Prior to the Civil War most of the property in the Rugby Road-University Corner District was part of two large farms, Wyndhurst and Rugby, which had been created when the Kelly tract was subdivided in the 1840s. The main dwellings on these two properties still stand. Wyndhurst was built ca.1857 as a single-family residence by Sally Ann McCoy, an early hotelkeeper at the University of Virginia. Thomas L. Preston purchased the 102-acre farm of Wyndhurst in 1863 and lived there until his death in 1903. Following the death of his widow in 1911, his heirs subdivided the property and subsequently sold it in 1919. Preston Place, a circle at the northern edge of the District, was subdivided in the early 1920s from the last remaining portion of the once-extensive Wyndhurst estate.

The buildings and districts listed under the Charlottesville Multiple Resource Area nomination represent a cross section of all the city’s historic periods, from the founding of Charlottesville in the 1760s through the advent of the automobile and the impact it had on the city’s expansion. Also included are buildings that have played an important part in the history of Charlottesville’s black community. Wyndhurst was listed in the registers under the Charlottesville MRA without a formal nomination document.

Wyndhurst house was proposed to be moved to a vacant lot north of its original location. The proposed location was historically part of Wyndhurst’s mid- to late-19th-century acreage, and is within the boundaries of the Rugby Road–University Corner Historic District. Pre-move documentation for Wyndhurst was approved by the National Register in 2018, but in 2020 the property owner opted to keep the house in its original location.
[NRHP Approval: 9/4/2018]