The Barracks Road Shopping Center is one of the oldest in the country, dating to 1959. To view the rest of this great old photograph of Barracks Road, see Cville Dave’s Posting on the Barracks Road Shopping Center in the 1960s.
In the photo you can see the newly built shopping center, mostly surrounded by woods, with large expanses of asphalt for the “acres of free parking” that was touted in the original advertisement. Built by an area developer, Rinehart, it displaced a famous tavern called Carroll’s Tea Room. Moore’s history of Charlottesville reports that although it often possessed neither tea nor room, it was “an oasis for thousands of thirsty university students.”
If you look closely at the Barracks Road logo, found on signs along the edges of the retail center, you will notice a rider on a horse. This logo references the cavalry soldiers who manned the “Barracks.” The military barracks were constructed west of town near Ivy Farms during the Revolutionary War to house British and German prisoners-of-war.