RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A farm purchased by a Richmond department store owner during World War II to shelter Jews escaping Nazi Germany has been added to the Virginia Landmarks Register.
Hyde Park in Nottoway County is among 13 additions to the register by the state Department of Historic Resources. Others include historic districts, a New Deal-era elementary school in northern Virginia, and houses and homesteads dating back centuries.
Department store owner William B. Thalhimer purchased Hyde Park in 1938 to create a training farm for students who sought to escape Adolf Hitler's extermination of Jews. From 1938 to 1941, about 30 Jewish immigrants lived and worked at Hyde Farmlands, which was devoted to dairy and poultry operations. The farm operation closed in 1941, as Thalhimer's health declined and the corporation running it financially collapsed.
Many of the male students at the farm later enlisted in the U.S. military, eager to defeat the Nazis. During and after the war, Hyde Park continued to provide refuge for families of soldiers from nearby Fort Pickett. Two Polish refugees maintained the house and grounds for 30 years.
Hyde Park, a former tobacco plantation dating to the 1700s, is also archaeologically important because of the slaves who toiled on the plantation. The property's main residence, dating to the late 1700s, still stands, with additions added in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The other additions to the register, with narratives provided by the DHR:
- The Garth Newel Music Center in Bath County, the former estate and residence of artists William Sergeant Kendell and Christine Herter Kendell. Started in 1923, the 114-acre property is where the Kendells painted and raised Arabian horses. Today it is the only residential music center in Virginia for the study and performance of chamber music.
- Arcola Elementary School in Loudoun County, constructed in 1939 as part of the Public Works Administration campaign under President Franklin Roosevelt.
- Dulwich Manor in Amherst County, built in 1909 as a summer house for Norfolk real estate mogul Herman Lawrence Page.
- The Charles M. Goodman House in Alexandria was the home of the Washington architect. Goodman designed hundreds of houses in Fairfax County and other district suburbs from 1940 through the 1960s.
- Hawthorne, a Winchester residence constructed of stone and partially built on an 18th century foundation. The main section of the house dates back two centuries.
- The Locust Grove/R.E. Luttrell Farmstead in Rappahannock County, dating to the construction of the main house in 1815. Representative of a Virginia Piedmont farmstead.
- Springdale in Mathews County, which combines two architectural styles, Georgian and Federal. It is the central domestic portion of a historic plantation landscape dating to 1774.
- The new historic districts are: downtown Waverly, a well-preserved depot town; Gretna commercial district, encompassing 26 buildings dating to 1881; downtown Christiansburg, dating to 1792; Glade Spring, a 19th century community oriented toward the railroad; the Narrows, originally settled in the late 18th century.
The Rivermont section of Lynchburg and portions of downtown Hopewell are previously listed historic districts that were expanded.
The listings approved in March, are forwarded to the National Park Service for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.
Online: Virginia Department of Historic Resources
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press.