PHW – Page 17 – Preservation of Historic Winchester

Friday Roundup: Hidden Feline Week

Our Friday post this week ended up with a surprise feline in each section. See if you can spot them all! 🐈

We need paper bags of all sizes for the Bough & Dough Shop! All donations welcome, and any bags that are too damaged to use will be recycled.

This week, we took inventory of our Bough & Dough Shop supplies for the upcoming year. We request your assistance in donating gently-used paper bags of all sizes. We will be putting a receptacle on our back porch at the Hexagon House where you can drop off bags if no one is available at the office. Thank you for helping us keep our expenses low by using recycled and donated materials!

PHW is pleased to continue to offer a copy of the reprinted Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture book with new memberships or renewals this year. We plan to send the next wave of snail-mail membership reminders out in early August, but you can renew online anytime through our website with a credit card, or download a membership form to mail in a check. Thank you for your support!

Some of you may be familiar with the unofficial PHW cat brigade and the health tribulations of the elder statesman, Severus. After a rough year through 2019 and 2020 with weight loss, high blood sugar, and other complications, he received a clean bill of health from his bloodwork this week. We hope we’ll be able to enjoy his grumpy and hissy (and occasionally greasy, like his namesake) antics for many more years.

We will be virtually attending the second “Dismantle Preservation” online conference next week between our normal office routines. Last year’s recordings are available online, and if you’re intrigued by any topics in this year’s event, you can join the conference through their website. In lieu of registration, the organizer recommends a $10/day donation or to support highlighted organizations through social media or email newsletters. (We admit we were suckered in by the “Cats and Brutalism” talk scheduled for July 28, 4:00-4:30 PM, but there are also more traditional topics.)

Similarly, the PastForward conference is now open for registration. The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s conference will be online again this year November 2-5. The conference subthemes include Promoting Equity and Justice Through Historic Preservation, Sharpening Essential Practices of Preservation, and Adapting to a Changing Climate.

Handley Library festoon details — You’ll never guess how someone found this image on Flickr…

Although Flickr does not provide stats for our entire viewing history, it looks like we may have broken our previous record for number of image views in a 24-hour period. We had over 29,000 views, primarily of the Millbank property album, on July 13. Our overall most-viewed image on Flickr is still the 1974 image of the Zayre store at 130 Delco Plaza, one of the long-forgotten collections unearthed from the basement of the Hexagon House (hence the unfortunate staining on the image.)

Since we began the caption project this January, we’ve seen more traffic on Flickr and more people finding our images with relevant, surprising and sometimes amusing text searches (our favorite this week is tiger nuts, the term used to find our feline festoon-holder on the Handley Library). We hope the images are proving informative and useful, and the increased captions are adding more depth and context. If there is an album, building, or photo in particular you would like us to focus our captioning efforts on, drop us a note on social media or at phwinc.org@gmail.com – we’re happy to take requests!

Friday Roundup: Public Hearing, MSV Free Admission, Call for Proposals, and a Happy End to a Search!

First, a public hearing on the proposed redevelopment at the corner of Cameron and Piccadilly streets Conditional Use Permit will take place on Tuesday, July 20, beginning at 3 PM in Council Chambers at Rouss City Hall. The CUP was triggered due to the size of the development exceeding by-rights use. If you are interested in making a statement on the project at the Planning Commission public hearing, you may review the submitted materials and staff report at the city meeting portal. PHW will note that according to the staff report, a previously approved demolition request and mitigation of the proposed loss of historic ghost signs on walls lining Baker Street has lapsed. PHW is in favor of retaining these ghost signs as they tell part of the story of the business enterprises in the area and the impact of the railroad on local commerce.

Some of the ghost signs on the building lining Baker Street.

Second, tomorrow, Saturday July 17, is free admission to the MSV and a car show. The car show coordinated by the Shenandoah Region of the Antique Automobile Club of America will feature 60 vehicles at least 25 years old. Families are encouraged to stop by the picnic area next to the garden entrance to pick up a take-and-make car-themed craft and a brochure with a seek-and-find scavenger hunt activity for the gardens. Visitors may also enjoy free admission to several special exhibitions, including Norman Rockwell’s America and the MSV Invitational Outdoor Sculpture Show. The Roaming Bistro and Shaffer’s BBQ food trucks will be on site offering food and drink for purchase from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. We’re excited to see this MSV tradition return this year!

