Like Common House, the annex is an older structure, built in the early 20th century, and it’s got the same artsy, rustic, DIY, antique-furnished vibe. Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
Before it opened in 2017, Common House—the co-working, networking, meeting, dining, and events club on Market Street—sent membership invitations to 100 people, giving the impression that it would be an exclusive place. But not long after it launched, 500 people had joined. Today, with more than 1,000 members and plans to open locations in Richmond and Chattanooga, Tennessee, Common House has clearly become a thing, attracting coverage by national publications including Vogue and the Robb Report.
Common House co-founder Derek Sieg says Little House, the new space on West Market Street that will serve as CH’s administrative offices, is “an older place with some soul and character.” Photo: Amy and Jackson Smith
Just as its popularity and membership have grown, so too has its management team. Co-founders Derek Sieg and Ben Pfinsgraff now count 12 people in various leadership roles, working to keep the Charlottesville location running smoothly and prep for the out-of-town chapters to come online.
Twelve people where there used to be three or four? The office at 206 W. Market St. was getting mighty crowded.
The solution comes in the form of a new space, called Little House, across the street from the mothership. Like Common House, the annex is an older structure, built circa 1910, and it’s got the same artsy, rustic, DIY, antique-furnished vibe.
“We wanted a space that fit with Common House,” Sieg says. “We were looking for an older place with some soul and character.”
What he and his partners found, bought, and refurbished is a stucco house with a porch and plenty of room inside for a conference room, shared office space, kitchen, and lounge-y living room.
As a bonus, Sieg discovered, Little House was once owned and occupied by the family of a current server—one of 50 employees—at Common House. “His grandfather was born and died in that house, and his mother lived there for years,” Sieg says. “It’s nice to have that personal connection.”
Little House has the lived-in feel of Common House, which is intentional and comfortable. The primary feature in the main room is a long conference table that Sieg himself built out of reclaimed barn lumber, with help from a Piedmont Virginia Community College carpentry instructor. “He has a shop out in the county and rents it out for $20 an hour and helps people with their projects,” Sieg says.
The table cuts a wide swath through conference room, which connects to the shared office and living room on the west side, and the kitchen and mudroom to the south.
Sieg says that while the building will mainly be used as Common House’s administrative offices, it has already been rented out by a local business for an off-site meeting and might eventually become an event space.
“We’re just glad that we found such a cool old building that meets our needs as we grow,” Sieg says.
Long walks in her new neighborhood of north downtown—and seeing the many colors and styles of the front doors there—inspired Lyndsey Brown to start her Instagram feed. Photos: @cvilledoors
The door photography craze can be traced to 1970, when a New York ad exec created a colorful collage of 36 arched Georgian townhouse doorways he shot while on a project in Dublin. As the story goes, the adman showed the assemblage to the head of the Irish tourism office in Manhattan, who commissioned copies with the simple tagline “The Doors of Dublin.” The poster led to a book of the same name, and spawned a tourism boomlet of people who wanted to see the doors in real life.
Today, the list of Instagram feeds riffing on the door theme—including one with 2.8 million followers—is so long that we lost count. But @cvilledoors is near and dear to our hearts. Lyndsey Brown launched the feed in June and had gained 145 followers by summer’s end.
After moving from Preston Avenue to a place on Park Street, Brown and her fiancé, Mike, began taking long neighborhood walks with their dog, Ollie. “North Downtown has such beautiful homes, and many people have put great care into their exteriors,” Brown says. “As we walked, we’d always notice the unique doors and point them out to each other. It became a kind of game.”
The game became the Instagram account, and the rest is history. You may take the photos at face value, or read a little into them like Brown does. “Doors are interesting because they’re interactive and functional,” she says. “Choosing to have a beautiful or unique door says something about the style and character of the people inside.”
The Monticello Hotel, designed by Stanhope Johnson, opened in 1923 and featured a lavish dining room. It is now the 500 Court Square apartment building. Photo: Courtesy Carolyn Gills Frasier
Stanhope Spencer Johnson doesn’t pop to the top of the list for most architectural historians, but the Lynchburg-based designer was remarkably prolific in his seven-decade career, and some of his better work—including two buildings on the National Register of Historic Places—can be found in Charlottesville. No one knows Johnson’s work better than our own Carolyn Gills Frasier, whose exhaustively researched book, Stanhope, Chronologically, came out late last year and would make a solid addition to any architecture aficionado’s collection.
Stanhope, Chronologically: The Work of Stanhope Spencer Johnson, by Carolyn Gills Frasier, is available at New Dominion Bookshop on the Downtown Mall and at The Ivy Nursery.
Johnson (1881-1973) designed the Martha Jefferson Hospital and Gallison Hall, the Georgian Revival estate in Albemarle County. Both landed on the historic register, but the less famous but much more popular Monticello Hotel —now an apartment building at 500 Court St. —endeared the architect to local residents.
Also in the Georgian Revival style, it was built in less than a year—from groundbreaking on March 9, 1926, to completion on April 8, 1926. The opening of the nine-story limestone-and-brick building was greeted with fanfare. It removed a stigma that—with apologies to the Boar’s Head Resort—still haunts the city. “No longer will the community be rendered self-conscious by the repetition of the plaintive wail: ‘if there were only a real hotel in Charlottesville,’” a Daily Progress editorial declared.
The complaint rose from the fact that Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello had opened to the public three years earlier, in 1923, causing a flood of tourists with few places to stay. By the time the Monticello Hotel opened, visitors were arriving here by train (there were two stations downtown) and wealthier travelers by automobile. The fortunate ones stayed at Stanhope Johnson’s opulent hotel.
