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Virginia: Valley, Piedmont, Southside & Southwest » Southside » Greensville County » Emporia (Independent City) and Vicinity » Village View

Village View

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c. 1815; 1826 enlarged. 221 Briggs St.
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)
  • (Virginia Department of Historic Resources)
  • (Photograph by Matthew Aungst)

This house was built during a prosperous era for Greensville County. It was constructed on the dower land of Elizabeth Wall Parham, widow of landowner Michael Wall, and later enlarged by another wealthy landowner, Nathaniel Land. By the mid-nineteenth century, the house was the center of an almost one-thousand-acre holding. Set on a generous lawn, the Federal house has a local flavor in its frame construction, two stories, five bays, and double-pile center-passage plan. Tall windows, two narrow chimneys on each side, and a (reconstructed) two-story central portico stress the house's verticality. Foreshadowing its unusual and highly ornamented interior woodwork, the entrance has an exuberant fanlight and heart-shaped tracery in the side-lights. During the Civil War, the house served as Confederate general Fitzhugh Lee's headquarters.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Anne Carter Lee

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