Julia Beverley purchased the corner lot on Stewart and Cecil streets on July 14, 1911. The pebbledashed Colonial Revival-style house was built by 1913, when the Beverley family hosted an elegant supper for a number of out of town guests visiting their daughter Miss Frances Beverley in their newly-built home. The property remained in the Beverley family until 1957.
The house has remained largely unchanged on the exterior since its construction. The classic facade harkens back to the mid-1800s and the era of Greek Revival style in American construction with its clean white exterior, dark shutters, and a pedimented entry. The gentle arch in the pediment, along with the understated dentil molding, is carried around to the Cecil Street side of the home on the small southern addition. Look carefully for the arched window with Y-tracery tucked behind this sunroom.
The current owners Michael and Lauren Peterson bought the house in 2018 to fit their multi-generational family. Their own design elements have been used to refine the traditional living and dining spaces. Most recently they have renovated their kitchen to a more contemporary and comfortable space for their active family of eight, including their four daughters and Lauren’s parents, Arlene and Dennis Torbett.
PHW is grateful for the support of the Belle Grove Plantation, one of our half page advertising sponsors of the Holiday House Tour.
The Philip Williams House was constructed in 1838 in the Greek Revival style. On Nov. 5, 1845, John R. W. Dunbar of Baltimore deeded this property to his brother-in-law Philip Williams, Jr. It was described as “a lot of land in Winchester on which the said Philip Williams, Jr. has lately erected a dwelling house.” Williams, who was born in Frederick Co., was admitted to the bar in 1832, was Commonwealth Attorney for Shenandoah and Warren Counties and also represented Shenandoah County in the Virginia House of Delegates. His first wife was Ann Hite of Belle Grove.
In 1898, the dwelling and property were sold to Minnie A. Miller, and under her stewardship several additions were constructed to the rear of the building. The interior enlarged room openings, mantel changes, and pressed metal facade design are similar to those seen in other grand homes receiving attention after the Civil War.
In the early 20th century, the building began its second life of commercial uses, including a tea house, an inn, and perhaps the best remembered, the Colonial Arts and Crafts Shop. After the closure of Joe’s Steakhouse, the current owners Scott and Barbara Bessette undertook a historic tax credit project to rehabilitate the structure for an event center.
PHW is grateful for the support of the Winchester Little Theatre, one of our full page advertising sponsors of the Holiday House Tour.
Tickets officially go on sale today for the 45th Holiday House Tour – and our Bough & Dough Shop opens at 10 AM! Adult tickets are $20, children ages 12-6 are $6, and children under 6 are free.
You can pick up Holiday House Tour tickets, along with PHW memberships (including a free copy of Winchester: Limestone, Sycamores & Architecture, valued at $25) at the Bough & Dough Shop at 530 Amherst Street. Remember to get your renewals in to PHW by the end of this year if you would like to take advantage of the free book offer!
Prefer to shop online? Ticket sales are open on Eventbrite for the Holiday House Tour – remember to grab your online tickets before noon on December 5 when the online sales end!
PHW is grateful for the support of Lisa T. McCoig, one of our full page advertising sponsors of the Holiday House Tour.
Complimenting the Holiday House Tour is the other half of the event – the Bough & Dough Shop. This year, the shop will be held concurrently with Holiday House Tour ticket sales between November 15 and December 5. Here’s what you need to know about the shop in 2021:
What: Do some holiday shopping while picking up your Holiday House Tour tickets at the Hexagon House. The shop features décor, ornaments, sweet treats, small gift items, and fresh greens for holiday decorating.
Dates: November 15-18, November 22-24, November 26-27, November 29-December 5
Time: 10 AM – 5 PM
Location: The Hexagon House 530 Amherst St.
Admission: Free
Other Information: Cash, checks, and credit/debit cards accepted. Please wear a face mask while shopping inside. Fresh greenery is expected after Thanksgiving through December 5. Free hot drinks will be served on Sunday, Dec. 5, while supplies last, to complement the Holiday House Tour.
Select items may be available through our online store. Use the code “curbside” at checkout to pick your order up at the Hexagon House during normal shop days to avoid postal system delays.
