Tree Streets Historic District

Single-family residences predominate in the Tree Streets neighborhood, but other building types are also represented. Duplexes and small apartment blocks were designed to blend in with surrounding houses. Institutional buildings include the former Waynesboro Library, a Carnegie-funded Classical Revival building erected in 1915; the 1922 Pine Avenue School, also Classical: Revival; and the 1931 St.. John the Evangelist Catholic Church, Romanesque 1n inspiration. Carriage houses, garages, workshops, and other historic outbuildings stand behind many homes; of particular note is the well-preserved 1929 Waynesboro Heating & Plumbing Co. shop. The neighborhood showcases the work of several talented architects and builders including Lynchburg architect Carrington Hubbard, the Staunton architectural firm of T. J. Collins & Son, and prolific builder Harry Brooks, whose house stands in the district. The quality of architecture and setting that made the Tree Streets a desirable place to live in the past remains very much a part of the neighborhood's ambiance today.

The Tree Streets Historic District meets Criterion A and is eligible in the Community Planning and Development area of significance as the principal residential development of nineteenth and early twentieth century Waynesboro, a product of the development fever that swept Waynesboro and other western Virginia communities during the 1880s and early 1890s. The district also meets Criterion C and is eligible in the Architecture area of significance as the embodiment of distinctive characteristics of types, periods, and methods of construction. The period of significance extends from ca. 1800, the approximate date of construction of the Old Stone House and the beginning of the architectural development of the neighborhood, to 1951, the National Register fifty-year cut-off and a date that roughly coincides with the transition from the historicist styles of earlier decades to the Ranch and other modernist styles of the 1950s and later. The district is eligible at the local level of significance.

The town of Waynesboro started out as a small cluster of establishments s¢rving travelers along the route linking Piedmont Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley via the Rockfish Gap (now approximated by US 250). The route originally crossed South River at a shallow ford, offering travelers the opportunity to rest, eat, shop, and make repairs; this economic potential readily attracted settlers who could provide such services to the area. The area of Waynesboro now encompassed by the Tree Streets neighborhood was first patented by William Beverly, who in 1738 sald to Daniel Monohan approximately 900 acres, which included all of what is now downtown Waynesboro and the bulk of the present-day Tree Streets area. Joseph Teas had acquired the Tree Streets portion of Monohan tract land by 1749, when John Campbell purchased 247 actes (a portion of which |falls into the Tree Streets neighborhood) along the South River just to the south of Teas’ property. Teas’ daughter-in-law Mary, widowed in 1777, operated her home near the river crossing as an ordinary by 1780. Ten years later the ptoperty was transferred to Mary's daughter and son-in-law, Jane Teas Estill and Samuel Estill, who in ~ the 1790s laid off a plat for the new town of Waynesboro. By 1798, the first!town lots had been sold, and in 1801 the community was officially chartered by the General Assembly. Originally comprised of only eighty-eight lots, the town was surrounded by agricultural plantations pccupied by settlers who

had begun acquiring land in the area by the mid-eighteenth-century. The neighborhood's oldest extant buildings are situated on lands associated with the above-mentioned Campbell tract, on the north bank of South River at Ridgeview Park. John Campbell and subsequent owners of the property, like most rural landholders in the region, farmed the acreage; the plantation's seat wag a small banked dwelling known mote recently as the Old Stone House (805 Oak Avenue), probably erected in the late-eighteenth century. |

While the town of Waynesboro grew relatively slowly during the antebellum period, many of the sutrounding plantations prospered. By the mid-nineteenth century the owners of the former Campbell plantation were successful enough to erect a new principal dwelling, later called Rose Cliff (835 Oak Avenue) on a prominence above the earlier stone house and overlooking the South River. This house, detailed in the Greek Revival style prevalent in the late antebellum period, not surprisingly resembled the domestically scaled buildings found on the streets of nearby Waynesboro. It too adhered to the pteferred regional format for substantial buildings: two stories in height, of brick construction, with classical features and a symmetrical facade.

