Despite its rapid transformation into a highly developed metropolitan area, the city of Virginia Beach preserves several pre-Georgian vernacular houses documenting the lifestyles of the more prosperous farmers early in the 18th century. With its hall-parlor plan and massive end chimney, the Weblin House is representative of the “Virginia style,” a vernacular house type evolved from the post-medieval farmhouses of the western and upland regions of England and employed by Virginia settlers from those areas. The house probably was built in the early decades of the 18th century for John Weblin, Jr., who inherited the property from his father in 1686. The steep gable roof was changed to a gambrel roof in the mid-18th century. The interior of the Weblin House has undergone 19th-century modifications, but the original floor plan survives as does a second-floor bolection fireplace surround.

Originally listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 1974, the Weblin House in Virginia Beach is part of a small cohort of modest brick dwellings in the Tidewater region that represent the transition from frame and earthfast construction to brick, that exhibits building methodologies typical of its early-18th- and 19th-century building campaigns, and that combines English building precedents with indigenous vernacular forms. This 2025 nomination update expands the narrative description of the Weblin House property, including a complete inventory of secondary resources associated with the dwelling. The statement of significance has also been expanded, situating the property within a continuum of agricultural activity in the once largely rural Princess Anne County (now the City of Virginia Beach). This nomination also presents justification for a decrease in the acreage for the Weblin House from roughly 150 to just over 6.5 acres.
[VLR Approved: 12/11/2025; NRHP Approval Pending]