Solitude

^-A A ⁺A

Facts

Location:
Blacksburg Virginia

Regional Essays:
Virginia: Valley, Piedmont, Southside & Southwest Southwest Virginia Montgomery County Blacksburg

Types:
springhouses lofts (upper level floors)passages (circulation spaces)log houses outbuildings universities (buildings)

Styles:
Greek Revival

Materials:
wood (plant material)

Parent Entry: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College)

What's Nearby

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech, Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College)

Burruss Hall and the Northwest Quadrant of the Central Campus, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

Lower Quadrangle Southeast

Torgersen Hall and the North Quadrant of the Central Campus

Cassell Coliseum

Citation

Anne Carter Lee, "Solitude", [Blacksburg, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-02-MO17.7.

Last accessed: November 5, 2024.

Permissions and Terms of Use

Print Source

Buildings of Virginia: Valley, Piedmont, Southside, and Southwest, Anne Carter Lee and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015, 435-435.

c. 1801; c. 1834, c. 1851 additions; 2011 restored. 705 W. Campus Dr.

(Virginia Department of Historic Resources)

☰ SEE METADATA

Solitude began as a one-room log house with an interior chimney and loft. The house was occupied in later years by Robert and Mary Preston and their family, who apparently added a log wing, providing a passage and an additional room on each floor. Around 1851 they greatly enlarged the by-then weather-boarded house with a wooden addition and thereby created a fashionable dwelling detailed inside and out in Greek Revival. Their one-story porch was treated as an interior space with plastered walls and paneled wain-scoting. As enlarged, it resembles the three-bay, two-story frame center-passage house form so popular at the time. A log springhouse and a small log outbuilding, both dating from the mid-nineteenth century, flank the house. Virginia Tech purchased the house and two hundred and fifty acres in 1872. The house was restored in 2011 to its mid-nineteenth-century appearance and now accommodates the university's Appalachian Center.

Writing Credits

Author:

Anne Carter Lee

If SAH Archipedia has been useful to you, please consider supporting it.

SAH Archipedia tells the story of the United States through its buildings, landscapes, and cities. This freely available resource empowers the public with authoritative knowledge that deepens their understanding and appreciation of the built environment. But the Society of Architectural Historians, which created SAH Archipedia with University of Virginia Press, needs your support to maintain the high-caliber research, writing, photography, cartography, editing, design, and programming that make SAH Archipedia a trusted online resource available to all who value the history of place, heritage tourism, and learning.

You are here

Solitude

Facts

What's Nearby

Citation

Print Source

Writing Credits

Data

What's Nearby

Citation

Print Source