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Charleston began to grow quickly after 1885 when it became the permanent capital of West Virginia. By the early 1900s, the city was a busy place with a growing population and a need for new housing in all directions. Businessmen who were involved in industries such as salt, coal, timber, chemicals, and natural gas built beautiful homes in neighborhoods like the East End, along Edgewood Drive, and across the Kanawha River in South Hills, which offered great views of the city.
Many famous builders and architects helped create these houses. The Davidson brothers, Wayland and John, built several large homes, including the Carver House and the Ohley House on Kanawha Boulevard. Architect H. Rus Warne designed homes in Edgewood, South Hills, and Kanawha City, many in Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles. Architect Walter Martens also designed many important homes, including the Governor’s Mansion and Torquilstone. Other notable architects in the area included Fred Crowther, L.T. Bengston, and John C. Norman.
This exhibit was developed with assistance from historians Ken Bailey and Billy Joe Peyton; Henry Battle, president of the Kanawha Valley Historical and Preservation Society; and the owners of the historic houses.
This Queen Anne-style brick house at 1116 Kanawha Boulevard was built in 1897 for coal operator Justus Collins. The house is now owned by the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and is located in the Downtown Charleston Historic District.
This American four-square style house at 1118 Kanawha Boulevard was built in 1903 for William A. Ohley, who served as West Virginia’s secretary of state from 1890 to 1893 and was an investor in the Pocahontas Land Company. The Kanawha County commu...
This house at 1210 Kanawha Boulevard was built around 1891 for Frank Woodman, who moved to Charleston in 1875. He became a wealthy businessman with interests in an iron works, a lumber company, a woolen mill, a furniture company, and a brick compa...
This Georgian Revival-style house at 1300 Kanawha Boulevard was built in 1895 for W. T. Thayer, a Charleston native, Confederate veteran, and successful coal operator. In the early 20th century, the house was remodeled for businessman William Zimm...
This Queen Anne-style house at 1422 Kanawha Boulevard was built between 1888 and 1889 for Judge Okey Johnson, who served as a justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court from 1876 to 1888. From 1896 to 1922, M.T. Davis, president of the Kanawha Min...
This Colonial revival house at 1510 Kanawha Boulevard was built in 1909. It was the home of O. F. Payne, a businessman who settled in Charleston in 1891.
This house at 1516 Kanawha Boulevard was built in 1902-1903 for coal operator John Carver and his wife, Frances, by brothers John and Wayland Davidson. Carver, who emigrated from Wales, moved to Charleston in the 1870s. He, along with his brothers...
This Italian Renaissance-style home at 1614 Kanawha Boulevard is one of a pair of houses built in 1923 by clothing specialty store owner Albert Schwabe for his daughters, Claire and Hedwig.
This house at 1636 Kanawha Boulevard was built around 1890 for wholesale grocer Meredith Ruffner. Ruffner, along with A. L. Ruffner and others, owned and operated the Ruffner Hotel, the largest building in Charleston at the time except for the Cap...
The West Virginia Governor’s Mansion, located near the southwest corner of the State Capitol Complex and facing the Kanawha River, was built in 1924 and 1925. Charleston architect Walter F. Martens worked closely with Cass Gilbert, the architect o...
This home at 2300 Kanawha Boulevard was built in the 1930s for Alvin J. Lindenberg, owner of the Hadley Furniture Company, and purchased in 1948 by Dr. Henry R. Glass. The pink stucco home, built in the Spanish colonial style, is part of the East ...
This house at 1502 Virginia Street was built in 1907 for Solomon and Bettie Hilburn Meyers, who were originally from Germany. Solomon owned a plumbing, heating, and gas fitting business and had served with the Confederacy during the Civil War. In ...
This house at 1527 Virginia Street was built around 1895 by Edward Langley Wood and his wife, Nannie. Wood was born in Kanawha County and raised in Ohio. After returning to West Virginia in 1869, he studied to become a lawyer but never practiced l...