In 1854 passenger rail service on the Virginia Central Railroad commenced between Richmond and Staunton via Waynesboro, and in 1858 with the completion of the Crozet Tunnel freight traffic was accommodated. The railroad's arrival led to a new era of development in Waynesboro and environs, delayed temporarily during the Civil War. The iron truss bridge that carried the Virginia Central over the South River at Waynesboro was the target of a Federal raid in September 1864, and the community was directly affected by the fighting again during the Battle of Waynesboro gn March 2, 1865, the last battle to be fought in the Shenandoah Valley. Prosperity returned after the war but Waynesboro grew slowly. The 1880 population of 484 was only slightly larger than the population in 1860. The 1884 Jedediah Hotchkiss map shows most development still confined to Main Street, although streets had been laid out beyond the original town boundaries. A few lots in the atea td the south of downtown and now included in the Tree Streets neighborhood had been sold ad built upon, although construction from this period does not appear to have survived.’

important changes were underway. In 1881 the Shenandoah Valley Railroad completed its line to Waynesboro and linked the town to the vast markets of the Northeast and to Roanoke and the coal fields of Southwest Virginia. The Shenandoah Valley line--soon to be absorbed into the Norfolk & Western system--actually passed east of town on the other side of the South River; nevertheless its importance and its proximity stimulated the local economy and set the stage for Waynesboro's real estate boom of the circa 1890 period.*

In 1888 it was reported that "a number of the active and responsible citizens of Waynesboro and vicinity have determined to have a boom in that locality, not based on great expectations, but upon substantial things and destined to be a movement of importance." Subsequently Waynesboro's first land-boom enterprise--the West Waynesboro Land Company--was organized with Confederate General Thomas L. Rosser as president and a capitalization of up to $200,000. Rosser was then connected with the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, but most of the other officers were Waynesboro residents and the principal stockholders hailed largely from Waynesboro and Staunton. The "Double W", as it was known, purchased 109 acres and laid out 900 lots stretching from Oak Avenue on the east to Rosser Avenue (the present US 340) on the west. (Only the eastern tip of this development is contained within the district.) Perhaps because the Double W lots were relatively distant from established sections of town, lot sales and improvements proceeded slowly over the first

Mote successful and more central to the history of the Tree Streets neighborhood was the Waynesboro Company, chartered in December 1889 and possessor of a 251-acre tract strdtegically located adjoining the south side of Waynesboro. The majority of the company's lands belonged to John G. Guthrie and wife in 1856 and the tract was known as the Callahan farm at the time of its purchase by the company on January 1, 1890. The Waynesboro Company was more ambitious than the West Waynesboro Land Company both in its capitalization (up to $500,000 in stock) and number of lots (1,700). The officers were drawn from the leading citizens of the town, individuals such as Thora H. Antrim, W. M. Chew, and William Patrick, who were also involved in other development schemes such as the Waynesboro and Basic City Street Railway Company, incorporated in| March 1890. Both the Waynesboro Company and the West Waynesboro Land Company faced stiff local competition with the organization of the Basic City Mining, Manufacturing and Land Company in December 1889. This

The Waynesboro Company took measures to ensure the success of its development. According to Waynesboro historian George Hawke, the company's prospectus “included ithe usual harangue about beautiful surroundings, healthful climate, an intersection of two railroads (which Waynesboro had turned down), abundant water, ‘untold’ mineral wealth, fine schools and churches, and so on." Advertising copy was an essential ingredient, but the company went beyond|mere verbiage. In 1890 it erected company headquarters at the corner of South Wayne Avenue and Eleventh Street, a two-story brick edifice encrusted with metal cornices and a corner turtet. The building also accommodated (or was intended for) the Bank of Waynesboro, the Waynesboro Times, and the Waynesboro Business College. Tax records suggest that ownership of the Waynesboro Company Building, which coveted

Several blocks south of its office on South Wayne the Waynesboro Company erected the rambling Brunswick Hotel. Construction began in June 1890 and was essentially complete in March 1891, and in its early years the hotel stood at the center of a resort complex of summet cottages, gazebos, lithia spring houses, a dance hall, and a recreation pavilion that contained a bowling alley and swimming pool. At first the hotel prospered, but the Panic of 1893 and ensuing Hard times forced it into bankruptcy and later attempts to revive it met with only partial success. In the late 1920s and 1930s the Brunswick provided lodging for construction workers and personnel at Wayinesboro's Du Pont plant, but it was finally torn down about 1940.’

