Like New Yorkers with the Empire State Building or Washingtonians with their monument, Charlottesville residents may only visit UVA when guests come to town. Fortunately, the University Guide Service offers a free, hour-long historic tour of the Lawn area daily during the academic year, providing a whole different perspective on our company town.
UGS student volunteers go through a semester-long training program to develop one tour geared to UVA applicants, and another version for visitors, tourists, and locals interested in learning more about the history of the university.
“Everyone thinks UVA and Jefferson,” says rising third-year John Beddell, current UGS chair. “People are amazed at how much history we cover.” They are also surprised to learn that UVA’s founder and architect died after serving only one year as its president.
The guides aim to tell a complete story—not just about the Academical Village, but also about the enslaved laborers who built and worked on Grounds; UVA’s development in the context of Charlottesville’s history; and efforts over the years pushing for change at the institution. A tour focusing on UVA’s Black history is offered every Sunday afternoon. Specialty tours can also be requested—the history of women at UVA, children’s tours, or large-group tours.
But—no surprise to area residents—no tours are offered on days with home football games.
Rod Walker, who owns 1,500 acres of forestland near Sugar Hollow, was named the American Tree Farm System’s 2023 Virginia Tree Farmer of the Year. Photo by Eze Amos.
Rod Walker has always loved the natural world. Throughout his career as an IT consultant, the avid hunter and fisherman owned forested land where he and his family could get away for a quieter life, if only for a weekend. But now retired to a western Albemarle County farm, his quiet life has inspired a new crusade: He’s one of the generals in the war against invasive plants that threaten our forests and fields.
In the mid-1990s, planning ahead for retirement, Midwesterners Walker and his wife Maggie went looking for land. “We had this theory—buy now and be ahead of the baby boomer rush,” he recalls. They had four must-haves: at least 50 acres, close to culture, good health care, and an airport. After two years of searching, the Walkers found their place—1,500 acres near Sugar Hollow. Over the next few years, the couple designed and built a new home on a ridge overlooking their valley, using stone from their mountainside and wood from their own trees. They moved in for good in 2012.
With a large chuck of forest to care for—“never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d end up with 1,500 acres”—Walker hired a forestry consultant to develop a management plan. His priorities included a healthy forest with plenty of wildlife, and careful harvesting to maintain forest health and generate money to help cover the costs.
During that process, Walker enrolled to be certified as a tree farmer. (Certification under the American Tree Farm System is open to anyone who owns 10 to 10,000 acres of forested land). The ATFS encourages landowners to apply the best management practices to their forests, and creates a network of common-minded conservationists. According to an ATFS member survey, “The top three objectives of family forest owners in the program are conserving wildlife habitat, having a place to enjoy with their friends and families, and leaving the land better for the next generations.”
The forest management survey of the Walkers’ land found many beauties—and lots of threats. Walker recalls early on, when they saw “these little vines with red berries, we thought they were native. Fast forward 15 years, and we found 15 acres close to Shenandoah National Park that were just a wall of these vines. We had to use a bulldozer to get into that area and start clearing it.” That was his introduction to Oriental bittersweet, one of the area’s most common invasive species.
Because their land abuts Shenandoah National Park, the Walkers contacted Jake Hughes, a park biologist specializing in invasive plant management and forest restoration. From Hughes, they learned about Cooperative Weed Management Areas, a collaboration of government agencies, groups, and private landowners working together to control invasive species. There were plenty of CWMAs around the country, but none in Virginia. In 2013, Walker began talking with other agencies and groups, and the Shenandoah National Park Trust agreed to be the new organization’s 501(c)(3) sponsor and provide administrative support.
That was the start of Blue Ridge PRISM—the Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management. “We started with the western half of Albemarle County,” Walker recalls, “and then we figured, hey, go big or go home.” PRISM expanded to cover the 10 counties surrounding the national park, and last year it added Loudoun and Fauquier counties. In 2020, it set up its own NGO independent of the SNP Trust.
The Walkers grow hybridized chestnut trees on their property through partnership with the American Chestnut Foundation. The foundation’s breeding program crossbreeds American and Chinese chestnut trees, combining the Chinese chestnut’s blight resistance and the American tree’s “timber-type form.” Photo by Eze Amos.
Hughes, who is still actively involved with PRISM’s leadership team and its advisory council, says, “The bulk of interest [in starting PRISM] came from private landowners. They really drove it. And PRISM has done a fantastic job on landowner education, and on helping with [public] awareness.”
Walker says PRISM is “unusual [among CWMAs] in that we don’t just work on the land of our members—we focus on the education of everyone.” While large landowners and commercial operations like farms, orchards, and wineries pay attention to the threat of invasive plants because of its economic impact, managing the problem area-wide requires the participation of landowners of all sizes. As Walker points out, invasives do not respect boundaries.
Walt Morgan, who bought eight acres along the north Rivanna River in 2019, is one of the local small landholders who has benefited from PRISM’s efforts. A transplant from the West Coast, Morgan was used to a much drier climate. At first, he was delighted by how green his property was—until he realized all that green was actually vines pulling his trees down.
PRISM’s resources and activities helped him get educated about his invasives and how to manage them. “I’m learning to see the whole ecology here,” Morgan says. “This has been a really positive experience; there are a lot of people in this area really working to be stewards of the land.”
Jennifer Gagnon, coordinator of the Virginia Forest Landowner Education Program, calls Blue Ridge PRISM “a fantastic resource” for landowners large and small across the state, adding that “we rely on them in the Shenandoah area.” She finds invasives to be “the number one concern” among the landowners she works with, so there’s a link to the PRISM website in her program’s monthly newsletter. In fact, it was Gagnon who nominated Walker for his recent recognition as ATFS’s 2023 Virginia Tree Farmer of the Year.
While education was and is PRISM’s primary focus, Walker says, “Soon we saw we needed a second thrust on policy, with Richmond and the state agencies.” One of its first efforts was expanding the state’s noxious weed list, developed by Virginia’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The list now includes 14 species: “Half of [them] we worked to have added, and 12 more are in the regulatory approval process.”
When PRISM first started focusing on policy, Virginia law said plants that were “widely disseminated” (i.e., occurring in many places around the state) couldn’t be added to the state’s noxious weeds list. PRISM and its partners worked out a compromise with the nursery industry, says Walker, and got the law changed so that only plants commercially propagated in Virginia could be exempted.
PRISM’s most recent success was pushing for a bill stipulating that the state’s invasive plant species list, published by the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation (not the same as the noxious weeds list), must be updated every four years. It also requires landscape architects, landscape designers, and landscapers to inform landowners if any plants they are specifying are on the list. “Most of the plants grown in Virginia nurseries are sold wholesale,” Walker says, so getting to landscaping professionals is another way of educating homeowners and giving them a choice before something is planted on their property.
