Located on a ridge above the Dan River in Pittsylvania County, Oak Ridge is a Greek Revival/Classical Revival house with many notable stylistic and decorative features. The house was built around 1840 for planter George Adams and his wife, Justina. The interior is richly embellished with ornamental plasterwork, mahogany-grained doors, and marbled baseboards and stair risers. A monumental Doric portico was added to the front in the early-20th-century. The Adams’s daughter Emma married Dr. John R. Wilson whose doctor’s office still stands on the grounds. Also on the Oak Ridge property are an early kitchen, a carriage house, a log root cellar, and log and frame secondary dwellings. An extensive garden with sunken sections, geometric boxwood plantings, and large magnolias and cedars has developed continuously since the antebellum period.
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