Meanwhile the Waynesboro Company staged lot sales, including two in May 1890. Deeds contained covenants intended to promote orderly and attractive development. Purchasers of lots from Chestnut Avenue west were prohibited from building closer than fifteen feet to front lot lines, and some deeds encouraged purchases to “plant shade trees and otherwise beautify" their lots. The lots along South

> Hawke, History of Waynesboro, 163-167, 177; Augusta County Deed Book 1109, p. 20. An idea of the hubris of the Basic City development is conveyed in an 1890 map published as the back end sheets of Hawke's history.

Wayne Avenue were not subject to setbacks, suggesting they were originally intended for commercial construction, although houses were eventually built on the street. Purchasets were required to erect buildings valued above a certain figure--$1,000, for example, along Chestnut Avenue--so as to prevent cheap construction that might be considered unsightly or that might make the development appear underfunded. Deeds from the early 1890s did not expressly bar African Amteticans from purchasing lots, but social convention undoubtedly acted as a deterrent, and in fact no evidence of black property ownership in the neighborhood during the historic period has come to light. Water was an important amenity offered to lot purchasers, and was originally pumped by hydraulic ram from the South River near the Rife Ram & Pump Works (appropriately) to a tank at the high point on Maple Avenue. The original tank stood on a steel tower; it was replaced in the early twentieth century by a black iron-plated drum-type tank. An 1891 aerial perspective shows a grandiose columnar tank’ closer to the river which, apparently, was never built.

During the first years of its extstence the Waynesboro Company met with considerable success in the sale of lots but was less successful in inducing lot purchasers to improve their properties. The grantor indexes for Augusta County (Waynesboro was a part of the county until the 1920s) show a total of ninety-seven transfers from the company to purchasers in 1890 and 118) in 1891. Most transfers involved multiple lots, so the company was able to sell a healthy percentage of its 1,700 lots during its first two years, and since lots could fetch a couple of hundred dollars each, the company also generated considerable revenue (assuming purchasers honored their financial commitments).?

Despite the brisk trade in lots, tax records for the year 1892 indicate that only about twenty houses had been built in the part of the development included in the district. Several of these were clustered towards the eastern tip of the district, the part nearest the downtown, while others stood at the south end of Walnut Avenue, an elevated section of the street with views of the South River and surrounding hills. The remaining houses were dispersed throughout the district and usyally represented the only construction on their respective blocks. The 1892 tax records provide anothes insight. A plot of the location of developed lots shows that the aforementioned 1891 aerial perspective is basically accurate in its portrayal of the extent and distribution of development in the Tree Streets neighborhood during

* Augusta County Deed Book 109, pp. 426, 427; Deed Book 110, p. 201; Deed Book 111, pp. 29 and 79; and Deed Book 127, p. 441; Bowman, Waynesboro Days of Yore, vol. 1 p. 103-104; and Hawke, History of Waynesboro, front end sheets.

In retrospect the Waynesboro Company development and its local contemporaries were poorly timed. They were begun too late in the railroad-generated development boom that had begun in western Virginia nearly a decade earlier. By 1892 local enthusiasm had slackened, al trend that paralleled the nationwide economic downturn that culminated in the financial panic of 1893 and the depression that followed. Boom-era developments in towns and cities throughout the western part of the state fell on hard times. Cities such as Roanoke, which had sprung up at the beginnirjg of the boom and had developed sound economic footings in transportation and industry, fared comparatively well; others such as the Botetourt County paper metropolis of Bessemer are now corn fi¢lds. As a well-established pre-existing community, Waynesboro as a whole weathered the depression of the 1890s relatively well, but the hopeful developments at its periphery went virtually dormant.!!

