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Written by Danae Peckler, HFFI Preservationist

(A shorter version of this article was published in the June 2025 issue of The Front Porch Magazine, page 19)

It is common sense to most people: the lowest priced homes in the market are smaller, older, and not made for HGTV. We’re talking about that tiny apartment, townhouse rental, two-bedroom cottage, converted basement or that place that needs a lot of work.  These quirky old places are referred to as “naturally occurring affordable housing” (NOAH) or “market-rate-affordable” by housing advocates, urban planners, and some real-estate industry professionals.

NOAH comprises 75 percent of an estimated 12 million existing affordable units in America today. This categorization refers to the existing stock of privately-owned, unsubsidized, modest-sized houses and apartments that are rented at rates below the regional  average.  This type of housing is most vulnerable to market pressures like rising property values and redevelopment trends, which can lead to displacement of long-time residents and a decrease in NOAH.

For decades, those advocating for Historic Preservation and/or Affordable Housing have often partnered in the rehabilitation and adaptive reuse of older buildings to create new housing opportunities–a collaboration supported by both state and federal tax incentives geared towards the reuse of historic buildings and increase in low-income housing opportunities. Similar examples of this type of adaptive reuse work in the City of Fredericksburg includes the conversion of the old G&H factory and Maury School into condominiums and some office space in the 1990s and 2000s. More recent examples include the adaptive re-use of the Janney-Marshall Warehouse on lower Princess Anne Street into apartment units.

The Preservation Compact, a non-profit Community Impact Corporation and policy collaboration thinktank, and the Institute for Housing Studies at DePaul University, have studied NOAH extensively across the country to support its preservation. “Unsubsidized, naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) comprises the majority of affordable rental housing, and needs investment. The responsible small businesses that own NOAH need support.” This collaborative effort identified effective NOAH preservation strategies based on market conditions.

In lower cost markets, the vast majority of NOAH is owned by competent, responsible private market owners. In these neighborhoods it is likely that small and mid-sized for-profit owners can efficiently preserve affordability, but they are typically not looped in to government and industry policy discussions, and may need support.

In markets where values are rising, NOAH is lost over time as prices and rents increase. Mission driven developers play a critical role in these neighborhoods to keep NOAH affordable over the long term. Those developers need tools and effective strategies in strengthening markets…

Increasingly stressed by rising market values, Fredericksburg’s NOAH seems to be in a period of significant transition. So what do we know about this important sector of our housing stock? Last month, City Planning Commission and staff discussed “tracking housing production” with City Councilors without mention of any plan to monitor our existing housing stock or identify what NOAH the city may have lost in recent years (see points made at joint meeting of City Council & Planning Commission on Comp Plan revisions: 2025.4.9_PC_CompPlan_comments-from-PC-CC-joint-mtg).

How do we know if FXBG is growing or losing its most affordable housing? Who are the competent and responsible private owners and mission-driven developers that steward our NOAH? Do you know any of these kind of developers? Are they included or involved in local affordable housing groups? What can we do to further support the preservation of our City’s older and smaller homes?

A circa-1930s triplex on Maury Street. This kind of NOAH might benefit greatly from an increase in the City’s Rehabilitation Tax “Credit” (or relief) program, designed to support safely updating and improving older buildings in town. State law provides quite a bit of room for the program’s expansion.

HFFI is proud to know one such competent and responsible private owner – the president of our organization, David James.  James has been one of the City’s competent, responsible, small-scale landlords for more than 20 years, maintaining nine affordable units that rent from $600 to $1,050 a month.  A self-taught handyman, David does the basic maintenance and repair work for his properties. He hasn’t raised the rent for more than a decade, and he knows his tenants fairly well. Recalling their names and occupations with ease: a plumber, retired railroad engineer, safety contractor,  bartender, pizza chef,  convenience store clerk, nurse, civilian in food service at Quantico, and  bookmobile driver.

“The greatest threat to affordable housing is not the lack of resources to build, but the lack of resources to operate, maintain, and repair,” says Priya Jayachandran of the National Housing Trust in her op-ed, “In the Rush to Build, Existing Affordable Housing Is Falling Apart,” online at Shelterforce.org.

The benefits of preserving affordable housing are clear and compelling. First and foremost, only by preserving existing housing at the same time as we build new housing will we move the needle on our supply shortage; building new units while hemorrhaging existing stock is treading water at best and losing ground at worst.

Preserving housing is much less expensive than building new…. Preservation leverages prior investments in affordability by extending the life of homes we’ve already created. It’s also faster—an affordable home that is renovated and preserved can be available to families in need of housing in a fraction of the time it takes to build new housing.

Preservation uses less energy and carbon than building new. And most importantly, preserving existing housing averts displacement of residents and addresses housing stability as well as supply.

Prior to its June 2025 demolition, this 1890s dwelling on Liberty Street sold in November 2022 for $100k less than what the owner is hoping to get from the vacant lot now that the property is back on the market in July 2025.

