The Dabbs House on the Nine Mile Road in Henrico County has had a multi-use history. It began in 1820 as a two-story, three-bay, side-gable, side-passage-plan farmhouse known as High Meadow. During Union Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign in 1862 to capture the Confederate capital of Richmond, Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee headquartered at the Dabbs House. Lee assumed command of the Confederate Army there after it had passed from Gen. Joseph Johnston. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and cavalry commander Gen. J. E. B. Stuart visited Lee at Dabbs House, where a counsel of war also met to discuss the fate of Richmond. This meeting culminated in the Seven Days Battle (June 25–July 1, 1862) and McClellan’s ultimate defeat. After the war, in 1883 Henrico County purchased the property for an almshouse for county paupers and inmates, closing it in 1924. In 1941, with partial funds from the Works Progress Administration, the county converted the property to offices and a police station. During the Cold War, in 1965 the county installed behind the house an underground emergency operations center—the first of its kind in Virginia built by a local government—that could be accessed from a rear addition of the Dabbs House. Beginning in 2005, the Dabbs House functioned as a county museum and visitor center. The architectural features of the building’s 1820s–1860s section and a ca. 1883 addition, as well as 1941 and 1952 wing additions by noted area architect Edward F. Sinnott, Sr., all still exhibit their period design and craftsmanship.