The Augusta County grantor index tallies illustrate the collapse. After 118 transfers from the Waynesboro Company in 1891 the number fell to twenty-eight in 1892 and nine in 1893 with a low of five in 1896. Lot sales did not pick up until after 1900, with a twentieth-century high point reached in 1902 when forty-two transfers were made. Transfers hovered between ten and thirty per year for much of the remainder of the first decade of the century before trailing off after 1910. This second fall off was a sign of success rather than failure; the modest but steady sales after 1900 essentially closed out the inventory of available company-owned lots. The architectural record) follows the same basic pattern, with renewed and sustained construction activity after 1900.!*

The Tree Street district includes a small residential development that is later than the Waynesboro Company development and separate from it. In the 1920s Waynesboro: industrialist Richard H. Clemmer acquired a farm and orchard at the southern end of Cherry and Locust avenues and began the development of Forest Hill. Clemmer's grand Arts & Crafts/Tudor Revival residence, built in 1927 at 656 Cherry, set the standard for construction in the development, which filled slowly during the 1930s and 1940s with substantial Tudor and Colonial Revival houses set in large landscaped yards

bounded by well-tended hedges of American boxwood. The 1940s witmessed another spate of speculative development, this time focused on more modest and less archite¢turally refined Cape Cod and Colonial Revival-style houses. Much of this newer construction was scattered throughout the Tree Streets as infill, An unusually contiguous example of the trend, located on ithe 700 block of Locust Avenue, is the Rose Cliff subdivision (named after the adjoining historic house), consisting of six small houses on the east side of the street. Today, Forest Hills, the Rose Cliff subdivision, and the earlier sections of the district retain the essential character of development int¢nded for them at their inception.

The earliest architectural fabric in the district survives on the north bank of the South River and is accessed from Oak Avenue. The ca. 1800 Old Stone House, which some historians date as early as 1751, ts a story-and-a-half, three-bay vernacular single-family dwelling of |stone construction. The rectangular-form (almost square) house is built into an embankment near a spring, and retains eighteen-inch-thick walls of uncoursed fieldstones, basement-level fireplaces with hewn log lintels and interior end chimneys, and remnants of late Georgian woodwork on the first floor. Since the late-nineteenth century, the house has been remodeled several times. Its surviving historic fabric serves as the nucleus of an expanded Colonial Revival-style dwelling, and may have inspired many of the Colonial Revival and Cape Cod cottages erected in the Tree Streets neighborhood in the early-twentieth century.

A more imposing presence on the hillside overlooking the South River is Rose Cliff, a two-story, three-bay dwelling with four large rooms and a center passage on each floor and interior brick chimneys serving fireplaces in each of the eight main rooms. Exhibiting features of both the Federal and Greek Revival styles, Rose Cliff is of brick construction, with walls laid in fiv¢-course American bond (Flemish variant), and retains pencilled mortar joints that in sheltered areas tetain handwritten initials and signatures, perhaps of the masons and carpenters employed in the building's construction. Covered by a shallow hipped roof of standing-seam metal, the house's period of construction is reflected in its orientation south toward the river and the old Greenville Road rather than riorth to Oak Avenue and the rest of the Tree Streets neighborhood. In typical mid-nineteenth- -centtury fashion, the house . features a one-story, three-bay porch that shelters the principal (riverfront) dntrance, a single-leaf six-panel door flanked by sidelights and topped by a transom, tripartite windows centered on the second story, and 6/6 double-hung wood sash. Original interior features including a staircase with an octagonal newel post, turned balusters, tendril-like tread brackets, and recessdd spandrel panels; plaster walls; asymmetrical wood moldings at doors and windows; and simple pilastered mantels reflect

The organization of the Waynesboro Company in December 1889 naturally figures as a watershed event in the architectural development of the district. The new suburb's first houses were erected at a time when Victorian stylistic influence was prevalent in western Virginia. The late Victorian styles drew heavily upon technical advances in the mass production of wooden building materials that made light nailed frame construction and so-called "gingerbread" ornament affordable| and commonplace. The most elaborate of the Victorian styles employed in the district was the Queen Anne style. Houses in the style are characterized by complex massing and roof lines; features such as tpwers, bay windows, and wraparound porches; ornamentation on porches and in gables; and decorative finishes such as shaped wood shingles and novelty weatherboard siding. (Many of the houses described as "Victorian" in the inventory show the influence of the Queen Anne style but are not fully! expressed Queen Anne houses.) Substantial numbers of Victorian and Queen Anne houses were erected in the district between 1890 and 1910, especially after 1900.

