Water and stone: A city house finally gets a pool, and more
It had been a long time coming. Chris and Greg Menke have owned their house in Charlottesville since 1982, and they’ve made many changes and updates to it along the way. But there was at least one big project they hadn’t gotten around to. “A pool was always part of the plan,” says Greg. Though […]
Meeting the eye: A Western Albemarle retreat shines in the details
Second homes are all about contrast: the difference between the weekday place and the getaway. Tom and Jenny Becherer live in a historic neighborhood in Alexandria—a bustling urban environment where the homes are mostly a century or more old. Ten years ago, they found the spot that would provide the perfect foil: 21 acres in […]
Improving on perfection: Pool meets mountains in a Nelson County landscape
You know you have a special site when you hire a landscape designer and his primary goal is “Don’t mess it up.” That’s what John Meaney told himself when he contemplated the charge from clients Shahir and Nancy Kassam-Adams, who wanted to add a pool and poolhouse to their Nelson County property. The 51-acre site […]
Bigger and better: The sweeping upgrade of a simple Cape Cod
Even in a well-loved city like Charlottesville, there are still hidden gems. Lynn Valentine had her eye on one that was just three blocks from her home on Park Street. “I’d walked by this property for years,” she said. It wasn’t the house—a modest brick Cape Cod overgrown with ivy—that attracted her. It was the […]
Flowing with traffic: Up and running, the 250 interchange aims to be a good neighbor
Most architecture, by nature, wants to be noticed. But sometimes design aims to fly under the radar—to seamlessly blend with its surroundings. That’s a tall order when the project in question is a 16.3-acre, multi-million-dollar roadway interchange that helped inspire a decade or more of dogged citizen protests (not to mention legal action) before it […]
Fitting in: A Glenmore house teases tradition, quietly
A neighborhood like Glenmore exerts a powerful force on everything within it. The gated golf community east of town is one of those places understood to be more than a collection of houses; there is also a social and aesthetic norm here that can hardly be flouted. Aesthetic conservatism is the byword. Perfect appearances abound as […]
Close to the action: In the old Martha Jefferson, 43 new places to live
Who wouldn’t want to live a short walk from the Downtown Mall? That’s an easy question to answer. Slightly trickier: Who wouldn’t want to live in an old hospital? In creating Locust Grove Apartments within a portion of the former Martha Jefferson Hospital, developer Octagon Partners aimed to make the building’s history a plus for […]
Lake new: A second life for a home on the water
You’d never know that Ken Schmalzbach and Karol Forsberg’s house isn’t brand new. It looks as up-to-the-minute as anything Wolf Ackerman has recently designed to be built from the ground up. In fact, this home on Lake Monticello is 31 years old, and the architects are responsible for transforming it from a near-eyesore to a […]
A softer line: Between grass and forest in Keswick, a new journey unfolds
In Keswick Estate, the houses may be luxurious—but, as garden designer Virginia Rockwell points out, they don’t easily mesh with their surroundings. “The challenge here is how to have the house settle into the landscape instead of alighting on it,” she said. The home of her clients Julie Christopher and Marge Connelly, completed in 2008, […]
The next chapter: Respectfully updating a Fry’s Spring Cottage
Worthy Martin and Ruby Burt woke up on the morning of August 25 to the sound of a backhoe outside their house in Fry’s Spring. For him, it was the beginning of a new chapter in a 30-year history with the house. For her, it was the first morning of a new life in Virginia. […]
Shuffle the deck: Changing up rooms refreshes a Rugby kitchen
A stone house looks very permanent from the outside, but big changes can occur within. Though the Rugby neighborhood house that Hyam Hosny and Eric Spooner bought in 2009 was stately—and its location couldn’t be beat—it needed to be brought into the modern era. “The kitchen was a servants’ kitchen,” said Hosny, relating that the […]
In the right light: Behind a historic home, a landscape for night and day
A house that’s been standing since before the Civil War can demand a lot of attention from its owner. Such was the case with Matt and Tricia Lucas’ home, a Free Union gem that, despite its ample size, had just one bathroom when the couple bought it about a decade ago. In fact, the home was […]
Reading outside the box: Albemarle’s Northside Library caters to a modern crowd
The new Northside Library, on Rio Road, says anything but “Shhhh.” From the outside, it’s positively jaunty, with aqua-blue and goldenrod-yellow accents dressing up the brick exterior, and surprising diagonals playing against the verticals of corrugated metal. One’s eyes travel to the tall entranceway and the single word, spelled in midcentury-style metal letters, on the […]
Seeing daylight: Keith Scott brightens up an Albemarle farmhouse
