ABOUT
OUR HISTORY
While John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and the Reverend W.A.R. Goodwin were envisioning the restoration of Virginia's colonial capital, they realized that the business community already in Williamsburg would need to be folded into the master plan.
Shops and other small businesses, many located on the footprint of the original colonial town, would ideally be moved into a new, customer-oriented shopping district in order to make way for the accurate restoration of the rest of the town. The buildings for this "Merchants Square" would not be designed to duplicate the architecture of the 18th-century Historic Area, but to harmonize with the character of the restoration.