The Waynesboro Company development's premiere example of Queen Anne architecture was the Brunswick Hotel, built in 1890-91 on the 500 block of South Wayne Avenue, the present site of Grace Lutheran Church (adjoining the district). The hotel's builder, the Waynesboyo Company, followed in the footsteps of other western Virginia development companies by tapping a Philadelphia firm to design its flagship building, in this case architects Albert E. Yarnell and William D. Goforth, who also did considerable work in the nearby communities of Goshen and Grottoes. Yarnell & Goforth designed a rambling two-and three-story frame structure sheathed with wopd shingles, capped by a multi-gambrel roof, and punctuated by a slender four-story turret that afforded "a lovely view of the surrounding country," according to a period account. The hotel's "modern appliances and improvements" included electric bells and hot and cold running water, and it contained thirty-nine guest rooms as well as ball rooms, parlors, a billiard room, and sample rooms|where traveling salesmen could display their products. The main parlor was decorated with "an elegant Japanese design in frescoing with ever changing hues," indicative of Victorian America's fascination with Japanese culture. Victorian America also liked to keep cool in warm weather, and the Brunswick's deep veranda provided a comfortable spot for sitting and socializing."

As richly ornamented as the hotel but smaller in scale are two Queen Anne/houses that share many features in common. The Fry House at 428 Maple and the W. J. Whitaker House at 517 Walnut, both built by mid-1891, share prominent front bay windows, second-story balconjes supported on curved brackets with sunburst-pattern spandrels, and other identical secondary features. Some features are different, such as the Fry House's octagonal turret with imbricated wood-shingle siding and slender metal finial spike, and the elliptical transom window over the front entry of|the Whitaker House. A common detail of the two houses--reeded window surrounds with turned corner blocks--also shows up on other houses that appear to date to the early 1890s. The Fry House was built to a design by Lynchburg architect Carrington Hubbard, who designed the nearly identical Henry E. McWane House in Lynchburg at the same time. The Whitaker House appears to be a modification of the same design. Hubbard's connection to Waynesboro is unknown, although his Lynchburg client McWane was president of the Glamorgan Foundry in Lynchburg at a time when iron fiirnace development was underway in Waynesboro. Hubbard was employed as a draftsman and machinery designer at the Glamorgan Foundry.'4

Another architectural marker associated with the district's early 1890s houses is a circular gable vent with a chrysanthemum-like piercing pattern. The houses at 425 Maple, 353-357 Chestnut, and 628 Chestnut--all three built by mid-1891--have this distinctive vent design. Th¢ house at 628 Chestnut originally belonged to carpenter John Lambert, who was associated with the! Lambert Brothers sash-and-blind factory and construction firm. The chrysanthemum vent may therefore be the signature of either Lambert or his family's construction business. Other early circular vents have swirled pinwheel and radial spoke-like patterns.!>

One Tree Streets trend that has its origin at the end of the nineteenth century is the construction of architecturally related groups of houses. The aforementioned Whitaker and Fry houses are a case in point, and the John Lambert House has a twin next door at 620 Chestnut which shares an asymmetrical two-story front wing with one-story bay window as well as other more specific details. Presumably John Lambert was involved in the construction of both houses, just as the neighboring houses at 660 and 668 Chestnut, which date to just after 1900, can be attributed to carpenter Charles H. Lovegrove. Another house tied to a specific construction enterprise is the brick Queen Anne cottage at 505 Chestnut. The house was built in the 1910s by E. A. Eakle, 4 lumber dealer who also