The Holiday House Tour returns for its 45th year! The PHW blog begins our coverage of the tour and shop this week and will continue up to the Friday before the tour. Here’s the event overview at a glance.
Date: December 5, 2021
Time: Noon-4 PM
House Locations: 25 West Piccadilly Street, 321 South Stewart Street, 814 South Washington Street
Admission: $20 in advance, $25 at the door
Ticket Sale Locations: Kimberly’s, Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center, The Bough & Dough Shop at the Hexagon House, and online through Eventbrite.
Other Information: The tour is not rescheduled for inclement weather. Wear comfortable, low-heeled shoes and dress for the weather. Bring face masks for interior tours. Be prepared to spend some time waiting in line outside. You may visit the three tour sites in any order. No photography inside the homes, please!
Steps between the Old Frederick County Court House and Clerk’s Office.
PHW will be temporarily suspending our daily image captions on Flickr starting next week so we can concentrate on the Bough & Dough Shop and Holiday House Tour. We hope you enjoyed the inaugural year of the caption project and some of our random image selections sparked your curiosity and interest. If you have any images that you would like to know more about, just drop us a note with the image link at phwinc.org@gmail.com and we’ll get it in our queue for 2022!
We’ve been hard at work preparing multiple mailings for PHW this week. Before it hits your snail mail box, you can read the latest issue of the PHW newsletter online. You should also be receiving your Holiday House Tour invitational postcards soon. If you’d like to grab a few extra postcards for friends, extras will be available at the back door of the Hexagon House.
Keep an eye on our Instagram account for the Bough & Dough Shop to see things taking shape and alerts for new products. Although we hope the shop will be held early enough this year not to have to close for snow, any weather or illness-related closings at the Shop will be posted here as well.
Holiday House Tour tickets will go on sale November 15 at Kimberly’s, Winchester Book Gallery, Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center, and the Bough & Dough Shop at the Hexagon House. Tickets will also be available online through Eventbrite. Program booklets may be slightly delayed, but you can find a digital copy at PHW’s website.
The Google Map for Holiday House Tour has also been updated for 2021. Use it to plan your travel route and parking during the event. We anticipate because the locations are spread out, carpooling may be very popular this year. Remember, you can visit the House Tour sites in any order during the event window.
Last, if you are looking for something different to do next week, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery will be hosting a 100th anniversary event November 9 and 10. For the first time since 1948, visitors will be allowed to approach the memorial and place flowers on the tomb. Read a history of the tomb at the New York Times, and register for the event through Eventbrite.
It’s been a busy week at PHW, including our earlier announcement of our support of the Godfrey Miller Home and Fellowship Center’s exterior preservation and wrapping up our printing for the 2021 Holiday House Tour and Bough & Dough Shop. The printed items are beginning to arrive at PHW, so expect Holiday House Tour postcards to hit your mailboxes soon!
Our kitchen and library in the Hexagon House is undergoing its seasonal transformation into our Bough & Dough Shop, and some sale items have been trickling in, with more expected to arrive next week. Keep an eye on our Instagram for Shop updates and teasers when we get closer to opening day on Nov. 15!
We are so grateful for all the paper bag donations this year for the Shop. If you are feeling a bit more generous, PHW is also happy to accept packages of insulated cups with lids and hot chocolate, coffee, teabags, or cider mixes for the hot drink station during the tour. Thank you for continuing to support us with your in-kind donations to enrich the Holiday House Tour experience for everyone!
For a bit of Halloween fun mixed with an interior renovation, may we invite you to experience a Gothic-themed bathroom makeover this weekend? While the finished product might not be for you, it’s still an honest exploration of making a very tiny space reflect your aesthetic. (And when could we ever share a makeover project like this if not for Halloween?)
Make sure you slip over to the MSV Gardens soon before these crows and other outdoor sculptures fly away on October 31!
We seem to be drawing to the end of our interior yellow jacket swarm saga at the Hexagon House. Things that have been learned from this experience include:
Yellow jackets will burrow into your houseplants’ soil, cling to your radiators for warmth, find past holes in the interior woodwork, and settle in.
Closing off the room of entry from the rest of the house mostly contained the wasps to one room while pest control methods did their work.