At the last regular meeting of Fredericksburg City Council, HFFI presented a summary of important Historic Preservation goals and called upon the City’s leaders to make progress on the “big 3” most impactful and achievable initiatives. These goals and priority tasks were created by professionally trained City staff, based on residents’ input and insights from professionals working in Preservation locally. You can read more in HFFI’s 2025 Preservation Advocacy Report to Local Leaders

HFFI members and anyone who signed our “big 3” petition in the last year may recall these top-priority goals:

1. Study it!  Conduct a city-wide Historic Preservation Economic Impact Study to quantify the ways in which preserving our City’s historic fabric supports the local economy, good jobs, the health of our environment, our sense of place, and maintains existing affordable housing and higher density development than areas outside the downtown core.  This kind of study has been a local Preservation goal since 2010 and emerged from the Preservation Plan (Chapter 8) adopted by Council in 2021. It was again recommended by an expert hired consultant in 2023. A study of Preservation’s economic impact across the entire City costs the same as recent economic feasibility studies funded by the City for just two individual properties.
2. Support it!  The goals set by City staff with and based on residents’ input are important and could be achieved with greater support. Ensuring the preservation of our City’s most unique, irreplaceable, and valuable cultural assets should not be a job limited to a few staff members. Create the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee as presented by staff on September 12, 2023, to increase awareness and provide greater support for City staff’s efforts.
3. Expand it!  The City’s Rehabilitation Tax Exemption program is largely unknown and rarely used. State law allows for a significant expansion of its scope to aid in the preservation and adaptive re-use of the existing built environment, This program could be tweaked for greater effect and efficiency to assist in safely upgraded and rehabilitating our aging, if not officially “historic,” building stock.  The expansion of this program was one of the biggest takeaways from a 2023 City-commissioned expert report and was also listed as a top priority task of the Clean & Green Commission’s Sustainability Committee in 2021. Check out the City’s 2023 report: Historic Preservation Recommendations: Economic Incentives and Spot Blight/Demolition by Neglect

Want to learn more about the many ways in which the City’s Historic Preservation goals overlap with other important initiatives and advocate for HP in FXBG?  Reach out to HFFI at preservatinoist@hffi.org

by Inga Gudmundsson McGuire

A shorter version of this article was published in the April 2025 issue of Front Porch Magazine.  

In and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, architect Philip Nathaniel Stern’s legacy sits in plain sight. On streets like Caroline (previously Main), Washington Avenue, and William (Commerce), his oeuvre includes numerous public buildings that anchor downtown Fredericksburg occupying corner lots and coveted plots of land. From his office in the Law Building (910 Princess Anne Street) from 1909 to 1949 (at least), Stern supplied Fredericksburg, neighboring counties, Winchester, Richmond, and far-flung states such as Mississippi and New York, with his architectural expertise and knowledge. Many of his completed designs, both commercial and residential, are extant to this day. While extensive research continues on the life and work of Philip Nathaniel Stern (1878–1960), an overview of his architectural career in Fredericksburg, which spanned four decades, is laid out below in hopes that more interest and discovery into Stern will be sought out in the future.

Philip Nathaniel Stern was born, along with his twin sister Katharine Wyman Grumell (nee Stern), on April 15, 1878, in Bangor, Maine. His parents, Jacob Stern (1844–1913), a German-born merchant married Maine native, Eunice Wyman Walker (1848–1924), in December 1876.[1] The Sterns operated a store aptly named Stern & Co. from 1871 until 1887, which featured fine goods.[2] A mainstay in Bangor, Stern & Co. remained opened until 1887 when it appears Jacob Stern fell into debt and declared bankruptcy, prompting Jacob and Eunice to move their young family to Karlsruhe, Germany, Jacob Stern’s hometown.[3]

Archival resources in the United States offer scant information about Philip Stern’s childhood in Germany or his eventual return to this country. At the age of eighteen, Philip Stern enrolled in the architecture program at the Royal Technical University of Karlsruhe, now the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, in the winter of 1896 where he studied for the next three years.[4] The first documentation that Stern was back in the United States following the family’s trans-Atlantic move came in June 1901.[5] Two years after leaving school, Stern, now a 23-year-old young man, was working as a draughtsman in Chicago, Illinois, for the well-known D. H. Burnham Co. architectural firm.[6]  Stern’s stint in Chicago, however brief, came at an exciting time in the city’s history, following the city’s post-1871 fire which sparked rebuilding and growth. The young draughtsman would have been surrounded by new technological advances, materials, and thought, dictating the changing architectural styles of Chicago in the latter half of the nineteenth century from Richardsonian Romanesque to Beaux Arts. Stern’s introduction and immersion into the Chicago School along with his architectural degree provided a strong foundation for his future career in Fredericksburg.[7]

