ou bought your house in 2021 with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 2.5 percent interest. You sure were proud of yourself as you watched interest rates skyrocket over the past two years.
Now, you’d like to move. But with that honey of a mortgage, you start thinking. Maybe you want to rent out your existing home rather than sell it.
Buy-sell decisions are complicated and unique for every homeowner. But at least one local real estate expert says it’s pretty much a no-brainer, even in today’s economy.
“We almost always encourage folks to sell,” says Brentney Kozuch of Story House Realty. “Most people want to sell so they can tap into their equity.”
Still, Kozuch admits certain circumstances could make an owner consider becoming a landlord—at least in the short term. First, the real estate market has cooled since its red-hot streak a few years ago, due in part to the rapid interest rate hikes. Average 30-year fixed mortgage interest rates in Virginia were around 7.5 percent at the turn of the year, up about 300 percent from those historic lows around 2.5 percent. Those scary mortgages are keeping some prospective buyers on the sidelines. And with most industry analysts projecting that rates will soon begin to decline, some sellers are indeed electing to hold on to their properties.
Still, the macroeconomy offers no guarantees.
“From everything that we are seeing and hearing, interest rates will drop,” Kozuch says. “But that may not be in the spring. It might be something that doesn’t happen until the third quarter.”
Second, life circumstances can dictate outside-the-box real estate strategies. Folks planning a wedding, for example, might be looking to generate cash flow without tapping into their equity. Maybe the professional opportunity to be a landlord is just too interesting to pass up. Or perhaps the tax benefits of being a landlord suit your 2024 plans.
Third, seasonality drives many housing market considerations. “In winter, buyers have more purchasing power versus in the spring,” Kozuch says. “But, prices have not dropped in our area. Charlottesville is unique compared to the surrounding counties. Prices have stayed level and even peaked in some places.”
For homeowners trying to decide whether to wait to sell, the strong market might be a reason to unload now. But even in a relatively hot market, historical trends show sellers will be able to get more out of buyers as the weather warms.
The reality, according to Kozuch, is that most homeowners aren’t in a situation where they can rent out an existing property and move into a new home to their liking. Most folks looking to move want an upgrade, and the equity in their home is simply a must-have as they go on the market as a buyer.
Indeed, homeowners who bought in 2021 with a mortgage at 2.5 percent are likely to have some chunky equity. “At the end of the day, they want that equity, and in just two or three years, some people have doubled what they bought their house for,” Kozuch says.
Such an equity surplus can even help new buyers balance out the hit they’ll take on today’s elevated interest rates.
“Once interest rates have settled to 5s and 6s, it’s not going to be as daunting or scary,” Kozuch says. “But if you have that 2.5 and you have the ability to rent the home out, it can be a great investment. It’s hard for the seller to give that up. We are never going to see 2s or 3s again.”
While a home’s public-facing (and public-gathering) rooms, like kitchens and dining areas, often call for more staid or timeless design, a powder bath—or even an ensuite—is the perfect opportunity to show a little personality. These three luxe loos (and their surprising wallpapers!) nailed the assignment.
Photo: Robert Radifera
Welcome to the jungle
This powder room off the home’s main entrance wasn’t part of the initial project, a whole house renovation in the Venable neighborhood, but Mandy Oliver, whose firm Oliver Falder oversaw the interior design, is so glad the homeowners changed their minds.
“We had great bones to work with,” says Oliver, who runs the business with her sister, Heidi Falder. “It was one of the most fun bathrooms we have done.”
And, to the designers’ delight, despite their initial hesitations the homeowners placed no restrictions or limitations on the design. They began by choosing the floor (sourced from Sarisand Tile).
“We were trying to find a wallpaper that held its own against it,” Oliver says. “When we suggested the one currently installed she immediately said ‘yes!’ It worked out beautifully.”
Photo: Lincoln Barber
For the trees
It’s not unusual for rooms to work double duty—guest rooms often are used as offices, dens take on a second life as playrooms—but this North Downtown basement bathroom had to take on three roles: bathroom to the guest bedroom and basement living area, as well as powder room fill in for the main level.
“Because of this,” says designer Betsy Kraft, “I wanted to ensure that it was punchy and bold but also highly functional.” The first step, given the poor shape the room was in, was ripping everything out and starting fresh. The minimal square footage proved to be a challenge, too (“originally the shower clearance was only about seven feet,” Kraft says), but Kraft worked with Peter Johnson Builders to finagle the shower casing and make the space a bit more roomy.
The showstopper, though, is the wallpaper. It was the colors that spoke to the homeowners, says Kraft. They loved that the orange and blue was a subtle nod to their alma mater, UVA.
“They thought it was the perfect amount of whimsy surprise,” Kraft says.
Photo: Robert Radifera
Bathing birdies
Two decades ago, Dalgliesh Gilpin Paxton Architects designed a French-inspired home for a couple who’d lived in Paris. So when it came time for the current owners to renovate the space for their own needs—to suit their active lifestyle, three teenagers, and two dogs—they turned to its original architects.
The resulting addition comprises a primary bedroom suite, home office, guest bedroom, and adjoining guest bath. The guest bath, in particular, was one where designer Chloe Ball of Kenny Ball Designs, felt the family could do something a bit unexpected.
“We wanted to create a fun vibe but still keep the space luxurious for guests to experience and enjoy while overnighting,” Ball says. “In Japanese culture, the crane symbolizes good fortune, longevity, and happiness. It’s considered a symbol of hope and healing as well. Perhaps this is the wish for all the guests who stay?”
