Belmont House

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John Winn House (a.k.a. Belmont House), drawing dated 1933

Belmont House (or Belmont Mansion) is one of Charlottesville's individually protected properties, meaning any exterior changes or potential demolition would have to be approved by the Board of Architectural Review. The house is located at 759 Belmont Avenue. [1] It was also known as the Belle-Mont House at other times in its history.

National Register of Historic Places

The house was built for John Winn in about 1820 by Thomas Jefferson’s brick mason John Jordan. Sponsored by the University of Virginia, School of Architecture with project management by Edward K. Lay, the John Winn House was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

History

Belmont House.JPG

The house, once part of a 551 acre estate, is believed to have been built for John Winn by John Jordan, a brick mason for Thomas Jefferson. It is similar to other buildings built by Jordan, such as Stono, in Lexington, Virginia. With its center pavilion with lower symmetrical side wings, the Winn House illustrates Jefferson's influence on Jordan. The details of the house are of the Greek Revival and Federal periods as it was built during the transition between the two. [2]

History

The brick tripartite house was built around 1820 for John Winn, likely by his brother-in-law John Jordan, a master brickmason. Winn had purchased the Belle Mont Estate and a 1790s one-story frame house in 1813 from John Carr.

It is located at the highest spot in the Belmont area. [3]

A brick fronting was added to the building in 1937, by which time it was being used as an apartment complex. [4]

Other owners include Slaughter Ficklin, Dr. W.B. Nichols, and George Seiler.


Details from Charlottesville Landmark Survey

“Belmont is an unusually large brick house seven bays in length, originally one room in width with a central stair hall. A great many changes have occurred in is long history. The main section is two stories on a raised basement with 9 over 9 windows on the first floor having six pane windows for the basement beneath them and 6 over 6 windows on the second floor. There are Jack arches over the first floor windows and the second floor windows almost touch the deep wooden cornice attached to a brick projection under the roof line. There are no windows on either end wall and the chimneys are flush with the end walls projecting from the gently sloping parapet gable. In the middle of the Belmont Ave. side is a projecting wing end gable to the street that was added by the present owner. It is half the size of the original building and both stories are brick. It is attached where a larger frame addition once was that reached the edge of present Belmont Ave. There were also several dependencies shown as late as 1890 where the street now is. The other side of the building is the original front and now has a large two story neoclassical revival portico and is the same height as the outer windows, while the second floor windows on either side of it under the portico are 9 over 9. The entrance door is under the upper doors’ balcony and has a Greek Revival door frame with shouldered architrace trim. The pedimented portico is supported by four square paneled columns resting on a raised brick base. The entrance bay is wider than the end spaces and the whole one bay in depth. From this porch an extension and symmetrical stairways have been added by the present owner.”[citation needed]


Previous owners

The estate was sold at auction to Slaughter Ficklin in 1847. He turned the property into a renowned horse farm and renamed the it Belmont, from the original Belle-mont.

References

  1. Web. List of Individually Protected Properties, City of Charlottesville, retrieved November 19, 2021.
  2. https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/va1465/ Historic American Buildings Survey. Accessed May 15, 2019.
  3. Web. City of Charlottesville Strategic Investment Area Plan, Cunningham Quill, Cunningham Quill, December 13, 2013, retrieved July 28, 2014.
  4. Web. Belmont - A History of a Neighborhood, James H. Buck Jr., Paper for James Kinard's Local History course, May 1980, retrieved July 28, 2014.

External Links

Map

Coordinates:Erioll world.svg.png 38°01′29″N 78°28′38″W / 38.024809°N 78.477263°W / 38.024809; -78.477263