The handsome two-story white weatherboarded Queen Anne-style Dabney-Thompson House is irregularly square with projecting bays on all sides. The central block is two bays wide and double pile. Its high foundation is of brick laid in five-course American-with-Flemish bond with a wooden water table. In 1892 Richard Heath Dabney, history professor and later dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia, purchased three lots in Preston Heights. He built this house in 1894 and lived there until 1907.

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. The Dabney-Thompson House was listed in the registers under the Charlottesville MRA without a formal nomination document.