Monte Verde was begun in 1815 by Captain Joseph Janey when he built a two-story frame house with a center-hall plan. The house is situated on a high ridge facing the Rappahannock River in Essex County. Janey gave the name Monte Verde to his house and plantation when it was fashionable to give Italian names to Virginia plantations, such as Monticello and Monte Bello. A remarkably high percentage of the original architectural fabric of both the interior and exterior survives, including early features in both the attic and the cellar. The Federal woodwork on the interior includes high-style Adam mantels with colonnettes, and there is a Cold War-era bomb shelter under the back porch. Changes made to the house over time have been sympathetic and carefully done. An antebellum one-story wing at the southeast end of the house and a one-story wing added to the northwest end of Monte Verde in 1958 repeat the English bond brick foundation and the beaded  weatherboards of the 1815 house.