For a 1992 Daily Progress column, David A. Maurer tracked down Mary Cabell Somerville, a New Yorker who booked into the Monticello weeks after its debut. “It was wonderful, and if we wouldn’t have known better, we might have thought we were back in New York City,” she told the writer. “We registered and went up to our rooms and took a long, hot bath.”
The newspaper clipping was a pebble in the mountain of Frasier’s research, but she shared a copy with Abode—with obvious pride and a bright smile.
Johnson designed The Monticello Hotel, which opened in 1923 and is now the north downtown apartment building 500 Court Street. Photo: Courtesy Carolyn Gills Frasier
The Tenth Street Warehouses project encompasses Peloton Station restaurant and bike shop, a new outpost of the Mudhouse, and a handful of apartments, along with more commercial and residential space in the former Coke bottling factory. Photo: Stephen Barling
The concept of urban placemaking surfaced in the 1960s, when writer and activist Jane Jacobs successfully led the fight to block a planned highway through New York’s Greenwich Village, and urban planner William “Holly” Whyte began the Street Life Project, documenting how built environments shaped the way people behave and interact. Today, Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities and Whyte’s The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces are required reading for architects, landscape designers, and planners—and their pioneering work has established the baseline idea that development is more about people’s everyday lives than it is about simply putting up buildings.
Shannon Worrell’s Tenth Street Warehouses project, at the threshold of Charlottesville’s 10th and Page neighborhood, is an exercise in urban placemaking. The pocket of thoughtfully designed commercial and residential spaces is comprised of the historic Coca-Cola bottling facility, a handful of new apartments designed by Wolf Ackerman, Peloton Station restaurant and bicycle repair shop, and a thoroughly modern new Mudhouse coffee shop.
Shannon Worrell has used her new development to create a more open, walkable space between West Main and 10th Street. Here, she sits outside Mudhouse Coffee Roasters, a commercial tenant. Photo: Stephen Barling
If you’re headed west along Main Street and turn right onto 10th Street, you will immediately see the Coke warehouse—with its patinaed red brick and black metal casement windows—and after about 40 paces you will enter an open space that provides relief from the claustrophobic corridor between the monolithic façades of the Flats and Standard apartment complexes. You may also sense that you are in a deliberately composed setting, alive with pedestrians and cyclists, folks enjoying a sandwich and a beer on the patio at Peloton, and people coming and going at the shops, small businesses, and studio apartments of the Coke building.
As the local population continues to grow, Charlottesville is molting its big-town shell and emerging as a small city, creating an imperative for more spaces like the Tenth Street Warehouses. We must commend the developers of Six Hundred West Main Street for preserving the Blue Moon Diner and the building next door. Likewise, kudos to the Quirk hotel designers, at West Main and Fifth streets, for sparing two adjacent 1920s streetfront homes. As a whole, the streetscape between Tavern & Grocery restaurant and Seventh Street presents many pleasant places, including the street-facing dining area outside Public Fish & Oyster and Oakhart Social.
The view from Tenth Street shows anchor tenant Peloton Station, Mudhouse, and the low-rise that contains a handful of modern apartments by Wolf Ackerman architects. The taller building in the background is The Standard, which is not part of the Tenth Street Station development. Photo: Stephen Barling
The Tenth Street Warehouses represent an opportunity for more than commodious living. It is a connector between Main Street and the Westhaven public housing and 10th and Page neighborhoods, both of which absorbed African Americans displaced by the city’s shameful demolition of Vinegar Hill in the 1960s. Worrell is fully cognizant of this history, and also aware that the neighborhood is threatened with gentrification. It could be argued that Worrell’s project contributes to that. But by creating a cohesive, modestly scaled development, she is announcing her commitment not to wall off one of the city’s less affluent communities. On the contrary, she hopes that the Tenth Street Warehouses will act as “soft, connective tissue” between the neighborhood and West Main Street and the university.
We spoke with Worrell, a former poet and musician, about this and much more.—Joe Bargmann
Abode: How did the Tenth Street Warehouses project begin?
Shannon Worrell: You can trace it back to about 20 years ago, when I bought the Coke bottling factory building. That was the company’s original facility in Charlottesville, but they outgrew it and built another one, which is now Kardinal Hall, over on Preston Avenue. The first building became a shirt manufacturing place—maybe not what you’d call a “factory” but certainly bigger than a tailor shop. Since I’ve owned it, it’s been a commercial and residential space, with big lofts and a few smaller spaces tucked in on the ground floor.
How much work have you done to the building?
A lot of the original details were preserved in a renovation by the previous owner, and I’ve continued that idea to this day. The space has been updated—it has to be useful—but I’ve been adamant about keeping all of the amazing old materials intact. It was a large, industrial space, and I’ve stayed true to that spirit and aesthetic. If anything, I’ve opened it up more rather than breaking it up into a bunch of smaller spaces.
What other elements have you added over the years to make what is now the Tenth Street Warehouses?
I bought the building and some land adjacent to what most people remember as the old C’ville Classic Cars shop. It was built around 1930, and for many years it was a machine shop where car parts were made. But it’s always been industrial and automotive.
The transformation into the space that is now Peloton Station and the Mudhouse is night and day. What was your vision in the beginning?
The first thing was just to save the building. There had been a lot of deferred maintenance. There was literally water rushing through it and the roof was falling in, and there were environmental issues because of the industrial use. So, I addressed and mitigated those issues. I was attached to those big, slanted, sort of Art Deco windows and the shape of the building, so I decided to revive it.
What option did you have?
None that I was willing to consider. I could have done what’s going on all over the city, and especially up on Main Street, which is to knock down the old building, put in parking on the ground floor, and then build up as many stories as the city would allow. But I live in that neighborhood, and I’ve been watching the changes over the years, and there’s no way I was going big. I can’t say it was the greatest financial decision [laughs].
I’m sure! And I can appreciate the aesthetic choice, but why was preserving that building so important to you?