Wood-sided frame construction predominated in the district until about 1910. More variety of materials is shown in the foundations of houses from the same period. Stomte and brick were used in the 1890s, with brick regarded as the more refined material; several houses have brick foundations across the front with stone to the rear. Rockfaced concrete block becam¢ popular during the first decade of the twentieth century. Practical do-it-yourself block-making machithes were introduced at the beginning of the decade, and they are known to have been in use in Waynesboro by 1906. The following year the Rife Ram & Pump Works rebuilt its factory on the river near the south end of the district in decorative block. Rife also replaced its log dam with a stone and concrete one built by a Mr. Hildebrand, who may have been responsible for the block construction pf the factory and other buildings during the period. (Hildebrand, who was a carpenter with Lambert! Brothers, is credited with building the house at 564 Walnut about 1910.) Rockfaced concrete block ws the foundation material of choice for a decade following 1907 and less frequently into the 1930s, It was also popular for retaining walls and free-standing walls along front property lines. An impresbive example of the latter can be seen at 705 Walnut, where the wall has curved copings to accommodate level changes and piers with hollowed-out tops that served as flower planters. Poured concrete gradually eclipsed block as a preferred foundation material during the 1910s and 1920s."

The district's architecture began to take the automobile into account in the 1910s and 1920s. Covered drive-throughs known as porte cocheres, once associated with grand residences of the preceding century and used for coaches and other horse-drawn conveyances, were adapted for automobile use in the early twentieth century. Examples include the porte cochetes of the 1920 Clyde and Anne Lambert House at 633 S. Wayne, the 1926 A. P. Finter House at 508 Chestnut, and the 1899 Weems-Watkins Hospital at 453 S. Wayne, the latter example created at the end of a Queen Anne porch in the early 1920s. Driveways of the era often consisted of parallel concrete runners with turf between.

houses and apartment buildings. The 1930 apartment building at 444 S. Wayne and the early 1920s house at 456 S. Wayne had multiple basement-level garages. Most garages were separate buildings, as were the carriage houses from which they evolved. They were usually unpretentious buildings of weatherboarded frame construction. Some, however, were given decorative treatments that coordinated with their houses. The bungalow and garage at 564 Maple shared|wood-shingle siding and the house and garage at 401 Walnut have partially stuccoed exteriors. Brick and brick veneer were expensive construction materials for garages; some property owners opted for brick on the cheap by siding their garages with brick-pattern metal sheeting (quite a few examples survive on Eleventh Street, at 717-719, 721-723 and 815). Some homeowners, perhaps fearful of fire, constructed their garages of poured concrete; a bunker-like example survives at 329 Walnut. Separate Banpges were built in sizable numbers through 1950; later examples were often cinder-block.

The 1910s saw the introduction of new house types and styles to the district. ‘A common type was the two-story Foursquare-form house, distinguishable on the exterior by its cube-like massing--often under a hip roof--and its off-center front entry--usually corresponding to a corner entry and stair hall. Usually but not always; some houses that have the Foursquare form, such as the 1920 James and Nell Wright House at 321 Walnut, never had a distinct entry/stair hall. Unlike other communities where Foursquare-form houses are usually detailed in the Craftsman style, the Tree S5treets' examples are in a range of styles. The earliest are essentially Victorian, with characteristic ornamentation and vestigial front wings. Later ones, especially after 1920, are Craftsman or Colonial Re fival 1 in inspiration (these styles are discussed below). |

A house type known as the Craftsman bungalow made its appearance locally at the same time as the Foursquare-form house. A more modestly proportioned dwelling one-story or a story-and-a-half in height, the Craftsman bungalow was perfected on the West Coast at the beginning of the century and popularized nationwide through the media of magazines and pattern books. Although generally less ostentatious than their Victorian predecessors, the district's bungalows could be beautifully detailed. Notable examples include the wood-shingled bungalows at 564 Maple and 712 Fourteenth, both built in the 1910s, and the cobblestone gable-fronted Hubert and Ethel Furr House at 740 Maple, built in 1928-30 and attributable to African American contractor Jacob Fuller. Not all Craftsman houses were either Foursquares or bungalows, and not all were exclusively Craftsman in detail. The 1920 Clyde and Anne Lambert House at 633 S. Wayne is a case in point. The two-story house has the cubic massing and hip roof of the standard Foursquare, but its front elevation is symmetrical, a Colonial Revival influence along with the elliptical fanlight over the front entry and the dena cornices and fluted pilasters of the home's four dormers.

