Sunnyside (Charlottesville, Virginia) Explained

Sunnyside
Designated Other1:Virginia Landmarks Register
Designated Other1 Date:June 18, 2003[1]
Designated Other1 Number:104-0006
Designated Other1 Num Position:bottom
Coordinates:38.0558°N -78.5039°W
Built:c., 1858
Architecture:Gothic Revival
Added:October 23, 2003
Refnum:03001086

Sunnyside, also known as the Duke House, is a historic home located at Charlottesville, Virginia. The original section was built about 1800, as a -story, two room log dwelling. It was expanded and remodeled in 1858, as a Gothic Revival style dwelling after Washington Irving's Gothic Revival home, also called Sunnyside. The house features scroll-sawn bargeboards, arched windows and doors, and a fieldstone chimney with stepped weatherings and capped corbelled stacks topped with two octagonal chimney pots.[2]

The house was built by John Altphin around 1800 in the rural outskirts of Charlottesville, which was only incorporated as a town of less than 300 people in 1801. The house passed through multiple owners before its major transformation in the 1850s. The longest-tenured owners of the property were the Duke family, after Confederate officer Richard Thomas Walker Duke purchased the property in 1863. Duke's descendants continued to live at Sunnyside until the University of Virginia acquired the property in 1963.[2]

It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Virginia Landmarks Register. Virginia Department of Historic Resources. 5 June 2013.
  2. Web site: National Register of Historic Places Inventory/Nomination: Sunnyside . Gwendolyn K. White. March 2003. Virginia Department of Historic Resources.