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Virginia: Valley, Piedmont, Southside & Southwest » Shenandoah Valley » Augusta County » Fort Defiance » Augusta Military Academy

Augusta Military Academy

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1870s; 1915 barracks, T. J. Collins and Son. 1640 Lee Hwy.
  • (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • (Virginia Department of Historic Resources)
  • Barracks (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Barracks (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Barracks (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Frame house (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Frame house (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Gymnasium (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • Gymnasium (Photograph by Mark Mones)

Founded by Confederate veteran and state delegate Charles Summerville Roller in 1874, Augusta Military Academy (AMA) was the oldest military preparatory school in Virginia. The buildings are arranged around a large circular drive. The centerpiece of the school are the stuccoed barracks, designed by a Staunton firm in castellated Gothic similar to the barracks at Virginia Military Institute (RB18) by Alexander Jackson Davis. The AMA building has a four-story central entrance pavilion with an asymmetrically placed tower and long three-story wings with pedimented end bays. Other structures on the campus include a late-nineteenth-century frame house visible at the front of the complex and an early-twentieth-century brick gymnasium. The academy closed in 1984, and the buildings are now owned and operated by the United Pentecostal Church as a campground.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Anne Carter Lee

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