Author: PHW

Although PHW has secured lines of credit and several grants and loans through the National Trust as part of the Jennings Revolving Fund and Simon Lauck House project, there was always a need to replenish the coffers with fundraisers. Thus the Holiday House Tour was born in 1975.

The tour took its cues from similar events in Charleston and Savannah. Grand homes would be traditionally decorated and opened to visitors via guided tours, with the proceeds from the ticket sales benefiting the local revolving fund. The first tour, fittingly enough, focused on the homes of PHW members along Fairmont Avenue, Amherst Street, and North Washington Street with a rest stop with hot drinks at Christ Episcopal Church. The Bough and Dough Shop was also held at the church.(1)(2)

The formula proved successful, and the tour has been followed that pattern since then with only two noteworthy experiments in approach. The first, in 1978, was an “exterior only” tour of other in-progress Revolving Fund Houses on South Loudoun Street, with Lee Taylor donating an enormous gingerbread castle for a raffle. Although still a successful fundraiser, the event was quickly refocused on providing interior tours. The second change occurred in 1989, when Saturday tour hours were added for the first time, likely to help ease the difficulty of visiting the sites as the tour focused on county properties that year (not a “walkable” tour as is generally the norm). Since then, the Saturday hours morphed into the Preview Party on Saturday evening.

The tour, in addition to being a fundraiser, was also conceived by the organizers as a way to involve all of the members of PHW in an event. Although it is unlikely we have ever reached the goal of “100% participation” from our members, the tour regularly involves at least one-third of the membership in some capacity, whether as a homeowner, decorator, docent, musician, craftsman, baker, or ticket taker. Not too shabby.

Holiday House Tours

Images from some early Holiday House Tours have been scanned, with more waiting to be digitized. Take a trip down memory lane at the Picasa album.

PHW became serious about documenting the town in 1974. As we saw in the Simon Lauck house post, the 1966 survey of worthy buildings was what you would call a “windshield survey,” or the kind of quick visual determination a researcher would make based just on what could be observed from a site visit.(1) (2) The term windshield survey is derived from the typical practice of driving through neighborhoods and looking at the buildings through the windshield to form an overview of the area and its character. Obviously any information gathered from this work is preliminary, and Winchester’s 1966 survey was no exception. It contained no history, no attempt at dating structures, nor even any attempt at recording the architectural style of the building in question.

Omission from the 1966 list was part of what made the fight to save the Simon Lauck house so difficult to justify to the regional Salvation Army – without documentation, it is easy to dismiss sad-looking houses as expendable and historically worthless, particularly if the historic significance is of local interest or hinges upon unique architectural features. Although today we generally talk about the financial incentives behind a National Register listing, the broader goal is to raise awareness of the historic resources we should preserve in our own backyards.(3)(4) That was the primary motivation for the 1976 survey, as well as providing PHW direction for areas to work on for the Revolving Fund and a tool to aid the Board of Architectural Review with applications.

First, a class of UVA graduate students – Julia Henley, Samuel Klingensmith, Nancy Recchie, and Royce Yeater – completed survey work for approximately 300 buildings. They focused on the northwestern portion of the current historic district. A small group of PHW volunteers took up the remainder of the 1060 properties where the student researchers stopped. Katie Rockwood coordinated the group, consisting of field workers Pat Zontine, Joanna Berg, Sandy Lee, Virginia Miller and photographer Ben Ritter. John G. Lewis reviewed the forms and corrected information as the architectural historian. The survey took two years to complete, and was acknowledged as often being a “best guess” based on the exterior details and historical information available at the time of the survey. The Sanborn Fire Insurance maps of 1897 were used extensively in the research, with volunteers color-coding the maps by construction materials.

The survey forms included basic information such as the address, present owner, historic name and/or original owner where available, construction date estimated by decade, architectural style based on exterior visual clues, and a sliding scale of architectural significance from “excellent” to “none.” The “none” category included modern construction and on occasion older buildings that had been inappropriately altered, often with notes on what alterations could be made to improve the appearance. Many, but not all, properties included a written architectural description to supplement the photographs, which can be used in situations like the Noakes House project, when a cornice needed to be recreated but no good visual image of the cornice was available. The written description could give some indication of what it “should” have looked like. In some cases, deed research or historical descriptions were also included to back up construction dates or original owners.

Although now superseded by the 2008-2011 survey, the work from the 1976 survey continues to be used in BAR applications today due to its easy to read “at a glance” format and now historic photographic documentation.

1976 Architectural Survey

Scanning of the original photographs of the 1976 survey is ongoing, but completed areas may be viewed in the Picasa album. Copies of the 1976 inventory and the summary report of the survey, which was used heavily for constructing this blog post, may be obtained directly from PHW.

