Hard Bargain is a particularly handsome and finely detailed Victorian house of weatherboarding, two stories above a brick English basement. John D. Watson purchased eight acres on the west side of the road to Cochran’s Mill from Thomas L. Preston in 1876 and two adjoining acres from W.W. Flannagan of Rock Hill the following year. This marked the northern limit of 19th-century suburban development along Park Street in Charlottesville. A small building, perhaps the present cottage, was erected in 1876, and the main house was built in 1878.

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. Hard Bargain was listed in the registers under the Charlottesville MRA without a formal nomination document.