About This Website
Preserving an Architectural Legacy
The Architectural Legacy of Charles M. Robinson is a public digital archive dedicated to documenting, preserving and sharing the life and work of one of Virginia’s most prolific architects.
The archive brings together information gathered from architectural plans, historic photographs, newspaper accounts, institutional records, family materials and decades of research to create an accessible record of Robinson’s remarkable body of work.
The goal is not only to document what is already known, but to make that information easier to discover, study and build upon—helping preserve Robinson’s architectural legacy for future generations.
The Plan Archives
An important foundation for this research is the remarkable collection of architectural plans from Charles M. Robinson’s firm and the practices that succeeded it. The collection includes 733 Charles M. Robinson plan sets, approximately 98.5% of which are original waxed-linen or onion-skin drawings.
These plans were preserved through generations of successor architectural firms before being acquired in 2020 by Robinson’s great-grandson, David B. Robinson. Their study helped identify members of Robinson’s firm, refine earlier project censuses and reveal details that might otherwise have been lost.
Today, the physical Plan Archives are property of the University of Virginia. The Architectural Legacy of Charles M. Robinson is a separate digital archive, created to make the history, research and information surrounding Robinson’s life and work broadly accessible to the public.
For questions regarding access to or research within the physical Plan Archives, please contact the University of Virginia directly.
A Living Digital Archive
While extensive, this digital archive is not complete—and new information continues to emerge.
Buildings have changed names, been altered or demolished. Historic photographs and documents may remain in family albums, institutional collections and local archives. Stories about Robinson’s buildings may survive with the people and communities that have known them for generations.
If you have photographs, documents, newspaper articles, corrections, stories or other information related to Charles M. Robinson or any of the projects featured on this site, we welcome your contribution. We also welcome questions about Robinson, his life, his work or the information presented here.
Curator of the Legacy:
David B. Robinson, CPA
Great-Grandson of Charles M. Robinson
David B. Robinson began researching his great-grandfather as a teenager, encouraged by his parents, Frances and Bruce Robinson. He wrote two small booklets about Charles M. Robinson in 1977 and continued collecting family materials and researching Robinson’s life and career throughout his adult life.
In 2020, David acquired the remaining architectural Plan Archives, fulfilling a goal he had held for decades. The opportunity to catalogue and study the collection firsthand significantly expanded the body of information available about Robinson, his architectural practice and the people who worked alongside him. Afterwards, David cataloged all of the plans, the remaining plan archives were shepherded to the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collection at the University of Virginia. On the census page of this website, the column 'AT UVA' denotes that the original plans existed, David laid his hands on them, and now they reside at the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collection.
Today, David serves, alongside William Arnold, as curator of this website, continuing the research he began decades ago and making that accumulated knowledge available to researchers, preservationists, institutions, building owners and anyone interested in Charles M. Robinson’s contribution to Virginia’s architectural history.