I remember when I was a kid, there were all these great old quirky buildings. There are just a few that remain, including a couple on Main Street, that remind me of my childhood. The big box housing developments on West Main Street change the whole scale and feeling of midtown. On the positive side, there are more pedestrians and The Corner is truly being connected to West Main and downtown. The downside is that some of these buildings look out of place in the original cityscape—more suburban and homogeneous in their design and material use. We saw an opportunity to make a project that was more architecturally unusual, while showcasing the old car dealership storefront. The Standard looms over us in a way that urges us to want to create something visually appealing in the shadow of its backside. We are working with them, Westhaven, and The Charlottesville Mural Project to create a park behind the apartment building.
How do you compensate for or counteract that?
We’re looking at our options right now. I’m working on getting a big mural painted that will break up some of that visual monotony of the back of the Standard.
Part of your goal is to improve the way the space looks, but there’s also a practical side to how you’re designing and programming it, right?
I like to describe the Tenth Street Warehouses property as connective tissue. When the classic car shop was in the Peloton building, there were a lot of fences in the space between it and the Coke building. I mean, a whole series of chain link fences were breaking up the space. I had them taken out. It’s important to my commercial tenants and the people from the neighborhood to be able to walk down from, or up to, Main Street.
Playing devil’s advocate, could someone call your project simple gentrification?
That’s fair, to an extent. I have been called a gentrifier. But at the same time, I’ve also deliberately sought out people’s point of view. I suppose I need to do more of that—have a stronger connection with my neighbors. But they’d have to admit that the space is now more walkable and open, a more pleasant place to engage with others. I like to think of it as kinder, gentler gentrification, if there is such a thing [laughs]. I want people to understand my point of view. I could have cleared the land and put up the biggest possible building, in order to make more money in the near term. I’m committed to a different approach. I have an open mind and an open heart. I have to run a business and make money, but I’m confident that if I do the right thing, that will happen in time. That sounds utopian and naïve, but time will tell and I’m just going to keep trying.
What’s going to happen with that lot on the other side of Tenth Street? It would be nice if you could have something there that continued in the vein of the warehouses.
Well, the university owns that land, and right now it’s used as parking for faculty and hospital staff. I think I’m like a lot of people from the neighborhood who have a love-hate relationship with the university. It obviously employs and educates and enlightens a lot of people, and it provides all of us with lots of wonderful diversions and resources. But people also see UVA as a gentrifier that’s encroaching on the city.
But the story isn’t so simple, is it?
No, of course not. And I think [UVA president] Jim Ryan is really interested in having more of a dialogue with the community and enhancing UVA’s relationship with the city. What happens with the land that’s now a parking lot? I don’t know. I guess it could end up being student housing.
Have you spoken with anyone at the university about that parcel?
No, I haven’t. But I hope to. And generally speaking, because of president Ryan and also the aftermath of August 12, I think the university is more sensitive to how it interacts with the city. It’s certainly more sensitive than an out-of-town developer who really has no community connection.
It seems to me that it would be beneficial for the city to leverage some of the talent from the School of Architecture—architects, landscape architects, planners…
That kind of integration would be really great. There are some amazing people in this community who are either at the university now or who have come out of it. I have had professors and students work up plans for sites in the past, but nothing ever seems to get off the page. There’s so much capital here—creative, intellectual, financial—that it would be great to be put it all together to solve some problems. The biggest problem now is affordable housing. It would be interesting to see what could happen if we all put our energy into addressing that.
What connection to the university do you see there?
There’s some student housing on grounds, but a lot of them need to live off campus. I think the relationship between student housing and affordable housing is contentious. We need to talk about that and make sure everyone has a seat at the table. I’m not saying I know how to make that happen. I’m sitting here in my utopian bubble! [laughs] But I am a developer, I have a stake in this, and I like to think I’m conscientious. I’m aware of the housing redevelopment process—I’m part of it in some small way. I do some volunteering for the public housing association president, and I’ve been talking to Habitat for Humanity about some housing initiatives. I’m trying to find a way forward and make a difference. I want to figure out the best way to do that.
What drives you to keep going along that path?
The creative part is what inspires me, and my desire to use that creativity for people in the community. There are a lot of things we could have done with the Tenth Street Warehouses space. We chose to create what you see now.
The apartments above Peloton Station and Mudhouse, designed by Wolf Ackerman, are very modern. How does that style mesh with the other buildings, which are industrial and from different eras?
The Coke building has very large, loft-style apartments. Their size and scale is dictated by the building itself—industrial space with really high ceilings, lots of windows, and wide-plank wood floors. I wanted the new apartments to be similar—with a warehouse-industrial feel and high ceilings—but the architects were like, “Man, there’s a lot of red brick in this town, and I don’t think we want to go there.” I agreed. We were looking at Scandinavian architecture, very spare, and also Japanese. So we coined the term Scandinese industrial. [laughs] It doesn’t mean anything on its face, but it became our shorthand way of talking about the style we were going for. It’s an extension of the industrial history of the site but also contemporary.
There’s a rawness to the whole site. Would you say that the Tenth Street Warehouses are still a work in progress?
Definitely. My tenants all understand that, too. We want to hear from people in the community —we welcome their opinions with open arms—about how the space can work for them and be meaningful to them. There will be changes. I think we’re really just getting started.
