The Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA

The Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA. 1859 Photo: Among the Ruin

Photo: Wikimedia

This house, across the street from the Ragland house, is another fine example of Italianate architecture in Poplar Lawn, a neighborhood named after a green park around which some wealthy Petersburg families grouped their homes in the late 19th century. The house was built in 1859 for John Dodson, a mayor of Petersburg. It was later owned by William McKenney, who donated it as a public library in the 1920s, a function it still serves today, although a new library is planned. The house is a five bay house that is particularly severe in its decoration. The design has some Anglo-Italianate influences in the closely spaced brackets, the classically detailed porch, and the simple surrounds. The cornice as well is very plain with some dentil molding and a strip serving as the architrave. The house is stuccoed without belt courses or other dividers between floors; the lack of definition in the basement (no rustication or belt course or anything) is surprising. The basement windows and those on the third floor are segmental arched, while the first floor has tall round headed windows. Each window is topped by a simple cast iron hood molding; the first and second floors include a keystone.

One thing I like about this house and have seen only in a few others (an example in Savannah comes to mind) is the tripartite window over the entrance that has flat sidelights and a segmental arched center. In essence, this is a sort of watered down Palladian. It is an uncommon window format, but an attractive one to me. Another thing to notice is the paired arched windows on the side. I've noticed that the Ragland house as well as some others have only two round headed windows in the center on the side. Perhaps this is another element of the Petersburg style. The house includes some servant outbuildings. Petersburg should be proud that many of its homes retain their original outbuildings. The current use as a library seems to have left the interior intact. One writer talks about the romance of wandering through the maze of shelves crammed in this house and about the experience of being surrounded by Victorian bric-a-brac as an enhancement to their library experience. One hopes that even if a new library is constructed, this house will remain a public building. There are a couple interior views here and here.

The Reuben Ragland House, Petersburg, VA

The Ragland House, Petersburg, VA. 1856 Photo: R. W. Dawson

This house at 205 Sycamore Street in Petersburg is part of the Poplar Lawn historic district. It was built in 1856-7 for Reuben Ragland, whose family is responsible for a variety of Italianate and Greek Revival homes nearby on Sycamore Street, a fashionable residential address in the 19th century. The house is a symmetrical plan house with a hip roof and cupola. It is a four story Italianate, which is not particularly common outside of row houses. Thus, the house is a grand expression of the owner's wealth in its imposing size. The house probably takes its height from the other Ragland houses on the street which seem to be just as tall. The facade is rather plain, being a brick cube, but it is enlivened by details. The porch spreads across all three bays of the front facade, an odd choice for this type of house, and has impressive Corinthian columns with a bracketed cornice. The porch sits very low to the ground because the house does not sit on a high basement, which creates a strange effect for a grand house. The first floor windows on the front are Greek Revival tripartite windows. Their treatment with simple stone lintels perhaps represents a conservativism to the design. The other Ragland houses are more Greek looking than Italianate. The front door is Italianate with complex pilasters framing it.

The upper floors are pure Italianate. The central windows which are both taller and wider than the sides, feature Venetian tracery. The flanking windows vary between segmented arches on the second floor and round arches on the third, a variation we have seen in Petersburg. Despite the third story, we can see this house follows the pattern of the Scott and Williams houses in having larger windows flanking the door on the first floor and above the door on the second floor. All the upper windows are topped with cast iron hood moldings that feature in different places, egg and dart moldings and keystones. The cornice is simple in design with paired brackets of c and s scrolls. The cupola is also simple, although it has a triple row of windows with a larger central section. A view of the side of the house shows that there is a small enclosed hyphen with an undulating cornice connecting the house to a back building. One outstanding feature of the house is the windows themselves. A look at the house shows that there is an odd complexity to the tracery in the windows, which resemble typical Queen Ann tracery. A picture from an old website for the bed and breakfast that currently inhabits it, shows that the windows have beautifully etched stained glass, an impressive and very rare treatment. This was probably an addition of the 1880s, but it is a particularly beautiful feature.

The site for the Ragland Mansion Bed and Breakfast shows a great deal of the interiors which are very well preserved with some of their mid 19th century design intact.

The James M. Williams House, Petersburg, VA

The Williams House, Petersurg, VA. 1879 Photo: R. W. Dawson

This house, a few lots down on South Market Street, was constructed, according to its NRHP nomination in 1879 for James Williams, a grocer and mill owner. The house features the same window treatment as the Scott house, part of the style of Petersburg's Market Street. The Williams house, however, was constructed over twenty years after the Scott house, reflecting the continuing popularity of this composition and of Italianate well into the 1880s. Like the Scott house, it has a symmetrical plan, but here the central bay projects from the facade and is topped by a gable. The cornice is paneled, and the regularity and elaborateness of the panels reflects its later date. An interesting aspect is that under the triangular gable cornice's architrave curves, a very interesting mixing of shapes. The window treatments are far simpler, being confined to stone hoods. The house sits on a high basement with a stone belt course. Ironwork balconies connect the double windows on the first floor and ironwork is present above the porch too, which in its bulbous column composition reflects 1870s design. This house provides an excellent foil for the Scott house, showing some of the changes taste can create when applied to an older precedent.

The A. L. Scott House, Petersburg, VA

The A. L. Scott House, Petersburg, VA. 1858 Photo: Wikimedia 

The next few posts will be looking at Italianate house in Petersburg, Virginia. Petersburg, despite a bevy of economic problems, was a major manufacturing center before the Civil War and maintained its prosperity into the 20th century. South Market Street, which is a registered historic neighborhood, was one of the city's most fashionable addresses from the 1840s to the 1900s. Many Italianate homes were built on the street, although it seems the most impressive have been demolished. The Scott house is one of the grandest survivors.

This house, built according to its NRHP nomination in 1858 for A. L. Scott, a clothing merchant, displays an arrangement of windows that seemed particularly popular in this area and might represent a type of Petersburg vernacular. The arrangement consists of paired round headed windows on the flanking bays of the first floor and in the central bay of the second floor with segmental arched windows on the flanking bays of the second floor. The arrangement creates a triangle of double round arched windows on the facade. It was once more prevalent, since a mirror of this house was constructed across the street. The house is of the symmetrical plan with a hip roof and cupola that has pilasters and tombstone windows. It is faced with stucco but has wooden details, except for a brownstone belt course between the first and second floors. The window surrounds are wood, and consist of simple eared moldings with carved keystones. Two interesting aspects of the windows are that there is an oval panel inserted in the center of the double windows, and the segmental arched windows have a blind balcony beneath them. The paired windows on the first floor also have connecting balconies.

The cornice is paneled and is almost Anglo-Italianate with its thickly placed brackets. On the sides of the house, windows are placed in the paneled frieze. We have often seen that the sides of the house are more likely to include frieze windows, perhaps because on the front an unpierced frieze looks more monolithic and impressive. The porch echoes the simplicity of the cornice with wooden paneled columns and a simple cornice. A truly outstanding feature is the oriole window on the left facade, which, though not unprecedented, is a real rarity. It is delicately composed with segmental arched windows, panels, and a bracketed cornice. It is strangely the only window on that facade. Perhaps the neighboring house was too close; often in urban settings there will be less windows on a wall that is very near to someone else's house. Other goodies include a lot of the original ironwork, a carriage house, and a surviving heated outhouse. Outbuildings, when they survive, are always an important aspect for any Italianate house in understanding its original relationship with the property. The house is well takencare of and is currently the La Villa Romaine Bed and Breakfast. Their website includes some interior images.