Third, there is a call for proposals for the 2022 Main Street Now Conference. Proposals are due August 13 in three themed categories: Main Streets for the New Economy, Community Preservation and Expression, and Housing and Small-Scale Development. Visit the link for more information and how to submit proposals. Winchester was one of the three test programs for the Main Street Approach, and it may be time for us to show how our downtown is surviving and thriving forty years after the program launch.

We are pleased to inform you our quest last week to help a descendant find a copy of the Keith Williams print “Historic Buildings of Winchester” has borne fruit. Thank you to those who helped and shared stories related to Keith. By a confluence of events, we came across his resume as one of the applicants to the Kurtz Cultural Center RFP in the late 1980s. A select list of Keith Williams’ local projects include: the F&M Banks on Cameron Street and Valley Avenue; alterations and additions to First Christian Church and Opequon Presbyterian Church; renovation and organ installation at First Presbyterian Church; the Religious Education Building at First Baptist Church; the Winchester Church of Latter Day Saints; Robinson Memorial Elementary School and Gibson Elementary School buildings; Fremont Nursery School; the Child Day Care Center for Amalgamated Clothing Workers Health & Welfare Fund; Shenandoah University’s Armstrong Building, Howard Building, Funkhouser Building, Cooley Building, Racey Building, Student Center, Field House (1969), 100-Student Dorm (1972), and Library; showrooms for Molden Electric Company and Pifer Office Supply Company; offices and plant for Perry Engineering Company; Beltone Hearing Aid Center; factories for Monoflo International Inc. and Capitol Records; additions to Fulton Trucking Company and Burger King; the Golf & Country Club; the War Memorial Recreation Center; Country Club Pines Apartment Complex; Prospect Hills subdivision; tennis pavilion and club house complex at Lake Holiday Estates, The Summit; Winchester Seed Processing Plant; two Automatic Soft Cloth Car Washes in Winchester; and an acoustics consultant to John Handley High School renovation. We don’t quite recognize all the location names for his Winchester work and addresses and dates for most were not provided, so if you know any details about the above projects, let us know and we will compile them for our fledgling “architects of Winchester list” we’re developing at the office.

Save the date for the 2021 Holiday House Tour! Current plans are for the daylight tour only on Sunday, December 5, noon-4 PM. Plans and dates for the Bough & Dough Shop are not yet finalized, but we anticipate it will be held at the Hexagon House concurrent with the ticket sale window. All plans subject to change!

Friday Roundup: Photos, Upcoming Events, and Fence Research

Thomas Phillips House, 124 W. Boscawen St. — Preservation is in progress at the Thomas Phillips House, 124 W. Boscawen Street!

While scanning some posters from past PHW events for our digital files, we found some individual photographs from events still attached to display boards. While they may be duplicates, we erred on the side of safety and scanned them for our digital collection. You can catch those images, as well as a few others, at the top of our Flickr photostream.

Do you have a copy of the Keith Williams print of Historic Buildings of Winchester, 1969 (click here for a detail from the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives holdings to refresh your memory)? A descendant of is on the hunt for a copy. If you have one you are willing to part with, please contact the PHW office so we can put you in touch with the seeker.

The Clarke County Historical Association will be hosting Colonial Kids Day on Saturday, July 10 at the Burwell-Morgan Mill (15 Tannery Lane, Millwood, Virginia 22646) between 11 AM to 4 PM. The 5th annual event features interactive activities including blacksmithing, craft making, colonial games, a scavenger hunt, the history of the Mill, living history interpretations, and grinding in action. Buy tickets ($5 per person) in advance at Eventbrite or at the event itself.