At last, with a trained revolving fund director and a recharged membership united behind the memory of Ray Jennings, PHW was ready to tackle a project through the Revolving Fund. That property just happened to be the Simon Lauck House at 311 South Loudoun Street. In 1974, the Salvation Army had purchased the duplex at 309-311 South Loudoun Street with an eye toward demolishing the building to expand the operations in their headquarters at 303 South Loudoun Street. PHW was interested in preserving the otherwise unassuming-looking building, because preserved inside the duplex was the log cabin of a famous early owner, Simon Lauck.

The duplex had not originally been listed in PHW’s 1966 list of worthy buildings in part because the Victorian-era makeover had been too complete, making the house look “younger” than it actually was. The initial survey of Winchester had lacked many of the tools we now take for granted when researching area buildings, like Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. However, more intensive research uncovered the core of the building was much older and more important than anyone first guessed.

Simon Lauck, along with his brothers Peter (of Red Lion Tavern fame) and Abraham, was part of the Dutch Mess organized in Winchester during the Revolutionary War. According to local legend, the Lauck brothers were part of Daniel Morgan’s honor guard and acted as translators with captured Hessians soldiers. After the Revolutionary War, the brothers returned to Winchester, each taking up residence on South Loudoun Street. Simon set up his gunsmithy on this property. Over the years, the house was expanded, then later updated with Victorian gingerbread details. By the 1970s, the Simon Lauck house was in decline, leading to its potential status as a playground.

When PHW approached the Salvation Army to purchase the Simon Lauck house, the initial offer was only for the logs after the house was demolished. This offer was not good enough for PHW, sparking a long and heated back-and-forth negotiation with regional Salvation Army leaders. In the end, the negotiations succeeded and PHW owned its very first historic building.

The plan at the time was to restore the building’s exterior to its appearance circa 1790 as a proof to Winchester that many of the “Victorian” houses in the Potato Hill area in fact contained a much older log nucleus. To achieve this, a substantial portion of the house was removed, reducing it from a duplex to a single residence and stripping most of the exterior away. PHW volunteers did a great deal of the hands-on work at the Simon Lauck house, as documented by Virginia Miller.

In 1976, the log cabin was exposed and a new owner purchased the building from PHW and completed the work in making the former duplex a charming office. Although the ride was bumpy, in the end one of Winchester’s oldest log buildings was preserved and still serves as a reminder of our frontier roots just blocks from Old Town.

View more progress pictures of the Simon Lauck House at Picasa

For more reading on the Lauck family and gunsmithy, investigate some of the following links:
Lauck Family Genealogy
A Simon Lauck Buck and Ball Gun
A John Lauck Rifle at the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley

We often talk about our successes at PHW, but it’s important to remember that not every project or property we’ve set our sights on was able to be saved through our efforts. Here are a few “big fish” stories from 1963 to the early 1970s which did not bear fruit.

Some of the demolished properties which initially concerned the nucleus of PHW in 1963 included Dr. Baldwin’s stone office and the Cannon Ball House on South Loudoun Street, the Capper House on North Loudoun Street, the Chanticleer Inn on West Boscawen Street, and the Hollis House on Cork Street. It appears that these properties were used as examples in the November 1963 meeting at the Handley Library, mentioned in passing in the January 24 post.

Concurrent with the Conrad House, several other buildings were part of the public discussion on parking lots downtown. This included the old health building, the Firestone Building, and Valley Distributors at Braddock and Amherst Streets. The properties were consolidated by the Winchester Parking Authority and razed in 1966-1968, eventually becoming the Braddock Street Parking garage. PHW spoke out in particular for the old health building, even attempting the lease the building to prevent its demolition.(1)(2)(3)(4)

Toward the end of the battle for the Conrad House, Hawthorn on Amherst Street was similarly being threatened with demolition for subdivisions for more Whittier Acres construction if the building could not be sold. Although PHW toyed with the idea of buying the property jointly with other civic organizations, the idea did not come to pass and the home was preserved through private efforts. Conrad House enthusiasts may be pleased to note the front porch now on Hawthorn was salvaged from the Conrad House.

Following the demolition of the Conrad House, efforts were made to purchase the small stone building then at 8 East Cork Street, often referred to as Friendship Market. That building, as well as several others, was for sale as part of the Sirbaugh Estate. However, the sellers had no desire to split up the package of properties and sell the stone building separately. PHW still managed to have a hand in that building’s preservation, which we will cover in a later post.(5)(6)

Also considered for purchase was the stone building at 15 South Braddock Street, as its location was no longer suitable for a dwelling and it could be adapted for office use.(7) Houses on Sharp Street were circled several times as being of interest to restore to provide more low-cost housing in the city and to retain for their historical and architectural value.(8) Properties on South Loudoun were also seen as potential purchases for similar restoration efforts. Word reached PHW about a possible City-led demolition of a log house at 502 1/2 South Cameron Street. None of the gentle inquiries or outright offers about purchasing these properties bore fruit.

Next week, however, we will learn how PHW became motivated to start a revolving fund and become serious about purchasing endangered properties.