Building and designing your dream home is usually a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Hours upon hours are spent researching and deciding on every detail, from where to store the KitchenAid to the right shade of white for inside the coat closet. If you’re lucky, you move in and everything is just as magical as you imagined. More likely, though, you’ll wish you’d done some things differently. After all, taste changes and hindsight is 20/20.
So, what if you got to build your dream house twice? You could keep the things you liked, fix those pesky little problems, and drop any passé trends that old you loved.
Helen Kessler is so lucky.
Kessler and her family moved from Norfolk to Charlottesville in 2016, when she built her first dream home, a modern barn-style dwelling. After living there for five years, the family decided to move. A piece of land popped up in Greenwood, they got an offer on their old home, and suddenly they had the challenge of building a new home from scratch in the midst of the pandemic with a tight deadline.
Mitchell Shifflett of Evergreen Builders was brought on as project lead, and Kessler’s friend Kristin Cory as architect. The team got to work using photographs and drawings of the original home, and by summer 2022 the Kesslers had moved into their new one.
Sitting neatly atop nearly 22 acres of the land, the dream house 2.0 is a sleek testament to the beauty of contrasting forms and materials. Dark, concrete composite boards in the shade Midnight Oil wrap the house, broken up by a wall of pale stone. The rich hues of the concrete seamlessly carry up to the gabled roof.
“It’s a very sort of taut, minimalist feel to the outside,” says Cory. “There are minimal overhangs on the roof and minimal trim. Everything’s very clean.”
More contrast can be found in the French gravel patio that leads from the driveway to the front door—a glass window that lets visitors see straight through the house and through the windows at the other end.
When the Kesslers built their first home, they decided to lean into the new-for-the-time modern farmhouse look. The home featured two stories, a flat roof section, an “H” shape, and a white exterior. Since then, the white farmhouse has certainly had a mainstream moment, so Helen looked to Europe for some fresh inspo.
The new build—with its single story, “L” shape, and unique hues—is inspired by Suffolk barns found in the South of England and Scandinavian barn homes.
“It’s a Nordic kind of look and feel without it feeling too architectural or too cold,” Kessler says. “We did want it to feel like a warm and inviting, natural family home, not something that was really stylized and overly designed.”
The doors open to an open-concept living, dining, and kitchen area, which at once feels minimal and clean, yet lived in and homey. Kessler achieved this by using a warm-toned white for the walls and a vaulted ceiling, clever lighting with dimmers (like the white resin antler chandelier by Kathy Kuo Home), and texture through rugs, overstuffed furniture, and pops of color.
One way Kessler incorporated color and added depth into the space is through sparingly placed opulent wallpapers.
“I do love minimalism and that clean, Nordic aesthetic, but I also enjoy some of the richer, more dramatic English wallpapers that you get in some of the country homes,” she says.
Though the front door opens right into the open living space, Kessler was able to create the feel of a separate foyer by papering a botanical wallpaper with flowers and bees on two walls facing each other right inside the door. The bathroom backsplashes also come alive with trippy wallpapers, like the kaleidoscopic pattern in the primary bedroom’s ensuite bathroom, and pink alligator print in the powder room.
In the kitchen, the cabinetry is kept entirely below waist-level, drawing the eye upwards to the dark soapstone countertops and a backsplash made from the same concrete boarding found outside. The center of the kitchen boasts two custom-built islands from local maker Mike Conway of Conway Custom Woodworks, topped with thick slabs of Carrara marble.
Raw materials continue to make appearances in the restoration hardware table, and the radiant-heat concrete floors, which give an earthy feel to the space, and fun details, like a wood-burning stove from Malm, give the house a charming feel.
“I think about, as an architect, what I would love to do differently with a project once it’s done,” says Cory. “That’s what Helen’s been able to do with this house. She lived in the old house, it was her dream house, and she had it exactly the way she wanted. Then she was able to do everything she wanted to do differently, and you can feel that.”
The renovation of Keswick Hall gave new owners Molly and Robert Hardie a chance to rethink every aspect of the luxury hotel, including moving the resort’s spa from the members-only clubhouse to its own building. The result is a reimagined facility with more service rooms, a more private setting, easier access for hotel guests and the local community, and a whole new ethos.
The new Keswick Hall Spa takes full advantage of its setting on a side road away from the main hotel. While the building was designed by the same firm that did the resort’s renovation (Hart Howerton), its look and feel are completely geared to its “away from the world” identity, beginning with its exterior—warm fieldstone, dark seamed metal roof, and large windows, as distinct from the creamy stucco and terracotta tiles of the Italianate main complex.
Photo: James Baigrie Photography
“The materials inside and out were chosen to be reflective of the setting,” says spa director Molly Flora. The interior palette created by Howerton designer Philippe Gozlan echoes the greens, blues, and browns of the natural environment that’s visible through all the large windows. There’s even a meditation walk of tan gravel and slate borders set in the grounds nearby.
The entrance/reception area says “spa” right away—light filled, creamy neutrals and blond wood, soft chairs. For guests stopping by to shop, the boutique is just off the lobby. Big windows, a vaulted ceiling, and muted lights show off the skin and hair-care products—“all organic and natural,” says Flora—plus sleep and lounge wear from local designer Gillian Valentine.
Across the lobby is a waiting area with manicure stands and private rooms for pedicures and hair treatments. Here too the setting is soft furnishings and carpets, toss pillows, calming blues and grays. The fabrics and art are natural themes, including several stunning depictions of flowers created by Richmond paper artist Daphne Lee.