The African American Heritage Preservation Foundation has created an app and website listing more than 1,600 sites throughout the United States and Territories that focus on the contributions of African Americans to our nation’s history. The app received an overhaul and relaunch in June 2021. Winchester’s Douglas School, through its listing on the National Register of Historic Places, is one of the featured Virginia sites, but we know that more could be highlighted here. If you have knowledge of other sites that could be featured on this app and site, get in touch with AAHPF to raise awareness and visibility for these places.

We were also alerted to a virtual event Afro-Virginia: Black Placekeeping and Power on July 22 at noon. Justin Reid, Director of Community Initiatives, Virginia Humanities and Manager, Virginia General Assembly African American Cultural Resources Task Force, will discuss Virginia’s contemporary Black cultural rights movement and his work promoting transdisciplinary, self-determined Black cultural placekeeping. Find out more and how to register for the free Zoom event at Brown University.

Detail of the fence with a distinctive gate ornamentation that provided the key to the manufacturer and thus its age.

We had the pleasure to virtually visit the remnants of a wrought iron fence this week for some historical investigation. While it is a relatively small bit of fence, it fortunately retained the gate, which is one of the most likely places to find a manufacturer’s mark or other distinguishing maker characteristics. This gate was by far the most distinctive we have had the pleasure of examining, with an elaborate crest on the top with crossed halberds, heraldic sea snakes, and scroll-like decorative flourishes around the central finial. Although the label where the maker’s mark should be was not visible in the image, the gate design alone was unique enough that we could say with relative certainty it was a “Buckeye” wrought iron fence from the 1880s.

The catalogue image of the Buckeye gate ornamentation – exactly as advertised.

Naturally, having found such a distinctive architectural piece but never having heard of it before, it seemed like a good time for a little more investigation into the parent company. Buckeye fences were just one of the products produced by Mast, Foos & Company. Although founding dates have been contradictory, we are inclined to believe the company was founded in 1876 by Phineas P. Mast and John Foos in Springfield, Ohio, after Mast had undertaken earlier ventures in buggy and farm implements. In addition to the Buckeye fence, the company also produced wind engines, force pumps, lawn mowers, and lawn sprinklers. The company existed for almost 100 years after various acquisitions and remains well-known in Springfield, Ohio, particularly as Phineas P. Mast helped to found the local historical society. Read more about the Mast family and homes at Clark County History and explore a Mast, Foos & Company product catalogue at Archive.org.

Do you have an architectural research or identification question like this? Drop us a note and a photo at phwinc.org@gmail.com and we’ll see if we can help.

Limestone Book Printing Error Notice

Did you purchase or were you gifted a copy of the reprinted Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture book and found some pages were out of order? We were alerted that a copy given out at our Annual Meeting had this printing error. A quick perusal of our other open boxes has not turned up any more printing errors, but if you find one, we will be happy to swap out your printing error copy for one that is appropriately bound. Just let us know at phwinc.org@gmail.com or 540-667-3577.

A Flag with 48 Stars

While the PHW Office will be closed Monday, July 5 in belated celebration of the holiday, we have a fun historical tidbit from our archives to share for the holiday.

As you may have seen our current banner on social media, one of the artifacts entrusted to PHW is a flag of 48 stars donated by Gardner G. Phillips, Jr. The flag once hung in Pleasant Valley United Methodist Church on Cedar Grove Road. After a renovation of the church in the 1960s, coinciding with the retirement of the 48 star flag on July 4, 1959, this flag was given to the Phillips family of Clearbrook. In June 1993, the flag came into the possession of PHW through the Kurtz Cultural Center as a place where the flag, with its ties to a local church, could be held safely.

Although it does not appear the flag was ever used in a Kurtz display, it was kept safely in our small archival object holdings. It is clear the flag saw a great amount of use before coming to our organization, as it has begun to pull at the seams and a few areas where it was likely hung also show damage. This holiday provided the perfect excuse to do some regular archival maintenance to inspect the flag and refold it in a different manner to prevent damage and creasing.

Congratulations for the Annual Meeting!

Despite an unexpected afternoon rainstorm and our own surprise at having double-booked so many of our members with other activities and services on the same day and time, we still managed to pull together a successful annual meeting.