Walker says that PRISM’s efforts have gotten a huge boost from the native plants movement, which encourages people to plant flowers, shrubs, grasses, and trees that have evolved to fit our area’s climate, soil types, and wildlife. Local herbivores—like deer and rabbits—may steer clear of non-natives, so the native plants get overgrazed, which allows the invasives to take over. The fruits of non-native species may not provide local birds with the nutrition they need for migrating or wintering over. And many non-native species aren’t good hosts or food sources for local beneficial insects, affecting everything from pollinators to caterpillars.
One of PRISM’s current efforts is trying to get the state to enact incentives for clearing invasives and planting native species. North Carolina, Walker notes, enacted a Bradford pear bounty: Remove one of these invasive trees, get a native replacement free. PRISM also has proposals under consideration at Virginia Tech for studies quantifying the economic cost of controlling invasives and forecasting their impact in the state—useful data for shaping policy in Richmond.
Another effort is the statewide conference PRISM will hold in December, inviting government agencies and nonprofits from around the commonwealth to identify the biggest problem areas in the state and develop proposals to suppress invasives there. Walker hopes that Blue Ridge PRISM’s example will spur the formation of other CWMAs around the state, in conjunction with the efforts of nonprofits like the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and the Virginia Native Plant Society as well as the state agencies that deal with land and wildlife.
Walker is heartened by the increasing public awareness about invasive species—PRISM’s email newsletter’s circulation has increased fivefold since 2018. “The word is getting out,” he says, “in part because the problem is getting worse. If climate change wasn’t happening, we’d still have this problem—but it does make [the impact of invasives] worse.”
That’s why PRISM concentrates on education of the general public, of large landowners, and of anyone who has a yard. “If you have an acre, you can keep it clear of invasives on your own,” Walker says—with the help of PRISM and a little sweat equity.
Among other ways to support PRISM’s work, you can raise a glass to its efforts, on September 23, with an educational session and fundraiser at Devils Backbone Base Camp in Nelson County. Every glass of Vienna Lager sold supports PRISM’s war against invasive plants.
Identifying invaders
Non-native plants have been arriving for centuries, and many of them have become part of the landscape—think tiger daylilies, forsythia, and daffodils. Non-native species only become invasive when they are both rampant propagators (e.g., put out huge amounts of seeds or send out large root networks) and hard to contain, usually because there are no natural control mechanisms like predators, diseases, or insects. As a result, native species are out-competed—or overwhelmed. Oriental bittersweet and porcelain berry, for example, climb over trees and shut out access to sunlight, and their added weight can cause trees to crack or fall.
Some native species, like wild grape and poison ivy, can be categorized as aggressive. But usually there are native creatures that help keep them under control. (In many areas, for example, deer prefer browsing on poison ivy.)
As for the idea that invasive plants are only a problem on land that has been disturbed, Walker points out “almost none of Virginia is undisturbed” due to centuries of farming and development.
Blue Ridge PRISM’s list of the biggest threats in our area
Joining the fight
Get educated. Find out what’s growing on your property. There are plenty of resources—government agencies, universities, and nonprofits like PRISM—that provide fact sheets, online resources, and educational sessions to help you identify problem plants.
Report what you find. PRISM participates in the Virginia Invasive Mapping Initiative, a state-wide effort to collect data on species occurrence and spread to aid in policy-making and control efforts. Anyone can support the initiative by using an app called EDDMapS to document where invasives are on the rise.
Fight invasives. Resources like PRISM, Virginia Tech’s Cooperative Extension Service, and the Virginia Department of Forestry can provide information on the best way to attack specific problem plants: how and when to prune, how and when to safely use pesticides when necessary. Many invasives, once established, are almost impossible to eradicate, but they can be controlled.
Plant native species. We all have favorite plants (native or not), but choosing species that have evolved to flourish in this area not only helps control invasives, but also benefits native birds, beneficial insects, and pollinators—and your neighbors. After all, many invasives are garden plants that escaped.
Learn more about our environment. The forests that make us love living here are under attack by other factors—climate change, new diseases, invasive insects. Native wildlife too is also threatened by these factors, as well as by development and human overuse. This area is getting more popular—and more populous—every year. Each one of us has an impact, and we all can do something to protect this place.
Albemarle County is in the midst of a two-year process to update its Comprehensive Plan, a guidance document to set goals and priorities for the county for the next 20 years. The plan covers programs for growth and development, education, transportation planning, housing and land use, and protection of natural resources.
However, the last Comprehensive Plan called for development of a Biodiversity Action Plan, which was finalized in 2018. Efforts to protect the biodiversity of the county, which covers a remarkably diverse array of ecosystems, was spurred by recognition that the area’s natural resources were not only valuable in their own right, but also were a vital part of the county’s economy, from agriculture to tourism, and its appeal as a place to live.
But a lack of information about what lives here has made planning to protect the county’s wildlife a difficult task. To fill in those knowledge gaps, two projects are underway: one tracks Albemarle’s elusive bobcats and the other analyzes the area’s many instances of roadkill.
Leah Jung, a Virginia master naturalist with a master’s degree in environmental management, was a member of the subgroup that developed the Biodiversity Action Plan. Among the questions the group examined, she says, were: “How will climate change affect the wildlife in the county? As Albemarle County continues to develop, will that push wildlife to move into Shenandoah National Park? How do we reduce habitat fragmentation and protect areas of biodiversity?” In trying to answer those questions, the subgroup faced a problem: There’s very little actual data about what species live where, what kinds of habitat(s) they need, and how they move within and between those areas seeking food, shelter, and mates.
Virginia master naturalist Leah Jung says the Natural Heritage Committee is “trying to find ways to help [the county’s natural resources staff] make the point that protection of environmental resources is important to the economics and the quality of life here.” Supplied photo.
Jung, a member of the county’s Natural Heritage Committee (a volunteer advisory body), got to thinking. The county has no funding for wildlife research, but central Virginia is an area with lots of academic institutions and people working on environmental issues. And one way to get interest (and support) is by studying a charismatic species—one that humans find compelling, like bobcats.
Jung put her networking skills into high gear. Her work on the Natural Heritage Committee had put her in touch with environmental professionals all over the state, including the Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridors Collaborative; Dr. Jared Stabach, leading the program studying wildlife mobility globally at the Smithsonian’s Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal; and Dr. Brett Jesmer, newly hired at Virginia Tech, with research interests in studying wildlife mobility as an aid in conservation management.