In the early years of the twentieth century, the fledgling architect led a transient life, traveling between Germany and the United States somewhat frequently. In August 1901, Stern, along with his sister, left New York for Germany on the steamship Vaderland. Almost three years later in May 1904, Stern returned alone to the United States on the Rotterdam, settling in Baltimore, Maryland. Three months prior, in February 1904, a fire destroyed over seventy blocks of buildings in downtown Baltimore, presenting an opportunity for young architects like Stern to help rebuild the city.[8] While working in Baltimore, Stern visited Fredericksburg, Virginia at least twice, in April and December of 1905.[9] That December, he stayed with the prominent Shepherd family, whose patriarch, George W. Shepherd Sr. (1830–1909) was the “leading dry goods merchant” at that time.[10] Soon after his first visit, the “rising young architect of Baltimore” would become inextricably tied to the family and town when, in December 1906, he married one of three Shepherd daughters, the “well known and loved” Mary “Mamie” Glassel Shepherd (1875–1960).[11] Soon after their marriage in Fredericksburg, the newlyweds returned to Baltimore, where Stern continued to work, although research did not uncover any buildings in Baltimore attributed to him.[12]

In Baltimore, Stern received a “very lucrative position” to join the architectural firm of Henry C. Brubaker Jr. (1874–1942), in Indianapolis, Indiana.[13] Moving in June of 1907, the Sterns would remain in Indianapolis for two years, Stern quickly becoming an important asset to Brubaker’s firm. In 1908, the two architects formed Brubaker & Stern, successfully winning a variety of large contracts for numerous Indianapolis area projects including the No. 54 School Building (1909), a residence for prominent Indianapolis dentist George Edwin Hunt (1909), and most notably the Rockville State Tuberculosis Sanitorium (1909).[14]

Images of Stern’s work printed in The Indianapolis Star, September 30, 1909, and August 14, 1909.

In 1910, Brubaker and Stern added a third architect to their firm, Harry E. Boyle (1881-1947), who operated their Evansville, Indiana office, creating Brubaker, Stern, and Boyle.[15] The firm continued until 1913, when the architects disbanded.[16] By then, Boyle had laid a strong foundation and client base in Evansville and Brubaker had begun to focus his architectural endeavors in Mexico and Texas.[17] As for Stern, once again he would be pulled back to Fredericksburg, this time for good.

While living in Indianapolis, Stern is attributed with designing his first building in Fredericksburg, the former Lafayette School (1908), presently the Central Rappahannock Regional Library on Caroline Street. This anomaly, the only work completed prior to Stern moving to Fredericksburg in 1909, seems somewhat estranged from Stern’s future work in town. The building, which blends both Classical Revival and Romanesque Revival features, is what architectural historian Richard Guy Wilson noted as “more typical of the nineteenth century than of the twentieth” indicating “a lingering Victorian sensibility.”[18] The building’s compound arches, prominent belt course, and corbel detailing above the main entrance do speak to the Romanesque style features that reached the height of their popularity in the decades prior, while the pilasters, pedimented double-hung windows, and central fanlight, seem more aligned with the Classical Revival or Beaux Arts architectural styles, both favored at the turn of the century.

In fall of 1909, Mary and Philip Stern returned to Fredericksburg from Indianapolis following the death of Mary’s father, George W. Shepherd Sr.[19] Whether Stern remained an active partner in business firm with Brubaker and Boyle after this move is unclear, but the architect did embark on his own endeavors in Virginia right away, building a successful architectural business and becoming a well-known architect at both the local and state levels. Stern brought skill and a capable knowledge of architectural design to the growing city of Fredericksburg. Along with his experience working in large metropolitan cities such as Chicago, Baltimore, and Indianapolis, his connections to the prominent Shepherd family and successful completion of the Lafayette Elementary School building created a foundation for Stern’s architectural career in Fredericksburg and surrounding area that only seemed to solidify with time.

In late November 1909, Stern, in collaboration with architects Charles M. Robinson (1867–1932) and Charles K. Bryant (1869–1933), completed plans for the first two buildings of the proposed Fredericksburg State Normal School.[20] Although Robinson is credited with the Jeffersonian Classical Revival style designs for both Monroe Hall (1909–1911) and Willard Hall (1909–1911), Stern superintended the construction of both buildings.[21]

Stern’s institutional, commercial, and residential designs constitute a fair portion of the city’s early-twentieth century landmarks, easily pointed out when driving or walking through downtown Fredericksburg. The architect seemingly pulling from the architectural elements of the colonial and classically adorned buildings around him, applying fanlights, broken pediments, symmetrical facades, dormers and columns to his own original designs at the Princess Anne Building (1910), Commercial State Bank (1911, Crown Jewelers), and the nearby Stafford County Courthouse (1922), as well as the houses at 1304 Washington Avenue (1910), 1111 Prince Edward Street (1914/1923), 407 Fauquier Street (1926), nearby Little Falls on Kings Highway (1915), 804 Prince Edward Street (1923), and 507 Lewis Street (1929).[22]

The Commercial State Bank at the southwest corner of William and Caroline Streets was completed erected in 1910. It has been heavily altered since this ca. 1925 photograph was taken.           

