Happy Holidays, one and all! May the the season and the New Year, especially, find you all well and ready to welcome in new and exciting things for 2026. As for us at Friends of the Old West End, we are looking at some big transformations and the broadening of our scope and ambitions. First of all, as you may have noticed, I’m back in the writer’s chair. After a bit of an existential crisis, I took a leave of absence and then decided that this is where I belong, after all. My apologies for the uncharacteristic wishy-washiness, but I did make some creative and executive decisions of my own.…

The Old West End and Holbrook-Ross historic neighborhoods will soon be joined by another officially designated historic district in Danville. The mill village of Schoolfield was established in 1903 by Dan River Mills, the textile giant who began operations in 1886 as Riverside Cotton Mills and who shuttered its operations in 2006 in order to take production overseas. Their exodus ended the careers of thousands of Danville’s citizens and left hundreds of buildings vacant and neglected, as well as several important buildings that were ultimately destroyed. Fourteen years after the company’s closure, the neighborhood of Schoolfield is at last getting the recognition it deserves. Unlike the Old West End, whose…