This English Tudor-style house at 1578 Virginia Street was designed by architect Ambrose Grayson Higginbotham, who also designed the Sunrise home for former governor William A. MacCorkle. The house was built in 1914 for Dave Baer, who worked for L...
This house at 1605 Virginia Street was designed and built in 1907-1908 by Ambrose Grayson Higginbotham, who also designed Sunrise. The house was constructed for Charles Capito, a liquor wholesaler who later became president of the Kanawha National...
This house was built about 1900. The one-story Craftsman bungalow stands out because of its small scale and simplicity compared to other East End homes.
This red brick house at 1599-A Quarrier Street was built around 1920 by prominent banker John C. Malone. In 1928, he sold it to coal operator and entrepreneur William G. Caperton (uncle to former governor Gaston Caperton) and his wife, Katherine. ...
This classic Victorian house at 28 Bradford Street was built around 1889 for Samuel and Cynthia Stephenson. Samuel was a businessman involved in the oil, gas, and coal industries, and he also served as a state deputy revenue collector and city cou...
This brick house at 110 Bradford Street was built in the early 1890s and features a five-sided tower at the northwest corner. The house was built for L. E. McWhorter, a prominent attorney.
These brick townhouses were developed in 1912-1913 to address a housing shortage on the East End. A group of prominent Charleston residents came together to create the townhouses, with an agreement to keep the center courtyard clear of buildings. ...
Samuel W. Starks, the first African American in the United States to serve as a state librarian, lived in this house at 413 Shrewsbury Street. Starks (1866-1908) was also well known outside West Virginia for his work with the Knights of Pythias. H...
This Georgian mansion at 746 Myrtle Road in South Hills was built in 1905 by West Virginia's ninth governor, William A. MacCorkle. The three-story stone structure was constructed by Ambrose Grayson Higginbotham, who may have also designed the home...
This South Hills house was built in 1902 for Frank Cox, a coal executive. His daughter, Alice Boyd Cox, married coal executive D. Holmes Morton. The house, also known as Home Hill, was constructed by Andrew Calderwood and is the earliest example o...
This South Hills house was built in 1926 by former governor William A. MacCorkle for his son, William Goshorn MacCorkle. The home was designed by Walter Martens, who also designed the Governor’s Mansion. Governor MacCorkle named it Torquilstone in...
This house at 920 Newton Road was built about 1921 for Charleston businessman James R. Thomas, president of the Carbon Fuel Company. The English Tudor-style home, also called The Maples, was later owned by the McJunkin family and then the Love fam...
This house at 626 Holly Road was built around 1896 for Captain George Danner (1826-1897). Danner immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1856 and came to Charleston after serving for three years in the Civil War. The house is a late Victor...
This neo-Georgian stone house was built around 1933 for William E. Chilton II and his wife, Nancy Ruffner Chilton. The home was designed by nationally known architect William Lawrence Bottomley, who designed numerous public buildings, private club...
This house at 6 Roller Road was designed by architect H. Rus Warne and built around 1925 for Paul B. Grosscup. He owned the Grosscup-Meyers Realty Company, which developed the neighborhood now known as the Grosscup Road Historic District. It inclu...
Architect H. Rus Warne designed this house at 8 Grosscup Road in 1910 for himself and his family by expanding on the original frame house on the site. That earlier house was built between 1875 and 1883 by James Ferguson (1817-1898), a lawyer and m...
This late Victorian frame house at 710 Bridge Road offers one of the best views of Charleston. Built in 1895 for Alvin D. McCorkle, a Charleston city judge, the house is part of the Grosscup Road Historic District. The area, originally known as Gr...
Dalgain, located at 1233 Staunton Road in South Hills, was designed by architect H. Rus Warne and built in 1916 for Robert E. McCabe and Margaret Fleming Ward. Margaret was the daughter of Charles Ward, the founder of Ward Engineering Works. The h...
