March 3, 2024 - If you travel to the town of Williamson, West Virginia, you’ll find a unique building in the vicinity of the Mingo County Courthouse.

At the corner of East 2nd Avenue and Court Street sits the Coal House. The single-story structure was built in 1933 and is made entirely out of coal! And, 91 years later, the Coal House is still in use. It serves as the home of the Tug Valley Chamber of Commerce.

The Coal House in Williamson, West Virginia.

Photo Credit: WOWK 13 News Anchor Merrily McAuliffe

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The Chamber’s website says the Coal House is open to the public on Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

The Coal House began as an idea from O.W. Evans, the general superintendent of fuel mines for Norfolk & Western Railway, according to the West Virginia Encyclopedia. An architect from Welch, West Virginia, named H.T. Hicks was hired to design the building. According to the Society of Architectural Historians, some other Mountain State buildings Hicks also designed include the Algoma Coal and Coke Company Store in Northfork, the Municipal Parking Building in Welch, and the Kimball World War I Memorial in Kimball.

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Several local businesses and even community members helped to contribute materials and labor for the structure, according to the WV Encyclopedia. The coal for the building came from the Winifrede Seam, and was donated by mining companies in the area, including, Leckie Collieries, the Crystal Block Coal Company, Puritan Coal, the Sycamore Coal Company and the Winifrede Block Coal Company.

According to the West Virginia Encyclopedia, the Coal House is 1,600 square feet in size and made from 65 tons of coal. The blocks of bituminous coal were hand-sawn and joined together with black mortar. According to the documents to register the building for the National Register of Historic Places, the coal was “cut into random size blocks and laid in a random range.” The building sits on masonry blocks atop a concrete footing, and the walls are capped with a stone coping.

In 1979, the Historic Preservation Unit of the West Virginia Department of Culture and History filed the documents to nominate the Coal House for the National Register of Historic Places. It was approved and placed on the registry in 1980.

The National Register of Historic Places paperwork stated that the building’s exterior surfaces remain intact because new coats of “weatherproofing varnish” are periodically applied to the building to help protect the coal masonry from deteriorating.

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The interior of the building has been remodeled several times, according to the registration documents. The WV Encyclopedia says a fire on Oct. 11, 2010, severely damaged the inside of the building. However, the Mingo County Commission was able to have the building restored with guidance from the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. They were able to reopen to visitors by late September 2011.

When the Coal House was built, it was the only structure of its kind in the Mountain State. And though it is still most certainly a unique building, the National Registry of Historic Places documents state that a second coal structure was built in Greenbriar County in 1959.

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According to the Society of Architectural Historians, the coal house in Greenbrier County is actually two structures that stand along Route 60 in White Sulphur Springs, not far from the West Virginia-Virginia state line. One of the structures is a one-story building made of 30 tons of coal that originally served as a gift shop. The second structure right beside it is a single-story home and is said to be “the only residence built completely of coal in the world.” The SAH says the coal for the two buildings was mined in Clay County.