Author: Joe Bargmann

The style of central Virginia’s wine-tasting rooms generally reflects their rural, agrarian roots. Some have a rustic, barn-like feel, because vineyards are essentially farms. Others exude the refinement and grandeur of a country estate, where one might relax with a glass of viognier after a morning on horseback. There are exceptions. Gabriele Rausse Winery built a trapezoidal modern glass box in the woods, and Stinson Vineyards chose a minimalist design, converting a three-car garage to house its production facilities and tasting room.

Flying Fox Vineyard—which opened its new location in Afton in September 2018—presents something entirely different. “We have a running joke,” says George Hodson, who co-owns the winery with his sisters Emily Pelton and Chloe Watkins. “If an old English pub and a ’70s carpet factory and a Virginia winery all had a baby, this is what you’d get.”

To deliver this unlikely mash-up, Hodson turned to Folly, the Charlottesville home furnishings store and interior design studio of Victoria Pouncey and Beth Ann Kallen. Pouncey is a friend of Hodson and his wife, Tralyn. “I knew they were working on this project,” Pouncey recalls, “and George said, Oh, we need help!”

“I came onboard in mid-June, and they were supposed to open August 1,” Pouncey says. “I told them, ‘I don’t see how you can do that.’”

The clients pushed back the opening one month, which gave Pouncey time to solidify her design ideas, select her color palette, and source light fixtures, wall coverings, art, and furnishings, including a custom leather-upholstered settee and couches. The latter were especially daunting, since made-to-order pieces usually take eight weeks or more to complete.

Luckily, Hodson had friends at Moore & Giles, the leather goods company headquartered in Forest, Virginia, which Pouncey put in touch with custom furniture makers she knows in North Carolina. Everyone agreed to work on an accelerated timeline.

The elements came together quickly. “I wanted it to be industrial with a somewhat old-fashioned look,” Pouncey says. “There’s a friction between those two styles that creates a unique energy.”

The industrial feel is endemic to the building, a stark brick structure with concrete floors that once was a yarn and fabric factory. The old-fashioned theme announces itself with a whimsical mural on a towering exterior wall. Rendered in black-and-white—except for the blazing-red Flying Fox logo—the painting depicts a wine cask held aloft by a hot-air balloon.

Inside, a wall extends three-quarters of the way across the cavernous room, creating two distinct spaces. The one in front feels like a Victorian parlor, with dark furniture and splashes of color provided by details such as the red leather shades Pouncey selected for the floor lamps. “I wanted this area to be lounge-y, and I think it is,” Hodson says.

The rear portion of the room, by contrast, is much larger, with a high ceiling and plenty of open space. Along the back wall stretches the tasting bar, made of concrete that matches the floors. But the clubby feeling is not lost here; it carries through with a rather grand, round leather sofa and sconce-studded walls partially covered with the same material.

What’s in a name?

Visitors to Flying Fox may notice the winery’s namesake on a table inside the front door. The weather vane depicts a leaping fox and once stood atop a shed at the vineyard’s original Nelson County location. Flying Fox Vineyard was established in 2001 to supply grapes to its parent property, Veritas Vineyard & Winery, which is owned by Andrew and Patricia Hodson—George, Emily, and Chloe’s parents. The Hodsons eventually began selling wines with the Flying Fox label, but the brand really came into its own when it moved to the current location. The family now calls the old weather vane Mr. Fox, and is developing the character as a brand symbol and representative.

“Mr. Fox is a world traveler,” Pouncey says. “That’s why you see the globe in the Flying Fox logo, and also why there are so many maps on the walls at the winery.”

There’s one of Nelson County, two of Jacksonville, Florida, George and Tralyn’s former home, and a very impressive one of London. “George’s parents are English,” Pouncey says. “At Folly we happened to have this huge map of London—it’s really an installation, framed in 18 sections.”

While the fictional Mr. Fox travels the world, Pouncey found ways to place other fox imagery in the winery. For instance, on an accent wall in the men’s restroom, the caricature of a fox in a red riding coat repeats in a regular pattern against a creamy white background. It’s bold, playful, and a clever design choice, perfectly fitting the message Flying Fox wants to convey.

And like the rest of the interior appointments, it came in just under the wire. “I was there, making finishing touches, the day before the winery opened,” Pouncey says. “I can’t believe we got it done.”

The address of the wedge-shaped building is 550 E. Water St., but it is better known simply as 550. That’s what happens when a piece of architecture breaks new ground. It becomes a symbol, and a shorthand reference is enough to identify it.

Designed by Cecilia Hernandez Nichols and her husband, Robert Nichols—founders and principals of Formwork—550 did not come into this world quietly. Construction of the six-story building forced street closures and riled some business owners, who said it was hurting their bottom line and blocking mountain views. One complained that the building threatened the character of the neighborhood. “I really, really dislike that every open space on Water Street is going to be gone,” she told C-VILLE Weekly. “It’ll be so cold.”

The architects don’t contest the point that 550 could be a harbinger of downtown densification. And they make no apology for the high prices commanded by its commercial space and six opulently appointed condos, which are listed for as much as $2.5 million. In fact, they are proud of its elegant, contemporary design, and they believe 550 could inspire the building of more—and more affordable—downtown living space.