The result is the Bobcat Habitat Connectivity Project, a study to examine where bobcats live and move within northwest Albemarle County. Jesmer recruited Nicole Gorman, who had done graduate research tracking bobcats and coyotes in Illinois, to lead this project as her Ph.D. thesis at Virginia Tech. The Conservation Biology Institute donated some collars and satellite time for tracking, while Jung and Gorman did more networking, with help from the Smithsonian’s Virginia Working Landscapes program, to find landowners in the target area who would allow Gorman to trap bobcats on their property.
Why bobcats? Gorman says bobcats make a good study subject because “what we find has implications for large areas of the U.S. Bobcats live in almost all of the lower 48 states; they’re a very mobile species that can make use of a variety of habitats; they’re a mid-size mammal” (i.e., large enough to spot easily on wildlife cams but small enough to trap, sedate and tag easily). And then, the winning factor: “They’re cool. People are interested in them.”
The challenge is, bobcats—nocturnal hunters—are also notoriously secretive and elusive animals. Most Albemarle County residents have never seen one here (the species is not endangered, but it is under pressure from habitat loss). Gorman and her two assistants have been working in the field since January, looking for good spots to set up trail cameras, setting traps where bobcats have been seen, monitoring the traps daily, and tagging and collaring the animals. Baiting the traps is a skill: “We use venison, ham, beef, squirrels, even roadkill, but bobcats have high standards, it has to be fresh,” says Gorman.
Ph.D. candidate Nicole Gorman leads the Bobcat Habitat Connectivity Project, which studies where bobcats live and move in northwest Albemarle County. Supplied photo.
In four months, the team has managed to trap and collar six animals. Unfortunately, one of them, Bobcat #3, was killed by a car after only a few weeks. Trapping efforts will continue, but spotting bobcats is more of a challenge now that winter is over and food is easier to find.
Gorman will have a year to track the GPS data from each animal collared—after 12 months, the collars drop off and can be recovered. She hopes to conduct two years of field work; Jung says the project continues to seek funding. Then Gorman would like to expand her research, to monitor other mammals and see if there is a correlation between bobcats’ movement patterns and those of other species, with the goal of minimizing both barriers and human interaction.
As the data accumulate and can be analyzed, Jung hopes that information will help inform the Comprehensive Plan’s updates on land-use planning for both development and recreational space. “The Natural Heritage Committee is trying to find ways to help [the county’s natural resources] staff make the point that protection of environmental resources is important to the economics and the quality of life here,” she says.
All the project’s sponsors, says Jung, have been encouraged by the community support, including offers of housing for the researchers, access to private and community land, landowner’s support for monitoring on their land, and even dinner invitations for the researchers. “We look forward to sharing results from the study with the community,” she says, both through the planning process and on social media.
In the meantime, Gorman says, “I get to go hiking every morning. It’s the best job in the world.”
Unfortunately, the fate of Bobcat #3 is all too common for Albemarle County wildlife. Virginia has one of the highest rates of deer-vehicle accidents in the country (60,000 deer killed every year), and these incidents cost the state and its citizens about $533 million annually. That’s one reason why Virginia is one of the first eastern states to have developed a Wildlife Corridor Action Plan. It’s also why Albemarle County’s Biodiversity Action Plan includes a recommendation to “investigate a Route 29 underpass in southern Albemarle County to better connect eastern and western portions of the Southern Albemarle Mountains Important Site, a conservation priority area.”
Connectivity means providing safe corridors for wildlife to move from one area of their habitat to another. Options can vary. In our area, for instance, there are small tunnels installed under Route 29 at Rio Mills Road and Polo Grounds Road to accommodate the seasonal migration of spotted salamanders living in large numbers nearby, as well as eight-foot-tall fences placed along I-64 to funnel wildlife toward two existing culverts under the roadway (which has reduced deer-vehicle collisions by 92 percent). But any solution requires knowing what animals are accustomed to moving where and at what time of year. Here again, the county budget has no funding earmarked for wildlife survey work.
Enter the master naturalists, a national program of environment-minded volunteers with 30 chapters around the Old Dominion, including the Rivanna chapter based in Charlottesville. Michelle Prysby, director of the Virginia Master Naturalist Program, is also active with the Virginia Safe Wildlife Corridors Collaborative, and when she heard that Albemarle County was interested in doing survey work on wildlife corridors, it sounded like a perfect citizen science project for the Rivanna Master Naturalists.
Prysby’s email solicitation went out in August 2021, seeking volunteers to drive Route 29 between I-64 and the Nelson County line and document animal sightings (both live and roadkill) using an online app. The goal was to collect data twice a week for at least a year, documenting what animals were attempting to cross the highway at what locations, and how that varied by season.
Michelle Prysby, director of the Virginia Master Naturalist program, says that over 16 months, 23 local volunteers clocked 157 hours documenting animal sightings (both live and roadkill). Supplied photo.
The response was strong, Prysby says. Over 16 months, through January 2022, 74 surveys were completed by 23 local volunteers clocking a total of 157 hours.
Ralph Henry and his wife Kathryn Levy, both master naturalists, were one of the most active pairs (two volunteers were required, one to drive and the other to use the app to record sightings). Henry has a science background, so he enjoys citizen science projects, and this one intrigued him “because it’s always sad when you see roadkill by the side of the road. I thought it was cool that the county was interested in protecting wildlife corridors.”
Henry and Levy made the drive on Monday mornings before going to work. He was surprised at what they were seeing. “I didn’t think we’d see so many dead animals,” he admits, “and I thought it would be mostly deer. I also thought it would be fairly regular. I was surprised by the seasonal variation.” In the fall, when deer are actively seeking mates, deer kills were frequent. Later, in the winter and early spring, came fewer deer and more skunks and raccoons. Opossums and squirrels were getting hit all year long. And, unfortunately, much of the roadkill was unidentifiable, except perhaps as mammal, bird, or reptile. His saddest sighting, Henry says, was a young adult black bear, hit and thrown into the roadside ditch.
Sightings also showed an effect from the weather. A large snowstorm in early 2022, for example, meant almost no sightings for a couple weeks, because animals were hunkered down and the snowplows effectively cleared the highway verges. Certain areas seemed to be more likely for animals trying to cross, like “just north of the Plank Road/Dr. Ho’s intersection,” Henry says.
People’s first reactions to hearing about the project were interesting. “They would either say, ‘Gross!’ or ‘Why?’” And the experience has Henry noticing roadkill much more as he travels other country roads.
