Magazines

This place looks nothing like a hay barn. Yet there was a time, at some point in the early 20th century, when the Somerset farmhouse now belonging to David and Sissy Perdue was in fact used to store hay. Built in the 1880s as a two-over-two home for a family of chicken farmers, the house […]

The weekend home of a Washington, D.C., couple sits not quite in the middle of their 76-acre property north of Charlottesville. They didn’t choose the most lofty site for their cottage, but instead gravitated toward a spot that snuggles into a treeline and offers a broad, rolling view of fields and woods. “This was our […]

In a way, one might say Jessie Chapman is getting back to basics. While many architects have gotten out of the practice of sketching their designs as the use of computers becomes more prevalent (and more time-effective), she prefers to put pen to paper. She says it helps her see more carefully. “When you draw […]

When Vinegar Hill Theatre closed its doors in 2013 after 37 years of showing independent films, many cinephiles in Charlottesville mourned its loss. So when the downtown building became the home of Light House Studio in May 2015, says Light House’s Brooks Wellmon, “There was a ton of community interest in preserving the theater.” Light […]

A second-generation interior designer, Michelle Willis Adams grew up “assisting” her mother, who had a design business in New York and Rappahannock, Virginia. She can remember sitting at her mother’s clients’ kitchen tables, “listening to them discuss fabrics and furniture arrangements,” she says. “I also remember browsing many antiques shops and going to auctions with […]

You want a porch. But you’re afraid of commitment. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life with a whole deck hanging off the front of your house? Getting cold feet is understandable. Perhaps a portico is more your speed. “Generally I think of a portico as purely shelter for a doorway, […]

The first very important question for would-be buyers of 622 Watson Ave. is this: How much imagination do you have? The question is key because the house, a 1930 foursquare, is ripe for a reno. It’s one of the older houses on the street, and in general it’s not the handsomest feller at the hoedown. […]

Designer Ann Nicholson admits she borrows inspiration from unlikely places—Edgemont, a historic Albemarle residence possibly designed by Thomas Jefferson; a pool house in the Hamptons belonging to designer Tory Burch. But the pool at Lowfields Farm in Fluvanna, where she resides with her husband? That was all her. Installed by Charlottesville Aquatics, the double lap […]