Over lunch at Brasserie Saison recently, they discussed 550 and much more.

Abode: There’s plenty of opinion about 550 and its potential impact on Charlottesville real estate, especially downtown. How would you explain its position in the market, and the style you chose?

Cecilia: There’s a fundamental thing you have to understand if you want to understand architecture, period: There’s style, and there’s typology. You can mix and match the two. So, you can have a courtyard building, which is a type of building, that is very modern, baroque, Tudor, or some other style. But style and typology get confused in the collective conversation about architecture, and it really mucks things up. In Charlottesville, because of the influence of Thomas Jefferson, there’s this idea that mimicking the style of his work is an architectural goal. To me, that mixes up the issues. It’s weird to apply to modern typologies what TJ did in terms of style.

Did you sense that when you were designing 550?

Robert: Yes and no. It’s easy to hear public grumbling (I try not to read the comments!) about brick color and stylistic issues. But conversations with the Board of Architectural Review are more substantive. There, and before the planning commission, the conversation was almost entirely about scale.

What makes 550 right for Charlottesville at this time, and for that location?

Cecilia: What Robert said: scale. Regardless of whether we would have liked to see an extra story on the taller volume, or how we could have slightly reshaped the massing, the foundational concept of the massing and how the volumes relate to the street are an appropriate next step for Charlottesville.

Why?

Cecilia: There exists a default attitude that building, in general, is bad. But I think for social creatures, urban density is a good thing. The world’s great cities, large and small, demonstrate this. But we must manage changes in this regard so that the scale of buildings and density of population are consistent with the needs of the community. Of course, factors other than scale also figure in: economic, environmental, and so on. In Charlottesville, we have this small, nicely scaled, walkable part of the our city that is enormously desirable, but the community often acts as if density should be resisted. We can fit more people here—upper, middle, and lower income members of the community. Density of population entails a certain density of construction, otherwise the people who work downtown return to bedroom communities at the end of the day. The question is, what will be the nature of the increasingly dense built form—the architecture—that comes along with a greater population?

What’s really new about 550? What makes it unique?

Robert: Up until 10 years ago, the thought that somebody might invest in residential construction on that tiny site, much less expensive residential construction, was preposterous. So designing for residential living at that location is unprecedented. A site that was once peripheral is now central.

Can you expand on the idea of the forms that make up the building, and why they might be a good model for future development?

Robert: 550 consists of a tall portion that completes the intersection of 5th and Water streets; a short connector piece that is somewhat utilitarian in nature, with garage doors; and finally, next to the old train station, a small volume that’s more or less the scale of a duplex. If you were to take those forms, and move them around to other potential building sites, especially close to downtown, they would create the variety of scale that makes blocks pleasing, and could also help transition to lower density streets further from the center.

Cecilia: Are you getting at the fact that we didn’t maximize the zoning envelope?

Robert: Yes, but that shouldn’t be a goal.

Cecilia: I agree. The development and design team started with the idea that we were not going to maximize the by-right envelope for many reasons. If you look at the rhythm of the buildings on both sides of Water Street, it’s very higgledy-piggledy. One block from 550 is a huge parking garage. That blows the massing equation out of the water. We were just looking at what a livable meter might be along the street, and trying to fit the project to that. There’s the C&O restaurant right across the street, for God’s sake.

At 550 you have the most expensive living spaces in the city. Is that a point of pride or shame?

Robert: There’s a couple of things going on. One is super-tight proximity to the center of town, where there’s a lot of pressure on land values. Housing that’s considered affordable—especially if it’s going to benefit from some incentive or subsidy—can’t be expensive to build. And so, a site like that, small and close to downtown, where it’s difficult to benefit from economies of scale, precluded 550 from playing a role as affordable housing.

Parking is a major issue downtown. How did it influence the design of 550?

Cecilia: We had to accommodate cars at the base level. In a sense, we designed around the parking spaces we needed to include, but it doesn’t look that way. In the end, we wanted to design spaces that were enjoyable to live in, and we wanted the building to be beautiful. I hope people think that it is, and if the design brings a premium to the price, that’s a total point of pride!

What statement does 550 make, design-wise, in the context of other downtown buildings?

Robert: I think it says that tackling any empty or underutilized site is worth a stab. It would be great if the mechanisms imposing constraints, economic or regulatory, would support greater density. I mean, when we built this building and the Holsinger, we heard a lot of people lamenting the loss of a parking lot. And a parking lot, especially a surface parking lot, is not something to be desired downtown. I would like to think that any site should be seen as fair game for building up and tightening up the urban fabric.

Cecilia: Sites should be exploited for what they are. There needs to be a sliding scale. You figure in whatever incentives are available, and our priorities as a community, and hopefully that makes for a healthy mix of housing that includes everybody.

But doesn’t 550 cut against that grain?

Cecilia: Just because 550 has expensive apartments doesn’t mean each piece of land downtown should be exploited in the same way. The scale of the building was what alarmed many during the approval process. They said, “That’s a huge building!” But it’s not a huge building. I think if people get comfortable with the approach to scale that 550 demonstrates, we will be able to fit a lot of us here, downtown, in a very livable, walkable way, at every income level.