If you were unable to attend, you can catch up with the official portion of the meeting and the presentation of the awards on our YouTube:

If this is a bit long for you to watch, you can find an album with images at our Flickr. We would especially like to recognize the 2020 and 2021 award winners, as follows:

Awards of Merit:

These awards recognize renovations of houses or buildings that contribute to improving the character of their neighborhoods and maintaining the overall historic fabric of the city. In order of nomination:

Nancy Murphy, 126 West Leicester Street
Stephen Von Fange, 501-507 North Cameron Street
Karen Darby, 417 Fairmont Avenue
Betty Laws, 416 South Cameron Street
Stephen P. Williams, 212 North Kent Street
GinTon, LLC, Henkel House, 316 West Boscawen Street
Beverley Byrd, 312 West Boscawen Street
David E. Mitchell, 123 East Cork Street
The Clowser Foundation, Clowser Family Cemetery, 152 Tomahawk Trail
Scott Bessette, Philip Williams House, 25 West Piccadilly Street

Belchic Award:

This award is named in honor of Ben Belchic, a founding member of PHW. Ben Belchic was also an active member of the Winchester-Frederick County Historical Society, so the Belchic award recognizes a significant contribution to understanding Winchester’s history. These awards are generally presented for written texts, such as books, maps, National Register nominations, and guided tours.

This year we were proud to recognize the work of Mike Robinson, who has been bringing Winchester’s history to a wider audience through his Facebook page Winchester Tales, that have subsequently expanded into five-volume set of books, with more on the way.

Patron’s Award:

This award recognizes a person or business which has been an outstanding supporter of the goals and programs of PHW. This award usually recognizes a financial component.

This year, we were honored to recognize Margaretta Barton Colt, who has long been a supporter of the history and architecture of Winchester. Her involvement with PHW started in our Kurtz Cultural Center days during the publication of Defend the Valley, for which she commissioned the painting “Winchester & Frederick County, Virginia” by Page Huff Dillon. That may sound familiar, as the painting has reentered our day to day lives again through the Shenandoah Valley Tapestry Project, which recreated the painting in needlework. Most recently, you can find out more about the tapestry and the houses included in it at www.svtapestry.com.

One of our award winners, David Mitchell, was unable to attend in person on Sunday. He did, however, provide a note on his work to his porch at 123 East Cork Street. You may remember the painstaking work and the scaffolding and tarps installed to protect the porch while it was under repairs. We are happy to report via David that “all original salvageable 1800s heart pine used in the original construction was stripped of paint and restored. Most of the original porch flooring is still present. Both ends required replacing with 1 1/8 inch tongue and groove, copied and milled to match. I found three of the original balusters and copied them . . . for the porch. . . . The woodwork was all preceded by rebuilding the stone foundation of the porch damaged by water on the east end, where there was an inch wide crack from the east corner to the left of the first floor window sill, and stones falling out from loss of mortar.” This specialized work was undertaken by Hicksville Planning Mill and Marshall Adams Stonework, along with the use of a product called Rot Doctor for wood preservation. David truly went above and beyond in the care he took to preserve and restore his porch.

Due to the rain, we also omitted the official announcement of our newest Honorary Council member, Ed Acker. As you may remember, he served as the VP of Education at PHW and spearheaded the Lunch and Learn lecture series. We have reproduced Ed’s note on this recognition in its entirety below:

Dear Members of PHW:

I want to thank the Board of Directors of PHW very much for this appointment to the Honorary Council. I was totally surprised and appreciate its significance very seriously.

I hope to see the very necessary educational function of PHW continue with renewed vitality, perhaps not in its most recent form, but being able to take advantage of new electronic communications technologies that have come on stream since the Covid pandemic. Also, I had always wanted to get more PHW involvement with K-12 children, which can instill in them the seed of a lifetime interest in history and preservation.

Professionally, I have been involved in historic preservation since 1963 when I had a summer architectural job and worked on an award-winning adaptive reuse project at the State University of NY Merchant Marine Academy, converting an old mess hall winding through the gigantic 7-foot-thick granite walls and arches of Fort Schuyler into the school’s library, pictures of which are still proudly displayed on the school’s website. Later that year I partook in an architect’s march to protest the planned demolition of the wonderful McKim, Mead and White Pennsylvania Station building, the event which many mark as the beginning of the modern preservation movement.