The east-facing rear of the house shows the simplicity of the design, large windows and balcony that connect the interior with the outdoors, and in the shadow on the lower right, the overhead door that opens to the basement gym. Photo: Stephen Barling
The couple was living in Boston when they started looking for an architect to build their house on a mountaintop in Albemarle County. It would have to be a unique design, one that meshed with their reverence for nature and rigorous commitment to personal fitness (he’s a serious hiker and outdoorsman, she’s an avid runner). Because their work lives required extensive travel and stretches of time apart, the home must also serve as a sanctuary, a place that would make them feel sheltered and safe, a haven to reconnect and reaffirm their place in the world, together. The structure would also have to feel and look substantial—not necessarily large and certainly not a McMansion, but a building with enough physical bearing and architectural gravitas to crown a prospect that commanded a vast and humbling view of nature’s grandeur.
“Harmony, comfort, healing, health—we wanted our home to promote and express these things,” the husband says. “The connection to nature is deliberate.” Photo: Stephen Barling
As for the style of the house, both the husband and wife had strong childhood memories of design and architecture that they wanted it to express. He was born and grew into his teens in Finland (his father was a university professor there). It was a place where “we thought of good design as a higher thing but also part of everyday life,” he says. “I grew up with kids across the economic spectrum, and every one of them had an Alvar Aalto piece in their house.”
The husband’s mention of Aalto is significant. He was a giant of Scandinavian design who practiced from the 1920s through the 1970s. The guiding concept of his work, on which he partnered with his wife, Aino Aalto, was design as “Gesamtkunstwerk,” which translates to “a total work of art.” In practice this meant that the Aaltos designed not only buildings but many of the objects within them, from glassware to furniture, in shapes that were biomorphic, taking cues from nature.
The wife is Virginia born and bred, a farmgirl who spent much of her youth outside. She recalls summers that included raiding the family garden, picking and eating vegetables fresh off the plants. She also remembers the first time that a work of architecture captured her imagination. It was Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece, Fallingwater. “When I saw a picture of that as a kid, I thought it was the coolest,” she says.
With a stream running beneath its foundation and leading to a waterfall, one of Falling-water’s core characteristics is its integration with the site. Large stones bulge up and out of the living room floor, and at one point along the foundation, naturally occurring stone rises a foot above the floorline before conjoining with a built wall, a literal expression of the connection between the natural and manmade. This is a central tenet of both Japanese and organic architecture: harmony between humans and nature. The wife may not have consciously registered this lofty concept as a child, but Fallingwater stuck with her into adulthood.
Building materials like Pennsylvania bluestone and Buckingham County slate enhance the connection to the natural environment. The steel I-beams at the top of the wall support the green roof above the garage, which creates a canopy above the walkway. Photo: Stephen Barling
The husband began the nitty-gritty of the search in the simplest way. “I Googled ‘modern architects, Virginia,’” he says.
A few clicks later he was poring over the extensive portfolio of Richmond’s Patrick Farley, who had earned both his bachelors and masters in architecture at UVA. The husband was impressed by the clean lines and simple geometry of Farley’s work. The buildings, mostly residential, were substantial yet unpretentious, and integrated well with their sites, some wild and some suburban.
After reviewing Farley’s work with her husband, the wife emailed the architect in November 2015. He was the one and only person they interviewed for the job. Their sensibilities and aesthetics aligned, and work on the mountaintop site soon began.
Above it all
How can a home exist so close to town and yet feel so middle-of-nowhere? That’s what I wondered as I drove there on a typically hot summer day, July 3, to be precise. The serpentine driveway climbed steadily for a couple of miles that seemed like five, at least. The ascent was so steep that I feared my car would overheat, which it did, with steam pouring out from under the hood. But when I finally reached the summit and saw the house, I knew the effort was worth it.
Standing on the fresh asphalt, I felt relieved—and not just because my car hadn’t died. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, enveloped in silence and surrounded by trees. In photographs on Farley’s website, the house looks imposing, but it’s inviting in person. The architect met me at the front door, where I kicked off my shoes (stocking feet only on the smooth wood floors) and stepped into a little foyer adjoining the dining room, immediately noticing the profusion of shiny leaves covering the vertical garden to my left, on the entry wall. I said a few words while greeting the couple and Farley. But when I looked up, I was drawn to the towering windows that form the east-facing wall, speechless. I was in a sort of trance as I backed away from the glass, turned to the right, and stepped down into the living room, scanning the mountainous horizon—again, through huge glass panes—from the north all the way to the southeast. On distant hilltops, I saw clearings around white or red dots that indicated other significant homesites, and I wondered whether if someone might be looking back at me.
“So, what is it we’re doing here?” the husband asked, perhaps a little annoyed by my wandering.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” I blurted. “Let’s sit and talk.”
We took seats at the dining room table and dove in.
“We knew we wanted modern,” the husband said. “There’s Miami Vice-modern that’s cool in a Lamborghini kind of way. But we wanted something more in the direction of Scandinavian-meets-the-Pacific Northwest.”
“One of the things we were attempting to do is connect the materials inside and out,” Farley said. “That’s why you’re surrounded by mostly wood surfaces, and the glass, floor to ceiling, provides a connection to the outdoors and the big trees that you see.”
A view from above reveals the expansive green rooftops and photovoltaic panels—both of which help to make the house extremely energy-efficient. The tapered, V-shaped beams were milled from cedar, and the shape is a tip of the hat to Virginia. Photo: Stephen Barling
Those trees, stout hardwoods, were visible mostly to the north. I could see them through a rectangular window, maybe three feet high, that ran along the wall above the kitchen sink and counter. The husband confessed that he had wanted to clear those trees in order to expand the view even further. The wife smiled and shook her head slowly.
She said the trees remained, in part, to preserve the feeling that the house is embedded in the landscape, in nature. “It’s intentional—we tried to hide it,” she said.
“It’s not a triumph over nature, it’s a submission,” the husband said.
We had veered into Zen philosophy, which seemed apt.
No one spoke for a few beats. Farley took the cue.
“Acoustics are important,” he said. “The wood and other natural materials, the deep beams in the ceiling—they all absorb sound. In the Miami Vice version of modern there’s a lot of reverb. Sound bounces off the hard surfaces.”