Patrons enter the service areas through the women’s and men’s locker rooms, where the hallways and bathrooms feature heated stone floors, smooth marble counters, muted lighting, and arrangements of fresh flowers. Both infrared saunas and steam rooms are available, as are individual dressing rooms for those who want privacy. Guests then emerge into an octagonal midnight-blue foyer with tiny lights like stars winking in the ceiling. Beyond, is The Overlook, where guests wait to be fetched for their individual services.
The Overlook is the heart of the spa. One end is a two-story window, as though guests are ensconced in the surrounding meadows and woods. Chairs with plump ecru and beige pillows and daybeds with lush blankets are positioned to take full advantage of the views. The walls are pale cream, with only a few nature-themed abstract art works; the vaulted ceiling is slatted wood paneling in a warm tan; the pendant lamps are golden teardrop-shaped glass. The abstract patterned area rug, manufactured in India, uses the same cream, blue, green, and gray shades as the ones in the foyer, waiting room, and boutique, “but each pattern is a little different,” Flora says. The hallways leading to the service rooms are screened by panels of leaded glass roundels.
One of the benefits of creating a spa from the ground up is that the service rooms can be designed for the needs of both guests and service professionals. One room is specifically geared for couple’s services (with its own two-person shower), and another for ADA access. Every service room has those touches that make for a luxury experience—counters with plenty of drawers to keep products accessible but out of sight; wall panels that enable quick and soundless adjustments to lighting and music; a warming rack for the guest’s robe. The massage table’s face cradle is gel-filled “so you don’t get that pressure on your sinuses,” says Flora.
And, of course, there are fresh flowers here, too.
For a lot of us home-decor lovers, the bones of a house are sometimes the least exciting part. We give some thought to what windows will get the best light, and how we want the kitchen to flow, but it’s the finishing touches—patterns, colors, furniture—that make designing a house fun.
Crozet couple Bob and Bev LoPinto have a different outlook. For them, good bones make a world of difference.
The couple started building their home in 2020. They chose Crozet to be close to family, and decided to do a custom build in a Stanley Martin community. Going custom was essential for the LoPintos, who wanted to build their house according to ancient Indian building principles that connect inner spirituality and social harmony with dwelling construction (think feng shui).
The principles go by various names, including vastu shastra (“structure science”) and sthapatya veda (“establishment knowledge”). It all roughly translates to the science of architecture, and it includes directives on orientation, placement, symmetry and proportion, and more.
From the outside, you might not even be able to tell that the LoPinto home is steeped in such ancient traditions. According to Bob, that’s because surface-level design doesn’t really matter, it’s what’s beneath that counts.
“I think there’s a lot of opportunity for personal preference,” says Bob. “We went with a Mediterranean, Italian-like stucco exterior for our house.”
It’s perhaps easiest to incorporate vastu into a new build where you have total control over all variables, but if you’re renting or buying, Bob says there’s one rule that’s most important to follow.
“The most important principle of vastu and sthapatya veda is the orientation,” says Bob. “That it’s true east or true north, any other orientation is not ideal. The rest [of the principles] make it even better, but if one has a choice, look for true east and true north.”
The LoPintos chose to face their house east to take advantage of the nourishing influence of the rising sun. Connection to nature is another big part of vastu, and a lot of the rules are designed to help residents take advantage of the benefits of the natural world.
Moving past the unassuming exterior, the house opens into a massive, two-story entryway atrium. While most atriums are grand, and meant to impress, the LoPinto atrium serves another, more intentional purpose.
In the center of the atrium—in the very center of the house—sits a table with flowers, which marks the brahmasthan of the house. The brahmasthan refers to the “silent center,” which is where the intelligence of the house is believed to live. The space is meant to help distribute positive energy, and serves as another reflection of nature, mimicking the “silent” center found in the heart of a cell, a seed, or even a hurricane.
The rest of the house flows from the atrium, and features 10-foot ceilings, lots of symmetry, and plenty of natural light sources. All the dimensions are precisely calculated, and the LoPintos made an effort to be energy efficient and sustainable where they could by installing triple pane windows, a high-efficiency heat pump, all-natural wood flooring, and limestone details.
The kitchen can be found in the southeast corner of the house.
“As the sun goes through the sky, its highest point is in the southeast, and your largest meal of the day should be lunchtime,” says Bob. “So the orientation of the sun coincides with the peak of your digestion, it’s in synchrony with nature.”
If the LoPintos need to take a moment away from all the hustle and bustle, they head to the meditation room in the northeast corner, another area known for conducting good vibes. The 12×12-foot room features soft lighting, and has metal-clad wiring with a built-in power kill switch.
“The bedrooms and the meditation room are all built with power kill switches, so when you’re sleeping you can turn off all the outlets so there’s no electromagnetic influence,” Bob says.
The most notable part of the house is the lit cupola that sits atop the roof and glows different colored hues. A glowing cupola isn’t mandated by vastu—”that was for fun,” says Bob.
For the LoPintos, it’s a design they can feel.
“You walk in and feel uplifted, not imposed upon,” says Bob. “I wouldn’t live in any other kind of house, and once you’re in it you won’t want to leave.”
Chris Dunbar and Robin McDaniel’s The Alley Light continues to be an upscale dining destination worth seeking out.
Photo by Tristan Williams.