(Full disclosure: This writer was also a RMN Roadkill Survey volunteer. When I told people I was spending several mornings a month counting roadkill—ranging from nothing to more than 20 carcasses a trip—their reactions ran the gamut from “What for?” to “Ewww. Do you have to pick it up too?” And my saddest sighting was an immature blue heron, which had apparently flown into a vehicle windshield and been tossed into the scrub alongside the road.)
Scott Clark, the county’s natural resources manager, says the Roadkill Survey is now on hold so that the first year of data can be analyzed (you can see the data dashboard at arcgis.com). “Our motivation was to improve our Biodiversity Action Plan by looking at connectivity in an area that’s not prioritized for development,” says Clark. “[Now] we have a lot of good data.”
Once the county knows more about wildlife movement across Route 29 South, it can form plans to reduce wildlife-vehicular interaction. There are existing culverts that weren’t designed as wildlife corridors, but could be used for that purpose if they are in the right places. Or it might be as simple a solution as signs that warn motorists where deer, bears, or other animals are likely to cross.
Fortunately, the survey found no signs of a massive salamander colony south of Charlottesville. Stay tuned.
Gallison Hall's eastern wing features an airy pool pavilion with a lounge area. Photo: Dear Lovers Photography
Gallison Hall is grand. If you’ve always dreamed of arriving at your wedding in a coach-and-four, like Cinderella at the ball, this place is for you—come through the ornate ironwork gates, down the tree-lined drive, and step down into the stone courtyard in front of the palace.
In fact, it’s likely the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg was one of the inspirations for Gallison Hall. The home’s original owners, Julio Suarez-Galban and his wife Evelyn (who met while attending UVA), loved to tour Virginia’s historic homes. In the early 1930s, they commissioned Lynchburg-based architect Stanhope Johnson to design them a stately home in Farmington; Johnson’s style was sometimes called James River Georgian because he drew on famous Virginia houses from Westover and Shirley to Gunston Hall and Bacon’s Castle. Gallison Hall’s landscape architect, Charles Gillette, was also known for his work on Virginia sites such as Kenmore, Agecroft, and Lewis Ginter Gardens.
Galban was the scion of a Cuban sugar dynasty, and Gallison Hall (the name is an amalgam of Galban and Evelyn’s maiden name, Allison) is the epitome of the lifestyle of the rich in the 1930s. The house, on both the National Register of Historic Places and Virginia’s Landmarks Register, is remarkable for its quality craftsmanship and wealth of architectural detail, from the intricate woodwork on the entry stair (modeled on one at Gadsby’s Tavern in Alexandria) to the graduated Buckingham slate tiles of the steep-pitched roof.
Gallison Hall has always been a private residence, and it’s currently being carefully restored and brought to modern standards by Jason and Susan Williamson. The Williamsons love a good reno. “Our first house [in the 1990s] was a renovation,” says Jason, “and Susan has a great eye.” The North Carolina-based couple are both Wahoos (at separate times); two of their four children currently attend UVA, so the Williamsons were looking for both a local base and a project when Gallison Hall came on the market in 2020.
“We didn’t even know this house was here,” says Jason. “So when we found it, we thought ‘This is cool!’ We love history, we love Charlottesville, and we want people to be able to enjoy this place.” Thus, the wedding venue idea.
Gallison Hall is not available for parties to spend the night, but couples can certainly take advantage of the extensive and beautiful grounds. Much of the back lawn of the Hall (which was originally the barn and paddock area) was redesigned in the 1990s. The house’s eastern wing was extended to create an airy pool pavilion with a lounge area featuring an enormous carved marble fireplace. The pavilion doors open onto a wide double staircase featuring two parterre rose gardens, and leading to a spacious lawn half again as large as a football field.
At the end of the lawn is a galleried building that houses the former indoor tennis court, refloored for use as a dining or party space. (Its two small locker rooms are completely tiled in that hexagonal-white-and-black pattern that’s so midcentury modern.) There’s also a full-sized catering kitchen—and an apartment above, in case anyone needs a nap.
The house’s rear façade, facing north and west, has a spacious patio and a small knot garden around a fountain, overlooking the sweep of lawns and the Blue Ridge views. To the west is a brick courtyard and boxwood garden, being restored according to the original Gillette drawings (“We’ve just planted 6,000 tulips,” says Jason). Another level down is the walled croquet court—what reception is complete without a spirited croquet match?
Set into the court’s wall are the delicately worked iron gates from the Galban mansion in Havana where Julio grew up, displaying the family’s initials. They are a reminder that, aside the from the historical architectural references, Gallison Hall has its own history.
Jeanne Ward has traveled the world. As a child, she grew up “all over the United States,” and as an international consultant, she lived for 15 years in Kenya and went wherever the job took her: East Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia. But a friend’s suggestion, serendipity, and the pandemic brought her to a quiet hillside outside Batesville—and a new home.
Ward had dreamed for years of building her own home, and had started looking at pieces of land in Kenya. In the meantime, one of her best friends from her college years, who had settled in the Batesville area, told Ward about a 10-acre lot for sale just down the hill. Ward thought Albemarle County land might make a good investment, and in summer 2015 bought the lot sight unseen. “At first, I wasn’t going to build there,” she recalls. “But when I came [to sign the sale documents], I thought, ‘Wow, this is pretty’—and after living in Kenya, my standards are pretty high.”
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
In the meantime, Ward had been talking about her design ideas to an architect acquaintance who said, “I have the perfect person for you”—a Chicago-based architect named Trish VanderBeke. Ward and VanderBeke talked on Zoom and connected; VanderBeke (whose bucket list had always included Kenya) came to Africa and spent a week looking around with Ward and learning about her tastes.
When Ward decided to go ahead and build in Batesville, VanderBeke developed a design and put it out to bid—and her new client faced the reality of U.S. construction costs. Ward reluctantly gave up the full basement with guest suite; VanderBeke made the house more compact (a little more than 2,000 square feet) and designed for natural climate control when Tesla solar roof tiles were still too pricey. Charlottesville contractor Sun Structures became a real partner in creating the house, says Ward—who throughout the construction process was still in Kenya. She saw her new home for the first time in 2019, when she arrived from Africa to move in.
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
Great timing—because once the pandemic hit in March 2020, there was no more traveling to work sites internationally. “I was so lucky—this house became my bolt-hole,” says Ward.
VanderBeke had homed in on two qualities important to Ward: a connection to the land, and a sense of both openness and privacy. (“We used the rural prototypes,” the architect says. “We didn’t want the house to stand out as an oddity.”) Its massing, the monitor roofline, the hayloft window, and the white vertical siding all fit right into the Virginia farm vernacular. Because soil conditions meant the house would be sited close to the road, VanderBeke minimized openings on that side and faced the living spaces out toward the meadows and hillsides. A felicitous result: The house is more closed to the north and west, keeping out winter winds and minimizing late-afternoon summer sun; Ward says the house barely needs to be heated—although the radiant flooring helps there—and requires minimal air conditioning.