My last historic preservation project was to design the structural rehabilitation of the walls and granite recladding of the 110-foot-tall facades of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel Ventilation Building. This octagonal building is located at the northern tip of Governor’s Island, sitting quietly and mostly unnoticed in the middle of New York harbor.

When Sherry Nay Acker and I moved to Winchester in June 2011 it was the twilight of both of our careers, she as a history professor and I as an actively practicing architect. But neither of us played golf, so what would we do? Sherry met Warren Hofstra, in fact at the exact time of the great Virginia earthquake at his Abram’s Delight office, who then put us in contact with Mark Lore, who introduced me to PHW, and the commitment to become Chairman of the Education Committee.

Sherry’s interest in her family’s genealogy went into overdrive. She knew that her great grandfather had been injured and taken prisoner at Halltown, WV in the Civil War. His West Virginia regiment had been retreating north and fought at Kernstown Two, Rutherford Crossing, and Halltown. Some of her Ohio ancestors were at the 2^nd Battle of Winchester. And she was related to the Scotch Bruce’s who had owned one of the original Winchester city lots at the SW corner of E. Piccadilly and N. Cameron Streets. So having not been here for a long time, we now have some real historical ties to Winchester.

I arrive at this time of this year with a jumble of emotions which is reflected in this piece. June 24^th will mark the one-year anniversary of Sherry’s death and our family and friends still miss her so much. June 30^th and July 7^th are the birthdays of our wonderful daughters, Alexandra, and Amanda respectively and we will gather in Denver to both remember and celebrate. And our grandchildren aged 5, almost 12, and 15 have some of their own milestones – Abe will start kindergarten in August; Hudson graduated elementary school, will start middle school, and is in scouting; and Sawyer is in high school and heading to Eagle scout, and is now learning how to drive.

I guess an underlying theme tying all these jumbled thoughts together is Resilience – Rebirth – Renewal, which can apply to our individual lives, our homes and workplaces, our neighborhoods, friends, and associations, and our entire communities.

Resilience – to have the toughness, flexibility, and canny skill to endure the hard knocks; Rebirth – to realize survival and to start anew; and Renewal – to establish a sustainable path to endure and thrive into the future.

Thank you for the opportunity to continue to serve the PHW community.

This Weekend Is Annual Meeting!

It seems like a toasty weekend is on hand, so you might want to envision the cooling water droplets from the Old Town Fountains while at our meeting on Sunday.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the weekend forecast and it appears we will be all set for a rain-free weekend. We hope you will join us on Sunday, June 27 beginning at 3 PM in the Hexagon House yard for our 57th Annual Meeting. We are happy to report the cicadas have moved on to the less amorous phase of their lifecycle and we will not be competing with their dulcet tones. Here are some other things to keep in mind:

We ask that guests who are able to walk up the hill to leave our limited parking lot at the top of the hill available for our older guests. If you are a designated driver and find the lot is full, you may drive your guests up the circular driveway in front of the house to let guests out on even ground.

We will have our small tent in the yard as a check in area for those renewing or joining PHW and picking up copies of the Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture book. We will also have a few other architecture and history-adjacent books out for sale, and a few plants for those who want to grab an offspring of the PHW African violets. We hope to be able to process credit cards, but as the WiFi has been spotty recently we are not sure we will quite be able to manage processing credit card transactions that far in the yard. You may wish to bring a check as fallback.

If you want to nominate someone to the PHW Board from the floor, remember your nominee must be in attendance and be a PHW member in good standing.

A limited amount of chairs are available for guests, but if possible, please provide your own seating.

The yard will be mostly in sun at the time of the event. Wear your sunscreen, bring parasols or hats, and stay safe. Plan to be at the business and award portion of the meeting in the yard for about an hour. Cold bottled drinks will be on hand for attendees to help you stay hydrated and cool.

