Save This Old House: A Colorful Queen Anne in Virginia
About This Household
Mae Talley, a audio trainer, developed this typical late-Victorian-period home in 1890 for herself and her teenage son. Madame Talley, as she was recognized, ran Danville’s Conservatory of Music opera house and made available songs lessons at her home until eventually she marketed it in 1899.
The dwelling subsequently adjusted fingers eight situations before slipping into disrepair. The City of Danville bought it in 2017 as aspect of a sturdy revitalization application.
Proven Over: The 2,310-sq.-foot property has a few rooms and a bathtub downstairs, and four rooms and a bathtub upstairs. The 3rd-ground attic features the possible for at the very least 600 further sq. ft of finished room. The hand-carved entrance doorways are unique, as are the windows, clapboards, and fishscale shingles.
Why Help you save It?
The house’s distinctive Queen Anne elaborations make it one particular of the most architecturally noteworthy in the city’s Previous West Stop National Historic District, a community of late-19th- and early-20th-century properties created in the course of Danville’s tobacco and textile growth. All 6 fireplaces keep on being, additionally ornate woodwork, coronary heart-pine floors, pocket doors, and mahogany windows.
Following an financial downturn, Danville has been on the upswing, and is redeveloping with gusto. Greensboro, NC, is about an hour’s drive south, and Raleigh about one particular and a 50 percent several hours.
Shown still left: The next-story major bedroom qualified prospects to a gabled balcony. Concrete columns and balusters are proof that the wraparound porch was rebuilt at some point in its early background.
Revealed correct: All 6 fireplaces continue being, 3 on the initial flooring and a few on the next. This 1, in a bed room, was originally coal burning, as had been 3 other folks.
What It Demands
The home awaits new devices, a new kitchen area and bathrooms, plus fire and carpentry repairs. The porch and balcony had been stabilized in 2019, when the metal roof and exterior ended up repaired and painted.
A preceding proprietor stripped the interior walls—likely scheduling to incorporate insulation and new wiring—so plaster or drywall is wanted. A rear addition was taken off, and the exterior boarded up for rebuilding. Restoration tax abatements are out there from the city, and covenants implement. It’s an bold project but an inspiring 1 for an previous-house fanatic looking for a local community of kindred spirits.
Revealed Above: The key staircase, with its handsome newel publish and turned balusters, is original. Like the turret, ornamental shingling, and expansive entrance porch, the massive half-spherical window is between the house’s quintessential Queen Anne–style characteristics.
Shown remaining: A previous proprietor taken off a rear addition and included the again with plywood. The metropolis remaining it boarded up, permitting the new proprietor to build out or keep the unique footprint.
Demonstrated suitable: Two sets of primary six-paneled pocket doors are even now in spot on the first flooring.
All seven authentic doorways are continue to in place upstairs, along with a second newel write-up and a curved balustrade. Most of the trim that has been removed is stored in the home, completely ready to be reinstalled.
The unique double entry doorways, hand-carved and built of coronary heart pine, continue on to grant entry.
Property Stats
Fascinated in preserving this previous dwelling?
Rate: $46,000
Spot: Danville, VA
Call: Paul Liepe, Friends of the Old West Conclusion paul@liepe.com