Abode | Erika Howsare

Everybody talks about marrying old and new, but there are different ways to do it. You’ve got your fixer-upper farmhouses, into which you can insert contemporary elements like stainless steel dishwashers. You’ve got your new builder homes that nod to tradition with way too much crown molding. Here is something totally different, and very unusual. […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

In Fauquier County’s hunt country, the views are long. Roads gently rise and fall through open fields, passing horse barns, ponds and board fences, and in the far distance, the Blue Ridge draws a curving horizon. It feels like a place where the long vistas suggest a connection to the past. In this iconic setting, […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

What could be loftier than Monticello? Well, at least physically, Montalto is—by 410′. The neighboring mountain was once part of Jefferson’s holdings, and these days, after decades in private ownership, it’s returned to the fold. In 2004, the Thomas Jefferson Foundation bought the mountain and the grand house, called Repose, that sits atop it. To […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

There’s nothing like a flood to rearrange priorities. Soon after Andrea and Brian Hubbell closed on their Rugby neighborhood house last March, the supply line to their kitchen sink gave up the ghost, spraying a geyser at the ceiling. Because the Hubbells weren’t yet living in the house—a 1950s brick structure—they didn’t discover the problem […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Sometimes, choosing an architect isn’t just business; it’s personal. That’s how Emily Umberger and Pradeep Rajagopalan felt when they met the folks at Wolf Ackerman in 2005. “We really got along with those guys personally,” said Rajagopalan—crucial when embarking on any project, but especially the design and construction of a new house. The feeling was […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

More than a decade ago, three of Charlottesville’s signature arts organizations got a beautiful new home—the City Center for Contemporary Arts, housing Live Arts theater, Lighthouse Studio, and Second Street Gallery. Yet, since 2003, the lobbies of the building—on floors one, two, and three —have been unfinished. “It was an awesome achievement—a very, very ambitious […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

With a weekend house, showiness is not the point. Take, for example, the big island in the kitchen/dining room of Danny and Katie MacNelly’s Scottsville getaway. Deceptively simple, it provides workspace, eating space, and enough extra room for a puzzle in progress. It’s a focal point, but its materials are not luxurious. “We talked about […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

It’s a long way from London to the woods of northern Albemarle County. Paul and Ginger Ferrell lived in the British capital for 24 years, and as they eyed retirement from across the pond, they zeroed in on Charlottesville as the perfect place to relocate. When asked if they considered living in town, they laughed. […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Meredith Mercer had luck on her side when she bought her house on Hessian Road in 2006. After living in various cities around the world, none with any land to speak of, she was ready to have a garden—and this house came with more than half an acre to play with. And though it had […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

1964 was probably a great year in some ways—for one thing, it was the year the Beatles first hit the U.S.—but not for kitchens. Nowadays, folks tend to find the carved-up spaces and retro finishes of midcentury kitchens to be a bit constraining. So when Justin and Jen Knippen bought their four-bedroom house in Ivy […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Kids and hospitals are not a fun combination, but at least the visit can be as convenient as possible—and maybe even educational. When UVA Health System opened its new pediatric outpatient building, the Battle Building, in June, its aim was to revamp the experience of visiting the hospital, for both patients and their parents. For […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

It is commonplace for architects to speak of “bringing the outside in”—usually via plentiful glass and a toolkit of other tricks. When Richard Williams describes his firm’s design process on a Rappahannock County home, that familiar goal—connecting inhabitants to the landscape—takes on an unusual cast. “On our first site visit,” he said of his clients, […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

To Cole Burrell, landscape designer, a garden is an extension of a house. “There’s a million styles and a million vocabularies,” he said, “but none makes any sense unless it makes sense with the house.” One of his Albemarle projects illustrates that principle with a garden that seems to spring organically from the spirit of […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Red Pump, one of Charlottesville’s newest restaurants, carries the tagline “A Tuscan Kitchen,” and its menu—bursting with pizzettes, bucatini, and salumi misti—certainly bears out that designation. But when it came to the interior, owners Dean and Lynn Andrews drew upon a continent’s worth of influences. A Tuscan fire breathes at the back of the restaurant […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

When Bethany and Mike Puopolo bought their acreage south of Ash Lawn-Highland, she embarked on a paradox. In designing a home, Bethany began with the image of a temporary structure: “a camp or a revival tent, something very plain and very simple.” She and her family have now occupied this “camp” for nearly a quarter-century, […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

It’s a luxury to imagine, then create, a playground—not only for children but for adults of many recreational persuasions. That is just what Brooke Spencer and her partner, Kim Cory, did at a Free Union property whose 97 rolling acres include mountain views, mature oak trees, and a spring-fed pond. Its present owners bought it […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

In the heart of Earlysville sits a fine brick ranch at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the Earlysville Heights neighborhood. Fifteen minutes from Charlottesville and five minutes to Hollymead Town Center, this home currently features three bedrooms and one-and-a-half baths. We asked Troy Yancey of Teal Construction to give us his contractor’s expertise […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Buying a condo might seem to be an exercise in ceding control—one has little prerogative to alter the building’s exterior, and a condo association has veto power over many other changes a homeowner might desire. Yet one resident of the Belmont Lofts, which were developed on a city brownfield near the railroad tracks in 2003, […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

It’s not always the case that a landscape design can actually encompass the entire landscape. But when a client owns 600 acres of woods and farmland, along with the headwaters of a small river, a landscape architect may find the opportunity to think on an ecosystem-wide scale. Waterstreet Studio had that chance at a bucolic […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Innovative companies may start in garages—or, in the case of one local concern, an old dairy building—but the successful ones will eventually need a proper home. Cadence is a Staunton company that manufacturers blades, needles, and other sharp components for medical instruments. Since its founding in 1985, it has graduated several times to larger workspaces. […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

One of the houses in Innisfree Village—a community in Crozet where volunteers share daily life with adults with intellectual disabilities—has stood since 1973. That was just a couple of years after the village’s founding, and four decades later, the home was sorely in need of an update. Yet the residents, and Innisfree’s director Carolyn Ohle, […]

Abode | Erika Howsare

Time marches on! Last time ABODE visited Turkey Saddle—the Free Union home of Elizabeth Birdsall and Eric Young—it was 2008 and the house had just undergone a major renovation, led by local architecture firm Formwork. It was a serene, minimalist retreat, like a treehouse overlooking the Moormans River. Now, the vibe has changed a bit, […]