Belle Aire is set on a wooded knoll above Lee Highway between Roanoke and Salem. The imposing, two-story, double-fronted, L-shaped house is built of brick laid in a variety bonds. The main, or south, facade is three bays long and is an early example of all-stretcher bond. Stuccoed Doric pilasters mark the corners ; fixed to the top of the pilasters are original metal downspouts with applied diamond ornaments. The first- and second-floor frontispieces, window frames, and many other details are adapted from Asher Benjamin's The Practical House Carpenter (1830). Both frontispieces are similar to the one illustrated in Benjamin's Plate 28, Design for a Front Door Case, but with the blocking course deleted and transom lights, more elaborately sculpted symmetrical moldings, and bull's-eye paterae added. The window lintels are derived from Plate 31, Design for a Window, to which the builder, Benjamin Deyerle, added an additional symmetrically molded element with paterae. The principal feature of this facade is the two story pedimented portico, which is supported against the house by colossal stuccoed pilasters and at the front by four fluted Doric columns at each level, those on the second floor being somewhat more delicately proportioned than those on the first. - NRHP, 21 October 1975