Diamond Hill developed as a fashionable neighborhood prior to the Civil War, when a number of Greek Revival houses and one or two Gothic Revival cottages and Italianate mansions were built along Washington Street, on a high ridge south of downtown. A second wave of building occurred at the turn of the twentieth century when Queen Anne and Georgian Revival designs took precedence. After a long period of prosperity, the neighborhood experienced the blight of urban decay in the 1950s and 1960s. In more recent times, thanks largely to efforts of the Diamond Hill Historical Society, which was formed in 1974, the area has witnessed the most impressive restoration and revitalization of any of Lynchburg's older hill neighborhoods.
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