2024 Homes

Edith Walker House

Enter at 40231 Fairfax Street

Open on Friday: 10am to 5pm

Robert Walker built this lovely Victorian home for his spinster sister, Edith, in 1897. He located the house on a portion of his property, Huntley Farm, and designed it to face his house next door instead of the street. A brick walk connected the two homes and remains to this day.

The Edith Walker House is a blend of Victorian and Colonial Revival architectural features such as the wraparound porch that serves as a spacious summer living area. There are two pedimented dormers, three gables and a sleeping porch over the front entrance, each clad with a different style shingle. The main body of the house boasts German siding. The original cedar shingle roof was replaced with raised-seam metal, as was the fashion in the area after the turn of the century. The windows further unite the two styles with six or eight small panes at the top, recalling colonial sash patterns, while the single large pane at the bottom incorporates the modern glass technology of the Victorian era.

Inside the home is a fine paneled Queen Anne staircase, beautiful Colonial Revival molding with bull’s eyes in the top corners, and pocket doors from the foyer into the parlor. Of special note are the five fireplaces, each of a different design. The three on the first floor have mirrored overmantles.

Over the years, there have been few changes to the floor plan, which speaks highly of the home’s comfort and adaptability to changing life styles. The major changes to the house were the addition of first and second floor bathrooms, and an enlargement of the kitchen accomplished by removing the wall to the butler’s pantry.

The historic exterior of the house is protected from alteration in perpetuity by an easement given to the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

The Edith Walker property is open through the courtesy of its current owners, The Wood Family.

William Irish Shop

40153 Main Street

Open on Friday: 10am to 5pm

The construction date of this house is unknown but, like many in Waterford, it once served as a store. William Irish (1844-1882), a Quaker from New York, conducted a watchmaking and jewelry business here after the Civil War until a typhoid epidemic cut short his life. The Chamberlins renovated and added onto this home around 1970. Photos antedating the renovation depict a two-story facade with a shed roof instead of a gable. A porch ran along the southeast wall.

The William Irish Shop property is open through the courtesy of its current owners, Carl Scheider and Jane Williams.

Loudoun Mutual Insurance

15609 High Street

Join the celebration – 175 years!

The concept of spreading the risk of fire damage emerged after the Great Fire of London in 1666, which devastated much of old town London. Inspired by this, Benjamin Franklin established the first fire insurance enterprise in America in 1752. By that time, the community of Waterford had already been established for nearly 20 years.

Loudoun Mutual Insurance Company traces its roots back to 1849, when it was originally founded as The Mutual Fire Insurance Company of Loudoun County. The company’s first insurance policy was issued to Talbott Farm, a property that has remained insured by Loudoun Mutual for 175 years. The company’s name was changed to Loudoun Mutual Insurance Company in 1979.

Currently housed in a building constructed in 1949, this is the third office structure built for Loudoun Mutual. The previous two buildings, which predate this one, are still standing in Waterford. This building, designed to be fire-resistant, is constructed from steel, concrete, and brick, and was modeled after George Mason’s home, Gunston Hall.

Originally established to insure against fire damage, Loudoun Mutual has expanded its
offerings over the years to include various types of insurance. The company’s official logo, a hand water pumper, symbolizes its origins and enduring commitment to protection and community. To mark its 175th anniversary, a replica of an actual hand water pumper, named Endurance, was commissioned and now stands proudly in their lobby.

Loudoun Mutual’s history is a testament to the Quaker principles of integrity and
community-mindedness upon which it was founded. These principles, combined with sound business practices, have guided the company through 175 years of success and will continue to do so in the future.

This building is open through the courtesy of Loudoun Mutual Insurance.

Ephraim Schooley House

15547 Second Street

Open on Sunday: 10am to 5pm

The Ephraim Schooley House is also known as the Parker Bennett House is a Federal period home. The land was acquired in 1820 by weaver John Morrow who began building the left side, shorter portion of the house ca. 1820 using Flemish Bond brick construction. You can see that the center window of the left side of the home would have been the front door. The house was initially a weaving establishment for not only Morrow, but also later Thomas Donaldson who weaved carpet and dyed both carpet and cloth here. During the economic depression of 1819 – 1822, Morrow lost the property. It was bought at auction by Richard Henderson in 1824, who then sold it to Jesse Gover in 1830. William Mayne took over the weaving establishment in 1828 where he accepted jobs for all kinds of weaving. Ephraim Schooley, the Quaker for whom the home is named, bought the property from Gover in 1834. The taller structure on the right side of the home was likely constructed in 1851 using Common Bond brick construction and was a separate residence.

Saddler Asa Brown (1794 – 1872) lived in the home in the 1850’s and 1860’s. The Civil War split his large family down the middle. Asa, a veteran of the War of 1812, was a loyal Unionist, as was his son and two daughters. Sons Charlie and “Ab” were supporters of the confederacy, as was wife Aurena and a third daughter. All managed to survive the war, though Charlie took a Yankee bullet at the First Battle of Bull Run.