Small and unassuming, the original Harry’s Bar in Venice, Italy, has served classic cocktails to celebrities and locals since 1931. The Alley Light restaurant owners, Chris Dunbar and Robin McDaniel, say it inspired Charlottesville restaurateur Wilson Richey when developing their intimate spot on Second Street SW.
“Will went to Europe a lot, and … Harry’s Bar is a place that he used to always reference. I think that was where the no sign thing kind of originated,” says Dunbar. “He always talked about how he wanted a place to have a proper cocktail, kind of a lounge setting, a little private, sort of off the path.”
It all took shape, “likely at a dinner party” with renowned chef José DeBrito, who quickly refined the menu concept from lounge fare to skillfully composed country French dishes, says Dunbar. Married couple McDaniel and Dunbar, along with DeBrito, joined The Alley Light team at the beginning. The three worked together at Fleurie, and when The Alley Light’s doors opened in February 2014, McDaniel was its pastry chef, and Dunbar took front-of-house duties a few months later.
Also on the opening staff was bartender Micah Lemon who, despite having an undergrad degree in science and a master’s in linguistics, says he sought out bartending. Lemon had been developing his mixology through experimentation and intensive projects, (such as bottle-conditioning ginger beer for Blue Light Grill). Once tipped off to Richey’s plans, he told him: “I’m into cocktails, and I kind of like to make things yummy and spend hours doing it.”
The opening of The Alley Light was a move that brought new energy to local upscale drinking and dining. DeBrito’s culinary talent had followers, and craft-cocktail lists had been shaking things up on metro scenes since the early 2000s. DeBrito’s elegant petit plats paired with Lemon’s innovative drinks created an immediate buzz.
Then in 2015, the James Beard Foundation nominated The Alley Light for Best New Restaurant, and Washington Post food critic Todd Kliman came to town to see what the fuss was about—and left a three-star review. The attention was a game changer. “Once we got the JB award nomination, it codified that we were good at something, and established a reputation that we made good things,” says Lemon.
Micah Lemon’s cocktail program adds to The Alley Light’s elegant speakeasy vibe. Photo by Tom Mcgovern.
Richey was a skilled restaurateur, who, to the devastation of the area’s food community, lost his life in a December 2023 car accident. At the time of his passing, he had nurtured several notable restaurant concepts into service, and fostered many careers. A big-idea man, Richey was a vivacious collaborator who believed in his people, tapped their talent, and gave them opportunities. In 2016, he sold The Alley Light to Dunbar and McDaniel.
“Will had established a pattern of opening up ownership to his restaurant team,” says Dunbar. “He had other projects and sped up the process to allow [our] buying Alley Light.”
Just a few months into new ownership DeBrito left for an opportunity at triple-Michelin-star legend The Inn at Little Washington, and McDaniel stepped into her first job as head chef.
McDaniel studied art and design, but always felt the pull of restaurant kitchens. “The running joke in art school was that I should be in culinary school,” she says. After graduating, she returned to Charlottesville, looking to cook and learn solid technique. It was as front-of-house manager at TEN, where McDaniel says she worked a few sushi bar shifts, and made her foray into cooking.
Focused and calm, McDaniel credits her natural ability to a balance of versatility and perfectionism, plus working under DeBrito, who taught her that “things are never fast, and the more work it is, the better it’s going to be,” she says. The evidence is all over her menu, where she pushes beyond pastiche with dishes such as chilled jumbo lump crab, watermelon, heirloom tomato, and prosciutto with lime-basil sorbet. A seasonal dish she runs only when she “can get the good tomatoes.”
Ten years in, it’s hard to decide what’s most alluring about The Alley Light. Is it seeking out the restaurant in its titular location? Or perhaps it’s the warm welcome into its cozy, loungelike dining room. But maybe it’s scanning the chalkboard of rotating menu items that reads like culinary poetry, or perusing the sophisticated cocktail list curated by Lemon and his team.
“There’s a lot of things that go into The Alley Light,” says Dunbar. “The atmosphere, cocktails. The attention to detail. Micah’s attention to detail. Robin’s attention to detail.” Mostly, he says, the restaurant works because The Alley Light asks its patrons to be adventurous. McDaniel says diners have grown into the food—beef cheeks and sweetbreads are popular. One young regular often dines on the bone marrow.
Sometimes it’s a customer who asks the staff to be adventurous. “The first couple years we were open, people just brought us weird things,” says Lemon. “One day, some dude brought José bear meat and wanted him to cook a bear steak.” The bear meat didn’t make it onto the menu, but DeBrito did oblige the patron.
Back-of-the-house adventures are more likely to be controlled chaos. “I think that’s what I find so exciting,” says McDaniel, whose tiny kitchen went without a stove for the first five years. “There are so many things that can go wrong.” For example? “The radish snack,” she says. “It’s the most simple, but it has to be perfect, and it will put you in the weeds. Everything is cut to order.”
After discussing drink recipes that include a calamondin sour, a ramp martini, and a stick cocktail, Lemon downplays his process. “Whatever bells and whistles you have on your plate or in your cocktail, it has to be fundamentally, unimpeachably tasty, or what’s the point?”
It’s about “tasting a time and a place,” he says. “I want people to appreciate coming here in June, and having a bourbon peach sour from The Alley Light.”
The University of Virginia Board of Visitors voted March 1 to rename the school’s main library. Now known as Edgar Shannon Library, the recently renovated building’s new name honors UVA’s fourth president and removes the name of its first president, Edwin Alderman.
