Bon Aire

The Full Property Film

Bon Aire reveals itself more slowly

The longer film moves through Bon Aire at a quieter pace, allowing the architecture, rooms, land, changing light, and panoramic Nelson County setting to unfold as they do in person.

Architectural Significance

The details that give Bon Aire its place in Virginia history

The National Register Record

An unusually detailed record of Bon Aire

Prepared in 1980, Bon Aire’s National Register of Historic Places nomination preserves a remarkable account of the house: its architecture, surviving early fabric, later alterations, relationship to other Virginia Palladian houses, and the Cabell family history that shaped the property.

The descriptions below reflect conditions documented in the 1980 nomination and should be understood as part of the historic record of the property.

Exterior Architecture

The original three-part composition

Bon Aire was described as a Federal-style dwelling dramatically sited on a hill above the James River. Although the house had experienced alterations by the time of the nomination, its original three-part composition remained strongly articulated.

Palladian in plan, the house consists of a two-story, three-bay center section flanked by one-and-a-half-story, two-bay wings. The brick walls of the original house and the small western addition are laid in Flemish bond. The nomination noted that glazing remained visible on many of the brick headers.

The center block is treated as a classical temple form. Its pedimented gable contains a lunette, while the pediment cornices are ornamented with slender round-butt modillions. Tall windows light the central halls, with nine-over-nine sash on the first story and six-over-nine sash on the second.

The nomination also records roughly pointed jack arches above the first-floor windows, evidence suggesting that these arches were originally stuccoed like those surviving on the rear, or north, elevation.

Center Bay & Portico

Evidence of the house as it first appeared

Recessed double-door openings occupy the center bay at both levels and are flanked by pilasters. Several courses of patched brickwork above the doors reveal that these openings were altered. The National Register researchers believed they may originally have been round-topped, resembling corresponding openings at Point of Honor in Lynchburg.

The large portico across the main block was added during the 1940s and rests upon a brick podium. Significantly, however, the 1812 Mutual Assurance Society insurance plan shows that a three-story portico originally stood against the central block, although it probably bore little resemblance to the later structure.

A single interior end chimney is located in the north wall. With the exception of the north elevation, the cornice modillions correspond closely to those of the central pediment.

The Flanking Wings

Details preserved through generations of change

The nomination recorded the wings beneath low-pitched gable roofs sheathed in slate. A two-window pedimented dormer projects from the southern slope of each wing, while a single gabled dormer with returns occupies the northern slope of each.

Added during the 1940s, the dormers were given slate roofs, cheeks, and tympanums. Their modillions were copied from the original architectural details of the house. Molded raking boards define the gable ends, and decorative end boards terminate the modillioned entablatures of the north and south elevations.

Later window and door openings were cut into the basement level of both the wings and central block to provide additional light and access. Original pegged window frames and grilles nevertheless survived in the basement openings of the wings.

Additions to the House

A record of a house that continued to evolve

The small brick addition adjoining the west wing was believed to have been constructed soon after Bon Aire itself was completed. By 1980, this room was in use as a bath.

A larger brick kitchen addition was attached to the east wing during the 1950s. A stair providing access to the basement was added behind the kitchen wing at the same time.

The Interior Plan

Rooms shaped by proportion and formality

Bon Aire’s spatial organization follows a three-part plan found in a number of early dwellings in both the Virginia Tidewater and Piedmont. At the time of the nomination, the interior floor plan remained essentially intact, with the exception of the basement, which had been finished for use as a family room.

The central block contains the entrance hall and parlor on the first floor and a bedroom above. The dining room occupies the east wing, while the west wing functions as the living room.

With the exception of later picture rails, the National Register nomination identified the interior trim as original, describing it as restrained in design and competently executed.

The Entrance Hall

One of Bon Aire’s defining interior spaces

The entrance hall was singled out in the nomination as an especially dignified and well-scaled room. Two arched openings create much of its formality: one marks the entrance to the enclosed stair, while the other frames the short barrel-vaulted passage leading to the parlor.

Molded keystones crown the arches, which spring from stop-reeded, fluted pilasters. Between the two arches is a large opening whose original purpose could not be determined by the National Register researchers.

The enclosed stair rises steeply between the walls. Similar molded baseboards and pedestal-cap chair rails continue through the six original rooms, giving the interior an unusual degree of architectural continuity.

Late-Federal Mantels

Original craftsmanship remains within the principal rooms

Four principal rooms retain their late-Federal mantels. The parlor mantel and the mantel in the bedroom directly above it are essentially identical, although the parlor shelf had been rebuilt by the time of the 1980 nomination.

Their ornament is restrained: gougework dentils and cable molding outline the pilasters, entablature blocks, and central tablet.

The nomination suggests that the living-room mantel may originally have matched the one in the dining room. It was later rebuilt using the same moldings found on the reconstructed parlor mantel shelf.

The dining-room mantel has distinctive proportions, appearing elongated because of its tall, deeply molded cornice. Apart from gougework dentils, its design is notably restrained.

The Original Dependencies

A glimpse of Bon Aire in 1812

When the nomination was prepared, three twentieth-century outbuildings stood behind the main house: a garage, guest quarters, and a storage shed.

The 1812 insurance policy reveals a very different arrangement. Two large offices, a meat house, a well, and a dairy were then located on the property. No traces of those original dependencies remained by 1980.

The two buildings specifically identified as offices are especially interesting, suggesting that Dr. George Cabell, Jr. carried on at least part of his medical practice from Bon Aire.

Virginia’s Palladian Houses

Classical ideas translated into a Virginia house

The National Register nomination identifies Bon Aire as a distinctive Federal dwelling inspired by Palladian forms published in eighteenth-century English architectural pattern books.

