Friday, April 23, 2010

Moving


The Woolen Mills blog is moving to a new address.
http://www.historicwoolenmills.org/fabric/

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

check-list


The Daily Progress has an article today about departing City Manager Gary O'Connell and all he has done for the City of Charlottesville during his tenure.
Charlottesville's AAA bond rating is a laudable achievement.



If there is time between now and April 12th, several items on the Woolen Mills checklist still need to be addressed.
In the alternative, the list is posted above for the Mr. O'Connell's successor.

Labels:

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Blair-Seay House


Blair-Seay House, built c 1890 by Edward Blair. Located in the Woolen Mills Village. For sale

Houses with square or irregular footprints, side-passage plans, front porches, and hipped or complex gabled roofs are the dominant dwelling type of single dwellings built in the 1885-1920 period. Roughly half of the houses built in these years are variations on this type. Some have irregular footprints created by recessed entrance bays. The house at 1709 East Market Street (DHR# 002-1260-0066), for example, is a two-bay, two-story, hipped-roof dwelling with a side-passage plan and an irregular footprint. A flat-roofed, full-width, one-story porch with brackets and lambs tongue chamfered posts shades a single 2/2 double-hung window in the west bay and the door in the recessed east bay. The two second-story bays each have a single 2/2 window. Built in 1889-96 by Archibald Blair, the building has been recently restored and brackets have been returned to the cornice underneath the overhanging eaves. The house at 1606 East Market Street (DHR# 002-1260-0045), built by Mill employees MC and Bettie Harlow in 1916-17, is an outstanding hipped-roof, brick example of this type with a recessed entrance bay. The brick is laid in Flemish bond with glazed headers on all elevations and features a gabled wing on the west that reads as an additional bay from the north-facing façade.

Some of the early owners of the large lots subdivided the plots and sold parcels to family members. It was common in southern mill towns for people to move to join family members already working in the factories.lxix After purchasing lots 8 and 9 of the Farish land from Henry Bragg in 1889, Archibald Blair built 1709 East Market Street (DHR# 002- 1260-0066).lxx In 1896, he sold the westernmost portion of the lot to his brother, Edward, for $200 and Edward built 1707 East Market Street (DHR# 002-1260-0064) next door soon thereafter. With side-hall plans and hipped roofs, these frame houses are very similar.--Lydia Brandt

Labels:

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

1914-2010


Clyde, Edna and Louise Holloway


Roy and Louise Baltimore

Louise Virginia Holloway Baltimore died yesterday. She was the daughter of Edna and Arthur Holloway. Arthur was a loom fixer at the mill. Arthur and his family lived "under the hill" at 1907 Woolen Mills Road, they lived at 210 18th Street, ultimately they settled in at 1601 Woolen Mills Road. Edna Holloway, Louise's mother died eleven years ago at the age of 109.
Louise met her husband, Roy Jackson Baltimore, when she was a child, Louise said she had always known Roy. Roy and Louise moved to Newport News in 1940. In 1978 they retired to the Woolen Mills and built a house next door to Louise's mother on Woolen Mills Road.
Louise loved her family and she loved this Place.
She died on the Place, surrounded by family and friends.

Labels:

Sunday, February 7, 2010

February snow


Woolen Mills Chapel

City crews remove broken trees limbs from Woolen Mills Road

Virginia Power lineman in the park works to restore power.

City crews accomplish the temporary repair of a broken water line on Chesapeake

Labels:

Thursday, December 17, 2009

recognition?


The Virginia Board of Historic Resources and the State Review Board convene today to consider new nominations to the Virginia Landmarks Register. The Woolen Mills Village is on the list for consideration.
Preserving the memory, stories and architectural fabric of the Woolen Mills has been the work of many of our neighbors past and present.
Particular thanks at this moment go out to Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris for his support of this project, to Mary Joy Scala, Preservation and Design Planner, and to Lydia Brandt, architectural historian, for her authorship of the nomination.

The map and nomination for this proposed National Register Historic District are available at Virginia Department of Historic Resources website.

Labels:

Saturday, September 26, 2009

rare executive ability


The board went, in fact, as far as New York City and hired Duryea Van Wagenen. Van Wagenen had been recommended to the board by mill owners at Danville, Virginia, despite the fact that he had had no experience with woolen mills. His chief qualifications were his "rare executive ability" and a reputation for "handling big affairs." Van Wagenen, it appears, had been connected with the National City Bank of New York. He also seems to have held an administrative post in at least one Southern textile mill. But these facts are not clear.
--Harry Poindexter

Labels: