The Greenfield Kitchen and Quarters are two log buildings of exceptional significance that formerly stood at the center of the historical Greenfield property, an extensive plantation in Botetourt County established in the mid-1700s by Colonel William Preston. Starting in the 1990s, Botetourt County turned to developing the Greenfield property into an industrial park—a complex known today as Botetourt Center at Greenfield. The kitchen and quarters originally stood behind Greenfield’s plantation house, which burned in 1959. The site was listed as “Greenfield” (since delisted) on the state and national registers in 2010 and 2011. By 2016, the county’s development plans required the relocation of the circa-1845 log kitchen and circa-1864 log slave quarters, after both had endured decades of vacancy and neglect. While the relocations removed the kitchen and quarters from their historic setting, the buildings were moved fully intact, without disturbing their historic fabric or their important affiliation with Greenfield’s African American history. Moreover, the new locations were carefully chosen to preserve their precise directional orientation and spatial relationship to each other. (The relocation also places the kitchen and quarters near a 1998-listed archaeological site within the Greenfield property, the Bowyer-Holladay House Site. The buildings stand between the Bowyer House footprint and a cemetery 500-feet distant that contributes historically to the Bowyer-Holladay House Site.) The kitchen and quarters are the only survivors of the many dependencies and agricultural buildings that once stood at Greenfield. The kitchen’s unique design, which incorporates a living space within a cantilevered, overhanging second story, is a highly significant architectural feature and both buildings’ uncommonly high level of integrity in all aspects except location ensure their continued register status, even as the original Greenfield site was delisted from the registers.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Programs
DHR has secured permanent legal protection for over 700 historic places - including 15,000 acres of battlefield lands
DHR has erected 2,532 highway markers in every county and city across Virginia
DHR has registered more than 3,317 individual resources and 613 historic districts
DHR has engaged over 450 students in 3 highway marker contests
DHR has stimulated more than $4.2 billion dollars in private investments related to historic tax credit incentives, revitalizing communities of all sizes throughout Virginia