 
The Lawn
Photograph courtesy of Scenic America: Deborah L. Myerson |
|
Named for its immaculately maintained greensward, the English-born Savannah
cotton merchant Charles Green established The Lawn in 1855 as a country
home following his marriage to Greenwich native Lucy Ireland Hunton. He
built here a fanciful complex of Carpenter's Gothic structures. Green's
Savannah residence, the famous Green-Meldrim house, is also Gothic Revival.
The Greenwich buildings appeared quite foreign to the area. One Civil
War visitor described the house as "the strangest in Virginia." The property
served as a Union camp in 1864.
|
Schoolhouse at The Lawn
Photograph from National Register Collection
|
Green was imprisoned, accused of being
a Confederate spy. The noted French author Julian Green, grandson of Charles
Green, visited The Lawn in his youth and used it as the setting for his
novel Maud. Architecturally, The Lawn is unique and the only surviving
example of a mid-19th-century Gothic Revival farm complex in Prince William
County. The main house burned in 1924 and was replaced with a Tudor Revival
work, completed in 1926, designed by A. B. Mullett and Co. of Washington.
The Lawn is located at 15207 Vint Hill Rd. off State Rte. 215, in
Greenwich. It is a private residence, and is not open to the public.
|