Foundational to Farley’s architecture is “biophilia,” a rarely used term that draws from the hypothesis first promulgated by the eminent scientist Edward O. Wilson in his 1984 book of the same name. The idea rests on the notion that humans innately seek connections with nature. Farley attended a lecture by Wilson in 2003 and read the book, which the architect—like many in the profession who are dedicated to environmentally conscious design and building—adopted as a touchstone.
The design proportions, inside and out, draw upon the Fibonacci sequence, which is based on naturally occurring patterns like the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower. This is said to bring feelings of harmony and an intuitive connection with the natural world. Nice views also help. Photo: Stephen Barling
Back to the thing about sound. Wright’s Fallingwater is often cited as a prime example of biophilic architecture, even though it was built in 1939, decades before the idea surfaced. Sound is one element of the human connection to nature inherent in biophilic architecture—and one constantly hears the rush of water at the house that Wright built.
I asked the couple why they were sold on Farley from the get-go. The wife immediately mentioned the green roof that is part of the architect’s repertoire. At the couple’s house, above the garage, the expansive roof is thickly planted with sedum and other plants.
“We knew he could pull it off,” the husband said, turning to address Farley. “We just wanted you to channel your inner Wright.”
The architect and his clients smile. The husband’s comment was a good-natured jab, a lighthearted damning with faint praise, because he and his wife know that Farley’s work goes well beyond mere mimicry. The proportions of the rooms, and the built-in interior elements, such as the cherry-wood cabinetry that conceals the television and other home entertainment equipment in the family room, are based on the Fibonacci sequence, a formula invented by the Italian mathematician of the Middle Ages. The simple definition of the sequence is that each number is the sum of the two previous numerals: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, and so on. Its application in design and architecture is more complex, but basically, it is said to produce harmonious spaces and objects, in part because it is the codification of natural phenomena. The spiraling patterns of a nautilus shell’s chambers, the seeds in the face of a sunflower, a pine cone, the growth points of a trees branches and twigs—all are physical expressions of the Fibonacci sequence.
No wall divides the television-viewing space from the rest of the interior, preserving the sense of openness and the views. Photo: Stephen Barling
“Harmony, comfort, healing, health—we wanted our home to promote and express these things,” the husband says. “The connection to nature is deliberate. There will always be something about a close connection to nature that is healing.” (I had noticed that he was walking with a slight limp; turns out he was recovering from a leg fracture sustained in a cycling accident.)
“We’re out here on 200 acres—out here among all the critters,” the wife says.
But the natural setting is just part of it. The live roof—which is technological as well as natural, because it acts as insulation and sucks carbon dioxide out of the air—is one high-tech element that makes the home “green” and energy-efficient. Geothermal wells are used for temperature control. Photovoltaic panels provide electricity.
The conversation peters out, and the day stretches into the afternoon. The couple is anticipating receiving guests and attending an Independence Day party. So, after a quick tour of the house—three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a large home-office upstairs, and downstairs a well-equipped gym, which includes an infinity lap pool—we bid one another adieu.
It has been an extraordinary visit—two remarkable people living in a beautiful home, designed with great care and purpose by an unusual (in the best sense) architect—and I am reluctant to leave. Down at the bottom of the mountain, people are rushing about, stocking up for July 4th barbecues. Up here things are quiet, and a one-of-a-kind house blends with nature. It’s not a bad place to be, even if your car overheats while getting there.
Chef Keevil and his beloved Höfner bass at his Belmont shop, Keevil & Keevil. Photo: John Robinson
Sometimes, when you hear the name of a well-known local chef, you think of him only for his culinary exploits. You may recognize Harrison Keevil for his corner store in Belmont, Keevil & Keevil, where he offers great sandwiches, salads, and desserts, and prepares meals for home delivery. If you’re into the Charlottesville restaurant scene, you might also know that Keevil once ran his own place, Brookville, on the Downtown Mall, and recently helped to create the concept of “modern Virginia cuisine” that informs the menu—and serves as the tagline—at Commonwealth Restaurant & Skybar.
All of these things are impressive, and Keevil certainly cuts a figure in the local food landscape. But he also plays a mean bass guitar. We discovered this in July, when Keevil posted a photograph of a black Höfner 500 four-string—the signature instrument of Paul McCartney—on his Instagram feed. We knew right away that Keevil is more than a casual bassist, otherwise the photo wouldn’t have also shown a daisy chain of effects pedals on the floor.
“I have wanted this bass for over 30 years (since my mom and dad introduced me to the Beatles), and @jpkeevil made it happen on my 37th bday,” he wrote. “So awesome!”
The awesomeness was a gift from his wife, Jennifer (@jpkeevil). It struck a profound chord for the chef, whose aunt, a Long Islander, was present at the 1965 Beatles concert at Shea Stadium that solidified the British Invasion. Keevil’s mom was the younger sister, not old enough to attend the show. But back in rural Goochland County, she and her husband made sure that young Harrison (after his grandfather’s surname, not George Harrison) got an earful of the Fab Four from an early age.
“The first album I got was Revolver,” Keevil says. “That one definitely opened the door.”
His next move was to get the Beatles songbook and learn to play their songs on his Dean bass. (Mind you, the kid was still in grade school at the time.) That was what he calls his “cheap and cheerful” bass—nothing compared to the Hofner that Jennifer bought for him.
Keevil went on to perform in a band in high school, and in another group in college. Neither was established enough even to have a name, but they scratched the itch that Keevil first felt when he heard Revolver. Come to think of it, the fact that that album marked the beginning of the Beatles’ psychedelic phase may partly explain why Keevil’s college group was a trippy jam band and not a pop band.
