Preservation Bath

08/13/2026

Be sure to mark your calendar and join us for our first-ever ghostly evening of true tales of horror dramatized along Courthouse Hill Road in Warm Springs!

Our guides will lead you to our ten favorite ghouls, each with a hair-raising legend unearthed from Bath County’s archives. Guaranteed to be the scariest fun you’ll have this season.

When: October 24, 2026
Where: Warm Springs Village

Stay tuned for more information!

A special thanks to our sponsors: Craig Robertson, the Bath County Arts Association, and Garth Newel Music Center.

08/11/2026

Public Hearing: Hot Springs Historic District

We hope you'll JOIN US, August 17, 2026 | 5PM | The Bear, 2833 Main Street, Hot Springs, VA

The VA Dept of Historic Resources will conduct a public information hearing of the Hot Springs Historic District.

Public comment regarding the proposal will be taken at the time of the hearing or can be sent to Director Roger Kirchen, Dept of Historic Resources, 2801 Kensington Ave, Richmond, VA 23221.

This proposal has been recommended eligible for the Virginia Landmarks and National Registers. This proposal will be presented to the State Review Board and the Board of Historic Resources on Sept. 17, 2026.

For additional information, contact Amanda [email protected] or 804.482.8092.

Virginia Department of Historic Resources

06/25/2026

We are EXCITED to announce that the 85-acre Bacova Historic District is now officially on the Virginia Landmarks Register after the Board of Historic Resources' June quarterly meeting!📣📣📣Read all about it here.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18vi5qJnJe/

🚨 15 historic sites have been designated as Commonwealth landmarks! Among the 15 places recently listed in the Virginia Landmarks Register after the Board of Historic Resources' June quarterly meeting are a mid-1800s Greek Revival-style manor in the Commonwealth’s northern region that also functioned as one of Frederick County’s earliest public schools; a Richmond facility built in 1930 to house and care for the permanently disabled that has remained the only institution of its kind in the state; and a sprawling historic district in Halifax County encompassing resources that represent the quintessential pastoral farming community in Southside Virginia. To learn more about each property, check out the 🔗 in the comments.

06/04/2026

Join us this Juneteenth as we help kick off the restoration of John Wesley ME Church — the future home of The Museum of West Warm Springs and Meeting House.

There will be a short program at 11:00am followed by a groundbreaking and refreshments.

Friday, June 19th · 11:00am · 212 West Warm Springs Drive

Preservation Bath is proud to have played a small part in bringing this moment to life. From early advocacy to supporting the establishment of the Warm Springs and West Warm Springs HIstoric District, it has been a privilege to walk alongside the West Warm Springs community as this long-deserved project takes shape.

The John Wesley ME Church has stood in this community for generations. Its restoration will ensure that the stories of the people of West Warm Springs and Bath County’s African American community, their faith, their resilience, and their contributions to Bath County and beyond, will be preserved and shared for generations to come.

We hope you'll join us. All are welcome.

05/31/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next Up - The Wilderness
VLR Listing Date | 06/15/2017
NRHP Listing Date | 08/21/2017

Established alongside a main road connecting the springs resorts of Bath County with the Shenandoah Valley, The Wilderness is a large estate in the county’s northeastern mountains.

Farmer and politician Samuel Blackburn developed The Wilderness during the early 19th century. At the center of the property is a two-story Georgian-style brick residence probably built about 1816.

The house is distinguished by its pedimented front pavilion, pilaster corners, and original interior finishes including mantels of unusual form and detail. Behind the house is a contemporaneous brick carriage house—no doubt a rare refinement in early Bath County—and nearby is the stone foundation of a detached kitchen.

Blackburn, the author of anti-dueling legislation and a noted orator, figured in period descriptions of the farm. The estate was later owned by the Frazier family, the proprietors of important springs resorts including Bath Alum Springs and Rockbridge Alum Springs. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, The Wilderness operated as a stock farm concentrating on large herds of sheep and cattle.

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📸 Dan Pezzoni | 2017
📸David Edwards | DHR 1980
📸Jim Moody | DHR 1968

05/30/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next up - Oakley Farm
VLR Listing Date | 06/06/2007
NRHP Listing Date | 08/08/2007

Oakley Farm is a property of considerable architectural and historical interest located in Bath County, on the edge of Warm Springs. The main house, known as Oakley, is a Federal- and Greek Revival-style brick residence built for plantation owner and second Bath County clerk of court Charles L. Francisco in the mid-1830s. Land for the present Bath County Courthouse, and much of the south end of the village of Warm Springs, was carved out of Oakley Farm.

The property was acquired in 1905 by Tate Sterrett, livery manager for the nearby nationally famous resort, The Homestead. Sterrett operated Oakley as a country dining establishment and recreational destination for guests at the county’s resorts. The house passed to Sterrett’s son, Tate Boys Sterrett, who, with his wife Hazel Marshall Sterrett, completed a Colonial Revival remodeling in 1921–22, according to a design apparently conceived by the Staunton architectural firm T. J. Collins and Sons. Numerous 19th- and early 20th-century supporting buildings, of both agricultural and residential nature, survive on the Oakley Farm property, with a portion of the 1830s Jackson River Turnpike.