In sufficient numbers, the swarm will set off the motion sensors in the alarm system.
Yellow jackets will leave behind excrement on your walls. Luckily, the excrement is reportedly nontoxic, and cleaned up easily enough with a bit of light scrubbing.
Dead yellow jackets in concentrated numbers have an overwhelming stink similar to dried fish food flakes.
Even though the yellow jackets were contained primarily to one room, the cleanup took longer than expected, even with multiple cleanups during each die-off wave. Leave yourself plenty of time and have a vacuum with a good crevice tool on hand to get all the bits and pieces.
We ask you to still exercise caution around the Hexagon House exterior, as the yellow jackets are still in the area around the front porch. They have been well-behaved outdoor neighbors, but we do not recommend long-term indoor cohabitation.
Thank you all for your patience while we waited to announce our 2021 Holiday House Tour lineup. We are easing our way back into the holiday tradition with three homes this year, 25 West Piccadilly Street, 321 South Stewart Street, and 814 South Washington Street. None of the buildings have been opened to the Holiday House Tour before, and we are excited to share them and their renovation stories with you this year. We are also looking forward to renewing our partnership with Winchester Little Theatre to provide costumed carolers during the tour, and free hot drinks will be served on Sunday at the Bough & Dough Shop at the Hexagon House.
The tour will be held on Sunday, December 5 between noon and 4 PM. We ask that visitors come prepared with face masks and be understanding that they may need to wait in line outside the homes (so dress for the weather and wear comfortable, low-heeled shoes). We expect the group sizes going through the homes may be more limited in the size this year than some other years, and please remember to keep up your social distancing while you wait.
Ticket prices are set at $20 per adult in advance, and $25 at the door. This year we will not be offering single-site admission tickets. Advance tickets will be available for purchase in person at Kimberly’s, Winchester Book Gallery, the Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center, and the Bough & Dough Shop at the Hexagon House, as well as online and by mail. We plan to have tickets available for purchase starting November 15; the program booklets may be slightly delayed, but online versions will be made available by November 15.
Thanks for your patience as we hold the announcement of the house line up for the Holiday House Tour. We can confirm tickets will be available for purchase starting November 15 at the Bough & Dough Shop at the Hexagon House, Kimberly’s, Winchester Book Gallery, and the Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center. An online purchase option will also be available, along with a digital version of the program booklet.
To tide you over until we have more updates on the tour side, we’ve prepared a visual guide for our Bough and Dough Shop. The schedule for 2021 is going to be a little different than our past years’, so to help you plan what days the shop will be open, we have created a calendar below. Be sure to visit the Hexagon House on the days highlighted in yellow to do some local shopping between 10 AM and 5 PM. Please note we are reducing the shop floor space to just the kitchen and the greenery on the back porch this year.
We will most likely be in need of evergreen cuttings for the “bough” side of the shop. If you have plans to trim or remove cedar, pine, juniper, boxwood, magnolia, holly, or other greenery in late November, we will be grateful to accept your clippings at the Hexagon House during the Shop. We recommend making large drop offs prior to 10 AM, after 5 PM, or on our closed days to prevent congestion in the parking lot with shoppers. Volunteers may be able to trim and haul smaller plants for you. If you have questions about greenery donations, please contact us at phwinc.org@gmail.com or 540-667-3577.
PreserveCast has an interview up with Merrill Hoopengardner to talk about the historic tax credit. From the podcast description: “In mid-September, House Democratic-led committees approved a more detailed $3.5 trillion package of bills with HTC enhancements similar to the HTC-GO (H.R. 2294). Next in the legislative process, the bill must move to the House floor, pass the House, pass the Senate, and be signed into law. Washington insiders believe that a final bill will be negotiated with the Senate before it goes to the House floor and is likely to be significantly reduced in both size and scope. If passed, the infrastructure bill would include the most substantial enhancements to the Historic Tax Credit in a generation. To support the efforts in getting these provisions across the finish line, please reach out to all Democratic Senators and ask them to support the HTC enhancement provisions included in the House infrastructure bill. To learn more about how you can contact your representative, click here.“
Deer visited the backyard at the Hexagon House this week.
