805 Oak Ave

From the National Register nomination

This one-and-a-half-story, three-bay vernacular single-family dwelling of stone construction, measuring 41' by 37', is built into the hillside above the north bank of South River. One of the oldest extant houses in the city, it retains eighteen-inch-thick walls of uncoursed fieldstones, interior end chimneys, basement-level fireplaces with hewn log lintels, and several pieces of original woodwork on the first floor, including cyma-molded window frames and ovolo-molded door frames, recessed paneled window reveals, and a mantel in the southwest room. The early-20th century remodeling of the house included the insertion of new partition walls and stairs on the first floor, enclosure of several fireplaces, and addition of two gabled frame wings, two gabled dormers and a rear shed dormer. In the early 1990s the house underwent additional, mainly interior renovations under the direction of Craig & Daughtry, Architects, of Waynesboro. While the exact period of its original construction 1s still debated by local historians, the house could date as early as the mid-eighteenth-century ownership of John Campbell; more likely is its construction in the late-eighteenth or early-nineteenth century, when Samuel Hunter, Sr., and then John Hunter owned the property. The property passed from the Hunter family to William Brooks in 1822 and from Brooks to Michael Coiner in 1859. When Rose Cliff (see 835 Oak Avenue, below) was built by Coiner before 1866, the smaller stone dwelling was used as a secondary/servants' residence and later became a dormitory for Rose Cliff Fruit Farm personnel. When the Rose Cliff orchard property was sold in the 1930s, this lot was divided off and the house was modernized and expanded for use as a single-family dwelling. (DHR file no. 136-9).