Not long after college, Keevil found his way to the French Culinary Institute, in Manhattan, which propelled him into his career as a chef. But the Beatles—and especially, McCartney—remained an inspiration to him, even after the ex-Beatle started Wings. “I was really into James Bond at one point, so I loved Paul’s music, you know, ‘Live and Let Die.’”
Today, Keevil plays his bass daily, just noodling around or perhaps playing a song or two. He’s practicing for the Party Like a Rock Star event October 18 at the Music Resource Center. Jennifer is on the MRC committee organizing the event, and Keevil will play a favorite song, the Foo Fighters’ “My Hero.”
Playing the Hofner is the equivalent of working with just the right knife in the kitchen. It feels good in your hands and is easy to use.
“The Hofner makes a big difference for me,” he says. “I love the bass and its association with McCartney, but there’s also something great about the fretboard. You can play it more like a guitar, you know, multiple notes at once as opposed to just one at a time.
We get it. Why be “just” a chef when you can be a bass player, too.
“Playing the Hofner is the equivalent of working with just the right knife in the kitchen,” he “It feels good in your hands and is easy to use.”
A panel of experts and enthusiasts tasted eight local brown liquors—bourbon, single malt, and one rum. Photo: Max March
Whiskey goes way back in Virginia. In 1620, English settler George Thorpe made the first batch of spirits in Jamestown using corn—not barley, as was the tradition in Europe—obtained in a trade with the indigenous Powhatan people. George Washington added to the commonwealth’s whiskey heritage, distilling a rye mash in Mount Vernon in the 1770s. Of greater relevance today is Culpeper’s Chuck Miller. He rescued an abandoned 3,000-gallon copper pot still from a hillside in Nelson County, and, with his wife Jeanette, became the first licensed craft distiller in Virginia in 1988. “I feel like I started a revolution,” says Miller.
In the decades since, a growing number of new distillers have followed the small-batch path in Virginia. With the cold weather blowing in, we decided it was time to sample some of those local efforts. So we gathered a few experts and enthusiasts to try two of Miller’s Belmont Farm creations and six other brown liquors made in and around Charlottesville. See our tasting notes below, and then find your own favorite to warm up the chilly nights ahead.
Belmont Farm Virginia Straight Bourbon Whiskey, Culpeper
92 proof. Aged two years in charred white oak barrels.
Notes: “Good, young bourbon.” “It’s a little like candy your grandmother would give you, in a good way.” “Interesting late-night sipper with some ice.”
Virginia DistillingCompany, Prelude American Single Malt Whiskey, Lovingston
92 proof. Aged three years-plus in sherry, cuvée and bourbon casks.
Palate: “Spice.” “Fresh wood shavings.” “Heavy wheat, less oak presence.” “Expansive.” “Smoother than the [Ragged Branch] Signature Bourbon, but still a little hot.”
Notes: “Hot on the palate at the beginning but slightly mellows at the end.” “A little on the sour side.”
Belmont Farm Bonded Virginia Whiskey, Culpeper
100 proof. Aged six years in apple wood and Virginia white oak.
Nose: “Rice pudding.” “Cinnamon-raisin oatmeal.”
Palate: “Cinnamon and smoke.” “Caramel.” “Sorghum.” “Orange creme brulée.” “Smooth, slow release of flavors.”
Notes: “Needs a drop of water to open it up. After that, you get the apple wood right away.” “Another complete whiskey.” “Has a lot of depth.” “+++!”
Vitae Spirits, Barrel-Aged Rum, Charlottesville
90 proof. Unspecified aging period in bourbon and wine barrels.
Early Mountain Vineyards has steadily elevated the quality of its wines, in part, with the acquisition of high-quality existing vineyard plots. With the recent arrival of chef Tim Moore, the intention is to offer outstanding food as well. Photo: Tom McGovern
Just off of Route 29, about 25 miles north of Charlottesville, a two-lane road gently rises and falls with the rolling terrain, leading west toward Shenandoah National Park. As you approach the distant mountains they appear to grow bigger. It’s an ethereal scene, relaxing and more than a little distracting, so you might have to hit the brakes pretty hard to avoid racing past the unassuming entrance to Early Mountain Vineyards.
That’s exactly what happened to me on a recent Thursday, as my girlfriend and I headed to the winery for lunch. The scene inside the barn-like main hall is also quite grand, with soaring ceilings trussed by massive wood beams and large windows that always keep the farmland, neat vineyard rows, and muscular mountains within view.
Chef Tim Moore brings more than seven years of kitchen experience at the three-Michelin starred Inn at Little Washington to his new position at Early Mountain Vineyards, in Madison. Photo: Tom McGovern
Our expectations were running high for the meal. I had enjoyed a quick preview of chef Tim Moore’s cooking a couple of weeks earlier, and now I was returning for a fuller experience of the menu, which is offered from 11am-6pm daily except Tuesday, when the winery is closed. Moore’s arrival at Early Mountain this summer was much anticipated. He was taking over the dining program that had been established a few years earlier by Ryan Collins, a protégé of renowned chef José Andrés and now head of the kitchen at Charlottesville’s Little Star. Collins set a high bar, but Moore, like his predecessor, entered with an impressive professional pedigree, having spent more than seven years at the Michelin three-star Inn at Little Washington, in Rappahannock County.
We were seated at a banquette table beneath a window, fortunate to be on the shady side of the dining room, because the sun was blazing that day. The vines were bare, with the harvest recently completed, and the grass was brown due to the drought and persistent summer heat.