The decision to rename the library comes after years of debate surrounding the legacy of Alderman, who was a proponent of the racist pseudoscience of eugenics.
“I’ve definitely heard that there’s a push because he was connected with the eugenics movement,” says Mary Grace, a UVA law student. “I definitely support renaming a building if someone is affiliated with that.”
When C-VILLE visited Shannon Library during the university’s spring break, a few students shared their thoughts on the renaming. While not everyone was aware of the controversy surrounding Alderman, all mentioned his ties to eugenics.
“It’s been a very contentious battle over the last several years to get it renamed,” says third-year Em Gunter. “The Board of Visitors tabled the motion back in December, leading many of us, including myself, to believe that they were tabling it indefinitely. … When I saw the news on Friday that they had voted to rename it, I was shocked.”
Students were generally enthusiastic about naming the building after Edgar Shannon, who instituted coeducation and racial integration during his tenure, though several mentioned their limited knowledge of the man who led UVA from 1959-1974.
“I don’t know much about [Shannon]. I assume they checked him on the obvious stuff like eugenics,” says fourth-year grad student Jack Warfield. “I think it’s good to keep the name in line with important figures in the university’s history.”
“I’ve heard some people grumbling that, oh, there’s a dorm named Shannon,” says Gunter. “It’s like, whatever, I don’t care. It’s someone that’s not shitty.”
The renaming of Shannon Library comes a few weeks ahead of the university’s grand reopening ceremony on April 4. Though the library opened its doors in January after years of construction, several areas remain cordoned off due to ongoing renovations and book relocations. A library representative did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
Exposé
Carver Recreation Center was unwittingly host to a sexually explicit broadcast during a February 29 community forum on jailhouse renovations. The hybrid virtual and in-person meeting was interrupted by the moans of a naked Zoom participant who initially could not be seen by the in-house audience. But when Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail Superintendent Martin Kumer’s PowerPoint presentation was paused and minimized to address the disruptions, every guest was exposed to the moaning man, who appeared to be masturbating. The Zoom meeting was swiftly closed, which booted virtual attendees from the forum. A makeup meeting has not been announced.
Big win
The UVA women’s basketball team upset fifth-ranked Virginia Tech on March 3 with a 80-75 victory at the John Paul Jones Arena. In the final home game of the season, the Hoos broke multiple records, including attendance—11,975, the most to ever watch a women’s basketball game in Virginia—and scoring—a team-high 21 points from freshman guard Kymora Johnson. The Cavs’ next game is against Wake Forest at 6:30pm on March 6, in the first round of the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament.
Closed for crash
Orange County Public Schools closed both Locust Grove Primary and Locust Grove Elementary on March 4 after a two-vehicle crash shut down part of Constitution Highway. According to Virginia State Police, the crash occurred around 5:50am. A 23-year-old driver, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was thrown from his vehicle. He is being treated at UVA Medical Center for life-threatening injuries. Five others involved in the crash are being treated for minor injuries at Mary Washington Hospital.
Dark chamber cabaret group Please Don’t Tell will host The Spirit Ball with Charming Disaster, Nouveau Vintage, and DJ Cadybug on Saturday at the Southern. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Sea shanties seem to have had a moment. Could dark chamber cabaret be next?
If so, Charlottesville’s Please Don’t Tell will likely help lead the macabre movement. After all, the three-piece band kind of made the genre up.
“I think that because we come from varied … but classical backgrounds, chamber music and our kind of salty, quirky, offbeat cabaret elements just came together,” says Christina Fleming, Please Don’t Tell’s founding member. “We have a range of themes, from introspective and difficult things that have happened to us to tributes to women in history.”
Fleming, a haunting vocalist and playful pianist who’s been a longtime Charlottesville music scene fixture, started Please Don’t Tell as a duo, alongside Nicole Rimel on cello and backing vocals, in 2020. After violinist Anna Hennessy joined for a single live show on a dark night in 2021, the trio stayed together. On March 1, they released their daunting debut recording, a six-song eponymous EP.
Fleming and Rimel were music majors together at the University of Virginia, and the sound Please Don’t Tell produces today—essentially period show tunes with a focus on the frightening and subtly naughty while still being fun—“just kind of came out,” Fleming says.
That’s not to say Please Don’t Tell is without influence or precedent. But the dark cabaret lineage heard from Tom Waits, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and Kurt Vile lacks the instrumentation, attitude, and commitment to recreating an 1800s aesthetic that Please Don’t Tell offers.
“There is sort of a sea shanty vibe to the storytelling. It’s slightly Brechtian,” Fleming says. “We’re always trying to come up with fun ways to make it more theatrical.”
When the band plays its Spirit Ball and record-release party on March 9 at the Southern Café and Music Hall, the trio will do so against the backdrop of a fictional ball that took place in the late 19th century. “On Saturday, March 9th, 1889, 200 attendees at the The Grand Benefit Ball believed themselves in for an evening of fancy dress and the latest music,” a press release from Please Don’t Tell reads. But they “instead reportedly disappeared without trace, orchestra and all.”
What makes Please Don’t Tell so dastardly yet delightful? The lyrics focus on struggles both internal and historical, while the music lends an irreverent obscura to these trials and tribulations.
“I started writing some of these songs a long time ago, when I didn’t know how to cope with certain things,” Fleming says. “It was just me writing at a piano, and it helped to be able to laugh at the harder moments in my life. It makes us resilient as humans to be able to find the absurd in the difficult.”
