The book look: City library addition celebrates the written word

Libraries are the repositories not only of books, but of feelings. There’s the love of a good read, of course, but bookworms harbor other associations with libraries, too: discovery, solitude and the satisfaction of working hard. When architect Bruce Wardell and his colleagues were asked to design a library addition for a Charlottesville homeowner, they […]

A bit of earth: How to buy land in the county

If you think “groundbreaking”—as in the physical act—might be one of the more thrilling words in our language, you might need to get in the market for land. Selecting a site where you can build anew, on whichever hilltop you like best, is a welcome adventure. But, like all adventures, it has its share of […]

Collector’s addition: Wish you were here

While cleaning the office of Madison House, where he was associate director from 1997-2001, former mayor Dave Norris found an old postcard of Madison Hall in the discard pile. “I thought [it] was a cool old knick-knack and saved it,” he says. Over time, he accumulated more postcards of UVA and, later, Charlottesville. The collection […]