Suffolk News-Herald

Suffolk’s West End Historic District is among 20 new Virginia listings on the National Register of Historic Places.

The district, which just last year was added to the state listing, is roughly bounded by Causey Avenue, Seaboard Coast Line railroad tracks, Pender Street and Linden Avenue.

The listing was effective Jan. 16.

The West End neighborhood’s high concentration of domestic architecture from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries, and its development to support the growing upper-, middle- and working-class populations of that period, are features that got the designation for the community.

The district was already considered part of the local historic overlay district. The designation will not impact what homeowners can do to their property, a city spokesman said. That has to happen at the local level.

What the recognition will do is make homeowners who rehabilitate older properties to meet federal guidelines eligible for a 25 percent rehabilitation tax credit.

To qualify for the tax credit, property owners are required to restore a property as closely as possible to its original form.