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Langhorne House

Historic house museums in VirginiaHouses completed in 1878Houses completed in 1922Houses in Danville, VirginiaHouses on the National Register of Historic Places in Virginia
Individually listed contributing properties to historic districts on the National Register in VirginiaItalianate architecture in VirginiaNRHP infobox with nocatNational Register of Historic Places in Danville, VirginiaSouthern Virginia Registered Historic Place stubsTourist attractions in Danville, Virginia
Langhorne House Danville Virginia
Langhorne House Danville Virginia

Langhorne House, also known as the Gwynn Apartments, is an historic late 19th-century house in Danville, Virginia later enlarged and used as an apartment house. Its period of significance is 1922, when Nancy Langhorne Astor, by then known as Lady Astor and the first woman to sit in the British Parliament, came to Danville to visit her birthplace and promote Anglo-American relations. The original dwelling was built in 1874 as a one-story, central-passage plan structure with a rear ell. It was enlarged in 1878 to add a second story and Italianate-style porch. In 1921, the house was moved to the next lot and further enlarged, with conversion for use as four apartments. The house was attached to a three-story apartment building constructed at its original site. The front facade features a two-tier porch with fluted Doric columns in the Classical Revival style and multiple entries. In 1990, the structure was restored to its appearance in 1922, when Lady Astor made a speech to 5,000 people from the second-story porch of the house. Named after Civil War veteran and business magnate Chiswell Langhorne, the dwelling was the birthplace of his and his wife's several daughters, all noted for their beauty. Nancy Langhorne (1879-1964) moved to England as a young woman, married Waldorf Astor and won his former seat in the British Parliament in 1919. She returned to Virginia in 1922 to visit her birthplace and to promote relations between the important allies. Her visit to Danville received national coverage in the United States and is significant in local history.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. Owned by the Lady Astor Preservation Trust, it is located in the Danville Historic District and is open to the public on Saturday afternoons or by appointment.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Langhorne House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Langhorne House
Broad Street, Danville

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Latitude Longitude
N 36.58 ° E -79.403333333333 °
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Langhorne House Trust

Broad Street
24541 Danville
Virginia, United States
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Langhorne House Danville Virginia
Langhorne House Danville Virginia
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William T. Sutherlin Mansion
William T. Sutherlin Mansion

Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History, also known as the William T. Sutherlin Mansion and the Confederate Memorial, is a historic home and museum building located at Danville, Virginia. It was built for Major William T. Sutherlin in 1857–1858, and is a two-story, five-bay, stuccoed building in the Italian Villa style. It features a one-story wooden porch, a shallow hipped roof surrounded by a heavy bracketed cornice and topped by a square cupola ornamented with pilasters and a bracketed cornice. While at the house, which served as his temporary residence from April 3 to April 10, 1865, on April 4, President Jefferson Davis signed his last official proclamation as President of the Confederate States of America. On April 10, Davis was at dinner at the house when he learned of the surrender at Appomattox.The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969. It is located in the Danville Historic District. The house is owned by the city and was used as the Danville Public Library from 1928 to 1972. This mansion, after being sold to the city, became a “whites only” public library from 1928 to 1972. In the summer of 1960, Black students would decide that they wanted the library to be integrated, and staged a sit-in. To resist desegregation efforts, the library would be shut down, and would not open again until the fall of 1960. While the library now had to allow Black people into the library, it did not have to provide comfortable accommodations; and the library re-opened without chairs.