About Williamson Coal House
Williamson has a building made from the material that defined much of the region’s economy. The Coal House was constructed in 1933 using roughly 65 tons of bituminous coal cut into blocks and laid like conventional masonry.
The project was promoted by O.W. Evans of the Norfolk and Western Railway as a symbol of the surrounding coalfields. Architect Hassel T. Hicks designed the small building, and workers shaped coal from the nearby Winifrede Seam into dark blocks for the walls and exterior pillars. Black mortar helped make the entire structure look even more thoroughly coal-built.
The approximately 1,600-square-foot building sits beside the Mingo County Courthouse and has served civic and tourism-related uses over the years. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. A 2010 fire damaged the interior, but the coal exterior survived and the building reopened after restoration.
West Virginia has countless buildings connected economically to coal. Williamson has the much stranger version: a building whose walls are literally made from it.