The furnishings and table settings are rustic, and the new cuisine‚ like this beet salad with Asian pears and foraged black walnuts, is refined. Photo: Tom McGovern
This is a story about a chef and a restaurant at an excellent winery, so I will dispense with the scene-setting (I know, it’s about time, right?) and describe the food and wine. We started with two, four-glass flights—one with a white, a rosé, and two reds, all from Early Mountain, and another with four reds (“Tantalizing Tannins,” per the list), two of which were from the vineyard and the others from Jefferson Vineyards, in Albemarle County, and Walsh Family Wine, in Purcellville. Early Mountain is the first vineyard in the area to offer a wine program with labels other than its own. The goal is to showcase the best the region has to offer, and thus raise its profile to the national level.
This may sound a tad too ambitious, but the winemaker, managers, and owner of Early Mountain (Jean Case, wife of AOL founder Steve Case) not only believe it can happen but are also taking strides in that direction. They’ve been quietly making trips to high-end restaurants in Washington, D.C., and Manhattan, and some have begun listing Virginia wines—and Early Mountain’s, in particular. Case, who spent more than 20 years leading marketing and branding efforts for AOL, is keenly aware of the importance of public perception. In the world of fine wine and hospitality—just as in any business, I suppose—that means hiring top talent. Moore is an ace pick, for sure, and so is winemaker Ben Jordan, who cut his teeth in the Sonoma Valley and later worked as general manager and winemaker for Michael Shaps. Born in Switzerland, CEO Peter Hoehn has 30 years experience at hotels around the world, including stints at Quail Lodge & Golf Club, in Carmel, California, and the Boar’s Head Resort (it was just an “inn” back then, but a very good one, for sure!).
So, about the food. In a word, sublime. The menu had just 12 items, with 10 priced from $6 to $16, plus a foie gras dish and charcuterie and cheese board that cost $26 and $24, respectively. We steered clear of those and eased into the meal with simply prepared crostini with sweet shallot confit balancing the saltiness of quickly sautéed prosciutto and comté cheese. A heartier dish—housemade focaccia with tomato jam (I call it coulis, but whatever) and a generous portion of burrata—stood up well to the rich reds I was drinking. (The 2017 Early Mountain Vineyards Shenandoah Springs cabernet franc was particularly lush, with deep notes of plum and dark berries.)
We moved on to a light transitional dish of local roasted beets, fromage blanc, black walnuts, and triangles of crisp Asian pear. This assemblage was also a study in balance and contrast: earthy beets, milky cheese, semi-sweet pears, and complex foraged black walnut sauce. I also detected a background citrus flavor, which added another note to the layered composition.
I was beginning to wonder if and when chef Moore would falter, but the goodness just kept coming. One dish—chilled shrimp with chimichurri flavored with coriander, dill, and parsley, and dressed with a vinaigrette that had tiny cubes of fresh lime—was bright and mouth-filling. My scribble next to the item on the menu reads simply, “outstanding.”
On the menu: Icelandic Arctic char with chanterelle mushrooms and mustard cream. The fish is dusted with crispy “pebbles” made by boiling, crumbling, and pan-frying potatoes. Photo: Tom McGovern
Moore is committed to buying local whenever possible, and he chose pork belly from Whiffletree Farm, in Warrenton, for the heartiest plate we tried—three slow-cooked slices finished in a frying pan and served with poached Virginia apples, braised red cabbage, peanuts, and a dark brown reduction of sorghum molasses, apple cider, and veal jus. I was surprised by the peanuts—I mean, by how well they went with the pork. Our fish dish was decidedly not local, made with Icelandic arctic char, chanterelles, puréed potato (with veal stock added, for richness), and grainy mustard cream.
I thought Moore had outdone himself, but then came a local pear poached in wine with fall spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, perhaps some allspice), spicy/sweet whipped cream, and a lacy brown crisp made of sorghum.
Moore’s menu is small but complete, and it changes at least weekly, based on seasonal ingredients and the chef’s imagination. By offering fine dining, Early Mountain is signaling its intention to create an elevated food and wine experience. The winery is also rather remote, so visitors tend to spend more time there than they would if they were touring several vineyards, a common practice in areas west or south of Charlottesville. A leisurely afternoon meal makes good sense for guests who carve out hours—or even a full day if they have kids, who can play outdoors on the expansive grounds—to soak up the atmosphere at the property. It’s also worth noting that Early Mountain is one of a growing number of central Virginia wineries placing more emphasis on dining. After all, if it’s within your means, grazing and sipping wine is not a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Living in Gordonsville while working in Charlottesville, as my girlfriend and I did for many months, had a certain romance to it. With the windows down and fresh air swirling inside the car, we enjoyed the winding morning commute through fields of grazing cattle and sheep. After nightfall, when we returned
to the old dairy farm where we rented a cottage, the darkness became so inky that we couldn’t see a
hand inches from our face, and the night sky was a shimmery blanket of stars.
But after a while, other things seemed as distant as constellations, and not romantic in the least. With no washer or dryer in our cute little rental, we resorted to the grungy laundromat nine miles away. The local restaurants were sparse and stopped serving early, so we often concocted our evening meal from whatever we found in the fridge. And driving the 50 miles round-trip every day turned from delightful to tedious.
A few months of this pushed us to the edge. We’re city folks at heart, so we were accustomed to easier access to laundry and food. Imagine our surprise (and joy!) when we found both in one place.
Hydraulic Wash, near The Shops at Stonefield, is all you can ask for in a laundromat: clean, well-lit, never
a wait for machines, and great people-watching. The major bonus is El Tako Nako, the food truck tucked
into a corner of the parking lot. It’s open from 5pm until midnight every day except Wednesday (when it’s closed), and it spawned a happy, cheap-and-cheerful tradition for us: date night at the laundromat.
