Thursday, August 10, 2006

Hidden histories

I LOVE learning my city's history, an interest which takes us on many free and cheap outings around town. We always stop when we see homes from another era, trying to imagine how the rolling hills looked before development.
In my real estate research, I'm stumbling across artifacts of our next neighborhood. I was already familiar with Traveller's Rest, the colonial home of Judge John Overton, which lies behind my husband's school. But there's more to the story--an estate so palatial that no one could afford to buy it, a home dismantled stone by stone. You can read the sad story of Crieve Hall here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The old Crieve Hall mansion is still around though. The land was bought for a subdivision, and I believe the developer had planned to tear it down, but a family bought and restored it and now lives there, in a mansion in the middle of a regular, otherwise plain jane new subdivision.

Meredith said...

You're kidding! I think it might be another mansion in the subdivision, though, because according to the article from the Crieve Hall Neighborhood association, it was demolished.

There were several other houses in the neighborhood--Caldwell Hall, Brentwood Hall (now Ellington Agricultural Center), .

I'll try to find out for sure.

It's a Mom Thing said...

Hey. I found your site through Mommy Life. As I was browsing, I noticed your post about Crieve Hall. I grew up in Crieve Hall and my parents still live there. I LOVE THAT PLACE! I hope you'll love it, too.