My neighborhood

When I decided to buy a house in Charlottesville in 1986, I only knew the City from a few short visits to my mother. I had few criteria. I wanted a duplex so I could rent one unit and keep the other for myself. My house needed to be on a bus line. And it had to “look like a place I’d like to live in”. The same good fairy that had watched over me 14 years earlier in Paris, when I looked for my first apartment, guided my steps to another wonderful place to live.
About 9 years before the Swedish banker and the French courtier started building my Paris quartier, a wealthy Virginian gave his son-in-law the land that was to become my Charlottesville neighborhood – though it did not even become part of Charlottesville until 1939. The lucky son-in-law was Frank Fry and, since the land contained a spring, useful not only as a water source but as a spa, the land became known as Fry’s Spring. Like other Charlottesville neighborhoods developed from old estates, it is still known by its “estate name” though the spring is now almost invisible unless you know where to look.
I know it's here somewhere....



Yes, I found the springs. Yes, my pants legs are wet because I fell through a rotten board as I was posing for my victory picture. No, I didn't hurt myself.



By the second half of the 19th century, much of this land had been bought by the Maury family. Stephen Price Maury had grandiose plans to turn the area into a recreational center complete with “a resort hotel, summer cottages, a lake, wide residential boulevards, and a circuitous rail car line.” This was to be a family vacation spot. Maury’s advertising brochure reassured future vacationers that the hotel, about two hundred yards from the clubhouse where people could enjoy the springs, would have “no bar room, billiard room or anything that could be objectionable in a family hotel.”





Alas for Stephen Maury , a nationwide real estate crash put an end to his dream. He went bankrupt and had to sell his hotel and most of his land. He did keep a home not too far from his dream hotel.



The hotel continued operating until it either burned down or was torn down (accounts vary) in 1910. But good land never goes to waste. The hotel site has a very different use today.



The land was developed into residential properties. Here are some of my favorites.









Fry’s Spring did continue as a recreational destination until about 1930. The “rail car line” never materialized but was replaced by a streetcar.



People flocked here in the summer months for picnics and dances. If I’d been here then, I’d have been able to see the Wonderland Corporation’s amusement park from my house (or at least hear it). I wonder how many of the residents of this quiet residential street are aware that 100 years ago, they’d have been in the middle of horse show grounds, baseball fields and a dance pavilion!



In 1920, the manager of the local movie theater built a large outdoor swimming pool on the site of Maury’s “Clubhouse”. Since the 1940s the grandly named Fry’s Spring Beach Club has been run as a private club (originally so it could sell liquor!) But it is more a neighborhood hangout than a country club. Thanks to two friends who are members, I spend many happy hours there during my summer sojourn each year.



Though I enjoy all of my Charlottesville stays, I have always had a special fondness for the neighborhood in the summer. I used to think it was just because of the luxuriant foliage of the huge trees in everybody’s yards, the lazy slowness of a hot Virginia summer and the peace of a University Town when the students are away. Since learning the neighborhood history, I’m sure that there’s more to it. I’m enjoying the echoes of over a hundred years of summer fun. No wonder it’s so hard to leave.