During the later eighteenth century, Virginia developed a strong tradition of three- and five-part houses in a Palladian vein. Typically, a narrow two-story center section beneath a hipped or pedimented roof was joined to low one-story wings. Five-part compositions extended the arrangement with taller end sections beyond the lower wings.

The prototypes for many of these schemes are found in William Morris’s Select Architecture, published in 1755. Thomas Jefferson owned a copy of the book and used it in developing the first form of Monticello, helping to popularize the Palladian tradition in Virginia.

Virginia builders did not simply reproduce these English designs. They adjusted scale, plan, details, and materials to local traditions. Constructed in red brick with whitewashed wood trim, Bon Aire exemplifies that process: a house the nomination characterized as diminutive yet imposing, adapted to the life of a Virginia planter.

Point of Honor

An intriguing architectural relationship

Bon Aire’s builder has never been identified, but the National Register researchers found significant similarities between Bon Aire and Point of Honor in Lynchburg, another Cabell family residence.

George Cabell, Jr. was studying medicine in Lynchburg with his cousin, Dr. George Cabell, Sr., during approximately the same period that his cousin’s new house, Point of Honor, was being constructed. The nomination considered the similarities between the two houses too numerous to be coincidental and proposed that George Cabell, Jr. may have engaged the same builder several years later to construct Bon Aire.

Other Piedmont examples cited in the nomination include Mountain Grove in Albemarle County and River Bluff in Nelson County. More formal Virginia expressions of the Palladian tradition include Brandon in Prince George County, the Randolph-Semple House in Williamsburg, and Battersea in Petersburg.

The Cabells and the James

The land before Bon Aire

The Bon Aire property originated within lands patented to Dr. William Cabell during the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Cabell emigrated from Warminster, England, around 1724–1725 and settled successively in Henrico and Goochland counties before establishing himself in the portion of Amherst County that later became Nelson County.

Dr. Cabell became prominent in Virginia’s eighteenth-century political and social life and accumulated substantial land around his original patent before his death in 1774. In his will he left a large tract to his son, Nicholas Cabell.

In 1799, Nicholas Cabell and his wife, Hannah Carrington Cabell, conveyed 940 acres along the Fluvanna River—the present James River—to their son George Cabell, Jr. The deed stated that the land was given “for natural love and affection for our son.” It was upon this tract that Bon Aire would be built.

Dr. George Cabell, Jr.

Physician, owner, and builder of Bon Aire

George Cabell, Jr. trained for the medical profession in Lynchburg under his cousin, George Cabell, Sr., and later completed his medical studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

He married Susannah Wyatt in 1798, a year before receiving the 940-acre tract from his parents. During the early nineteenth century he practiced medicine with his brother-in-law, William Mare, and both men were assessed for houses in the small community of Warminster.

Although the deed conveying the land was recorded in 1799, George Cabell, Jr. did not begin paying taxes on the property until 1812.

The Year 1812

The documentary evidence for Bon Aire’s completion

In 1812, the Mutual Assurance Society issued George Cabell, Jr. a fire insurance policy for Bon Aire. The replacement value and insured value were identical, leading the National Register researchers to conclude that the residence had probably been completed only shortly before the policy was written.

The insurance plan depicted a three-part brick house with a wood roof and a three-story portico. It also documented the two detached offices, strengthening the likelihood that Cabell conducted his medical practice from the property.

Bon Aire’s dramatic position in southern Nelson County originally commanded panoramic views of the James River and its bottomlands, much of which had once belonged to the Cabell family. Bon Aire, Soldier’s Joy, and Montezuma were identified in the nomination among the few surviving architecturally significant houses associated with the family in this part of Virginia.

Life at Bon Aire

A glimpse inside the early nineteenth-century household

Period records suggest a house of considerable refinement. Bon Aire was furnished with mahogany furniture, framed pictures, mirrors, and bookcases. The house and its contents were valued at approximately $5,000, an exceptionally high figure for Nelson County at the time.

George Cabell, Jr. remained at Bon Aire until 1817, the year Susannah died. He subsequently moved to Richmond, where he became active in Masonic affairs.

A Continuing History

Bon Aire through changing generations

In 1826, George Cabell, Jr. and his second wife, Elizabeth Fitzhugh May, conveyed Bon Aire to Zachariah Neville for $7,500, a substantial sum for the period.

Neville owned Bon Aire until his death in 1832. In 1839, his heirs—Lafayette, Louisa, and Jefferson Neville—sold the property to James T. Smith of Buckingham County for $10,000.

The following year, Smith sold approximately 926½ acres to William Robinson for $11,000. Robinson died in 1851, and in 1868 his youngest son sold the property to Daniel Hartsock.

The Hartsock family retained Bon Aire until 1884, when the property was acquired by the Piedmont and Arlington Life Insurance Company. The company sold it in 1892 to Nannie L. Lewis.

In 1972, Bon Aire was acquired by Ormonde B. M. Wilcox and his wife. Mrs. Wilcox was a Cabell descendant, returning the property, for a time, to the family lineage with which its earliest history had been so closely connected.

National Register Boundary

The historic designation and the property today

The 1980 National Register nomination established a nine-acre historic boundary encompassing the house and three outbuildings. That nominated acreage should not be confused with Bon Aire’s present offering of approximately 43 acres.

Bon Aire • Wingina, Virginia

For those who find inspiration in places that have endured

Bon Aire will linger in the imagination of the buyer drawn to architecture, history, beauty, solitude, and the quiet creative pull of a house with a story still unfolding.