Fleming didn’t think anyone would hear most of the tunes, so there was no real intention of making them public-ready. Then Rimel joined her college friend for private jam sessions—just two music nerds having fun with a piano and a cello.
Hennessy’s violin added the finishing touch to the troupe, which laid down its first professional recording at Fatback Sound in Nashville with Gabe Rabben, and local Sons of Bill alum Sam Wilson, on production. Noticeably absent a proper percussion section, the record skips and hops on piano rhythms with Wilson’s keen handling of Please Don’t Tell’s aesthetic.
“They recorded us like a true chamber group, all in the same room,” Fleming says. “We had a lot of fun; Sam and [Rabben] were wonderful to draw into what we wanted to do. Actually, trying to find the right fit and person took some time. We wanted someone who understood our flexible, organic, quirky nature, while also being narrative.”
Fleming says her and Rimel’s love of the morbid comes from being longtime “goth kids.” Fleming drew on the affinity in her locally renowned former band In Tenebris, an alt hard-rock outfit with an undead edge. But working with Please Don’t Tell is the first time she’s made her own, truly original music.
Hennessey brings yet another influence to the bawdy ballroom with a background in bluegrass. And all three of Please Don’t Tell’s musicians come from impressive musical training—Rimel and Fleming at the hands of UVA’s music department, Fleming now being a vocal instructor, while Hennessey is the orchestra teacher at St. Anne’s-Belfield.
The Spirit Ball will feature New York-based mystical folk duo Charming Disaster and synth pop two-piece Nouveau Vintage, in addition to Please Don’t Tell. For the dark chamber cabaret portion, showgoers can expect to hear the vignette-like tracks they’ll find on the band’s first EP, including the earwormy “Nearsighted,” ruefully lullabying “My Therapist,” and jaunty “Heave Ho.”
Will any of those tracks be the next viral hit a la Nathan Evans’ 2021 version of “Wellerman”? Perhaps, if the spirits wish it so.
Holy Temple Church of God, located on the corner of 12th Street and Rosser Avenue, was built by contractor Charles Hunter Brown, who also served as the church’s pastor. Supplied photo.
By Yasu Shinozaki
The neighborhood of Preston Heights is deeply linked to the legacy of one man: Charles Hunter Brown. Brown was one of the first Black contractors in the Charlottesville area and built many of the houses in the neighborhood located between Preston and Grady avenues. He also built Holy Temple Church of God, located on the corner of 12th Street and Rosser Avenue, where he served as pastor for decades.
The church has been an important fixture in the Preston Heights community since it opened its doors in 1947, providing a place of worship to countless parishioners, a community to Black UVA students, and meals to neighborhood families.
But in recent years, a lack of maintenance has caused parts of the building to fall into disrepair. Leaks have created substantial water damage in the basement and attic. The building needs a new roof and water remediation. Brown’s daughter, Angie Jefferson, is administrator of the church, and she’s started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the renovations, with a goal of $75,000.
To Jefferson, the preservation of the church is linked to the survival of the Preston Heights neighborhood amidst threats of gentrification and redevelopment.
She describes Preston Heights as the “last true African American neighborhood in Charlottesville,” saying it is one of the few places in town where many Black families have long ties, some going back three generations.
The neighborhood is still predominantly Black, but the majority of houses that were once owned by Black residents have been acquired by LLCs. Silk Purse Properties LLC owns every structure on one side of Rosser Avenue except for two houses and Holy Temple church, according to Charlottesville tax data.
C.H. Brown was born in 1907 in Proffit, Virginia. He was one of 13 children and received little formal education. He worked for a time in the kitchen of a downtown restaurant—but Brown wanted a different career, and started working in carpentry.
“We’re talking about a period when there wasn’t much in Charlottesville for Black men to do, except maybe sweep the floor or clean somebody’s house or something,” Jefferson says. “So for him to have those kinds of aspirations said a lot about who he was.”
C.H. Brown’s company built countless houses in Charlottesville, at least half a dozen churches in the surrounding counties, and numerous commercial buildings. Brown is credited with allowing many African Americans in Charlottesville to become homeowners.
Church Clerk Clinton Johnson says Holy Temple’s construction was remarkable for another reason: The ground beneath it is solid rock, and Brown had to use dynamite to excavate the foundation.
“I’ve heard that they didn’t believe that church would ever be built because Reverend Brown built that church on a boulder of some sort,” Johnson says. “So to me, it also had a Christian outlook that … on this rock he would build this church and the gates of hell would not prevail. So when other preachers and people were coming by and saying that there was no way he was going to bless that rock and build a church on it, he proved them wrong.”
C.H. Brown’s son, Ralph Brown, is the pastor at Holy Temple, and runs the C.H. Brown Christian Center, which is dedicated to continuing his father’s legacy through mission work and preservation. Ralph is also attempting to protect his dad’s work by law—in early 2021, he filed to make six houses built by his father and the Holy Temple church a historical preservation district. But he needs the consent of property owners, and the buildings keep changing hands.
Ralph Brown and Johnson stress the importance of C.H. Brown’s legacy as a pastor, as well as a contractor. Johnson says that when Brown was preaching, sometimes every parking spot would be taken on Rosser Avenue, as well as nearby sections of Grady and Preston.
The doors to the church were always left unlocked when her father was pastor there, Jefferson says. The building served as a place of solace for community members.
“Before my dad passed in 1996, he spent a lot of time in the church,” she says. “And so people knew they could always find him there. Women who had been abused, children who had run away from home, there were a myriad of situations where people came to the church.”