Stern’s residences exhibited other architectural styles popular during the early-twentieth century, some with eclectic elements from the Stick, Craftsman, and Prairie styles. These works include the house at 1307 Washington Avenue (1911), two sister residences at 1308 and 1310 Caroline (1911), 1200 Washington Avenue (1916), and two bungalows built in Stafford County (1910 and 1916, locations for both unknown).[23] Stern’s Lee-Maury School building (1911, demolished) in nearby Bowling Green has Stick-style features like decorative tussles in the gables, wide overhanging eaves, and general applied ornamentation.[24] These buildings, in contrast to the bulk of Stern’s Classical and Colonial Revival designs, showcase the architect’s flexibility and proficiency in providing each client, whether a local businessman or a board of trustees, their desired style and type of building.

His architectural career included a variety of educational and industrial buildings. Along with his early involvement at what is now the University of Mary Washington, the former Lafayette Elementary School, and the Lee-Maury School in Bowling Green, Stern is attributed with designing various other schools in the area, his most impressive school design being the Fredericksburg High School Building, now known as Maury (1919).[25] Some of Stern’s original designs for commercial and industrial establishments are no longer extant, like Sunshine Laundry (1929), Virginia Excelsior Company Office Building (409 Caroline, 1910), the Liberty Cafe Lunchroom and Store (500 Caroline, 1918), and Mullen and Mullen Office (707 Princess Anne, 1922).[26]

He also provided plans for improvements, additions, and interior alterations to existing buildings on streets like William, Caroline, and Princess Anne. Stern directed the interior renovation of the Mansfield Country Club (Fredericksburg Country Club) in 1925, supervised the construction of the Planters Bank Building (1927, now Ava Laurenne Bride), expanded “The Busy Corner” store at 321 William in 1925, and remodeled the Commercial Cafe in the long-demolished Bradford Building (1935).[27] An important legacy of Stern’s is also the numerous alterations he designed for the old Mary Washington Hospital on Sophia Street including additions in 1910, 1915, 1927, and 1933.[28]  Stern worked on the interiors of numerous historic houses and landmarks in and around Fredericksburg. Names like Kenmore, Rising Sun Tavern, Mary Washington Home, John Paul Jones House, Sabine Hall in Warsaw, Snowden, Rokeby in King George, Hayfield in Caroline County, and the Knox House (Kenmore Inn) were restored, or rather renovated, by Stern beginning in 1911 when he first worked on Hayfield to his last known restoration work on the Rising Sun Tavern in 1938.[31]

Stern newly designed a few churches in Virginia, all of which lie outside of the city’s boundaries.  St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (1914) in Warsaw; New Hope Church (1915) in Stafford County; and St. Anthony Catholic Church (1916) in King George County are all attributed to Stern. Interestingly, his church designs vary in material and layout.[29] In 1919, Stern also renovated the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church in Warsaw, and in 1925 completed an interior renovation of Fredericksburg’s St. George’s Episcopal Church.[30]

On June 30, 1960, Philip Stern died at the Riverside Convalescent Home, formerly the Mary Washington Hospital on Sophia Street, the same building he had worked on and improved his whole architectural career in Fredericksburg. Philip and Mamie Stern never had children. At the time of their deaths, just a few months apart, their estate was estimated at a staggering $225,000 dollars in 1960, close to $2.3 million dollars in 2025.

This article, neither comprehensive nor extensive, was written in hopes that it would generate more interest and research into architect Philip Stern. His career and legacy, while solidified in Fredericksburg, extends farther into the state and beyond. His restoration work, original architectural designs, involvement in the American Institute of Architects (one of four founders of its Virginia chapter in 1914), Kiwanis Club, and numerous other local and state level committees provides a lens into the architectural profession during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century as well as the development of Fredericksburg and the surrounding area from 1910 to 1960.[32] Only the start of my research into Philip Stern, this article acts as the kickstart into uncovering the architect’s legacy and better understanding his impact on the Fredericksburg area.

Citations:

[1] Bangor Maine Town and Vital Records 1819-1891, 534, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-99FP-N4H6?i=533.

[2] “Jacob Stern,” Bangor Daily Commercial, September 30, 1887.

[3]  “Bangor and Vicinity,” Bangor Daily Commercial, October 10, 1887″; Jacob Stern Dead”, Bangor Daily Commercial, December 1, 1913; “Philip N. Stern Dead; Retired Architect, 82,” The Free Lance-Star, June 30, 1960; Jacob Stern, Find A Grave, accessed November 10, 2024 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/253000536/jacob-stern#view-photo=271540071.