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
The home’s airy white-walled interior harkens back to Ward’s lifestyle in the mild Kenyan climate; the kitchen, dining, and living areas flow together, and each space has its own access to outdoor seating and the meadow beyond. The living area’s two-and-a half-story window wall takes full advantage of the Blue Ridge landscape. As a result, the house feels more spacious than its square footage, and serenely private—the only intrusion on the view are the birds and an occasional contrail in the distance.
Past the main living space is a small den/guest room and the master suite, set off by a pocket door. The master bedroom has its own patio, and even an outdoor shower (“not hooked up yet, that’s on my list,” says Ward). On each corner of the deep-overhang roof are silver rain chains—a charming and visually attractive way to channel water off the steep roof (VanderBeke says, “I searched all over for that particular design.”). A second-story space overlooking the living area functions for now as Ward’s office, but may become a small guest suite.
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
Throughout the home are furniture and furnishings from Ward’s years in Kenya and her travels. Woods and fabrics dominate, along with fresh flowers. There are a few decorator touches: The main wall in the master bedroom is papered in an almost-lilac neutral Philip Jeffries pattern called Dandelion Seeds, and two powder room walls are Kelly Wearstler’s black-and-gold Graffito. Ward likes the idea of dark walls in small spaces “to make them appear larger.” In the den, for example, painting the walls a soft black makes the space feel like a little hideaway after the wide-open white living space.
Now that she’s in her dream home, Ward has found—as most homeowners do—that the work is never done. Her first-year project was opening her meadow view and revealing the orchard beyond by clearing out an acre of scrub trees and undergrowth (including the remains of a former Christmas tree farm—her new neighbors appreciated the free Christmas trees). Last year’s project was renovating the property’s original farmhouse to serve as an Airbnb; Ward filled it with some of her own furniture, supplemented by Charlottesville’s Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and she’s already hosting.
Photo: Virginia Hamrick
Still to come is finishing the landscaping around the new house, including a possible retaining wall and larger gravel drive/parking area. And then perhaps the guest quarters Ward had to give up in the original design will be reincarnated in a silo-type structure at the top of the driveway. One of Ward’s Kenyan rentals was a small one-bedroom place with two little guest houses; she liked that approach—“I got to have my guests and my own private space,” she says with a smile.
In the meantime, Ward is living in a space she had always dreamed of. “I adore this house,” she says, and from the look on her face it’s clear she has come home.
Linnea Revak, owner of Darling x Dashing, credits environmentally conscious young people with the growth of the thrift industry. Photo by Tristan Williams.
Whether you are moving out, moving in together, downsizing, settling an estate, or just tired of the clutter, spring is a great time to get rid of stuff. But do the Earth a favor: Give your castoffs a second life.
Reuse helps both people and the planet. Community advocates point out that lots of folks will happily use what you no longer need or want. Green activists stress that making new things uses both resources and energy, and landfill space is limited. Environmental concerns among young people “are a huge part of why the thrift industry is growing so fast,” says Linnea Revak, owner of consignment store Darling x Dashing.
Consignment is a way to score some return, in cash or store credit—and it’s often easier than selling it online. For consignment, items must be clean, current in style, or truly vintage (not just old), and in good, working condition. Start by visiting the store or checking its website to see what the store stocks.
For apparel (clothing, accessories, hats, shoes, bags, and jewelry), Natalie Dressed features top-end brands, while Agents in Style takes only luxury and designer apparel. ReThreads and Darling accept a wider range of styles. Darling’s partner store Dashing takes only men’s apparel; Arsenic & Old Lace and Low are strictly vintage. Kid to Kid (its mantra: “kids grow faster than paychecks”) accepts children’s clothing, toys, sports apparel, and bikes; Plato’s Closet focuses on teens. High Tor Gear Exchange accepts kids and adult outdoor clothing and gear—the website’s sensible guidance: “Please clean all gear prior to arrival. Remember to check pockets.”
For furniture, furnishings, and housewares, the Consignment House focuses on items “of historical or artistic value” (e.g., heirlooms, signed artwork), while Heyday and The Eternal Attic accept a wider range of antiques (including jewelry) and furnishings. Circa, one of the biggest consigners, will take almost everything décor, from furniture to tchotchkes, for cash up front. “We can arrange to pick up large items,” says co-owner Robin Slaats. “Or you can call us before an estate sale to [come out and] see what you have.” All these outlets require an appointment or preview photos before you bring anything in.
If you don’t need money back, there’s lots of donation options. Goodwill, SPCA Rummage, and Salvation Army take an enormous range of items from A to Z—but check their guidelines because each place has its own rules. Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore only takes furniture, furnishings, some appliances, kitchenware, and building supplies. Donation appointments aren’t required, but “are appreciated,” says assistant manager Bert Bettinger, who’s seen a lot of downsizing lately. Then there’s Twice is Nice, whose sales support programs benefiting seniors; Schoolhouse Thrift Shop, which helps fund several local church missions, including PACEM’s homeless programs; and Earlysville Exchange, whose profits fund programs and resources for community members in need.
The donation outlets are trying to help you out, provide good choices to their customers, and save resources. Leaving large, bulky or broken stuff outside their door at night is not donation, it’s dumping.
What about your other stuff?
Books—Blue Whale Books pays cash, while the Book Room and 2nd Act Books offer store credit; each store specializes, so check websites or call beforehand. Unless you know your books are worth something, go for donation, including to your local library: Most branches accept books in good condition for resale (the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library’s fall 2022 book sale raised $137,000 for library programs). Peter Manno of Friends of the Library, which runs the volunteer-staffed sale, asks that if you’re donating more than two or three boxes, you drop them off at the JMRL’s Gordon Avenue branch.
Medical equipment—If it’s still usable, help someone in need by donating to Goodwill or All Blessings Flow.
Music/video—To sell your old vinyl or CDs, try Sidetracks, Plan 9, or Low. Each outlet has specific areas of interest, from rock to jazz to vintage. Most donation centers and libraries accept CDs and DVDs for resale. VHS and cassette tapes? Good luck.
TVs/computers/electronics—Do not just dump these items (the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority holds electronic waste collection days in the spring and fall). In addition, late-model televisions and electronics are accepted at some donation centers (check beforehand, their guidelines change frequently). For older items, stores like Staples, Best Buy and Crutchfield may offer recycling options. Lots of places take used cell phones, from donation centers to SHE (Shelter for Help in Emergencies). For laptops, contact Computers4Kids, which will “take laptops less than six years old and refurbish them for students in our community to learn programming, Photoshop, and other skills,” says Colin Learmonth, the group’s director of operations.
