Historic Charleston Saturday, April 22, 2006 The Associated Press CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Charleston's downtown historic district has been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The Keeper of the National Register approved the district's nomination on March 24 and state officials plan to formally announce the listing at a historic preservation conference in May, said Susan Pierce, director of the State Historic Preservation Office. Susie Salisbury of the Charleston Area Alliance said the listing will bolster efforts to market the city to tourists interested in cultural heritage. There are more than 100 buildings in the district, and they comprise a veritable three-dimensional guide to the evolution of American architectural style between the 1870s and the 1940s. The buildings range from late 19th- and early 20th-century stone-and-brick Neo-Classical, Renaissance Revival and Italianate styles, with columns, arched windows and decorative cornices, to office buildings from the late 1930s and early 1940s in Art Deco and other modernist styles. One of the grandest buildings in the district is the Kanawha Valley Bank Building, a 20-story "skyscraper" built in the late 1920s. The city's oldest church, the Kanawha United Presbyterian Church, was built in the 1870s and 1880s and is considered an excellent example of High Victoran Gothic architecture. Several buildings -- like the Daniel Boone Hotel, a 10-story building completed in 1928 -- were already individually listed on the National Register. Homes range from an 1897 Queen Anne brick house to examples of simple boxy American Foursquare homes.