Agecroft


  • Address: 4305 Sulgrave Rd
  • Travel Genus: Sight
  • Sight Category: Building

Erected in 1926-7 in the Tudor-Revival style, the house incorporates architectural fragments from a 16th-century English priory and from Agecroft, a late 15th-century English manor house. On the use of the fragments, an early history of the house contains the following notice: The new Agecroft was to be, smaller than the original, since only the best parts had been brought from England, and the needs of Mr Williams (for whom the house was built) were not excessive. However, a new addition was necessary-a service wing in harmonizing style. Changes in ground plan were also made, certain sections were to be placed in new relations to each other. All four sides of the former quadrangle were not to be reproduced.

Williams built his new house on Windsor, a farm which he owned on the western edge of Richmond. Most of the tract was then divided into generous building lots, and an exclusive subdivision was erected over the next several years. In its American Georgian-style houses, Windsor Farms reflected the ideals discussed above; its Colonial architecture graphically expressed the social and architectural relationship between Agecroft and its neighbors. The antiquarian, Anglophile, anti-urban impulses which led to the creation of Agecroft and Windsor Farms were explicitly acknowledged in a 1926 essay by Mary Newton Stanard, a prominent Virginia antiquarian of the 1910s and 1920s. Windsor Farms (a "typically English name") had "felt the heel of Indian warrior and English pioneer. " Now T C Williams was fulfilling there his "vision of again planting an English village--a glorified English village on the banks of James River: " Windsor Farms roads would "lead the way from city noise and unrest to homes of English architectural sturdiness...distinctly country homes. " In the erection of Virginia House and Agecroft in their midst, Stanard went on to say. "England is literally being brought to America", a feat "almost too good to be real. " - NRHP, December 1977


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Agecroft
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Timeline

Y/M/D Person Association Description Composition Food Event
Y/M/D Person Association Description Composition Food Event
1928/00/00 Henry Grant Morse Jr Associate Architect Designed by New York architect Henry (Homer) G Morse, Agecroft is built from 1926-1928.
1928/00/00 Charles F Gillette Landscape Architect Landscape architect Charles Gillette installs an English Elizabethan garden at Agecroft

Data »

Particulars for Agecroft:
Area of Significance Architecture
Criteria Architecture-Engineering
Sight Category Building
Area of Significance Community Planning and Development
Building Attribute English Manor House
Criteria Historic Event
Owner Private
Historic Use Single dwelling
Area of Significance Social History
Architectural Style Tudor Revival



US National Registry of Historic Places Data »

Accurate at time of registration:

PLACE DETAILS
Registry Name:
Registry Address:
Registry Number: 78003186
Resource Type:
Owner: Private
Architect: Morse,Homer G.; Gillette,Charles
Architectural Style: Other
Attribute: Tudor-Revival
CULTURAL DETAILS
Level of Significance: State
Area of Significance: Community Planning and Development, Architecture, Social history
Applicable Criteria: Event, Architecture-Engineering
Period of Significance: 1925-1949
Significant Year: 1926, 1928
Historic Function: Domestic
Historic Sub-Function: Single dwelling
Current Function: Recreation and Culture
Current Sub-Function: Museum

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