Roxbury’s 1861 Victorian villa in Westmoreland County was the home of Dabney Carr Wirt, a son of the jurist, statesman, and author William Wirt. The Gothic-style dwelling, with its asymmetrical plan, multi-gable roofline, and long veranda, closely parallels “Design XX” from A Villa Farm-House in the Bracketed Style,” published in Andrew Jackson Downing’s Architecture of Country Houses (1850), a design which Downing describes as intended for the country home of a farmer of wealth. Such houses are relatively common in the North but are rare in Virginia. No architect has been associated with Roxbury, suggesting that a talented local builder had access to Downing’s popular pattern book. Around the turn of the 20th century, Roxbury was the home of F.W. Alexander, who inaugurated the movement to acquire and restore Stratford Hall as a memorial to the Lee family. Since 1960 it has been owned by Ingleside Plantation, Inc.
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