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📸 Debra McClane | 2017

05/29/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next up! Reveille
VLR Listing Date | 03/18/2021
NRHP Listing Date | 05/03/2021

Reveille, now known as Quarry Hill, is a masterwork designed in 1928 by architect Carl Max Lindner, Sr., to serve as a second home for Judge William Clark and his wife, Marjory Blair Clark. The French Renaissance-style house, a one-and-a-half-story, stucco-clad brick and stone dwelling, stands above the village of Hot Springs in Bath County, and adjacent to the resort Homestead Hotel property. Reveille offered the Clarks, who resided in Princeton, N.J., a summer residence with an advantageous location for entertaining and socializing with Homestead guests and other visitors to the Warm Springs Valley. That the Clarks intended the house should serve for entertaining is underscored by the inclusion on the second floor of five bedrooms for maids.

Lindner, well known for his many Tudor and Georgian revival–style designs of Richmond apartments and houses, likely executed with Reveille his only French Renaissance or French country-style residence. Typical of his work in other styles, Reveille exhibits Lindner’s attention to the scale, massing, form, building materials, and details that make the house an outstanding work of revival-style architecture. Less formal than the Chateau-style of architecture, the French country home retained formal spaces, separated public and private sections, and incorporated discreet areas for domestic servants and daily household activities. Reveille also reflects the influence of the Beaux Arts movement and classical Renaissance detailing. Complementing Reveille’s architecture are the refined but modest formal gardens and terraces surrounding the house that landscape architect Charles Freeman Gillette designed. Gillette’s garden forms, balustraded walls, stone steps, and other details remain intact.

Marjory Clark likely chose Reveille’s architectural style. Her family home, Blairsden (1898), is an elaborate 38-room French Chateau-style mansion in New Jersey that her father, wealthy investment banker C. Ledyard Blair, commissioned from the prominent Beaux Arts architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings. Although a modest reflection of the larger New Jersey home, the authentic French inspiration found at Reveille, as well as many of the decorative features of the interior, are attributable to Marjory Clark’s influence and refined tastes. Married in 1913, the Clarks divorced in 1947. Their ownership of Reveille ended in 1944.

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📸 Debra McClane | DHR 2020

05/28/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next: Garth Newel Music Center
VLR Listing Date | 03/21/2013
NRHP Listing Date | 06/19/2013

The Garth Newel Music Center in Bath County is the former estate and residence of husband and wife artists William Sergeant Kendall and Christine Herter Kendall. Begun in1923 soon after the couple moved to Virginia, the rural 114-acre property is where the Kendells painted, raised award-winning Arabian horses, and entertained guests in a main house with an open floor plan that could accommodate the private concerts often hosted there.

A distinguished artist, William Sergeant Kendall achieved international recognition as a painter in the academic style. After he died in 1938, Christine Herter Kendell, also an accomplished artist, as well as an author, musician and patron of the arts, continued to make Garth Newel her home until her death in 1981.

In 1973 she co-founded the Garth Newel Music Center, bequeathing her estate to the nonprofit at her death, ensuring Garth Newel would continue as a venue for small concerts. Today it is the only residential music center in Virginia that exists strictly for the study and performance of chamber music. The property also features a one-story modern Ranch-style residence, two other secondary dwellings, a riding arena and horse barn, and stone entrance piers and retaining walls.

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📸 Julie Langan | 2012

05/26/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next - Hidden Valley
VLR Listing Date | 12/02/1969
NRHP Listing Date | 02/26/1970

The formal Greek Revival mansion of Hidden Valley, its façade dominated by an Ionic portico, takes its name from its matchless setting in a narrow, remote valley of the Allegheny Mountains in Bath County, through which the Jackson River flows. The house, originally called Warwickton, was built ca. 1857 for Judge James Warwick, grandson of Jacob Warwick, an early settler of Bath County. Most of the polished academic detailing was adapted from designs in Asher Benjamin’s The Practical House Carpenter (1830), thus illustrating how builders, even in the farther reaches of the South, made use of this popular Boston pattern book. In 1965 the house and surrounding lands were acquired by the U.S. Forest Service. The Hidden Valley house has since been leased and privately restored as an inn.

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📸 Lena McDonald | DHR 2012
📸 DHR 1968
📸 ca 1900

05/25/2026

Join us as we celebrate National Preservation Month.
We’re taking time to highlight the places throughout Bath County that help tell the story of our community—its history, resilience, and evolution through generations. From schools and churches to homes and public spaces, these landmarks connect us to the people and moments that shaped the region we know today.

Next: The Yard
VLR Listing Date | 09/06/2006
NRHP Listing Date | 02/13/2007

The Yard was the home of the Ingalls family, who developed The Homestead resort and the Hot Springs area of Bath County into a world-renowned resort through their leadership of the Virginia Hot Springs Company.

The extension of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad to the area in the 1890s made travel to The Homestead available for more people. The company capitalized on this influx of visitors by selling lots for summer cottages near the resort.

The Yard, built in 1925, is a Tudor Revival house that represents this new period of affluence in Bath County, and also represents a break from the traditional Virginia resort architecture. Designed by C.W. Short, Jr. of the prominent Cincinnati architectural firm of Matthews and Denison, the house and its style, often associated with genteel country living, were masterfully adapted to suit the informal sporting lifestyle of the owners as well as the climate of Bath County.

The Yard also retains original gateposts at the entrance, a foxhound kennel, and a chauffeur’s shed.

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📸 Beth Scripps | 2016