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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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). […]
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, […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]