Following the meeting, limited tours (suggested group size of five to six) will be available of the downstairs of the Hexagon House. We strongly encourage mask wearing inside for your safety.

Thank you all for your continued interest in PHW. We hope to see many familiar faces on Sunday to help us celebrate the accomplishments of our local preservationists!

PHW’s 57th Annual Meeting

The meeting approaches! Mark your calendars for Sunday, June 27 at 3 PM to visit the Hexagon House. Mailed invitations are at the Post Office for the award recipients and PHW members, but for our other followers, here is a heads up on the event:

The meeting will be held outside at the back porch of the Hexagon House. We will not be rescheduling for inclement weather.

Please bring your own seating if possible. You may also wish to bring parasols or hats if the day is sunny, as the back yard is fairly exposed at this time of day.

You do not need to RSVP in advance, as we do not have a capacity limit this year. However, we strongly encourage anyone not fully vaccinated to continue social distancing and mask-wearing.

We will be able to process member renewals or new signups at the event. You may wish to bring a check just in case we have difficulty with the credit card payments with the machine at a distance from the WiFi.

Copies of Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture will be available for pick up at the membership renewal table.

While we will not have snacks after the meeting as in years past, we will have an assortment of cold beverages to keep you hydrated during the meeting.

The cicada boom seems to be dying down at the Hexagon House, but be prepared for some insect party crashers.

If you have not had a chance to tour the Hexagon House, we will be available to take guided tours through the downstairs following the meeting. We strongly encourage mask wearing inside the building during tours.

Repair work at the Apple — Oh no! The giant apple in front of Kimberly’s has been peeled! We hope to see the familiar shiny red skin back on this landmark with its stem reattached soon.

Friday Roundup: Behind the Scenes Prep Work and Friday Photos

First, we did a bit of cleaning up of our MailChimp mailing list during the lead-up to the Annual Meeting. A few new member emails have been added (hello and welcome!) and a section of bounced and unsubscribed emails have been archived. If you know someone who is not receiving the weekly emails and wants to stay informed, remind them to sign up in the opt-in form. If you unsubscribe from our mailing list, we cannot add you back in manually at the office, as it needs your confirmation you want to receive emails again. This is done in compliance with anti-spam laws through MailChimp. Thank you for understanding!

Second, next week will be a busy one for the office as we prepare the snail-mail Annual Meeting invitations in advance of the June 27 meeting, as well as some out of the office meetings. Please remember to call or email ahead of a site visit to the Hexagon House, as we may not be in the office.

We hope to help you find out what you member renewal status is with this Annual Meeting mailing, as we know last year we lost all sense of time. Look for your member renewal date (to the month of your renewal) in the membership form block in the Annual Meeting invitation and check its accuracy. Don’t receive a mailed invitation? That means you have fallen off our recent membership list. We hope you will chose to renew and catch up with old friends and familiar faces at the Annual Meeting, which will be our first real event since Holiday House Tour 2019(!).

Third, if you would like to join PHW or renew your membership, remember we are offering copies of our reprinted Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture book (a $25 value) as a thank you for your continued support. Copies can be picked up at the Annual Meeting or by arrangement through the PHW office. The reprinted edition was lovingly remade from the original to be as faithful as possible to Walter Kidney’s text and James R. Morrison’s photographs. The revisions and updates were limited to correcting errors and expanding on some omissions from the first publication (like a much-needed index). The book is a perfect introduction to Winchester’s architecture and broad history of development patterns. It may especially appeal if you are new to town, or want to share your appreciation of Winchester with someone less versed in architectural history.

Fourth, we were thrilled to be able to visit the Clowser House in Shawneeland last weekend to see all the progress made at the site. If you were not able to attend, you can catch photos of the event at our Flickr album. The Foundation is doing an amazing job documenting the history of their site and the family connected to the homestead, and PHW is proud to have helped them begin the journey five years ago to preserve their ancestral home for generations to come.

