Springdale Mathews, Virginia

Text courtesy of the National Register of Historic Places, a program of the National Parks Service. Minor transcription errors or changes in formatting may have occurred; please see the Nomination Form PDF for official text. Some information may have become outdated since the property was nominated for the Register.

Springdale is nominated to the National Register of Historic Places under Criterion C for its architecture, with a local level of significance. Springdale preserves two important stages of construction that represent the evolution of the house from an elegant late 18th-century simplified Georgian-style, two-story, side-passage dwelling to a mid-19th-century Federal-style mansion with a complex floor-plan containing two wings with perpendicular gables connected by an ornate and spacious central hyphen. The building sequence included ca. 1774-1824 interior renovations to the original mid-18th-century Georgian wing of the house and Federal stylistic elements that were later adopted in the wing and hyphen additions by 1840. These changes exemplify the unique evolution of architectural style in Mathews County, a small, rural community which derived much of its antebellum wealth and cultural influence from maritime trade and the ship-building industry. The house is rare among Mathews County buildings for representing the survival of a Georgian-style dwelling with simplified stylistic elements, rather than high-style design, and the thorough adaptation of Federal additions and details to the 18th century core. The house is also remarkable as one of a small group of buildings in the county with complex floor plans that incorporate 18th-century buildings, and as one of another small group of buildings that feature a locally distinctive ca. 1830-1840 lunette window with intersecting arches, located in a prominent pediment gable. Windows like these are a local architectural feature found in at least five other Mathews County buildings constructed or expanded from 1830 to 1840, a period of economic growth and architectural creativity in the county. The house sits in a secluded, tree-edged lot on the banks of an inlet of Put-In Creek, preserving the central domestic portion of a historic plantation landscape that thrived throughout the ca. 177 4-1943 period of significance, which the architecture embodies. The end of the period of significance is based on the first introduction of modem utilities, including baseboard heat, and transition of ownership from the James family, which owned and preserved the property for nearly 60 years. Prior to this, the building and surroundings appear to have remained without significant changes since the addition of the south wing by 1840. Springdale is simultaneously exemplary of specific local building traditions and of the antebellum economic and political growth of Mathews County, in particular the accomplishments of William Respess, who built the original plantation house, and Dr. William Shultice, who significantly expanded it by 1840, giving the building the appearance it retains in the 21st century.