Kenridge, Albemarle County, Added to Virginia Landmarks Register

Overshadowed by the Fifeville discussion and vote at the March 20th joint session of the State Review Board and the Virginia Board of Historic Resources, there was another local action: Kenridge (PDF), in Albemarle County, was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and recommended to the National Register of Historic Places. The house is probably better known to longer-term Charlottesvillians as the Kappa Sigma National Headquarters. Which it was until the Kappa Sigma Foundation secured a Virginia Supreme Court decision that gave the Foundation clear title to the property, which the Foundation sold in 2005. The house made up, along with the adjacent houses White Gables and Boxwood, and a fourth house now demolished, “Rinehart Row,” country houses built by Hollis Rinehart, Sr., for himself and his three children. Rinehart, who made his fortune in servicing the railroads and then in building and industrial construction, had been living in Birdwood until he finished Kenridge in 1922. His architect was William Johnston Marsh of Marsh & Peter Architects, Washington, DC. Marsh had already made a name for himself as a designer of houses in the District, and he and his partner, Walter Gibson Peter, would leave a legacy of District schools and commercial buildings. The firm’s most prominent Charlottesville commission, and the one which brought the architects to together with Hollis Rinehart, was the 1920 Charlottesville National Bank, the town’s first skyscraper, now used as Wachovia Bank’s Regional Headquarters. Rinehart had helped create the Charlottesville Bank and Trust Company in 1914, and was chairman of the board when it came time for the bank to establish itself in a grander fashion on Main Street, and was thus pretty much in charge of picking the tower’s architect. Rinehart would be a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, appointed to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, an investor in the Paramount Theater, and one of the founders of Farmington Country Club. While it had its share of larger commissions, including Walter Reed Army Hospital, Marsh & Peter Architects’ most recognizable work today is the gold-domed Farmers & Merchants Bank on Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, a building that is currently a branch of Riggs Bank. The Georgetown bank is modeled on the banking hall (the first two stories) of the Charlottesville bank tower, which the firm had designed at least one year before undertaking the Georgetown bank, but the Georgetown version retains its original configuration, windows, and lobby furnishings. The Charlottesville tower was heavily renovated in the 1970s before being returned in 1999 to something much closer to Marsh & Peters’ design, including a faithful restoration of the tower’s 1920 exterior appearance. Both bank buildings may be more the work of Peter, but the firm’s houses, including Kenridge, are generally attributed to Marsh.