It began as the Belgian Pavilion and was built for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. Designed by the Art Nouveau architect Henri Van de Velde, the structure and its distinctive, 161-foot tower were intended to be the centrepiece of a new university back in Belgium. But when the Nazis invaded, the pavilion became stranded in the United States, prompting the Belgians to sponsor a competition to determine its new home. The winner was Virginia Union University, an historically black institution founded in Richmond after the Civil War. In 1941, John Malcus Ellison Sr., VUU’s first African American president, raised the $500,000 necessary to transport the building to Virginia and reconstruct it on campus. The tower’s 35 bells, however, were awarded separately to former president Herbert Hoover and were located in the Hoover Tower at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. (The Virginia non-profit Bells for Peace has been founded with the goal of replacing those bells.) The Belgian Friendship Building is listed as a National Treasure and a Virginia Landmark and now houses facilities for Virginia Union University.
Further Reading:
- Virginia African-American Heritage Program, “Belgian Friendship Building.”
- Bells for Peace, Inc. “Belgian Building Story.”
This Vignette Provided By
Betsy Chunko, graduate student at the University of Virginia and editorial intern at Encyclopedia Virginia
