Virginia Historic Homes | 1850–1899

Historic Homes for Sale Built 1850–1899

The second half of the nineteenth century set Virginia's architecture free. Late Greek Revival houses gave way to Gothic Revival cottages with pointed gables, Italianate residences under deep, bracketed eaves, and the exuberant invention of the Victorian age. It was a time when a house was meant to be noticed, and the best of them still reward the looking.

A house built between 1850 and 1899 may rise in tall windows that flood the rooms with light, and open onto a broad porch made for long summer evenings. Look for bracketed cornices, steep gables, and decorative woodwork cut with a craftsman's patience, then step inside to an elaborate staircase, original mantels, and heart-pine floors that have darkened and warmed over the decades. Others are quieter Virginia farmhouses, cherished for their proportions, their craftsmanship, the outbuildings that still stand nearby, and the long, easy relationship between the house and the countryside around it.

Browse historic homes for sale in Virginia dating from 1850 through 1899, including country homes, farms, and estates from a period of remarkable architectural change. Each was built with a point of view, and each is waiting for the owner who will appreciate it.

Historic red-brick Virginia home with black shutters, white trim, and a columned entrance
c.1850 Historic Virginia architecture

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Browse Historic Homes Built 1850-1899 in Virginia

Search available Virginia historic homes built from 1850 to 1899, from late Greek Revival residences and houses of the Civil War era to Victorian and Queen Anne homes, historic farmhouses, country estates, and properties with acreage. If a particular architectural period matters to you, the related year-built pages make it easy to compare neighboring eras and see how materials, setting, and sense of place change from one generation to the next.

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VIRGINIA HISTORIC HOMES | 1700–1799

Virginia Houses from the Eighteenth Century

Black dressage horse and rider in the Virginia countryside

BUYING A HISTORIC HOME BUILT IN THE 1700S

Colonial-Era Houses and Early Virginia Architecture

The houses Virginia raised in the eighteenth century keep two registers. Some are vernacular farmhouses, plain and sure, built by hand from what the land supplied. Others are formal Georgian residences, composed with a patrician eye for balance. The survivors still speak in their original materials: brick laid course by course or heavy timber frame, chimneys of generous scale, paneled rooms, and mantels that have framed two centuries of fires. Wide boards run underfoot, woodwork still carries the mark of the tool, and the plan, whether hall-parlor or center passage, follows the quiet logic of the Georgian ideal.

When you buy a historic house, look well beyond its age. Learn what has been restored and what remains original, what was added and when. Examine the foundations and chimneys, the well and septic, the private road, the barns and dependencies, and the way the land drains and holds its water. Then understand what the law and the landscape will allow: historic designations, conservation easements, development rights, and rehabilitation opportunities all shape what the property may become. A house of this age rewards the buyer who asks the harder questions first.

VIRGINIA HISTORIC HOMES | 1850–1899

Listing, Marketing & Selling Historic Homes Built 1850–1899

Black dressage horse and rider in the Virginia countryside

Historic Home Listing Agent | Virginia

Selling Historic Homes Built 1850–1899

Historic homes built between 1850 and 1899 carry stories that no new construction can replicate, and the right buyer is buying into that story. The architecture, craftsmanship, restoration, setting, and changes made over generations all become part of how the property should be presented.

My Signature Marketing

A Brochure That Sells Before the Showing Even Starts

For every historic home I represent, I create a custom digital brochure, sometimes ten pages, sometimes closer to a hundred, depending on how much the house has to tell. It begins with the architecture and the careful work of restoration, then moves on to the gardens, and the way morning light crosses the floors and settles in the windows by afternoon. The aim is to give a buyer enough detail, and enough feeling, to fall in love with your home before they ever step through the door. Paired with a dedicated property page and professional video, the brochure becomes a portrait of the house itself: its history, the changes it has seen, and the quiet reasons it is so special.

A house built between 1850 and 1899 was meant to be noticed, and the brochure gives each of its voices room to speak: the original mantels and carved woodwork, the tall windows that draw in the light, the porches made for long evenings, and the staircase that greets you as you enter. It follows the later additions, the outbuildings, and the gardens, and it shows how each period of the house's life left its own mark, so that a buyer can read the house as one reads a well-kept family record.

View examples of my property brochures, films, and dedicated property pages →

Always a leader, never a follower.

