The connected neighborhoods of Chandler Court and Pollard Park are an intimate interpretation of the garden suburb ideal developed in late-19th-century Britain. They were the creation of John Garland Pollard, lawyer, educator, and Virginia governor (1929-1933). Chandler Court was laid out on a tight scale, on level land, in 1924. Pollard Park was laid out more loosely around in a wooded ravine. The two developments incorporated such design amenities as curved roadways, brick pathways, minimum setbacks, and common open-space. The houses that make up the Chandler Court and Pollard Park Historic District are generally small- to medium-size middle-class dwellings, typical of the 1920s to 1940s through the use of various historical references. Some employ the more specific grammar of the Williamsburg Colonial style. Architects whose work is represented here include Eimer Cappelmann, Clarence Huff, Jr., Charles M. Robinson, and Thomas T. Waterman. Prominent residents have included Governor Pollard, college librarian Earl Gregg Swemm, and historian Richard L. Morton.

Updated nomination documentation was submitted in 2020, in order to provide justification for the addition of Landscape Architecture as an area of significance, and to extend the end date of the period of significance for the Chandler Court & Pollard Park Historic District from 1940 to 1968.
[NRHP Approved: 10/6/2020]