This can’t be real. That’s the thought that popped into my head when I saw Wade’s Mill. The rustic wood-and-stone structure, with its big water wheel and dark raised- seam roof, basked in the soft sunlight of a late-fall day. As I approached, car windows wide open, I felt as if I were moving toward a massive painting, a Hudson River School masterpiece.

I snapped out of my reverie as a man bounded toward me, waving and shouting, “Hello, welcome to Wade’s Mill!” I sized him up: a cheerful guy in his mid- to late-50s with good energy and a slender face beneath the bill of a well-worn ball cap.

While he gave me a tour of the mill, I learned that his name is John Siegfried. July will mark the third year since he and his wife, Karen, bought the Raphine, Virginia, property—a pastoral setting in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley, about an hour’s drive southwest of Charlottesville.

In December 2015, the Siegfrieds were living in England—John working as a consultant in the oil and gas industry, and Karen as a program director at the University of Cambridge—when a friend, Chris Fox, told them the mill was for sale. Fox had family roots in the area. He’d recently returned from England and settled near the mill, which, ever since it began operating in 1750, was still bringing flour and other ground grains to market. It didn’t take much convincing to get the Siegfrieds to join Fox as neighbors. Well, not John, at least.

“I think it immediately captivated John’s imagination,” Karen says. “I was a little bit more skeptical, initially.”

“Well, Karen was the one who came and saw the mill first, so I blame everything on her,” John jokes.

The Siegfried’s were motivated to move back to the United States to be near their parents, who were getting on in years. Neither John nor Karen was in a position to retire, so acquiring the mill meant buying not only a home but also a small business.

“That was quite important to us,” John says. “It’s just such a lovely setting, and we love the historical part of it. This was the Wild West in 1750. As for the business part of it, I thought, ‘Well, how hard can it be?’ I didn’t actually say that—we walked into this with eyes wide open.”

The mill was built and put into operation by Captain Joseph Kennedy, who immigrated from Ireland in 1733. The Wade family later bought the property and kept the business running for more than 100 years. The grinding stones installed by the Wades in 1880 were driven by the water wheel and still function. But the Siegfrieds now use electric power to turn stones introduced in the 1950s. The mill building has been expanded and beautifully renovated, and John also spends a fair amount of time restoring equipment used by the Wades, such as a decades-old sifter and packing machine.

Wade’s Mill grinds corn, wheat, rye, and buckwheat to produce flour, polenta, grits, and mixes for pancakes, bread, cornbread, and hush puppies. About 70 percent of their business is wholesale, supplying restaurants, caterers, bakeries, specialty grocery stores, and gift shops. The balance of sales occur online or at the mill itself. Local customers include the Boar’s Head Inn, Foods of All Nations, the Greenwood Grocery, and the Ivy Inn. But the business reaches as far north as Washington, D.C., and also into Richmond, Lexington, Harrisonburg, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach.

“We get a lot of new customers through Instagram,” Karen says. “Chefs like to follow other chefs, and when one of our restaurant customers posts images of things made with our products, we repost them, and that often brings in new business.”

While the couple works to expand the business, they also simply enjoy living at the mill. They also rent out a restored early 19th-century schoolteacher’s cabin. Relocated from the Lexington area, the log structure features a living room with a fireplace on the first floor, and two bedrooms on the second. It sits beside a creek and adds to the storybook quality of the property.

The Siegfrieds say they’ve learned a lot in the past three years, and it reaches beyond the ins and outs of business. “If the miller started to smell anything burning, it meant that the stones were too close together, and the friction was causing heat,” Karen says. “Before we bought the mill, we thought ‘keep your nose to the grindstone’ meant to work harder. But it actually means to be smart about what you’re doing, and pay attention.”

If you go

Wade’s Mill is open 10am to 5pm, Wednesday through Sunday, March 30 through December 22. Co-owner John Siegfried gives tours and runs the mill’s historic equipment, including the water wheel, from 10am to noon on Saturday and 3 to 5pm Sunday.

“I started painting moths eight years ago. Each of the first few took months to complete, but now I can paint one a week. I’ve done 110, including several of the same species; I expect that number to rise steadily, since I paint every day.

“At night, on the side of the shed on my heavily wooded lot, I illuminate a white cotton sheet, and moths flock to it. In glass jars I capture those I want to paint and refrigerate them; this puts them in a torpor so they remain still while I take close-up photographs. After the moths warm up, I release them outdoors. Of the 2,000 to 3,000 species in central Virginia, I have photographed about 500, and painted more than 80.

“Working from a moth’s photo, I render it on a 30-by-40-inch canvas. Scale is a key factor. I want to present an intimate look at their amazing details. I feel that the large size of the paintings inspire awe and wonder.

“Moths are beautiful and mysterious, as well as being important ecosystem players, primarily as pollinators and food for birds. Since moths are mostly nocturnal and rarely noticed, I am on a mission to show them to the world. This brings to mind a Mary Oliver quote: ‘Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.’” —Deborah Davis, as told to Joe Bargmann