Friday Roundup: Events and A Vanished Winchester Story

First, the Clowser Foundation Memorial Service will be held tomorrow, Saturday, June 5 at the Clowser House, 152 Tomahawk Trail. The event is free and open to the public. If it’s been a while since you’ve been into Shawneeland, there are numerous improvements to the house and grounds to see and many friendly Clowser family descendants to meet. The event starts at 10 AM.

Second, if you are looking to travel a bit farther afield for some history tourism, Leesburg will be holding their first ever Juneteenth celebration on Saturday, June 19th beginning at 11:00 AM with a car caravan from Belmont Country Club to Claude Moore Park. Activities begin at noon at Claude Moore Park with the traditional flag raising ceremony by the legendary Buffalo Soldiers, followed by musical performances, kids activities, and mini-Juneteenth classes. Learn more at The Patch.

Are you invested in the future of saving places? The National Trust for Historic Places is developing a National Impact Agenda to help collaboratively guide the future of historic preservation and make it a more inclusive movement. Learn more and take the survey at their website to chime in why old places matter to you and what actions should be prioritized over the next 3-5 years!

In our work sorting through the Mutual Assurance Fire Policies, we noticed a number of buildings we have documentation for are no longer standing. Some are known to us through other means like photographs, town maps, drawings, or recollections like William Greenway Russell or T. K. Cartmell. Some others, however, seem to have slipped through with very little documentation. During some unrelated research, we found a news article on the demise of Jacob Baker’s home on Kent Street. The name was familiar from the recent Mutual Assurance Society policy database work we undertook this spring, and we can now bring a long-ago Vanished Winchester story to you.

The first trail on this building through the Mutual Assurance Society comes from Henry St. George Tucker insuring his building on “a square of lots East of Kent Street, West of East Lane” in 1827. According to a footnote in Russell’s What I Know About Winchester, Jacob Baker purchased the property in 1832. Although the footnote would lead one to assume the building was destroyed by fire before Baker’s purchase, it was perhaps a bit of careless reading of Russell’s recollections without deeper follow-up. While the house was indeed destroyed by fire at the time of Russell’s writing, the implied timing does not match the primary sources. In 1845, the Mutual Assurance policy had transferred to Jacob Baker, who was using the building as his personal dwelling.

While the Mutual Assurance Policy sketches are suggestive at best, it appears the house was situated roughly mid-block between the bounding streets of Kent, Piccadilly, Philpot, and East Lane (about the location of the Lewis-Jones Knitting Mill, but set back some distance from Kent Street). A one and a half story stone wing 24’x33′ with a wood roof was to the north (toward Piccadilly St.). The main house was two stories high, 38’x54′, and made of brick and stone with a wood roof. The main entrance was facing Kent Street with a porch around the central entrance. On the eastern (rear) side of the house was a full-width two story porch facing East Lane.

The house remained standing until March, 1866. At about 7:30 AM on March 8, the roof of wood shingles was noticed to be on fire. While it had not progressed far at that point and assistance was sent for, high winds and the dry shingles fed the flames, and the Union fire engine could not help, as its hose could not reach the fire hydrants. Amazingly, soldiers and citizens helped remove most of the furniture from the house so that not everything in the house was lost. Read the full article in the Winchester Journal through Handley’s online newspaper archive. A second account of the fire also ran in the Winchester Times, which survives as a reprint in a Richmond newspaper, below:

Mutual Assurance Policy 21127 from 1860, showing the Jacob Baker house.

Fire in Winchester.—On Thursday morning last, says the Winchester Times of the 14th, the elegant mansion of Jacob Baker, Esq., on Kent street, took fire, and all efforts to extinguish the flames were unavailing, and in a short time this noble old structure together with the out buildings presented a mass of smouldering blackened ruins. At one time fire was communicated to the long dry grass in Mount Hebron Cemetery, and it was feared the wooden head-boards to the graves of hundreds of Confederate dead would be burned, and thereby obliterate every trace of the departed loved ones, but through the almost superhuman efforts of the citizens and soldiers, this most dreadful calamity was spared us. We understand Mr. Baker is insured in the Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Richmond for the amount of $5,000, which is perhaps one-third his loss. (Richmond Whig, Volume 75, Number 66, 19 March 1866)