Oakley Hill is a historic
plantation house
A plantation house is the main house of a plantation, often a substantial farmhouse, which often serves as a symbol for the plantation as a whole. Plantation houses in the Southern United States and in other areas are known as quite grand and e ...
located near
Mechanicsville,
Hanover County, Virginia
Hanover County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. As of the 2020 census, the population was 109,979. Its county seat is Hanover Courthouse.
Hanover County is a part of the Greater Richmond Region.
History
Located in the wester ...
. It was built about 1839 and expanded in the 1850s. It is a two-story, frame
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 in the
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 ...
style. On the rear of the house is a 1910 one-story ell. The house sits on a brick foundation, has a standing seam metal low gable roof, and interior end chimneys. The front facade features a one-story front porch with four
Tuscan order
The Tuscan order (Latin ''Ordo Tuscanicus'' or ''Ordo Tuscanus'', with the meaning of Etruscan order) is one of the two classical orders developed by the Romans, the other being the composite order. It is influenced by the Doric order, but with u ...
columns and a Tuscan entablature. Also on the property are a contributing
smokehouse
A smokehouse (North American) or smokery (British) is a building where meat or fish is cured with smoke
Smoke is a suspension of airborne particulates and gases emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with t ...
and servants' house.
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''Accompanying photo''
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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 1995.[
]
References
Plantation houses in Virginia
Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
Greek Revival houses in Virginia
Houses completed in 1839
Houses in Hanover County, Virginia
National Register of Historic Places in Hanover County, Virginia
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