[4] Wells, John E., The Virginia Architects, 1835-1955: A Biographical Dictionary, 1997, 430. https://archive.org/details/bwb_T2-ERT-433/page/430/mode/2up?q=stern.;
Matrikel der Gr. Polytechnischen Schule Carlsruhe und der Technischen Hochschule, accessed November 10, 2024,  https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/content/pageview/6635276, 83. Note that Stern’s AIA folder says that he graduated from the program in 1904, which does not match the university’s records found. Matrikel der Gr. Polytechnischen Schule Carlsruhe und der Technischen Hochschule, accessed November 10, 2024, https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/content/pageview/6635653, 14.

[5] Stern’s parents continued to live in Karlsruhe until Jacob’s death in 1913. Karlsruhe Death Register, Certificate No. 1696, 1913, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/57557:61003?_phcmd=u(%27https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/search/collections/61003/?name=jakob_stern&successSource=Search&queryId=eba5ad5a-2822-43a0-b84a-aabed08be299%27,%27successSource%27). “Welcome to the City of Rockland,” The Bangor City News, June 20, 1901, 2.

[6] 1901 Passport Application, accessed November 10, 2024, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/1096188:1174?tid=&pid=&queryid=3f8117ed-2c80-4196-8ff8-e6bcc895b2fd&_phsrc=Bfa1611&_phstart=successSource; “Philip N. Stern,” The Daily Star, May 5, 1922. Note, that in his passport application, he uses the address of B. B. Thatcher, a prominent Bangor resident who married two of Eunice Stern’s sisters. “Hon. B. B. Thatcher,” Bangor Daily Commercial, June 2, 1906.

[7] Lowe, David Garrad, “Architecture: The First Chicago School”, Encyclopedia of Chicago, accessed December 10, 2024, http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/62.html.

[8] Badertscher, Eric, Let’s Take a Look at Maryland, https://research.ebsco.com/c/n4ikcb/viewer/html/65tul2zmdb.

[9] “Newsy Nuggets,” The Daily Star,” April 17, 1905, 3.

[10] “Current Comments,” The Free Lance-Star, December 28, 1905; “Laid to Rest,” The Free Lance-Star, October 7, 1909. Shepherd Jr. served as best man in the Stern-Shepherd wedding, which could be evidence of a close friendship between the two and possible connection to the Shepherd family and Fredericksburg initially. “Shepherd-Stern,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, December 13, 1906.

[11] While researching, the only connection to Fredericksburg, Virginia prior to Stern’s visit in 1905, was a mysterious note in the Bangor Commercial newspaper in 1887. It noted a man, who was thought to be Jacob Stern, had committed suicide in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Called a “sensational report,” to boost newspaper sales, perhaps the Sterns had connections to Fredericksburg that led to this false report.; “Stern-Shepherd,” The Free Lance-Star, December 15, 1906. At the time of their wedding, Mary was thirty-one years old, and Stern was twenty-eight.

[12] “Newsy Nuggets,” The Daily Star, June 17, 1907, 3. Research did not reveal any buildings in Baltimore that Stern designed, or if he was working for an established firm or as an individual architect.

[13] “New Member of Architect Company,” The Indianapolis News,” June 29, 1907, 12.

[14] “Architects Chosen,” The Indianapolis Star, March 27, 1909, 7; “Finish New School Plan,” The Indianapolis Star, August 24, 1909, 14; “How Others Have Built,” The Indianapolis Star, August 22, 1909, 44; ” The P.G.C. and G.E. Hunt Society, Circa 1915,” accessed November 10, 2024, https://images.indianahistory.org/digital/collection/dc013/id/293/.

[15] Marchland, Joan C., Sunset Park Pavilion Nomination, National Register of Historic Places, accessed January 31, 2025, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/132005003.

[16] “Harry E. Boyle & Company Incorporated Architects & Engineers are successors to Brubaker, Stern, and & Boyle,” Evansville Courier and Press, October 26, 1913, 28. It seems that 1913 marks the year Boyle left the firm. Brubaker and Stern continued to work together in some capacity, with a contract awarded to the pair in 1919. “Three Homes Are Started,” The Indianapolis News, July 23, 1919.

[17] “Heads New Architectural Firm,” The Evansville Journal, October 12, 1913, 17; “Gets Mexican Contracts,” The Indianapolis News, February 19, 1910, 2.

[18] Richard Guy Wilson, et. al. “Central Rappahannock Regional Library,” Society of Architectural Historians, SAH Archipedia, accessed January 29, 2025, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-01-FR32.

[19] “Current Comments,” The Free Lance-Star, October 7, 1909, 3.

[20] “Building Plans Are Approved,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 13, 1909, 2.

[21] “Building Plans Are Approved.”

