It started as a pavilion. Specifically, Belgium's showcase for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Henry van de Velde designed the structure alongside Victor Bourgeois and Lon Stynen, wrapping the exterior in dark Belgian slate and red terracotta reliefs. But then the Nazis invaded Belgium in 1940. This left the Belgian delegation stranded in New York with a massive, masterfully crafted modernist building and no safe way to ship it back home. So, they chose to gift it to Virginia Union University, a historically Black institution in Richmond. Though some federal records mistakenly file this under Richmond County, the building actually sits in Richmond City.

Moving the structure was brutal. Workers painstakingly dismantled tons of steel, glass, and stone, trucking the entire lot down to the Virginia campus in 1941. They rebuilt it as a gymnasium and library. This transfer carried immense political weight during the Jim Crow era. In the heart of the segregated South, a European government handed its prized architectural achievement to Black students. That mattered. Today, the building's stark, geometric lines still slice through the campus skyline. It remains a wild cross-continental relic.