To hear Keith Scott tell it, the house his client started with was almost worse than no house at all. “It was one of those early-’80s, quasi-farmhouse suburban houses that lack any charm or interest,” he said. “My client was really debating a tear-down.” So why had she bought it? The major reason was that […]
Estate of the art: The magical realm of Kuttner and Ost
Where does style live? Is it found in a teacup, a pair of boots, the lift of a chin in a photo? Is art embodied in a perfect square made of daffodils, or a painting hung on the ceiling? Can a way of life, or a network of people, be designed, just like a skirt […]
Through the hedge: A Charlottesville garden embraces a woodland
“An unfolding story” is how one Charlottesville resident describes her collaboration with landscape designer Cole Burrell. That’s apt —their work together has logged nine years and counting. But it’s also a fair description of what happens when you walk through the garden. From the street to the rear property line, the landscape here reveals one […]
Storied sophistication: Fabulous and (not too) formal, Tudor Grove blends eras
To visit Tudor Grove is to step into a river of time. This venerable estate, just south of town off Old Lynchburg Road, has been standing here since 1800—long before I-64, Fifth Street Extended or apartments and subdivisions came to define the surroundings. As the gracious winding drive reveals the first glimpse of the house’s […]
Bucolic beauty: Verulam Farm aims to be the setting for memories
Among this year’s offerings during Historic Garden Week, a local star will be Verulam Farm. The Ivy estate has been an Albemarle mainstay for nearly 80 years, and these days it’s serving not only as a private residence but a grand backdrop for weddings and other occasions. In 1936, Courtlandt Van Clief, a New York […]
Art underfoot: Two city bathrooms get a colorful treatment
What’s an art collector to do about the bathroom? You can’t hang valuable paintings in there. But Don and Allison Innes—who own an impressive collection of American representational art—found a way to bring their passion into even the smallest rooms of their home. The couple, whose 1949 Rugby neighborhood home was due for a double […]
Embracing its place: An Arts and Crafts estate branches out from tradition
In architecture, to honor tradition is no simple matter. But the land is a good place to start. Whatever materials are native to the site can become an indelible link between building and ground. Such was one of the goals at Green Mountain Station, where the Van Clief family has just settled into a brand-new […]
Fresh face: Waynesboro factory Solutions Place gets a second life
It’s easy for a lobby to go nearly unnoticed; it’s just a place to pass through or wait for a few minutes before moving on to the real destination. But for small startup companies, a lobby can be significant. “You don’t necessarily want to spend a lot of money on a fancy lobby, but clients […]
High on the hill: A house prizes flow, along with the views
Robin and Mary Felder like to call their place Monte Piccolo, meaning “tiny mountain.” That’s in deference to Thomas Jefferson, whose home was, of course, the “little mountain.” And while it may not be Monticello, there’s nothing small about the view from this elevated site in Ivy; you can see all the way to Wintergreen, […]
Perfectly Victorian: Rooms with a view in historic Staunton
Anyone with a fondness for Staunton—its well-kept, homey neighborhoods, walkable and engaging downtown and intact historical fabric—can appreciate the appeal of living a couple of blocks uphill from the center of town. Imagine it: You emerge from your house on foot and all but roll down to Beverley Street to partake of whatever pleasure (cappuccino, […]
Subtle and simple: In neutral shades, a kitchen for the moment
Buildings reflect priorities. In 1949, when Jennifer Greenhalgh’s house on Park Street was built, kitchens were not the centerpieces they’ve become today. She and her husband Blake bought the colonial-style dwelling in 2008 and immediately set about making the kitchen more relevant to their contemporary lifestyle. “The kitchen was much smaller,” she remembered, standing with […]
First and last: A well-used kitchen gets its due
The earliest image Jim Rounsevell and Carol O’Connor have of their house, from shortly after it was built in 1920, includes food. The aerial shot shows chickens and pigs behind the house, along with rows of garden veggies. Almost a century later, the current owners love cooking and entertaining; food is important in their lives. […]
Old world, new views: On a venerable farm, a house for today
It’s appealing to imagine building anew on open land—making one’s mark on untouched acreage. But one couple in Rappahannock County took on a more unusual challenge. Lynn and Pam Pittinger bought a 93-acre farm and set about adding a modern house to an existing cluster of buildings. In the midst of this timeworn set of […]
Meet me at South Street: A facelift for an old Charlottesville favorite
If anybody around here understands how locals prefer to drink their beer, it’s Mandi and Taylor Smack. The proprietors of Afton’s wildly popular Blue Mountain Brewery, the Smacks bought South Street Brewery in July and hired Wolf Ackerman to help them put their stamp on it before reopening it in November. And though lots of […]