During the American Civil War, the Confederate Army established a large hospital here. In the late nineteenth century, the biracial state legislature established the first state-supported black college, founded here in 1882 as Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (now Virginia State University). John Mercer Langston, who founded the Law School at Howard University, was its first president. He was elected as a US Congressman from Virginia from here. Vawter Hall and Old President's House was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.