Rock Hill forever: Charlottesville's not-so-secret gardens

Gallery Added: Thu, 6/30/2011

Forget about the 250 Interchange project and the fabulous history of the nearby 9-acre Rockhill estate, once the site of a circa 1820 two-story Federal style house (which, thanks to a mischievous youngster, burned down in 1963) that famed architect Eugene Bradbury once called home, and where Rev. Henry Alford Porter, minister of the Charlottesville’s First Baptist Church (Park Street), who bought the place in the 1930s, created the extensive rock gardens that one UVA architectural historian has called the "most complex residential garden landscapes in all of Charlottesville." Just go take a look at it.

Comments

[email protected] on Jul 6, 2011 at 5:45pm.

well done

Lee Caplin on Jul 6, 2011 at 7:31pm.

So good to see Rock Hill settling in as a place of beauty
During the years of Massive Resistance it stood for the
the "resisters," and we kids learned which families were
opposed to integrated schools as childhood friends parted
ways under the strain of diverging philosophies. My mother
and 9 other mothers - the 10 mothers- opened their homes
to children, both black and white, and hired those public
school teachers rendered jobless by the Governor's decision
to close public white schools. When schools reopenef, only the
Basement students returned, while the Rock Hill kids stayed
at Rock Hill. Times have changed and it is reassuring that Rock
Hill's gardens have weathered the times and now offer peace
and beauty to all who are able to oat them a visit.