Stonefield arose in 1860 in the city of Charlottesville as a simple, vernacular, two-story, one-over-one-room frame house on a high brick basement (finished, and used as a dining room). Between 1880 and 1884, new owner Mason Gordon added a two-story Victorian Queen Anne “façade,” two rooms in width and one room deep, effectively masking the original rambling vernacular structure.  In 1915, Nancy Burr Gordon, Mason’s daughter, moved the school that she had operated downtown since 1911 to the house where it became Stonefield School. Stonefield served as Gordon’s residence and schoolhouse until the year after her death in 1954. The school then merged with the University Country Day School to form Belfield School and moved elsewhere.

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