, Nathaniel Wilson, John Ross, William Linn, and James D. Patton – believed in the importance of female education.  A building erected in a retired (quiet and secluded) section of Danville at the corner of Jefferson and Loyal Streets was occupied in January 1832.

The school struggled at first.  In an 1835 report, the school’s trustees stated it did not have “the necessary apparatus for exemplifying and demonstrating the facts and principles of the sciences, without the necessary furniture and fixtures, which the convenience and comfort of the pupils and teachers require.” Even though they received all of the funds that came from tuition, the teachers were underpaid.  However, the school continued until the time of before the Civil War.

When Danville established a school system in 1870, classes were held here until public school buildings were constructed.  That use is shown on the F. W. Beers map from 1877.

Later, Miss Clara Read of Green Street reportedly used the building as a boarding and day school from 1880 to 1886 when the building became vacant.

Nearby on Tazwell Street (now South Ridge Street), Danville’s Ladies Benevolent Society created the Home for the Sick in 1884.  Their building was rented from Captain W. T. Clark.  Clark, who also became Chairman of the Danville Female Academy, suggested to the Ladies Benevolent Association that they might be able to occupy the school’s larger building.  With approval of the sale granted by Virginia’s General Assembly on March 1, 1886, the ladies began raising funds.  The Academy’s Trustees sold the property to the Ladies for $3,500 on February 26, 1887, promptly donating that same amount for conversion of the property to a hospital.  That use of the building, with porches added, is shown on the 1899 Sanborn map and in a later photograph below.

The Ladies Benevolent Association continued to raise funds in the late 1890s and early 1900s.  With $20,000 in hand, a new three-story center section and left wing were completed in 1904.  It was at that time the name was changed from Home for the Sick to General Hospital.

The General Hospital continued to serve Danville well into the 1920s.

As the result of a generous gift from tobacco dealer and exporter John Edward Hughes, a new hospital opened on South Main Street in 1926.  At that time, the General Hospital property was sold to the Jefferson Avenue Improvement Corporation (JAIC).  The JAIC demolished the old Danville Female Academy portion of the building nearest to Loyal Street, converted the 1904 section to the Fairfax Apartments with 10 units and by 1928 to the Madison Apartments with 18 efficiencies.  They also erected commercial buildings facing Loyal.  With the completion of the new Worsham Street bridge, the JAIC envisioned Loyal Street as a new main street and the entire Five Forks area as an additional business district.

While a fire at the Madison Apartments in 1996 ultimately led to its demolition in 2011, the stores on Loyal Street remain to this day, below.

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Sources:
Quote from the Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia, 1935.
Danville by Clara G. Fountain