The house was used as two separate dwellings that were both sold to H.C. Bennett in 1876. From 1919 to 1959, the property was owned by the H.B. Parker family. Harvey, a blacksmith, came home from WWI and feuded with his brother Fred who had run the smithy in his absence. The two never spoke again. When Mr. and Mrs. John Lewis bought the property in 1959, they restored the home and named it “The Parker-Bennett House”. The two-level addition was added in the 1970’s and an easement was granted to the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission. Further additions were done in the 1980’s. Although you would never know it by looking at it from the street, this is one of the largest lots in Waterford. There are four acres in the back. The house was built with “Waterford bricks,” which were fired right here on the property.

The Ephraim Schooley property is open through the courtesy of its current owners, the Manch family.

Weavers’ Cottage

40188 Water Street & 40188 Main Street

Open on Saturday: 10am to 5pm

This two-story stone and log house is the only one still standing on Water Street. It exemplifies housing for less affluent individuals in the early 19th century; many builders continued to use log and stone as a cheaper alternative to brick or frame construction. Its earliest known owner was Elizabeth Gore (c.1772-c.1848), who in 1818 bought what was probably a vacant lot. She sold the property in 1849 to a weaver from Germany. In the mid-1850s William Robinson (born c.1821), a free African-American, purchased the house; it remained in his family for close to a century. Two additional dwellings owned by African-American families stood to the right of the Weaver’s Cottage until the late 1800s.

The Weavers’ Cottage is open through the courtesy of Owners Jeff Darrah and Issac Johnson and Renter Shawn Perrine.

Asbury-Johnson House

15567 Second Street

Open on Sunday: 10am to 5pm

This house is the first of three Victorians built on contiguous vacant lots along the southwest side of Second Street in the late 19th century. During the Civil War, in October 1862, a Union division commander described the location as a beautiful site “in front of a most excellent family of Quakers on the opposite side of the street . . . They offered a nice room, but I prefer my tent,” (where he could keep an eye on his men bivouacked on the adjoining Phillips Farm).

Armida Athey Love (1841-1926), widow of a Union army surgeon, bought the land in 1886 and by the following year had added a new frame dwelling. The house was built by carpenter Asbury R. Johnson (1842-1905), whom she married in March 1887. The local press reported the following month that “Mrs. Kate Rickard, nee Compher, has purchased the handsome new residence lately built by Mrs. Love . . . as her [Kate’s] future home.” Kate, herself a widow, remarried John S. Paxson in 1889, and the property remained in the Paxson and Rickard families until 1956.

A protective easement on the house is held by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources (DHR). Many homes in Waterford have this protection. It prevents inappropriate changes to the original structure. And in fact there have been few alterations made—plumbing and wiring aside. It is less exuberantly embellished than its labor neighbors to the south. In 2010 an earlier deck was rehabilitated and a porch added that is sympathetic to the original architecture.

The Asbury-Johnson House is open through the courtesy of Debbie Zongoli & George Rambo.

The Bank House

40149 Main Street

This finely crafted house was probably built about 1806 by young Israel H. Thompson. Unfortunately, he died the same year, at age 22. The building he left is notable for its precisely mortared brickwork and an elegant architrave under the eaves.

Thompson’s executors sold the house to Richard Chilton in 1809, and in 1815 Isaac Steer and his son Jonah purchased the building. Early on, Isaac rented a “storeroom” in the house to the newly formed Loudoun Company, a bank founded by local farmers and businessmen. The enterprise was short-lived but, according to tradition, the steel door of its vault was repurposed to cap a horse-mounting block across the street.

The Chamberlin family that began the restoration of Waterford bought the property in the late 1930s and held it for more than 70 years. Wellman Chamberlin, National Geographic’s chief cartographer, made extensive repairs and improvements to the old building at mid-century, including replacing a dilapidated porch that spanned the front façade with a hand-carved door surround he fashioned himself.

The Bank House property is open through the courtesy of Tracy and Paul Shorn.

The Isaac Hough House

40205 Main Street

In 1801 Isaac Hough, a Quaker, bought lots 14 and 15 of Mahlon Janney’s early subdivision of the Big Hill. Hough sold them to local joiner Thomas Lacey in 1813. Between 1818 and 1820 tax records indicate a structure had been built—as two joined-but-separate houses—probably being used as rentals. Lacey’s heirs sold the property to John Hough in 1837. The property thus returned to the Hough family—albeit a Methodist branch—and would remain in the family until 1908.

In 1855 half of the house sold for $500, but eleven years later it brought only $125—eloquent testimony to at least one effect of the Civil War.

An extraordinary view from the back of the house across the village to the fields beyond, all of which is within the National Historic Landmark, clearly shows the relationship of village house to rural landscape, one of the primary reasons for Waterford’s being named a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

The Hough House is open through the courtesy of present owners Fiona and Mark Sullivan.