Category: Holiday House Tour

24 South Washington Street
The Home of David Look and Terry Frye

This Queen Anne style home was built in 1888 by Alexander M. Baker, a local businessman. The exterior is distinguished by its complex patterned slate rooflines, including the prominent bell-shaped tower in the front. The house boasts seven chimneys and a wraparound front porch supported by fourteen columns. The second story projection features two sets of paired windows with concave lozenge-shaped upper lights.

The house was purchased in 1983 and painstakingly restored to a single family residence and appointed with Victorian furniture and ornamentation by Hal and Betty Demuth. The current owners, David Look and Terry Frye, moved into the home in 2014, and they retained a portion of the Demuth’s collections.

220 West Boscawen Street
The Home of Richard Oram and Debra L. Johnson

The Fuller House is an excellent example of Winchester’s Greek Revival residential architecture. The brick and stucco home was built prior to 1854 by Joseph S. Denny and subsequently enlarged by Dr. William McPhee Fuller, a dentist. An advertisement in the Winchester Times for June 30, 1898 locates his office as the “fifth door west of the Episcopal Church on Water Street.”

The house contains ten fireplaces and the original cherry circular staircase which spirals from the first to the third floor. Found throughout are intricate moldings and woodwork showing a master’s touch. The kitchen and a butler’s pantry converted to a wet bar have been completely modernized by Richard Oram. The carriage house to the rear of the property, which has been restored, will be included on the tour. Artifacts of Dr. Fuller will be displayed in the home.

530 Amherst Street
The Office of Preservation of Historic Winchester

The Hexagon House, owned and maintained by the Museum of the Shenandoah Valley, has been the location of Preservation of Historic Winchester’s office since 2006. This six-sided Italianate villa was constructed between 1871-1874 by James W. Burgess, a local furniture and casket dealer.

Burgess listed the Hexagon House for sale in the Winchester News in September of 1873. It was advertised as “one of the most convenient and substantial new brick dwellings in the valley” with a basement cistern, spacious rooms, and multiple closets. It is the only known hexagonal house built in Virginia, and one of only a dozen across the United States. The MSV purchased the property in 1985 and restored the building to its 1870s appearance. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

The PHW Office on the first floor is furnished with Henkel-Harris furniture, maps of Winchester, and artwork relating to Winchester’s architecture and the history of PHW.

226 Amherst Street
The Home of George and Jeanne Schember

The Daniel Morgan House, home of the Revolutionary War General, was built in 1786 by London merchant George Flowerdew Norton. General Morgan, famed rifleman, moved here as his retirement home in 1800 and reputedly built the western portion at that time. He died in the upstairs master bedroom on July 6, 1802.

Found throughout the home are the original Dutch elbow locks, doors, and red pine flooring. Most of the eight mantels date to the 1830s when the house was upgraded by Alexander Tidball. Other major architectural features, including the staircase, room layout, paneling and wainscoting, would have been familiar to Morgan himself. The home was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.

Mr. and Mrs. Schember’s eclectic collections of artwork, furnishings, and Christmas tree decorations were acquired during their extensive foreign and domestic travels.

608 South Stewart Street
The Home of Joe and Julie Curran

The 1920s home of Joe and Julie Curran incorporates a number of eclectic design decisions to form a typical Winchester vernacular interpretation of a Colonial Revival style home. The shed roof dormer with paired windows adds light and headroom beneath steep roofs. The flat porch roof is surrounded by a turned baluster railing, continuing a longstanding Winchester tradition of double stacked porches. The front porch itself is supported by fluted Doric columns symmetrically arranged to frame the large windows and central Craftsman style door.

The home has an elevator, which replaced the back staircase in 1940 to add accessibility for the homeowner, C. A Robinson. Tim Bandyke restored the home from apartments in 2005, making the Currans only the second family to use the dwelling as their home.

703 South Stewart Street
The Home of Bill and Katy Wiley

The spacious porch on this 1943 Colonial Revival brick home invites you to step inside for the Preview Party on Saturday evening. The home of Bill and Katy Wiley is open for its first Holiday House Tour only on Saturday evening from 6-9 p.m.

The dwelling was built on Lot 14 of the Handley Lands. It was sold to Mrs. Jessie I. Butler on March 30, 1936, with the stipulation that no building valued at less than $8,000 would be built upon the land. The clean lines of the brick exterior are subtly accented with a denticulated cornice and fluted porch columns. The windows are framed by panel shutters with crescent moon cutouts. Such silhouettes were common in Colonial Revival architecture in the period between World War I and II. Solid panel shutters with cutouts could be securely closed, with the open patterns still admitting some natural light and ventilation to the home in the days before air conditioning. Home magazines recommended fastening wire screens over the cutouts to prevent intrepid birds from building nests in the inviting nooks.