Bicycles—Charlottesville Community Bikes accepts bicycles in good condition to be cleaned up for a new rider.
Mattresses—No donation centers take mattresses. The International Rescue Committee, The Haven, and Love INC. occasionally need mattress/box springs sets (call first). If you’re willing to pay, there are services that will recycle mattress components. If all else fails, it’s off to the Ivy Materials Utilization Center—don’t just leave a mattress (or any large items) at the curb or the dumpster.
A baker who enjoys being outdoors, Sarah Rennie combined her two loves and created Two Fire Table. Photo: Katie Thompson
Whether it’s s’mores in the backyard, burgers and ears of corn on the grill, or fresh-caught fish when you’re camping, there’s something about fresh air and a fire that makes food taste better. Two Fire Table wants to bring that feeling to your next gathering—and you won’t even have to build a bonfire.
Two Fire Table is the dream child of Sarah Rennie, an advocate for communal meals, seasonal eating, and wood-fire cooking. But she’s also savvy enough to know that while many people may savor the experience of eating outdoors, most of us would prefer to have her handle the tongs.
Two Fire Table’s offerings are literally soup to nuts. Tell Rennie where, when, and how many, and she will develop a tailored menu—appetizer, local protein, two seasonal sides, and dessert. The day of, she shows up with all the cooking equipment (custom-made for her, including her own portable fire pit), as well as dishes, utensils, linens, glassware, and even tents. It’s the best combination of camping and cuisine.
Rennie’s path began with culinary school in Asheville, North Carolina, and an internship at Farm & Sparrow, a wood-fired bakery and mill where the emphasis is on local produce and regional grains.
“I learned about seasonal eating, about using your farmers’ market, and about cooking in the most authentic way,” Rennie says. “Cooking over a fire, you have to be more attuned to what you’re doing throughout the process—it’s very focused; you can’t be thinking about anything else.”
From Farm & Sparrow, Rennie went to Sub Rosa Wood-Fired Bakery in Richmond, and stayed for six years, eventually becoming kitchen manager (“It was the best experience; I was baking my heart out,” she says). Rennie became the bakery’s croissant master, and worked with local farmers to create pastries using seasonal ingredients from strawberries and pears to jalapeños.
Eventually, Rennie’s husband wanted to start his own business as a fly-fishing guide, which meant being closer to the mountains, and they bought a house in Scottsville.
“I’d always enjoyed being outdoors—I’m a horse person, I’ve been riding since I was 4,” Rennie says, and she began thinking about being a trail guide. She took a summer job out West to learn about trail-guiding, then came a trip to Argentina to learn more about campfire cooking. Amazed by one rider who brought a packet of herbs for the fish cooking over the fire, Rennie recalls, she began to think about combining her love of the outdoors with her devotion to seasonal and conscious cooking.
“I wondered how I could translate this [outdoor cooking experience] and move it around,” she says. “I wanted it to be portable. I wanted to share my perspective on communal eating with others.”
Rennie began practicing.—“I cooked many, many chickens in my backyard”—to learn about timing, when to turn the bird, how to achieve crispy skin and well-cooked but moist flesh. Her husband was more than happy to taste-test the experiments.
Part of the fun of creating Two Fire table, Rennie says, was figuring out how to make moveable wood-fire cooking work. She found metal craftsmen who could make customized equipment—from grills, spits, and tripods to hanging saucepans and Dutch ovens—that she could transport in her car and set up on site. She also developed a network of butchers, suppliers, and farmers because “it always helps to know where your food comes from.”
In 2019, she launched Two Fire Table. “When I first started, I would build a ‘feeder fire’ from which I started others—that’s where the name came from.” Rennie has created meals for family events, weddings, and social gatherings for groups from bird hunters to chefs. She’s got the logistics down—chopping and ingredient prep, including making sauces and dressings, is done ahead of time. Food is served family-style, everyone around the tables passing dishes, because for Rennie that’s an integral element of the experience. “For me, this is about connection—creating community around the fire.”
his year, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center marks its 10th anniversary. Since 2013, it has provided educational programs, cultural events, and commemorations for Charlottesville’s Black community—and revived the role of the original Jefferson School.
“From its founding, the Jefferson School held the cultural practices—the gatherings, performances, the festivals—of the African American Community,” says Andrea Douglas, who has been executive director of JSAAHC since its founding. “The Center came [into being] to connect the history of that institution to the modern space.”
Part of Charlottesville’s past
Following emancipation, Charlottesville’s Black community began creating the institutions it had long been denied. One of the first was the Jefferson School, a Freedmen’s Bureau school offering both elementary education and teacher training. The school was opened in 1865, in the building at Seventh and Main streets shared with the First Baptist Church, one of the city’s first independent Black congregations.
Thirty years later, the Jefferson Graded School (for grades one through eight) moved into its own building at Commerce and Fourth streets in Starr Hill. But under Jim Crow, there was no requirement for Charlottesville to provide a high school for Black students. It wasn’t until 1926, after the African American community petitioned City Council, that the first Black high school in Charlottesville opened in a new building (the one that is now the home of the JSAAHC), constructed adjacent to the Jefferson Graded School.
For the next 25 years, the Jefferson School (by this point grades one through 12) was home to a wide range of activities—from athletic teams and clubs to music and theater groups—that supported the culture and cohesiveness of the Black community. Its auditorium hosted school and public events at a time when venues like the Jefferson Theater and the Paramount, while open to Blacks, were restricted spaces. In 1934, the city opened a Colored Branch library in the school; municipal libraries were segregated until 1948.
In 1951, to accommodate the city’s growing African American population, Burley High School was built for Black students; the Jefferson School continued to teach Black students in grades one through eight. Seven years later, after Brown v. Board of Education, the Charlottesville 12 (Black students from Jefferson and Burley) petitioned to attend white schools, and forced the city’s schools to integrate.
Jefferson School African American Heritage Center executive director Andrea Douglas underscores the Jefferson School’s importance for the Charlottesville community: “We’re not a museum,” she says. “We’re an event-driven cultural space, a place to cele- brate the arts, the festivals, the gatherings—a place where the Black community feels at home.” Photo: Eze Amos
While the city grappled with how to integrate its existing schools, the Jefferson School offered grades seven and eight for Black students. In 1966, when integration was finalized, the Jefferson School taught sixth grade for both white and Black students—a first in the city’s history. But, as Douglas points out, “When the school [stopped being] an all-Black institution, you ended that [community] space. What we’re trying to do is redress that loss of the cultural practices of Charlottesville’s African American community.”
