The property upon which the home at 888 Pine Street stands was once part of the estate of John T. Watson. In 1884 the lot was sold to W.Y. Noell. It was likely he who commissioned the Italianate home to be built there. William Young Noell was born in December of 1854 in Oak Hill, North Carolina, the son of James D. and Virginia Penick Noell. Educated in Halifax, he came to Danville in his twenties and found employment with the dry goods dealer Sol Fleishman. He later took employment with Estes and Wooding, another dry goods business, of which Mayor Harry Wooding was a partner. He eventually quit the…

On the 7th of June 1889, Berryman Green (son of Nathaniel T. Green) sold a large lot on Holbrook Avenue to Ella F. Dougherty. It was likely very soon after that that the grand brick Queen Anne double house was constructed. Mrs. Dougherty was born Ella Frances Millner on the 15th of October in 1853 to William Banks Millner and Mary Humphries Keen. Born in Danville, she was the first cousin of Nancy Ann Witcher Keen, the mother of Nancy Langhorne Astor. Ella married Dr. Charles Edwin Dougherty on her 25th birthday in 1878. Dr. Charles E. Dougherty, a dentist, was a native of New Jersey where he was born…

On the 2nd of December 1887, the lot on which 440 Chestnut Street now stands was conveyed to W.S. Copeland by J.M. Neal. Neal, like Nathaniel Green and the Griggs family, owned vast swaths of what would eventually become Danville’s Old West End historic district. The large and imposing brick Queen Anne home at 802 Main Street is the home (the second of two) built on that lot for the family of James Mastin Neal. Walter Scott Copeland, who constructed a much larger home at 145 Holbrook Avenue, seems to have built both homes for the purpose of investment as the family does not appear to have lived in either…

Prior to 1870, the land upon which 852 Green Street now stands was part of the vast estate of Nathaniel T. Green. Mr. Green died just prior to the Civil War, and in 1870, his children began selling off portions of the property, including a large section facing Green Street which was purchased by George Whitfield Read. The large lot extended from the boundary of the Crumpton property at 838 Green Street to that of Dr. T.D. Stokes, who, in 1884, would sell the rear portion of his property (his own home faced Pine Street) to H.W. Brown who would build his large home and elaborate gardens at the at…

By 1943, with Danville’s Greek population growing, trustees for the congregation of Greek Orthodox worshipers announced the acquisition of a site for the future construction of a church. The lot was purchased as a partition from the lot of the Bruce James home at 803 Main Street and was conveyed to them by Dr. James’ widow, Annie Schoolfield James. The congregation chose architect Robert W. Thompson to design the Gothic revival structure, and Thompson in turn chose to construct the building of stone quarried in Crab Orchard, Tennessee. Prior to the construction of the building, members met across the street in the basement of the Episcopal Church of the Epiphany.…

The home at 247 West Main Street was constructed in 1914 at the direction of Peter Booth who, with his brother Charles, was responsible for the four nearly identical houses on this section of West Main Street. Legend has it that the work was done by four Italian men who placed each of the stones quarried and transported by train from Mt. Airy, North Carolina by hand and that no two are alike. Using a frame of wooden scaffolding they expertly erected the two-foot thick walls, taking two years to complete the work. By 1916 Peter Booth and his family were in residence. Peter Louis Booth was born in Franklin…

In September of 1912, Peter and Charles Booth purchased two lots on West Main Street from The Mount Vernon Villa Company. Two years after the brothers built their identical homes of Mt. Airy granite at 243 and 247 West Main Street, they built two additional houses at 233 and 235 West Main Street. The home at 233 West Main Street, completed in 1914, was constructed in a fashion nearly identical to its cousins (though on a narrower scale) for the purpose of speculation. Starting shortly after the home’s construction, the family of W.T. Hughes took occupancy as renters. Two years later, they purchased the home. William T. Hughes, a native…

The brick Italianate home at 864 Pine Street was built by Richard Warner Peatross who purchased the land in 1877 from the Worsham estate. The house was likely built that following year. Richard Warner Peatross was born on the 28th of October 1839 in Caroline County on the farm his grandfather homesteaded upon emigrating from Wales in the late 1700’s. The sixth child of ten born to Robert Sale Peatross and Anna Elizabeth Scott Peatross, Richard spent the early years of his education at home before going on to Emory and Henry College. He graduated in 1861 and shortly thereafter joined the cause of the Confederacy. He was present at…

  When James Pritchett, Jr. purchased the property at 108 West Main Street from A.W. Traylor in 1910, a wood frame home stood there designed in the traditional Victorian Queen Anne style. Twelve years later, about 1922, the home was razed and the Tudor Revival house that stands there today was built. James Ira Pritchett, Jr. was born in Danville on the 7th of September 1883 to James I. Pritchett and Eleanor Hickson Pritchett whose home at 992 Main Street was raised to make way for the realignment of Holbrook Street with Holbrook Avenue. Mr. Pritchett owned and operated the Dan Valley Flour Mills located about where the new YMCA…

In September of 1912, brothers Peter and Charles Booth purchased two lots on West Main Street from The Mount Vernon Villa Company, on which the two gentlemen built identical homes of granite quarried from Mount Airy, North Carolina. Charles and Peter divided their two lots into four (and then more) and built their homes at 243 and 247 West Main Street, respectively. Charles Louis Booth was born in Franklin County, Virginia on the 19th of August 1870, the second of four children born to Christopher Silas booth and Susan Elizabeth Wooding. The family moved to Danville in 1872 where Charles attended local schools. He attended Oak Ridge Institute in North…