Built by Samuel B. Gardner in 1847, Mountain Home is one of Warren County’s best-preserved examples of the Greek Revival style in brick, and one of a very few extant buildings of this style in the region to have borrowed directly from popular pattern books of the period, such as Asher Benjamin’s The Practice of Architecture, published 1833. Written records about the house and its residents provide unusually detailed and revealing documentation of the lifestyle of a wealthy landowner and his family, whose holdings were little diminished by Civil War activities in the area. The property was well situated to observe the movement of both Confederate and Federal forces, activity that is vividly described in the diary of one of Samuel B. Gardner’s daughters, Anne Gardner. Fifteen-years-old when she wrote her diary in 1862, Gardner provided a rare glimpse of the Civil War in one of Virginia’s most fought-over regions. Although well placed amidst troop movements, Mountain Home miraculously escaped significant damage and survived relatively intact. Remaining outbuildings include a 19th-century slave quarter and several early-20th-century agricultural and livestock buildings.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia