Customs House, Yorktown, Virginia

The Customs House in Yorktown was built about 1720 to collect taxes on items shipped into the colonies.  Yorktown was the largest deep water port between Charleston, South Carolina and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In addition to collecting taxes, the building has housed British and French troops during the Revolutionary War, Union soldiers during the Civil War, the African-American physician who also served in the state legislature, was used as a school for African-American children, a general store, a bank, a barber shop, as military housing during World War I, and finally ended up in the care of the Daughters of the American Revolution who restored it for their use and operate it as a public museum on Sundays and holidays.  It is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Virginia Landmark Register.