The Garrett VanMeter House (''ca.'' 1830) is an historic home near Old Fields,

Hardy County, West Virginia Hardy County is a county in the U.S. state of West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 14,299. Its county seat is Moorefield. The county was created from Hampshire County in 1786 and named for Samuel Hardy, a distinguished V ...

, USA. The house is a two-story brick

I house The I-house is a vernacular house type, popular in the United States from the colonial period onward. The I-house was so named in the 1930s by Fred Kniffen, a cultural geographer at Louisiana State University who was a specialist in folk archit ...

dwelling with a two-story rear " ell". It has

Greek Revival The Greek Revival was an architectural movement which began in the middle of the 18th century but which particularly flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, predominantly in northern Europe and the United States and Canada, but ...

stylistic elements. Attached to the ell is a one-story summer kitchen. It has a side gable roof and sits on a stone foundation. It features a centered entrance

portico A portico is a porch leading to the entrance of a building, or extended as a colonnade, with a roof structure over a walkway, supported by columns or enclosed by walls. This idea was widely used in ancient Greece and has influenced many cult ...

. The house was built about 1830 to 1835 by Garrett VanMeter (1804-1856) who had inherited the land from his father, Colonel Jacob Vanmeter. Colonel Jacob Vanmeter was the son of Colonel Garrett Vanmeter. The Vanmeters were the first white settler (1744) in the area. The Colonel (he had commanded a regiment in the Revolutionary War) was one of the wealthiest farmers in the region. He owned several hundred head of cattle and about 30 slaves. (No land records, or other corroborating documents, are available to confirm the dates of construction, which are estimates.) The Garrett VanMeter House is one of four significant VanMeter family dwellings; the others are Traveler's Rest,

Fort Pleasant Fort Pleasant — formerly known as Fort Van Meter and Town Fort and still also known as the Isaac Van Meter House — is a historic site located near the unincorporated community of Old Fields about 5 miles north of Moorefield in Hardy Count ...

, and

Buena Vista Farms Buena Vista Farms is a historic home located near Old Fields, Hardy County, West Virginia, USA. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. The main house at Buena Vista Farms was built in 1836 and is a brick dwelling in t ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 2001.

References

Dutch-American culture in West Virginia Greek Revival houses in West Virginia Houses completed in 1830 Houses in Hardy County, West Virginia Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in West Virginia I-houses in West Virginia National Register of Historic Places in Hardy County, West Virginia 1830 establishments in Virginia {{HardyCountyWV-NRHP-stub