Nomination Form
Lansdowne was built around 1755 and acquired in 1772 by James Mercer, a delegate to the Continental Congress in 1779. Abutting the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania Battlefields National Military Park and consisting of 12 acres just south of the city of Fredericksburg in Spotsylvania County, Lansdowne was witness to the Civil War battles of Fredericksburg I and II, and used by Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood in 1863 to host a court martial proceeding. The house underwent expansions in the early 19th century and in the 1950s but retains its original functional and ornamental building materials. The Lansdowne property also contains a circa 1920 board-and-batten barn, a road trace, and many historic landscape elements such as boxwoods and a terraced hillside.
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