Of course, we weren’t the only ones taking part in the suds-and-grub ritual. Many people lined up at
the window to place orders and, minutes later, pick up a plate of double-tortilla tacos and maybe a tall bottle of Mexican Coke, which tastes better than the domestic stuff because it’s sweetened with cane sugar instead of corn syrup. The smell of ingredients sizzling on the grill and the sound of Mexican pop music poured out of the truck. Customers—white, Latinx, African American—shared the metal picnic tables. Day workers with sturdy boots and dirty clothes stopped by to pick up bags of tacos to go.
As my girlfriend and I scarfed our chicken tacos—
always chicken, even though the menu also includes beef and lengua and chorizo—I imagined families seated at the kitchen table or in front of the television doing the same thing.
There is something reassuring about tacos. Because they’re cheap ($3 apiece at El Tako Nako), you feel virtuously frugal. The ones we ordered—served simply with caramelized onions, freshly chopped onions, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime—were consistently good, a welcome break from grazing out of our refrigerator at home. The setting at the laundromat, with people of all ages and various ethnicities eating in the glow of fluorescent light at the edge of the asphalt parking lot, felt just right.
In Gordonsville, we experienced the romance of life in the country. In the city, we found a more grounded and social kind of romanticism. Ultimately, we gravitated to the latter, leaving our rural nest and moving into a house near West Main Street. We have our own washer/dryer now, so those date nights at
the laundromat are a thing of the past. But every now and then, we’ll remember our ritual and inevitably say, “Wasn’t that great?”
El Tako Nako, 2405 Hydraulic Rd., 305-8918, bit.ly/2ooRykj
Behind the house, a hill tumbles down to a dry creek bed, and then the land rises up to a hilltop that Amy Lewis and her husband, Reid Humphries, have turned into a vast tract of native plants. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
Sweat glistens on Amy Lewis’ brow as she cracks open a bottle of beer in the kitchen of her home in Free Union. It’s late August, and she’s just back from the 1,000-acre Albemarle farm where she maintains the grounds and gardens, her full-time job. At the wooden dining table sits her husband of 21 years, Reid Humphries, and at her feet lie their two Australian shepherds. A hummingbird hovers at the feeder hanging on the back porch.
“Everything you see here, we did,” she says, patting her forehead with a wadded-up paper towel. She sweeps her hand to direct my view out the glass-paned door. The land tumbles down to a dry creek bed and then climbs a broad hillside covered by a sun-drenched thicket of native plants.
Before the sun goes down, Amy Lewis tends to her multi-acre native garden for hours after leaving her full-time job—as the gardener at a 1,000-acre private farm. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
She’s sure they are native plants—with a few invasives to be weeded out—because she and Humphries put them there. They have been tirelessly creating their 11-acre “labor of love” (her words) since 2010. The landscape has become a showcase of cultivated wilderness and environmentally conscious living, so much so that the Piedmont Master Gardeners and Rivanna Garden Club chose it as a site this year in a series of tours of extraordinary domestic green spaces.
Lewis has lived in Charlottesville since 1978, when she moved here with her now ex-husband after he took a job at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. Humphries, born and raised in Virginia, had been an itinerant carpenter—living and working in Manhattan, Colorado, and Nantucket—before landing in Charlottesville. He met Lewis 25 years ago on a job: She was installing a garden that included a water feature Humphries was building.
After Lewis’ kids moved away—her daughter, 35, now lives in Washington, D.C., and her son, 32, in Denver—she and Humphries, who has a wry and slightly off-color sense of humor, bought the land in Free Union. He likes it because it’s secluded. “My definition of privacy,” he deadpans, “is that I can take a piss off the back porch and not get busted.”
Amy lets that line slide without comment but takes it as a cue to begin our tour of the property. The upper portion of the parcel, in front of the house, has a small orchard, vegetable garden, chicken house, and barn, all built by Humphries, who is a multi-talented craftsman. When their house was being built, they hit rock—dense sandstone—not far beneath the surface, and excavated a great deal of it. Humphries used it to build stone walls that bracket the house—the wall in back is 82 feet long.
Australian shepherds Ollie and Mo trot along the grassy paths and sniff out critters in the tall plants. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
For gardeners, the real show begins at the creek bed, where ferns, bulbs, Virginia bluebells, and woodland phlox have naturalized. Paths of packed soil and mowed grass lead up the hill and into the meadow, a scraggly but beautiful three-and-a-half-acre display of native plants: witch hazel, bee balm, St. John’s wort, plumbago, cedum, aster, prairie grass, coneflower, sumac, and the list goes on. Grassy paths criss-cross the meadow, the plants buffering the sound and providing a green embrace. Butterflies flit around, alighting on flowers. Songbirds provide the soundtrack.
Before the couple cleared that land, it was a livestock pasture that, once abandoned, became overgrown with non-native trees, poison ivy, rosa rugosa, and more. “It was a mess,” Lewis says.
To clean it up, Lewis and Humphries successfully applied for two federal grants to create the native habitat, one from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and the other from the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program.
The funds enabled the couple to realize Lewis’ vision. “I wanted to contain the soil on the hill with natives that have strong root systems,” she says. “I didn’t want a landscape that was tied to plants that require a lot of water and can’t survive on their own.”
Today, the meadow—and most of the property, in fact—consists of plants that not only survive on their own but are deer resistant. They provide an idyllic preserve where birds forage and bees and butterflies thrive, fulfilling their natural duty as pollinators.
The work, usually initiated by Lewis, has been intense for the couple, and the property is always evolving. “She gets this look in her eye,” says Humphries, “and I say, ‘Oh, here we go.’”
“People ask, ‘What’d you do this weekend?’” Lewis says. “I say, ‘Oh, we gardened.’ We’re cheap dates. Our entertainment is built in.”
In the front yard, Reid Humphries, Lewis’ husband of 21 years and a skilled craftsman, built not only the barn but also the rock wall, which is made from stone excavated during construction of the couple’s home. Photo: Virginia Hamrick