Two styles that began to appear in the district after about 1910 were the Classical Revival and Colonial Revival. They are closely related, for both derived inspiration from the classical tradition in architecture. The Classical Revival was most popular in Waynesboro du ing the 1910s and was employed for some of the finest houses built in the district at that time. Several of these were on South Wayne Avenue, among them the 1913 John Plumb House at 405 S. Wayne, distinguished by its portico of monumental fluted Corinthian columns. Plumb, like others who built grand residences in the neighborhood, was a summer resident. He is credited with supervising the construction of his own house and other dwellings in Waynesboro.'*

The Colonial Revival also had its start in the 1910s. An early example is the|Carl and Nettie Bowman House at 611 S. Wayne, begun in 1911 but possibly not enlarged to its finall size until the end of the decade. The Bowman House 1s a hybrid: the elliptical fanlight over the front entry and other secondary features are more akin to the Colonial Revival, whereas the monumental fluted Ionic columns of its front portico are Classical Revival. Perhaps because it was suited to a range of house sizes and could be cheaply evoked by a few stock decorative elements, the Colonial Revival persisted in the neighborhood after the Classical Revival ebbed. Some Colonial Revival houses sported gambrel roofs borrowed from Dutch Colonial prototypes; representative examples include the houses at 673 Chestnut and 413 Pine and the duplexes at 410 and 558-560 Walnut, the former duplex with the legs common front-gambrel configuration. Another genre of the style was the Cape Cod cottage, a sttipped-down version that reached an apex of popularity after World War IJ. A collection of Cape Cott line the east sides of the 300 and 400 blocks of Pine Avenue.

In the late 1920s the Tudor Revival style, an amalgam of medieval and later finglish elements, made its appearance in the district. In 1927 Waynesboro industrialist Richard H. Clemmer chose the style for his home at 656 Cherry, the flagship residence in the Forest Hills neighborhood that he and his wife Mary were developing. According to family tradition, Clemmer had served in England during World War I and while there had acquired a liking for traditional English architecture. He was dissatisfied with the type of residential development available in Waynesboro and so he tetaimed a California architect (name unknown) to design a house along English lines. The result features walls of irregular sandstone blocks and a gabled front entry wing with half-timbering and basketweave brick nogging (infill between the timbers). The Tudor Revival, like the Colonial Revival, was eventually adapted for smaller-scale construction and distilled to a few stereotypical elements. The hallmark of the simplified Tudor Revival house is the juxtaposed front chimney and gabled entry projection; examples can be seen at 504 and

The Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival styles were chosen for seventeel architecturally related speculative houses built in anticipation of the opening of the Du Pont cellulose acetate plant at Waynesboro in 1929. The houses are clustered in four groups; the largest, centered on the intersection of Pine and Fourteenth, is comprised of eleven houses. Attorney G. H. Brarjaman is known to have built one group, and it is possible that Du Pont had some role in the constru¢tion of the houses. The houses were built from several studiously varied plans so that identical houses did not stand side by side, although architectural twins or triplets might exist on the same block. The Tudor Revival varieties are stuccoed, the Colonial Revival varieties typically have brick veneer, and all feature roofs covered with diamond-pattern asbestos shingles. The original garages typically survive behind the houses. These are identical in form and in their novelty weatherboarded frame constructid in, with asbestos-shingle roofs to match their dwellings.””

Along with spec housing a number of duplexes and small apartment buildings were erected in the district during the years of the Du Pont plant's construction and early operations. Most of the apartment buildings were built along South Wayne Avenue in 1929 and 1930. These include the building at 346-348 S, Wayne, distinguished by its stucco exterior and front-gable roof; a brick-veneer building at 444 S. Wayne; and the Lyle Apartments at 649 S. Wayne, a Colonial Revival brick building with double two-tier front porches. Many of the district's larger houses weye made into apartments beginning in the 1930s, sometimes with additions to accommodate lodgers. One such addition to the rear of 520 Pine has two-tier porches supported by octagonal-section concrete pillars. The apartment buildings built before the 1950s respected the scale, massing, and street relationship of surrounding single-family houses. Unfortunately, most later apartment blocks ignored context, although a refreshing exception was built at 546 Chestnut Avenue in 1989.

