Our Campus

It is both an honor and an obligation to care for our historic campus in Richmond's Northside. 

The stately buildings around our quad were built by the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S. as a home for their Training School for Lay Workers. In 1921, the Assembly Training School (ATS) bought seven and a half acres of Joseph Bryan's Laburnum property, seeking to expand their educational facilities for a rapidly growing student body. In 1922, Watts Hall (now Graves Hall) was constructed to accommodate 125 students. Virginia Hall was built soon afterward to hold a dining hall, kitchen, chapel, and more classrooms. Both buildings held their first classes in 1923. In 1953, Dubose Hall (now North Hall) was added at the north end of the quad as an administration building. The row of buildings on the west side of the quad was completed by the construction of Kraemer Hall, a student dormitory, in 1957. 

In 1952, the Assembly Training School decided to add kindergarten education to its curriculum. Josephine Newbury, previously a public school and church school teacher, was asked to start a "demonstration kindergarten," and she dove into her new job with passion and vision, carefully planning the layout of the new space. The Newbury Center (currently Veritas' Junior Kindergarten classroom) was built in 1958 and served as a training ground for the Assembly Training School's students, while simultaneously offering a unique and valuable education for children.

The most recent building on the quad is Lingle Hall, which opened its doors in 1967 and offered elegant rooms for socializing, a cafeteria, a bookstore, and a skating rink in the basement. The skating rink was one of the earliest racially integrated facilities of its kind in Richmond.

The Assembly Training School was renamed the Prebyterian School for Continuing Education (PSCE) in 1959. Several of the buildings were sold to Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1990s before being purchased by Veritas School. 

Veritas School is also proud to own the historic Laburnum House, built by Joseph Stewart Bryan, a wealthy and influential businessman who settled in the Ginter Park area in the 1880s. The Neoclassical Revival house was built in 1908 as a replacement for a home in the same location which had burned down two years before. At the time of its construction, the Laburnum House was one of the most elaborate houses in the Richmond area, containing 50 rooms and 17 bathrooms.

Laburnum House is joined to the former Richmond Memorial Hospital, which was built in 1957 and is no longer in use.