The Graffiti House, built ca. 1858 on land bordering the Orange and Alexandria Railroad in the Culpeper County village of Brandy Station, has plaster walls in three second-story rooms filled with the names and comments of Union and Confederate soldiers who alternately occupied the house during the Civil War. The frame house is the only antebellum building with explicit Civil War associations in Brandy Station, the scene of the war’s largest mounted cavalry fight. Other Virginia dwellings listed in the state and national registers also contain Civil War-era graffiti (including Ben Lomond, Prince William County; Blenheim, city of Fairfax; and Riddick’s Folly, city of Suffolk), but the renderings in the Graffiti House are unusually extensive, covering most of the walls of the second-floor rooms.
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