[22] “Hotel Directors,” The Free Lance-Star, May 31, 1913; “New Residence,” The Daily Star, October 12, 1914; “Commercial State Bank” The Daily Star, May 18, 1912; “Building New Residence,” The Daily Star, July 8, 1925; “New Court House,” The Daily Star, May 9, 1922; “To Build Brick Residence,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, January 21, 1923; “To Build Brick Residence,” The Daily Star, February 17, 1915; Building Residence for Dr. G. B. Harrison,” The Free Lance-Star, February 27, 1929; “Eight Fredericksburg Homes open their doors,” The Free Lance-Star, December 1, 1979.

[23] “New Houses To Be Built,” The Daily Star, July 1, 1910; “To Build Residence,” The Free Lance-Star, January 8, 1916; Richard Guy Wilson et al., “J. Conway Chichester House,” Society of Architectural Historians, SAH Archipedia, accessed January 31, 2025, https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-01-FR50; “Will Build Bungalow,” The Free Lance-Star, July 9, 1910; “Fredericksburg, VA. – Bungalow,” The American Contractor, July 29, 1916, volume 37, 94.

[24] “Bowling Green High School,” The Daily Star, July 10, 1912.

[25] “Letter of School Board,” The Free Lance-Star, May 12, 1917.

[26] “Mullen & Mullen,” The Free Lance-Star, December 21, 1922; “Will Erect Handsome Building,” The Daily Star, July 23, 1918; “Sunshine Laundry Is To Begin Operation Monday,” The Free Lance-Star, March 15, 1929.

[27] “City Items,” The Free Lance-Star, May 09, 1930; “City Items,” The Free Lance-Star, May 21, 1935; “Find Shattered Rafters In Repairing Old Tavern,” The Free Lance-Star, March 29, 1938, “To Build $20,000 Residence,” The Free Lance-Star, May 12, 1917; “New Home of Planters National Bank,” The Free Lance-Star, October 8, 1926; “Renovating Country Club,” The Free Lance-Star, March 12, 1925; “To Erect New Building,” The Free Lance-Star, July 8, 1924, “Bank and Office Buildings,” Manufacturers’ Record, April 14, 1910, 65, accessed January 31, 2025.

[28] “The Hospital Addition,” The Daily Star, May 13, 1910; “The Hospital,” The Free Lance-Star, June 10, 1915; “News of Bygone Days,” The Free Lance-Star, March 29, 1933; “Hospital Work is Under Way,” The Free Lance-Star, September 23, 1927.

[29] “Contract Awarded,” The Daily Star, July 19, 1916; “New Hope Church,” The Free Lance-Star, June 9, 1915; “To Build New Chapel,” The Daily Star, September 4, 1914.

[30] Stern also designed a chapel “near Truslow’s Store” in Stafford although at the time of this article, the location has not been determined. “To Build Chapel,” The Daily Star, September 19, 1910; “Improvements for Warsaw,” The Free Lance-Star, May 13, 1919; “Completing Improvements,” The Free Lance-Star, May 21, 1925.

[31] “Will Have Handsome and Modern House,” The Free Lance Star, November 2, 1911; “The “Snowden” Fire,” The Free Lance Star, January 19, 1926; “Hayfield Mansion,” The Daily Star, November 11, 1911; “Will Close Mary Washington Home,” The Free Lance-Star, August 17, 1929.

[32] “Kiwanis Held Informal Session,” The Daily Star, March 17, 1926.

City of Fredericksburg Planning staff made a  presentation at the August 28, 2024 meeting of the Planning Commission on the amount of infill development and teardowns in town over the past few years (a copy of staff’s memo and presentation is available at the end of this post). HFFI was pleased to see that City staff conducted such an analysis and hopes they will continue to keep the public informed on this matter – as it provides insight into potential gentrification and loss of historic housing in some of the City’s older established neighborhoods.  HFFI’s public comments read at the meeting are provided below.

The Historic Fredericksburg Foundation has reviewed the upcoming agenda for the August 28, 2024, meeting of the Planning Commission and submits the following comments on select items: 

Discussion of Potential Policies, Ordinances or Applications: Item 5.A. Analysis of Tear Down and Infill Housing

HFFI is pleased to see staff’s assessment of recent teardowns and infill development and are thrilled to see the long-standing historic trend of infilling vacant lots continue in our community. We also understand that the demolition and replacement of some older buildings is necessary for the continued growth and development of the city. The buildings constructed today and those erected decades ago will not last forever. Regardless, what we choose to preserve and what we discard is a direct reflection of our culture and community values.

The adaptive re-use and rehabilitation of existing buildings is important for many reasons, some of which are not commonly known.