Marketing That Reaches Buyers Looking for Historic Property

My clients also benefit from a network of websites built for buyers searching for a specific lifestyle: a historic estate, an equestrian property, quiet country living, or a working farm. These sites include VirginiaHistoricEstates.com, VirginiaCountryLiving.com, CharlottesvilleCountryEstates.com, and CharlottesvilleEquestrianProperties.com. Many properties belong on more than one, and that overlap is by design: a historic home with a barn and paddocks is marketed on VirginiaHistoricEstates.com and CharlottesvilleEquestrianProperties.com at the same time, so it reaches both the buyer searching for architecture and the buyer searching for land to keep horses on. Each site holds a firm, ongoing place on the first page of Google, not by accident, but by design. It's one small example of my innovation for my clients. Always a leader, never a follower.

I watch the traffic, the inquiries, and the showings. When something can be improved, I make adjustments. Much of this work happens quietly after the listing goes live. Your home's marketing should continue to evolve for as long as it is on the market.

Getting it right from the start matters.

Pricing a Historic Property That Has No Exact Comparison

Pricing is always a discussion we have together. We weigh your property's architecture, condition, restoration, land, location, and the current competition, but the price must ultimately speak to today's market. Getting it right from the start matters. An overpriced property loses its momentum quickly, and the price reductions that follow often end in a lower sale price than had you priced it competitively from the start. My goal is to position your property thoughtfully, attract qualified buyers, and give them the confidence to act.

Online valuation tools can give you a quick ballpark, and they can be a useful starting point. But they run on algorithms built from comparable sales data, and a historic home rarely fits that mold cleanly. A property with no exact comparison is exactly the kind an algorithm gets wrong most often. If you'd like a real answer, let's meet at your property.

Get an instant online estimate →   or   Let's talk instead →

An Exceptional Brokerage Behind the Listing

The Strength of McLean Faulconer

Selling a historic property calls for a brokerage with real depth in the upper end of the Central Virginia market, and that is what stands behind my marketing. McLean Faulconer has ranked first in sales over $1 million in Albemarle County for the past twenty years, and first in sales over $2 million there for the past two years. The firm has surpassed $1.5 billion in farm-and-estate sales.

Those numbers represent decades of relationships with buyers, sellers, referring agents, attorneys, lenders, landowners, and other professionals who have worked alongside the firm through significant property transactions across Central Virginia. For a seller, that network reaches buyers nationwide and overseas.

McLean Faulconer also makes a substantial, ongoing investment in marketing: targeted digital campaigns, print publications, luxury-publication partnerships, social media, and a strong network of qualified buyers.

There is a quieter advantage as well, and it is one a one-person firm cannot offer. McLean Faulconer fully staffed active office of agents who give their working lives to farms, estates, historic homes, and land. We talk about our properties. We share buyers, trade knowledge, and put our heads together when a home needs a fresh approach. When your property comes to market, it is not one agent's effort but the combined attention, contacts, and experience of an entire office, all working toward the same result: a sale. That network is strong because it is used every day.

A Home Like This Comes Along Once

Let's Make Sure the Right Buyer Finds Your Historic Home

Historic homes are not replaceable, and neither is the way they are marketed or sold. Your property deserves an agent who understands what it took to restore it, a brokerage with the reach to find the buyer who will love it the way you do, and a marketing budget built specifically for a property that has no exact comparison.

If you are thinking of selling, I would love to meet with you. And if you are not quite ready, that's alright too. Keep my number. When the time feels right, I'll be here.

Call Bridget Archer: (434) 981-4149 Schedule a Listing Appointment

Updated  ·  Saturday, October 17, 2026

All information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed, and is subject to errors, omissions, changes in price, prior sale, or withdrawal without notice.

For Historic Property Sellers

Historic Property Experience Matters. Let's Make It Work For You.

Bridget Archer, Central Virginia real estate agent

Bridget Archer

McLean Faulconer, Inc.

Some historic houses announce themselves. Others reveal themselves slowly. The balance of the architecture, the depth of a window, the sheen of old wood, and the placement of a garden, a barn, a guest house, a line of trees, or a distant view all complete the composition.

Bridget has represented Charlottesville and Central Virginia real estate since 1990, with a particular focus on pre-1940 homes and estates. She works with McLean Faulconer, Inc., a Charlottesville brokerage founded in 1980, and has served as Director of Education for the Charlottesville Area Association of REALTORS®.

Selling a historic home comes down to emotional connection. The architecture may draw the eye, but it is the feeling of the house that makes a buyer imagine a life there: the light, the patina, the gardens, the land, the sense of continuity.

A strong presentation does more than document those qualities. Through photography, film, and editorial narrative, it creates the moment when a buyer stops admiring the property and begins to imagine it as their own.