Briarwood, located at 1240 Staunton Road, is an English Tudor-style house designed by architect Fred Crowthers. Born in England, Crowthers worked in Charleston for several years before relocating to Michigan. He also designed the Barnes-Wellford H...
This house at 66 Abney Circle was designed by Fred Crowther, a renowned architect known for his English Tudor-style homes. It was constructed around 1923 for businessman Bernard Barnes and his wife, Dorothy Dyer Barnes. The house was added to the ...
This house, located at 601 Briarwood in South Hills, was built about 1914 in the style of a late Victorian-period farmhouse. The first resident may have been Frank J. McAndrews, the state commissioner of Workmen’s Compensation. The house was added...
Bougemont, a stately home that overlooks Charleston from South Hills, was built about 1916 by Harrison Brooks Smith, a Charleston lawyer. Horace Hamilton Smallridge, a Charleston businessman, purchased the property in 1959. The home was added to t...
This South Hills house, built in the early 1900s, was constructed from a kit manufactured by the Iowa-based company Gordon-Van Tine. It is one of Charleston's many kit homes, a popular style in the early 20th century. Companies such as Sears, Mont...
This Georgian-style house was built in 1930. In the 1970s, the construction of the interstate required the Hamrick family to relocate their home by carefully jacking it up and transporting it along a rail to a new foundation, positioned 80 feet ba...
This Colonial Revival-style house at 2122 Kanawha Avenue was built in 1922 for Mr. and Mrs. Roger Atkinson Young. It was designed by Charleston architect L. T. Bengston, who also designed many other residences and public buildings in West Virginia...
This distinctive house on Porter Road in Kanawha City was designed by architect Henry Elden and constructed in 1968. The home was uniquely designed to accommodate Elden’s studio on the first floor, with living space above. Top-O-Rock won numerous ...
This house at 306 20th Street in Kanawha City is one of 12 East End homes that were relocated across the Kanawha River in 1923. The homes had originally been purchased by the state to make room for the new state capitol. However, before the buildi...
Breezemont, built in 1905, is a historic house on a hill overlooking Charleston. It was constructed by Cornelius C. Watts, who served as West Virginia's attorney general from 1881 to 1885 and as U.S. attorney general from 1886 to 1889. According t...
Architect John C. Norman designed this Craftsman-style house at 1118 Second Avenue on Charleston's West Side for himself and his family. Born in New Jersey, Norman studied architecture at Cornell University and served in World War I. Afterward, he...
This eclectic-style house at 841 Edgewood was built about 1919. It is part of the Edgewood Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
This tall shingle-style house at 847 Edgewood was built by H. P Brightwell, an engineer about 1911. It is part of the Edgewood Historic District.
This house at 849 Edgewood was built in 1907 and is the oldest in that area's historic district. Augustus Guthrie, a coal operator, commissioned the house, to be built by Ambrose Grayson Higginbotham, who also constructed Sunrise for former govern...
This American four-square-style house at 904 Edgewood was built in 1916.
This house at 905 Edgewood was designed by architect H. Rus Warne for Dr. George Schoolfield, a prominent Charleston doctor. Built about 1918, it's a combination of prairie and Craftsman styles.
This Craftsman-style house at 907 Edgewood was built about 1930. It is part of the Edgewood Historic District.
This neo-Colonial Revival house at 910 Edgewood was built about 1914 for Isaac Loewenstein, president of the Charleston National Bank.
This Tudor-style house at 1015 Edgewood was built about 1939 for the Maier family.
This neo-Classical house at 1017 Edgewood was built about 1938.
The Woodrums-Stevens house at 836 Lower Chester Road is one of three original homes built in the Woodrum Partition, now part of the Edgewood Historic District. Constructed between 1920 and 1921 by C. E. Woodrum, co-owner of the Woodrum Furniture C...
This house at 835 Chester Road is considered one of the finest examples of a Craftsman bungalow style. Built in 1921, it is part of the Edgewood Historic District.
This house at 888 Chester Road was built in 1921 and is part of the Edgewood Historic District.
This Exhibit has 7 Sections