The house at 502 Park Hill St., just north of Downtown, sits up on a hill, sightlines protected by trees. Even if you were to peer around the trees, to really get a good look at the house, you would see a structure that seems to slowly melt into its surroundings. This is not an accident.
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The house’s architect, Eugene Bradbury, enclosed its first-floor walls with boulders that were taken from the site. He also designed a red terra-cotta roof that takes its hue from the distinct color of Albemarle County red clay. In the words of Daniel Bluestone, a UVA professor of architectural history, Bradbury was "seeking to establish reciprocity between the site and house."
Bluestone is something of an expert on Bradbury, who was working in Charlottesville at the beginning of the last century, and Bluestone says that Charlottesville holds the architect’s largest collection of buildings. One of them, though, might not be around much longer. The Jefferson Scholars Program, a group that has long endowed UVA undergrads and, more recently, grad students, is deciding whether to tear down the Compton House ( a.k.a. the Beta House) to build a center for their graduate fellows program. That decision is worrying members of City Council, not to mention Bluestone.
 The Compton House, built in 1913, is one of Charlottesville’s most important examples of Bradbury’s work, says Bluestone. It’s in jeopardy of being torn down for a new building for the Thomas Jefferson Scholars Foundation. |
The Compton House, built in 1913, is one of Charlottesville’s most important examples of Bradbury’s work, according to Bluestone. By adding a trellis to one side of the house and a sunroom to the other, Bradbury opened up the house’s design to the surrounding landscape. A person can look at the house and its site in the same view and feel the close relationship between the two. Bluestone says that such a strategy was important to designers at the turn of the century. "It stands in pretty striking contrast to the neoclassical houses that are around," he says, "where it’s much clearer where the house begins and the site ends."
 The Trotter House on University Circle shows how early 1900s architect Eugene Bradbury resisted the impulse to impose outside structures or ideas on natural sites, according to Daniel Bluestone, a UVA professor of architectural history. |
Bluestone points to another example of Bradbury’s work, the Trotter House on University Circle, in which he resisted the impulse to impose outside structures or ideas on natural sites. "You can see that there are these French double windows that come out of most of the first floor," he says. "The notion is that you can step right from inside the house to the outside of the house into the garden." It also features a red terra-cotta roof like the house on Park Hill.
City Council has expressed concern that the Compton House might be destroyed. After approving an $18 million bond in June to the Jefferson Scholars, councilors balked at approving $3 million more when it became clear that the Foundation was considering demolishing the building. The Foundation has said that it can proceed without the extra $3 million if it chooses to tear down the Compton House.
"In June we just couldn’t imagine that they would want to tear down the building," says Mayor David Brown. "It didn’t cross our radar screen that this would be a possibility. What underlies all this is that the Jefferson Scholars is a great program. so we didn’t imagine that this was in the cards."
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