Stuart Hall, a girls' boarding school and a coeducational day school, began in 1831 in a school Maria Sheffey held in her house in Staunton. Established as the Virginia Female Institute in 1844 and one of the oldest Episcopal schools in Virginia, it was renamed in 1907 for Flora Stuart, widow of Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart and the school's revered principal from 1880 to 1898. Originally, the entire school was contained in Old Main (1846, Edwin Taylor), a five-bay, two-and-a-half-story Greek Revival building with a severe monumental portico on paneled Doric piers.