271 S Liberty St

From the National Register nomination

Octagon Mode two-story house of stuccoed masonry construction with an asphalt-shingled eight-sided pyramidal roof. The cornice has dentils and small brackets. The wraparound one-story front porch stands on classical columns and has trellis panels and, underneath, brick piers and lattice. The recessed front entry has a two-light transom, double-leaf wood and glass panel doors, and early screen doors with spindle ornament. Above the entry, opening onto a small reworked balcony on the porch roof, is a second-story entry/window with two narrow wood and glass panel leaves with one-light transoms and a center mullion with a sawn bracket at the top. Other features include a limestone foundation, an interior brick flue, and a small one-story frame rear wing comprising an enclosed porch and a weatherboarded room that may have been a pantry. The house does not appear on the 1885 Lake map, but it was apparently built soon after by J. Wesley Miller. In 1896 Miller and his wife Gabriella sold the house for $2,000 to Clara Chaunceauline. According to historian Martha Caldwell, Chaunceauline was a "French lady who evidently caused a stir in Harrisonburg with this house and a fast team of horses." (Suter and Lyon, Images of America: Harrisonburg, 75; Letter, December 7, 1970, from Martha B. Caldwell to Calder Loth, in DHR file)