• Environmental Benefits: Reusing buildings and making them more energy efficient plays an essential role in meeting our community’s goals for sustainability, resilience, and climate action. Modernizing existing buildings greatly reduces greenhouse gases by keeping many tons of material out of landfills and reducing the need for new construction, which typically generates far more carbon emissions than conservation and reuse.
• Economic Benefits: Repairing, reusing, and renovating historic places keeps money in the local economy by spending more on labor than materials compared to new construction, and employing local laborers. Furthermore, the rehabilitation of older buildings gives property owners a marketing edge—with buyers paying a premium for the resource’s unique features and stories.
• Health & Well-Being Benefits: Older places also support our emotional and psychological health in multiple ways. We form strong emotional bonds with the places that helped shape us or that provide the backdrop for our daily lives, and we take comfort in their familiarity. Older and historic places remind us that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, connecting us with our past and with each other, while fostering a sense of belonging and pride of place in our community.
• Blight Reduction Benefits: Reviving vacant and underused buildings, maintaining older multifamily housing, and adding compatible new construction in older neighborhoods can add density and vitality to a community while keeping what makes it unique.
• Affordability Benefits: Most of the country’s existing affordable rental housing is unsubsidized, privately owned, and at risk. New construction can’t keep up with demand, and the vast majority of new construction isn’t affordable to low- and middle-income residents. Rehabilitating our existing housing stock keeps these buildings safe and maintains greater affordability at a fraction of the cost of new construction.

Infilling vacant lots is the most organic way a city grows new built resources. The other way involves the demolition and replacement of older structures or buildings of lesser market value. While HFFI is pleased staff’s study highlights just four of the 14 new houses in 2024 resulted in the demolition of older buildings, it is both common sense and proven fact that vacant lots are low hanging fruit. As time goes on, Fredericksburg neighborhoods will increasingly lose their older, smaller, and more affordable housing.

The fact that new buildings raise the property value of the existing parcel is made clear in staff’s analysis. This infill will also impact the value of neighboring properties—good news to many homeowners whose residence is likely their largest financial asset. Sprinkled across the city in various neighborhoods, incremental increases in property value enhance the wealth of our community slowly over time. However, such changes also increase property taxes—impacting some people and neighborhoods at higher rates than others. Given Fredericksburg’s ongoing challenges of affordability, rising cost of living, and the forecasted growth in renter-occupied houses, investor-driven rapid growth in our older established neighborhoods can only exacerbate these issues.

Preservation isn’t the sole solution to pressing local issues, but we can’t solve them without it. We can’t build our way out of the housing crisis or bulldoze our way out of climate change. We need to use every tool we have, including our existing places and infrastructure.

Hired consultants and planning experts like Streetsense and Heritage Arts have repeatedly advocated for increasing local preservation incentives—a priority task for City Council since 2021—to encourage the conservation and rehabilitation of our existing housing stock. We can support preservation and new development simultaneously—it is not either or, it’s both.

HFFI hopes that the Planning Commission and City staff will continue to assess the quality of infill and impacts of teardowns in the City, sharing these statistics regularly with the public to monitor character loss and any rise in gentrification. We further urge Planning Commissioners to support the expansion of preservation incentives to retain and rehabilitate our unique, authentic, historic, and most affordable housing assets.

by Danae Peckler, HFFI Preservationist

On the first page of his 1991 book, Robert A. Hodge called Alum Spring Park, “the most historic park in America’s most historic city.” These days, people might view that ambitious moniker with suspicion. However, the more one learns about Fredericksburg’s past, the more remarkable it becomes. The park encompasses 34.75 acres around the Alum Spring—named for the crystalized salts that form on the surface as the spring’s water evaporates. However, the area has also served many other purposes:

• A source of clay for local indigenous populations that camped along area waterways
• The site of multiple 18th and 19th century grist and saw mills along with millworker houses
• A hospital and prison camp for Hessian and British soldiers marched to Fredericksburg after Cornwallis’ surrender in October 1781
• A place for dueling and more than a few tragic deaths
• A quarry for local sandstone
• A place of refuge and conflict during the Civil War, as well as the site of many veteran reunions into the 20th century
• A plentiful source of ice in the winter
• A popular local swimming hole in the summer
• A wondrous place to explore the area’s natural and cultural history.

Local newspapers and long-time residents credit Hodge—a geologist, educator, and local historian—as the galvanizing force behind the creation of Alum Spring Park. After moving to Fredericksburg for a teaching job at James Monroe High School in 1956, Hodge began taking students to Alum Spring to illustrate the area’s natural history, using its diverse rock formations, from the bed of Hazel Run to its sandstone cliffs, as visual aids for teaching geologic time. And for the many decades that he lived here, Bob Hodge also read, thoroughly researched, and wrote about local history in his spare time. Decades after his efforts to create Alum Spring Park, he published a small book about the property, entitled A History of Alum Spring Park, to chronicle all that makes it unique and historically significant (copy available at the CRRL Downtown branch).

The area was actually first proposed as a park by the Fredericksburg Development Company and appears in the firm’s 1891 map of holdings in and around the city. However, the idea for a public park did not come to fruition until the land was threatened by a large townhouse development in the mid-1960s. The Planning Commission and Recreation Commission supported the park idea, and in October 1965, Fredericksburg City Council voted unanimously to purchase the land that comprises Alum Spring Park today (The Free Lance-Star, Oct. 6, 1965:4).