From the very beginning the Waynesboro Company encouraged the construction of churches within its development. In May 1890 the Staunton Windicator reported that the company had donated lots to the town's Baptist and Lutheran congregations on the condition that they speedily erect church buildings. The Baptists were the first to build. The 1891 aerial perspective depicts a handsome brick church with a center entry tower at the west corner of Chestnut and Thirteenth, but the 1907 Sanborn

map shows the Baptists to have been located at the south corner of Chestnut and Eleventh, behind their present church on South Wayne. The Lutherans built a Gothic brick church on the east corner of South Wayne and Eleventh, dedicated in 1901. The Episcopalians erected 4 cozy wood-shingle-sided chapel on the north corner of South Wayne and Thirteenth in 1907, and the Presbyterians moved ftom their West Main Street location to the north corner of South Wayne and Eleventh in the early twentieth century. The four congregations still have churches near the district)?!

The Tree Streets neighborhood's best-preserved historic church building is St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church at 300 Maple. Built in 1931 to a design by the Staunton architectural firm T. J. Collins & Son, the church is an inspired rendition of Romanesque ecclesiastical atchitecture. Its rock-faced limestone facing (on a structure of cinder block, an early use of the material), small round-arched side windows, and squat tapering front tower with needlelike spire convey a sense| of primitive massiveness. Although few historic churches survive in the district, a fair number of church residences exist, in several cases multiple generations of residences associated with a single congregation. The former Methodist Parsonage at 416 Maple may be the earliest to survive: a two-story frame Victorian residence dating to 1897.77

Non-religious institutional architecture includes the former Waynesboro Public Library at 313 Walnut and the Pine Avenue School at 301 Pine. The library was built in 1915 to a (design by T. J. Collins & Son with support from the Carnegie Foundation. Although technically one story in height, the building has a high basement story and a Classical Revival exterior that create an imptession of larger size. The inscribed names of famous literary personages from Homer to Poe wrap around the stone frieze. The Pine Avenue School was built in 1922 as the Woodrow Wilson High School. It too is Classical Revival, with a front elevation graced by monumental Doric columns in antis and a stuccoed pediment with a circular window. The school was the third in a succession of school buildings erected at the elevated

Limited construction continued in the district through the 1930s. Even though the period was one of economic depression, the presence of the Du Pont plant created a need for housing. Home construction virtually ceased during the Second World War but rebounded in the late 1940s. The post-war peak was achieved in 1948 when the city issued 239 building permits for a total of $1,147,007 in home construction. Most of the construction occurred in newer subdivisions,|but the remainder began to fill in the few remaining undeveloped lots in the Tree Streets neighborhood. The pre-war Colonial and Tudor revival styles remained popular for a time, but in the early 1950s the Ranch house type was introduced to the district. Defined by its long ground-hugging one-story form and shallow-pitched gable or hip roof, the modernist Ranch house generally dispensed with histotrically-derived ornament, or relegated it to a few attenuated features such as fluted entry surrounds and flanking coach lights. Among the first houses to show the influence of the Ranch style were 361 Walnut, designed by T. J. Collins & Son and built in 1950 or shortly thereafter, and 548 Pine, built in 1952. Another 1950s

The opening of new subdivisions after the war siphoned off interest and capital from the Tree Streets neighborhood. To many homebuilders the neighborhood no longer seemed|a desirable place to live, and a spate of apartment construction in the 1960s and 1970s further eroded the owner/occupant base. Fortunately, by the end of the century increased appreciation for the| character and quality of

Waynesboro's 1995-1998 Comprehensive Plan review process identified reservation of the city's historic neighborhoods as a leading community priority. The city also committed funds to a rehabilitation grant program that has been utilized for at least two dowmtown buildings to date. Commitment to the preservation of the City's historic resources appears to|be an ongoing effort, as evidenced by several recent successes. In mid-2000, the City was named a participating community in the Virginia Main Street Program, and received matching funds from the} Virginia Department of Historic Resources to undertake survey and prepare historic district nominations for the Tree Streets and Port Republic Road neighborhoods and downtown Waynesboro (the latter designated in mid-

efforts by fostering appreciation for the neighborhood's architectural character and by making state and federal rehabilitation tax credits available to property owners.