Buy tickets online at www.phwi.org/hht.php through PayPal or at any of the advance ticket sale locations.

PHW is grateful for the community support it takes to pull off this event every year. We are especially indebted to our advertising sponsors, who help us offset some of the expenses associated with hosting an event of this magnitude every year.

We extend our thanks to the following advertising sponsors of the 2015 Holiday House Tour:
Bank of Clarke County
Belle Grove
The Cake Boutique
Colony Realty
Davenport Insulation
Flavor Pourfection
Richard Hampton, United Real Estate
Incredible Flying Objects
Sherri Kitts, OakCrest Builders
Murphy Beverage Co.
OakCrest Companies
Eugene B. Smith Gallery
Shenandoah Valley Electric Cooperative
Summit Community Bank
Union Jack Pub & Restaurant
Village Square Restaurant
Vintage, Inc.
Winchester Foreign & Domestic Automotive Repair
Winchester Little Theatre

We also extend our thanks to the following in-kind supporters and advance ticket sale locations:
The Final Yard
Kimberly’s
Mount Hebron Cemetery
Wilkins’ Shoe Center
Winchester Book Gallery
Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center
Winchester Little Theatre
Winchester Medical Center
Winchester Surgical Clinic

The tour would not be possible without the support of our sponsors.

Join us for Preservation of Historic Winchester’s 39th Annual Holiday House Tour, “December Delights.” This year we visit a selection of homes and non-profit organizations in and around Winchester’s newly expanded Virginia Landmarks Register Historic District, spanning the range of Winchester’s architecture and history from the 1780s to the 1940s on December 5 and 6.

Winchester’s western Historic District corridor is the artery to the former Northwestern Turnpike, now Route 50 West. The need for a western road had been recognized by General Daniel Morgan and George Washington as early as 1748. The turnpike, constructed between 1831-1838, connected Winchester to Parkersburg, West Virginia. Toll houses were located at twenty mile intervals along its length. Despite the seemingly impossible task of traversing the hilly terrain, Chief Engineer Captain Claudius Crozet surveyed and connected the most important settlements between Winchester and Parkersburg. The Northwestern Turnpike “bears the earmarks of his engineering genius” and the road was a success. The tolls paid for the road to be macadamized (paved) in the 1840s, shortly after it was completed.

Although the Northwestern Turnpike was supplanted by railroads and canals to the north shortly before the Civil War, it was vital to the westward movement. It remains one of our area’s scenic and historic routes, populated with historic sites and homes along its length.

Can’t wait for more Holiday House tour information? Be sure to visit the main Holiday House Tour page for basic information and online ticket sales, the Featured Artisan page for a sneak peek at the Bough and Dough Shop vendors, and the FAQ page for some frequently asked questions about the Holiday House Tour. These pages are being updated through November.

We start off our month-long Holiday House Tour informational posts with the maps and addresses of the 2015 sites:

Advance Ticket Sale Locations

• The Final Yard, 33 East Gerrard Street
• Kimberly’s, 135 North Braddock Street
• Wilkins’ Shoe Center, 7 South Loudoun Street
• Winchester Book Gallery, 185 North Loudoun Street
• Winchester-Frederick County Visitors Center, 1400 South Pleasant Valley Road
• 315 West Boscawen Street, Bough and Dough Shop (open to the public December 5 from 9AM-5PM and December 6 from 11 AM-5PM, no entry fee)

Bough and Dough Shop

• 315 West Boscawen Street, Bough and Dough Shop (open to the public December 5 from 9AM-5PM and December 6 from 11 AM-5PM, no entry fee)

Preview Party

• 703 South Stewart Street, Preview Party House (open December 5 from 6-9PM only)

House Tour Locations

• 608 South Stewart Street
• 226 Amherst Street
• 530 Amherst Street
• 220 West Boscawen Street
• 24 South Washington Street

Parking
Free parking for the event is available at:

• The Bough & Dough Shop, 315 West Boscawen Street
• Winchester Surgical Clinic, corner of Stewart and Boscawen Streets
• The Hexagon House, 530 Amherst Street (limited parking at the top of the driveway)
• City-operated surface lots
• On-street along the tour

City Autoparks (Braddock, Court Square, George Washington, and Loudoun) are self-service and open 24 hours a day for $0.50 per hour.