While its congregation has waned over the years, Holy Temple is still an important meeting place in the community. Ralph Brown serves free meals twice a month at the church.
But he is concerned that the purchase of nearby properties by outside firms makes the neighborhood vulnerable to redevelopment. He also fears lack of home ownership will lead to community members having less of a say in local politics.
“Unless you’re a property owner,” Ralph says, “you can’t move the needle a whole lot about what can and cannot be done.”
Devin Floyd has made his knowledge of, and love for, the Piedmont into a personal vocation by working to restore it in all its ecological diversity.
Floyd is the executive director of the Center for Urban Habitats, an environmental education, research, and consulting group that he created in 2012. But its mission really began decades ago, with a young boy raised in the Blue Ridge.
When Floyd was about 6, the family moved to the mountains of northwest North Carolina, eventually settling in southwest Virginia, in a log cabin in the Mt. Rogers area. “We lived in the woods,” Floyd recalls. “My parents made a living making crafts and working with plants, and my grandmother encouraged me to engage with nature. I spent every day outside, and absorbed so much about the animals and plants.”
Floyd earned a baseball scholarship to James Madison University and a degree in prehistoric archaeology (with minors in geology and art). He got a job as an archaeologist at James Madison’s Montpelier in Orange, and then at Oatlands in Leesburg, where he also did work as a freelance technical illustrator. Archaeology, Floyd says, requires a skill at reading landscape, which came naturally to him, given his upbringing. In addition, concentrating in this one region of Virginia was deepening his knowledge of the flora, fauna, geology, and ecological niches of this area.
His environmental interests led Floyd into a collaboration with nature-lovers, hikers, educators, and scientists in the Mount Rogers area. The result was the Blue Ridge Discovery Center, near Marion, Virginia. The nonprofit, which Floyd co-founded in 2008, has a mission to combine environmental research, education, conservation, and stewardship in a multi-faceted approach to learning about and living with the natural world.
By this time, Floyd and his wife had settled in Charlottesville. Floyd was working at Monticello on a major project, a plantation survey of Tufton, one of Thomas Jefferson’s farm holdings bordering Monticello. But Floyd’s interests were evolving.
“I became increasingly aware that people saw [the landscape] as here to manipulate,” Floyd says. “But I was reading it as plants responding to the geology, the soils, all the inputs of their environment.” He began looking for the areas that were still free of modern human degradation—and he saw a whole new world.
The Piedmont, a geological area that stretches from Alabama to the Hudson River Valley, is the most populous ecosystem in North America, Floyd points out, and has been through centuries of human habitation and activity. “But even here, all over are little pieces of ground that are undisturbed, like finding a little time capsule.” He calls these pockets “remnants,” areas that have never been developed, never been sprayed or treated with herbicides, never even been plowed.
With this personal epiphany, says Floyd, “everything changed.” He started using his environmental and botanical knowledge to create landscapes using plants specific to that particular microhabitat. His first project was designing the plantings for a homeowner’s patio; instead of the usual Virginia native or rock garden plants, he selected species that fit the site’s particular geology and microhabitat—in this case, a Piedmont mafic barren (mafic referring to the underlying rock types and barren meaning that natural plant growth is sparse).
To meet the needs of clients who wanted more detailed ecological assessments of the habitats, plants, and animals across their properties, Floyd began finding and collaborating with others in the Charlottesville area who were equally devoted and knowledgeable about this area’s ecology.
In 2014, he left his Monticello job to concentrate full-time on the Center for Urban Habitats, a group of like-minded environmentalists and educators (including his wife Rachel), with specialties from plants, birds, and insects to landscape restoration, publications, and web design. The organization’s mix of environmental research, conservation, and education was like that which spurred the Blue Ridge Discovery Center, but instead of the wilder area of southwest Virginia, CUH’s focus was the more domesticated landscape of Charlottesville and its surrounding counties. If he was going to educate folks about their natural world, Floyd thought, “Let’s go to their backyard.”
Many of CUH’s first projects were as much educational as environmental. The Wildlife Garden at Clark Elementary School was designed as a hands-on way for children to learn ecological basics, using native plants specifically adapted to the site and exceptionally supportive for wildlife. Jackson-Via Elementary School’s Owl Magnet, which students helped build and now study as it evolves, created a habitat with the right mix of plants, insects, and animals to make a perfect hunting habitat for owls. A native pollinator sanctuary in Friendship Court (now Kindlewood) was part of a community garden project led by the Urban Agriculture Collective of Charlottesville and other community organizations. Most recently, CUH helped design and build an outdoor living classroom for science and art at Nelson County Middle School.
These and other projects—including a native plants garden in Court Square, pollinator plantings on the curb extensions along Hinton Avenue, and a path and meadows project still under construction at Ix Art Park—were created in cooperation with community partners and funded by local and state agencies, donations, and grants.
Armand and Bernice Thieblot turned to Devin Floyd to transform the derelict soapstone quarry on their Schuyler property into The Quarry Gardens, which now includes 14 ecozones, seven conservation areas, an education center, and walking trails. Photo by Tom Daly.
Floyd was increasingly sought out by private landowners seeking to return their property to its more native state. One of CUH’s best-known and most ambitious projects grew out of a 2014 presentation Floyd did about the Ix Art Park project for a master gardeners group, which included Bernice Thieblot who, with her husband Armand, owned a large ridgetop tract near Schuyler that included a derelict soapstone quarry. Inspired by a visit to British Columbia’s Butchart Gardens, extensive formal gardens created a century ago in a former limestone quarry, the Thieblots wanted to build an exhibition garden of native plants, and Bernice saw Floyd as “just the right person.”
