Annaburg
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Annaburg Nursing Home (Annaburg)
1892–1894, Gustav Friebus. Many later additions. 9201 Maple St.
Commissioned by Robert Portner, an Alexandria beer baron, the central portion of this building was one of northern Virginia's showplaces: the main house of a 2,500-acre estate that stretched to the Manassas battlefields. The gatehouse still stands nearby at 9218 Portner, though it has been modified. The estate also included a model farm, all of which is subdivided and gone. The main house cost in excess of $50,000, which was a very large sum for the 1890s. Designed in the Italian Renaissance idiom with a large front porch, the house was embellished on the interior with murals and other works of art. The architect is a shadowy figure who was active in Washington in the 1880s and 1890s and then turned up in Norfolk as a supplier of building materials. Since Germans dominated the American beer industry, Friebus's Germanic background probably recommended him to Portner.
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