West Virginia's easternmost county is closer to five other state capitals than to Charleston and closest of all to the nation's capital. Washington, D.C., is only fifty miles southeast, a distance that figuratively becomes ever shorter as more and more of Jefferson County's...
Charles Washington, George's youngest full brother, established Charles Town in January 1787 on eighty acres taken from his extensive land holdings. In an unusual clause, the Virginia legislature let him plat the half-acre lots “in such manner as he may judge best.” In...
Most of the Washington family houses are west and southwest of Charles Town. All are privately owned, but are easily seen from public roads. Except for Harewood, none has received serious architectural study, although all have been the subject of antiquarian interest...
Civil War artist James Taylor made several sketches here, noting that “the roadway was narrow with time-worn houses of stone, brick and wood.” In 1941 the WPA guide called Middleway “a quiet village with aging gable-roofed buildings of white-washed stone, faded brick, or logs,...
Shepherdstown is one of the two earliest towns in West Virginia. On December 23, 1762, the Virginia General Assembly established Mecklenburg, as it was first called, and Romney. Shepherdstown claims primacy because Germans from Pennsylvania had established a settlement on...
Harpers Ferry, at the easternmost point of West Virginia, is the state's most famous town, thanks to a short-lived but seminal event, John Brown's October 1859 raid to capture the United States Armory. Although Brown's attempt failed, the armory was destroyed early in the...
Harpers Ferry's steep, picturesque site precluded any sort of grid plan. The Lower Town, at the tip of the peninsula, consists of Shenandoah and Potomac streets, paralleling the river for which each is named, and High, or Washington, Street. Washington intersects...
The Upper Town is also known as Camp Hill, for an encampment of army troops in 1799. Reached via High Street, it contains a cluster of mid-nineteenth-century houses erected for the upper echelons of the armory hierarchy. After the Civil War, Congress exempted these...
When one thinks of Wyoming, buildings are not the first images that come to mind. The state is known more for its majestic mountain ranges and seemingly endless expanses of sagebrush prairie than for its architectural monuments. With less than 600,000 residents occupying an area of 97,000 square miles...
