The Southampton County plantation of Sunnyside contains one of southeastern Virginia’s most complete groupings of domestic and farm outbuildings. The complex is scattered about an architecturally evolved main residence and includes a schoolmaster’s house, dairy, tenant’s house, smokehouse, kitchen, various sheds, and a peanut house which together maintain the village-like image that dominated a traditional Virginia plantation. The house itself began as a one-room structure built ca. 1810-11 for Joseph Pope. Sunnyside was remodeled and enlarged in 1847 and again in 1870 by his son Harrison who was among the county’s most ambitious 19th-century planters. The porticoed front section, which combines Greek Revival and Italianate elements, is one of the region’s few Reconstruction-period structures with architectural pretension.
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