When you think of design in Charlottesville, you probably think of UVA’s Lawn and the Rotunda and Monticello and blah bity blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But do you also think of Booker T. Washington Park? Blue Light Grill? The Live Arts building? The silkscreened posters for the Wilco show at the Pavilion? You should.
Charlottesville’s Rose Hill neighborhood has a lot to teach us about this town’s history—the good and the bad—and its present status—the good and the bad. Exhibit A: The 81-acre area northwest of downtown is home to one of the loveliest and most well-designed public spaces in Charlottesville—Booker T. Washington Park (designed by nationally-renowned landscape architect […]
Whatever you do, do not try to drive through the Orangedale neighborhood around 3:50pm on a weekday. That’s when the Charlottesville High School bus lets out on the corner of Bailey Road and Prospect Avenue off Fifth Street SW, and that’s when Orangedale’s younger residents pour into the streets, communing in the road to chat […]
Jim Chang is your typical reluctant neighborhood association president—he took over the job “by default,” he says. You know, somebody’s got to step up and organize the annual neighborhood potluck. Oh, but if only Chang’s job were that glamorous and fluffy. No, figuratively speaking, when Chang was the last Meadows resident to shout, “not it” […]
When I agreed to report on the results of the city’s design contest for the Water Street parking lots, little did I know the Charlottesville Community Design Center (CCDC) would receive a whopping 63 submissions from six countries. Wait, what? How many ways can you redesign a parking lot? Especially when you have to comply […]
When I announced, eight months pregnant, at my baby shower that (1) I planned to be back in my bikini by summer, (2) I intended to tag along with my spouse on a planned work trip to China with a nine-month-old, travel-loving baby in tow and (3) I planned to never, ever appear in public, […]
When Ken White moved to Charlottesville and bought his home in Dunlora three years ago, he says he had few other options. He saw, maybe, five or six houses in his price range that fit his requirements. He wasn’t necessarily looking for a subdivision with a pool and clubhouse—just enough space for each of his […]
Every year we at C-VILLE wait in giddy anticipation of the Best Of survey results and we wonder: Will this be the year of a major upset in the pizza category? Of course not, you say! Duh, you say.
If you’re like many smug out-of-state undergraduates, you came to UVA proudly boasting your Pennsylvania pedigree, and you spent your first year finding subtle ways to constantly remind everyone that you got into UVA even though you don’t hail from Virginia and can’t dribble a ball or run a 4.6-second 40 to save your life, […]
But in the case of Whitley’s Garden Gate Farm subdivision in North Garden, the statement’s not just a throwaway. That’s because along with the three-car garage, vinyl siding and first-floor master suite that comes with your neo-colonial on Garden Gate Court, you get a warm and friendly pseudo-grandpa. That would be Whitley, who lives with […]