“It’s really important and unusual that we have in our community a descendant organization of the original Freedmen’s School,” says Jalane Schmidt, a UVA professor and director of the Memory Project at the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy. “It’s a direct link to the community’s Reconstruction history.”
Reinventing the Jefferson School’s role
In 2002, a group of Jefferson School alumni, Starr Hill residents, and figures from local businesses, government, and nonprofits began talking about restoring the Jefferson School as a mixed-use community center. In 2006, the school building was added to the National Register of Historic Places; in 2013, it reopened as the Jefferson School City Center, housing a range of community services and the newly formed Jefferson School African American Heritage Center.
“We think of ourselves as a bridge from history out,” says Douglas. “We’re not a museum. We’re an event-driven cultural space, a place to celebrate the arts, the festivals, the gatherings—a place where the Black community feels at home.”
But Douglas emphasizes that JSAAHC is a resource for the wider community as well. “Our mission is not ‘We just do things for Black people.’ White people need our programming as much or more than Blacks do—we know our history.”
Supporting the Black community
To fulfill that mission, JSAAHC’s programming over the last 10 years has been wide-ranging. Its permanent exhibition, “Pride Overcomes Prejudice,” tells the history of the local Black community from emancipation through the late 20th century, often through the voices of Jefferson School alumni and community members. Rotating exhibits focus on community history and on the works of contemporary Black/diaspora artists.
JSAAHC’s Isabella Gibbons Local History Center, named for the Jefferson School’s first Black teacher, offers resources for researching family and area history. In 2017, local journalist and social historian Jordy Yager worked with JSAAHC and others to launch the African American Oral History Project. Now at JSAAHC, Yager’s current undertaking, called Mapping Cville, documents Black land ownership and racist housing policies in Charlottesville and Albemarle County; its findings will be hosted online for use by researchers and local schools.
The center also provides space for community meetings, presentations, guest speakers, and activities ranging from Kwanzaa and Juneteenth celebrations to book discussions and the annual Greens Cook Off. The former school auditorium now hosts the Charlottesville Players Guild, a reincarnation of a Black troupe that performed there in the 1950s; the Players Guild presents a full range of productions, from Shakespeare to contemporary Black/diaspora theater.
Driving change
In addition to promoting Black history and culture, JSAAHC was intended to be a forum for addressing racial inequities past and present. “We believe what we do should help drive cultural change,” Douglas says. “This city is not this city without the truth and authenticity of fact.”
To that end, Douglas served on the Blue Ribbon Commission for Race, Memorials and Public Spaces, which met at JSAAHC in 2016. In the 2017 lead-up to the Unite the Right rally, City Council asked the center to host response planning and preparations. “We had 400 people here to be educated about the Proud Boys, and why it was important to be on the streets that day,” says Douglas. “This is the place that Charlottesville came to understand what was happening and why.”
When the statue of Robert E. Lee was finally taken down in 2021, JSAAHC led the development of Swords Into Plowshares, a project to re-use the statue’s bronze to create an artwork symbolizing the city’s commitment to racial inclusivity and healing.
But telling the city’s Black history encompasses far more than contextualizing the statues. JSAAHC has developed a Black history walking tour of the city, from the Court Square slave auction block to the Daughters of Zion Cemetery; worked with area schools to help teachers incorporate local Black history into their curricula; and advocated for March 3 (the day Union soldiers arrived in Charlottesville in 1865) as Freedom and Liberation Day. The Center helped locate and memorialize the site where John Henry James was lynched in 1898—and raised the money to take 100 people to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, to deliver soil from where James was killed.
“JSAAHC plays a singular role of promoting and hosting the very difficult discussions about race and justice,” says Schmidt, who as an activist and public historian has worked on many of JSAAHC’s public education programs. “The public knows that the center holds a place for these discussions—and it’s trusted by the community at large.”
The work continues
JSAAHC marked its 10th anniversary in January with a social event—and two days later held a facilitated discussion on race, politics, and the Black community. The Players Guild performances and exhibitions highlighting Black artists; the ongoing work of Swords Into Plowshares and Mapping Cville; Trailblazers, a program that trains African American youth to be community guides; the 2023 Civil Rights Bus Tour with the Memory Project—the center’s commitment to convene, educate, support, and lead continues.
“The Jefferson School, and now the Heritage Center, was and is a touchstone for the African American community,” says Douglas. “We have taken the idea of Blackness in Charlottesville and made it tangible.”
AUGUST WILSON’S CENTURY CYCLE COMES FULL CIRCLE
Perhaps no one has presented the African American experience with more perception, passion, and depth than Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson. In 2017, the Charlottesville Players Guild, under the leadership of Artistic Director and writer/director/actor Leslie M. Scott-Jones, staged Wilson’s Fences, and launched the troupe’s commitment to stage the playwright’s complete American Century Cycle—10 plays examining the changes and challenges affecting Black Americans in each decade of the 20th century. Only a handful of theater companies in the nation have taken on this challenge.
In 2023, the guild will complete the cycle with productions of Seven Guitars, based in the 1940s (February 23-March 5); Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, covering the 1920s (June 15-25); and King Hedley II, set in the 1980s (October 12-22). The week following the cycle’s completion, the JSAAHC will host “Wilsonian Soldiers,” a five-day symposium with panel discussions and master classes from four noted national Black theater practitioners and several local theater artists. The symposium will culminate in a performance of How I Learned What I Learned, Wilson’s theatrical memoir. Visit jeffschoolheritagecenter.org for tickets and season subscription information.
Jen Deibert doesn’t care much for categories. “I would not call myself a potter,” she says, although her cozy cluttered studio is packed with ceramic pieces. (It actually looks like a vintage shoppe and a crystals booth got married in a kiln and had children.) Asked about her art, Deibert simply says, “I make things.” But whatever she’s creating, she clearly has The Touch, because people love her work.
Deibert starting creating early: “I always loved rocks and crystals and digging in the dirt.” By the time her family moved to Charlottesville in her middle-school years, she recalls, “I was making my own necklaces and earrings. My parents loved to go to antique shopping—they’d take me along, and I would get these great vintage jewelry pieces and take them apart to make new things. And the girls at school would say, ‘Could you make me something?’ I would decorate my notebook covers, and people would say, ‘Where did you get that?’”
Next, Deibert says, she taught herself how to make stained glass, and sold it on the Downtown Mall. She left college because she couldn’t decide on a major; she got a real estate license, but all she really wanted to do was make things. She has no formal art training: “I never liked sitting still or following directions,” Deibert says with characteristic candor.