“Our site is unusual,” Thieblot explains. “It’s right on the edge of both the Piedmont and the Blue Ridge [ecoregions], and the soapstone bedrock means our soil is very pH basic, which is unusual in this area. It’s also hilly, with lots of wet and dry areas. Devin came out to take a look, and was intrigued.”
Over the next year, the CUH team came out every few weeks to survey the site and its existing biota, design a plan to restore the microhabitats there, and develop a comprehensive plant list. Site work and planting began in the spring of 2016, and The Quarry Gardens opened in the spring of 2017. It now includes 14 ecozones and seven conservation areas, as well as an education center that offers exhibits on both the local ecology and the history of the soapstone industry, general and specialist tours, two miles of walking trails, and speakers on topics from native plants to geology, spiders, fungus, and moths. And because the work is never done in a garden, the CUH team leads volunteer work days every Friday morning.
The 40-acre Quarry Gardens was a massive challenge, but Floyd and CUH were willing to take on smaller, backyard projects. In 2018, a recent retiree from northern Virginia bought an Albemarle County house with a backyard that was “a disaster—the former owner had used it for doggie day care.”
Over the years, the new owner became more and more interested in native plants, and Floyd became well known in native plant circles. She invited him to take a look at her yard, and “he came out in the freezing cold, and got all excited. He told me I had the kind of soil that Jefferson and Madison had come here to farm,” she says.
CUH developed a four-zone garden plan, and preparing and planting the yard took a couple of years. At that time, the homeowner recalls, “native plants were hard to source, and expensive.” Getting a grant from a local government conservation program helped (see sidebar), but she’s still happily investing in her piece of ecological heaven. “You should see the difference. The wildflowers I have, and the birds I get here … I get hawks hunting in my yard. As they say, if you build it, they will come.”
While gardeners’ knowledge about and demand for native plants was increasing, Floyd found the ones on sale at nurseries weren’t always the same plants he was finding in unspoiled habitats. Many plants have developed specific genotypes adapted to their individual environmental microhabitats. To meet that need, CUH is creating a network of local genotype native plant growers, including Twinleaf Native Nursery, Little Bluestem Nursery, Hummingbird Hill Native Plant Nursery, and private landowners.
The challenge of restoring the environment that was here originally is not all about plants. Perhaps one of CUH’s most unusual projects is the salamander crossing under Route 29 at Polo Grounds and Rio Mills roads. In the 1990s, local nature-lovers Bess and Jim Murray had located one of the largest colonies of spotted salamanders in the state, and the amphibians needed to migrate every spring from their wooded upland habitat to their mating grounds on the floodplains across the busy highway. Working with Albemarle County, VDOT, the Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridor Collaborative, and Riverbend Development, CUH was able to get a wildlife tunnel and guide walls constructed to allow salamanders (and other creatures) to cross safely under Route 29 and fulfill their life cycle.
While the need for more research, education, restoration, and conservation are unending, Floyd is also taking on a whole new aspect of recovering ancient landscapes. Among the remnants of the prehistoric Piedmont that Floyd has been identifying are a habitat that has been ignored: grasslands. It’s a common assumption that pre-colonial Virginia was one huge expanse of forest. In fact, he says, “50 percent of the Piedmont was savanna.” CUH has already identified more than a thousand grassland remnants in central Virginia, and is beginning to identify patterns in their distinctive biota. Many of these plants are clonal (growing vegetatively, not by sexual reproduction), which makes them literally ancient. Floyd describes finding these old-growth habitats as “coming across an abandoned cabin in the woods.”
Savanna remnants may be tiny, but they aren’t rare. CUH has found at least 300 sites on roadsides throughout our area. “You could drive by one every day, within 10 miles of your house,” Floyd says. “There are some grassland areas at Preddy Creek Trail Park, along the paths in Hilltop Meadows. Look for green milkweed.”
Grassland remnants of a size large enough to support wildlife as well as plants are particularly rich and biodiverse. CUH has already gotten two grants from the Virginia Native Plant Society to study these savanna fragments, with a goal of conserving and protecting them for further research. In one of the study proposals, Floyd wrote, “Before we can make room [for] natural grasslands, or begin to inspire others to love and steward them, we must learn how to see them.”
Learning to see has been Devin Floyd’s life work.
When your yard needs a little green
Restoring a native plant community or creating a conservation-oriented landscape takes time—and money. The Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District has supported several CUH projects, including the Owl Magnet at Jackson-Via Elementary School and the above-mentioned backyard restoration.
Funding for the backyard restoration came through a grant from TJSWCD’s Virginia Conservation Assistance Program, a cost-share program for residential or other developed land uses. VCAP provides financial, technical, and educational assistance to property owners who adopt eligible “best management practices” in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Albemarle Conservation Assistance Program and Charlottesville Conservation Assistance Program are similar, with special funding from Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville.
Property owners and schools or places of worship at least a year old may be eligible for assistance to treat and control stormwater runoff, control erosion, conserve water within the landscape, improve riparian buffer areas, and promote native vegetation and wildlife habitats.
For more information, go to tjswcd.org/best-management-practices-homeowners.
Ed. note: This story has been updated to better clarify the details of Devin Floyd’s early life.
