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2023 SESSION


HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 571
Commending Historic Huntley.

 

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, January 30, 2023
Agreed to by the Senate, February 2, 2023

 

WHEREAS, Historic Huntley, a 19th century Federal-style villa in Fairfax County, celebrates its 50th anniversary on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places; and

WHEREAS, Historic Huntley was built in the 1820s to serve as a summer retreat for Thomson Francis Mason, mayor of the City of Alexandria from 1827 to 1830 and grandson of founding father George Mason; and

WHEREAS, originally, Historic Huntley was a retreat in the form of a country villa, with associated farmlands tended year-round by African Americans enslaved by the Mason family; and

WHEREAS, in later years, Historic Huntley served as a grain farm, an encampment for troops of the 3rd Michigan Infantry during the Civil War, and a dairy farm; and

WHEREAS, following an advocacy campaign by local preservationists and historians and the home’s owner at the time, Marguerite Amlong, Historic Huntley was added to the Virginia Landmarks Register on March 21, 1972, and the National Register of Historic Places on November 3, 1972; and

WHEREAS, Historic Huntley was ultimately acquired by the Fairfax County Park Authority in 1989 and was used in a limited capacity for semiannual events and school and scout trips for many years; and

WHEREAS, following a renovation of the manor house in 2012, Historic Huntley is now regularly open for scheduled programs and tours, including Saturday tours from late April through October, offering visitors the opportunity to appreciate the estate’s Federal-period architecture and to imagine life as it was in the early years of the nation’s history; and

WHEREAS, the renovation of Historic Huntley was made possible in part by a $100,000 grant from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures program, which helped to fund extensive structural restoration work at the site, as well as two bond programs managed by the Fairfax County Park Authority, which raised several million dollars for the preservation and redevelopment of the site; and

WHEREAS, in 2017, the tenant house at Historic Huntley was renovated and adapted to serve as a visitor center, enhancing the site’s ability to support meaningful historic and cultural programming for the benefit of visitors; and

WHEREAS, during the renovation of the tenant house at Historic Huntley, signs were discovered suggesting that the building may have originally served as quarters for enslaved people; this supposition was confirmed following an investigation by then University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation associate research professor Dr. Dennis Pogue and the site was listed in the Virginia Slave Housing project database in August 2022; and

WHEREAS, for more than 30 years, the nonprofit organization Friends of Historic Huntley has worked tirelessly to preserve and protect Historic Huntley for the enjoyment of future generations; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That the General Assembly hereby commend Historic Huntley on the occasion of its 50th anniversary on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates prepare a copy of this resolution for presentation to Friends of Historic Huntley as an expression of the General Assembly’s admiration for the site’s place in the history of the Commonwealth.