She kept on doing what she loved: finding and using vintage jewelry, clothing, and objects to make new things in her own eclectic style. But she found the distinction people made between her work as “craft,” and the more valid, respectable “art” to be a false one. “It’s taken me 45 years to say I’m an artist,” she says.
Photo: Eze Amos
Two years ago, Deibert began developing her own approach to ceramics. She had bought a cheap potter’s wheel to try out (“I hated it—it’s now a spider house”), but she found working with clay and hand-building felt really familiar. “Working with the earth […] there are endless possibilities. There’s nothing you can’t make from clay.”
And to prove it, Deibert’s current and most popular creations are trophies—recognition of achievements which have nothing to do with competition. Her trophies are child-like, homemade, painted in gleaming white and bright colors, each one unique and proudly displaying affirmative or thought-provoking mantras: “Keep going.” “You’re doing great.” “Good job floating through space.” “Is any of this even real?” “Oh dear, what a year!” Even, “We’re going to need a better trophy.”
Deibert says her ideas start from a phrase. “My [work] is more about the message, but in a physical thing you can touch,” she says. “It’s more about the things I’m trying to get people to think about.” Many of these ideas come to Deibert while she is meditating under a special lamp called a Lucia No. 3. She has one mounted over the couch/bed in her studio; she characterizes its impact as “like a more modern version of staring into the flames. It’s a tool for creativity.”
Deibert works on other objects as well. Scattered around her studio are ceramic cups, vases, and animals as well as vintage objects modified with crystals, paint, clay, and papier-mache. (A favorite example: a table lamp modified into a bright yellow banana decorated with quartz prisms and one staring bright blue eye, emblazoned with “Don’t forget we are here to have fun!” around the shade.) Her works are available for sale on her Facebook and Instagram pages and at The Quirk Gallery.
While she’s enthusiastic about her ceramic work, Deibert also wants to continue working with jewelry and vintage clothing. “I have this mental list of all the things I want to make,” she says. “When I get old, I want to have all these things [around me] that were made by me.”
Which is a wonderful description of the Deibert home in Esmont, where Jen, husband Josh, 8-year-old daughter Birdie (“already a wonderful artist,” says her proud mother), and their five dogs have lived since 2017. The large farmhouse has a charmingly overgrown Secret Garden atmosphere. Her studio in the vine-draped English basement has a worktable watched over by a turquoise papier-mache dolphin, a plastic chair the shape of a giant cupped hand, and the Lucia meditation bed under a parachute canopy.
Whether it’s vintage jewelry, a second-hand lamp, or a 1950s housedress, “I just like recycling old things,” Deibert says. “I love pointing out or finding things other people ignore. They are begging you to look at them. We all want to be validated.”
What’s in your back yard? Some people have a fire pit, or a small pond with water lilies and koi, or a trampoline and a tree house. Matt Lucas has a 200-year-old log cabin.
“I’ve always been interested in old things,” says Lucas, a D.C.-area native who graduated from UVA and made a career in the software industry. When he and his family were ready to leave northern Virginia in 2004 in favor of a more rural lifestyle, they bought a mid-1800s farmhouse in Free Union. The house needed more than a little work—in fact, the appraiser put a negative value on it. Lucas spent the next two years restoring the farmhouse. “It was hard work,” he recalls, but he was hooked. His wife Tricia says the Free Union farmhouse “was his training wheels.”
Soon Lucas had acquired a 19th-century house in Freetown that supposedly once served as a general store/community hub for the free Black community there; its restoration is still underway. Then he purchased a Civil War-era Crozet house that had been moved from its original site to a lot next to The Yellow Mug—Lucas has been working on that one for the last five years.
Photo: Stephen Barling
In 2016, Albemarle County Supervisor Ann Mallek—who knew Lucas as a neighbor in Free Union—came calling. Engineering firm Froehling & Robertson wanted to expand its facility in Yancey Mills, but that would mean razing a log cabin that had been there for 200 years. Mallek wanted to preserve this little piece of history, noted on the Virginia Landmarks Register as an example of “a vernacular architectural style common to Virginia.” She asked Lucas if he would take on the challenge.
Lucas offered to relocate the little building to the yard behind the house he was restoring downtown. The Crozet Community Advisory Council was very supportive, he says, not only of his acquiring the building but in agreeing to rezoning his lot. In 2017, once the approvals and planning were completed, the cabin (which was too unstable to be lifted and moved) had to be disassembled by hand and reconstructed in its new location.
And that was just the beginning. Over its 200-year life (“Is it pre-Revolutionary War? We’re not sure,” he says), the building had been adapted as its uses changed. Lucas has heard it may have originally served as a roadside tavern for travelers headed over the mountains, while at a later point, when it was likely a family home, the log walls were covered with wood siding. Very little of the structure could be retained, either due to deterioration or because the building had to be brought up to modern codes if anyone was ever going to go inside.
Photo: Stephen Barling
For those reasons, Lucas hasn’t attempted a complete restoration. Rather, he says, “I wanted to keep its historic character.” So three walls are constructed of the original logs, with the adze marks still visible, and chinked with historically accurate mortar, and the back wall is built of logs reclaimed from another old structure. The heart pine wood flooring in the main room was salvaged from a cabin in the Scottsville area; the second floor is wood from an old silo. The chimney is not brick but fieldstone, as it would have originally been. And the bathroom Lucas added is floored in bluestone salvaged from another house lost to time.
After a decade of buying and reclaiming historic properties, Lucas has a well-developed network of artisans and restoration enthusiasts—plus a barn full of logs and stone, metalwork, fixtures, woodwork, and other furnishings he’s picked up in years of roaming central Virginia to purchase or salvage from old properties. For this project, he had invaluable help on both the reconstruction and the interiors from father-and-son historic restoration team Peter and Blake Hunter of Batesville.
But while Lucas wants the cabin to be as historic as possible, he has an eclectic appreciation for all old things—and a modern desire for good plumbing, heating, and lighting. The kitchen has a counter made from old barn flooring, a late-19th century J.L. Mott sink, and a vintage Chambers stove (c. 1940s). The bathroom has a vintage sink, 20th-century light fixtures, and a contemporary glass-walled open shower.
Proud of having a reclaimed piece of history in his back yard, Lucas enjoys that patrons sitting out back at The Yellow Mug can look over and see the restored cabin. But he also wants the old building to come back to life by being used again. He and Tricia considered turning the cabin into a bed-and-breakfast, but decided to use it as a space for entertaining. Their trial run: holding their daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner there. “It was a perfect setting for a family gathering,” says Lucas.
