It’s always best to be prepared if you want to take a walk with me through a historic neighborhood. My energy and enthusiasm are seldom checked, and I keep up a running commentary to my companions as I dash back and forth across streets, madly taking photos and sighing with delight. Some less charitable members of my family have referred to these pleasant excursions as “architectural death marches.” Earlier this month, a brick gable end wall almost hidden by shade and spring greenery caught my eye on such a walk in the Belmont Neighborhood of Charlottesville, Virginia.
The chance view that caught my eye.
It was one of those “something in this picture isn’t like the others” moments. One moment I traipsed along admiring lovely turn-of-the-century (and later) houses and the next moment I catapulted back into the early 19th century, all with a glimpse of some masonry and water table on what looked suspiciously like a raised basement. (Raised basements are not something I expect to see on Queen Anne-inspired houses or bungalows from the 1920s.)
A circa 2009 view of the original façade of the John Winn House. Photograph by Cville dog – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21113628
Naturally, I trespassed, venturing past a dreadful addition protruding out from one wall, and further into the shaded recesses of the side yard, while my sisters said, ‘Is she really going back in there?” (Silly sisters!)
The façade of house as it may have looked circa 1840. Elevation from the Historic American Buildings Survey, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/va1465/
Around 1820, a brick mason by the name of John Jordan* built a house for John Winn on a 500-acre farm. Jordan usually worked for another resident of Charlottesville, a gentleman by the name of Thomas Jefferson (I will go out on a limb and imagine that most readers have a passing familiarity with Jefferson and his architectural tinkerings, among other pursuits). Jordan’s sister Lucy was married to John Winn, who was a successful merchant and postmaster for Charlottesville from 1803 to 1837 – the year he died.
According to some very well-done research conducted in 1986 by a team of students at the University of Virginia, the dwelling began as a brick, two-story central pavilion, three bays wide, with one-story wings to either side. Built on a raised basement, the façade of the house was laid in Flemish bond – a typical pattern for the Federal style of architecture.
Stono, the house John Jordan built for himself in 1818, seen here circa 1984, illustrates the central pavilion with flanking wings plan. Lexington, Virginia. Image 0002005_0013 from the VMI Archives Photographs Collection, https://vmi.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15821coll7/id/2004/
Around 1840 (when the property likely changed hands) the one-story wings were raised to a full two stories, greatly changing the look of the house. The wonderfully proportioned windows with brick jackarches on the first floor are topped with smaller windows that essentially touch the cornice.
The façade, June 2021.
The original façade is sort of a mess, but that is a not unexpected result of the house being turned into apartments in 1940. While a two-story portico remains, its lines are marred by exterior stairs snaking up the second story – stairs with shed roof porches and little balconies. Original exterior details remain, including the the jackarches and of course – that simple, yet elegant detail of the water table course at the top of the raised basement.
First floor plan of the house. Plan from the Historic American Buildings Survey, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/va1465/
Slaughter Ficklin, the second owner of the property, oversaw these changes to the house and turned the property into a well-known stock farm. He imported two Percheron-Norman stallions and mares from France and was instrumental in establishing that breed in America.
Colonel was one of Ficklin’s horses. Image from the
April 1877 edition of The Southern Planter and Farmer.
No matter how successful the stock farm, it could not stand in the way of an expanding town. Charlottesville (then as it is now) was bursting at the seams at the end of the 19th century. In the spring of 1890, most of the farm was sold to the Belmont Land Company and promptly divided into 300 lots.
Ficklin’s son William would remain in the family home with his invalid mother until 1906. According to historical records, Mrs. Ficklin was “afflicted” – what we would call mentally ill today. Contrary to popular opinion at the time, she was never placed in an asylum, but was cared for at home.**
A 1920 “view” of the house from the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
The neighborhood quickly grew up around the house, and after 1906 the “yard” around the dwelling gradually shrank, until the building ceased to function as a single family home and was turned into apartments.
I didn’t know any of this when I made my detour to investigate the interesting anomaly I’d seen from the corner of my eye – but I was pretty sure it was the original house of the original farm, still hanging on in a very different environment. And for its survival, my preservation heart gives a hearty hurrah!
*John Jordan was pretty awesome and deserving of his own post – but I would like to see some of his other work first.
** Hospitals for the mentally ill were commonly referred to as asylums in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