The city’s Recreation Commission, of which Bob Hodge was a member, made a careful study of the 34.75-acre property in consultation with National Park Service staff and state Outdoor Recreational Department officials. In December 1967, a formal report made to the City Council “emphasized the primary purpose of the park was to preserve the natural state of the tract as much as possible,” and provided a plan for the park’s immediate development along with some long-range proposals (Hodge 1991:39).

Presently, two planning efforts stand to substantially affect the landscape within and around Alum Spring Park—both require and assume that the city will acquire the neighboring 34-acre tract of woodland on the east side of Emancipation Highway, north of the park, from the University of Mary Washington (UMW).

The Parks & Recreation Master Plan currently proposes a wholesale redesign of Alum Spring Park, reorienting it toward the busy Emancipation Highway (Route 1). This plan calls for closing the ford entrance and removing most of the existing facilities to build a new larger parking lot, bathroom/ welcome center, and playground on UMW’s undeveloped land (Figure 1). Simultaneously, the Small Area 5 plan currently proposes the construction of a new “connector road,” extending from the William Street/Blue & Gray Parkway (Route 3) intersection to meet with Idlewild Drive or Beverly Lane (Figure 2).

City staff’s proposed plans to build a new roadway with a multi-use path, 50-space parking lot, new welcome center/restroom facility, picnic shelters, and a playground on UMW’s forested tract seems to be at odds with many stated environmental and historic preservation goals.

Given its proximity to Hazel Run and Alum Spring, much of Alum Spring Park and UMW’s wooded 34 acres are located within “Resource Protected” and “Resource Management Areas” under the Chesapeake Bay Protection Program. The rest of UMW’s parcel is within the “Whole Lot Provision” of the Resource Management Area (Figure 3). Both the Alum Spring and UMW tracts have also been identified in George Washington Regional Commission (GWRC) reports focused on bettering our environment. In the Green Infrastructure Regional Plan, both parcels are identified as Contributing Eco-Core areas, and “the over-arching finding is that proper forest retention can provide important water quality benefits to the Commonwealth and Chesapeake Bay Watershed,” based on recent studies on the impact forest buffers have in protecting against erosion and stormwater runoff (GWRC 2016, 2017). 

From a preservation perspective, these plans will have a negative effect on known cultural historic resources. The 1968 Recreation Commission report to the City Council called for archaeological investigations at one of the known mill sites; however, few, if any, such studies have been conducted. The area also has a significant indigenous, Colonial, Civil War, and industrial history—much of which has yet to be thoroughly documented and analyzed. Localities and other state agencies often avoid disturbing areas known to contain important cultural artifacts, embracing the cheapest option, which is to preserve them in place. Given that almost every inch of the UMW and Alum Spring Park tracts falls within the highest probability in the City’s Archaeological Predictive Model, both plans will come at a higher price to taxpayers (Figure 3).

It is often said, “history repeats itself” and “no idea is ever new.” In 1980, a proposal for a new road connecting the end of Alum Spring Drive to the Route 1 Bypass was voted down by City Council after an uproar from local groups, including “the Jaycees, the Planning Commission, Recreation Commission, Economic Development Commission, and the Rappahannock Garden Club,” who “chiefly [opposed the road] because it would border tranquil Alum Spring Park” (The Free Lance-Star, Feb 28, 1980:17). The Public Works Committee had supported the idea as a “trucking link that would open an undeveloped section to business use” (The Free Lance-Star, Jan 25, 1980:3). A January 28, 1980, editorial in The Free Lance-Star addressed the feelings of many residents had for this special place in the city:

Crossing tiny Alum Spring is like entering another century. You may hear a truck on the Bypass or spot the top of a nearby apartment complex. But the distractions are few amid the splendid isolation of Alum Spring Park’s wooded hills.

There is a sense of discovery and reflection to these 35 acres. A 2,000-year-old sandstone cliff and an abandoned railroad bed from a century ago suggest a resistance to change. For close to 40,000 visitors a year, a piece of Fredericksburg’s past has been delicately and beautifully preserved….

With the Fredericksburg area leading Virginia in growth, it has never been more important to safeguard our remaining natural and historical resources from the temptation of short-term economic gain….

The Council should do more than ratify the overwhelming arguments against this proposal. It’s time to go on the offensive in protecting our natural assets. Possible scenic easements on nearby undeveloped tracts should be explored as a way to insulate the Alum Spring “experience” from future developments.

As currently proposed, the “new” plans fail to protect much of what City Council’s Vision for 2036 describes as important to Fredericksburg’s future and identity. They do not preserve one of the few sizable, undeveloped, Eco-Core areas in the City; do not reduce run-off into our waterways; do not protect known cultural historic resources; and do not appear to make prudent use of taxpayer dollars.