The Walter McDonald Sanders House is situated on College Avenue, formerly the Cumberland-Fincastle Turnpike, in the Tazewell County town of Bluefield. It is a large, fashionable, brick Queen Anne-style house, completed in 1896. Its complicated geometry and fine decorative detailing indicate the trappings of financial success in the late-Victorian period. A limestone springhouse, small frame dwelling, smokehouse, and granary are of the same period as the house. These buildings, on a two-acre parcel, are all that is left of a 3,000-acre farm that the Sanders family operated. The remaining property is today surrounded by commercial development and skirted by the four-lane U.S. Route 460 bypass. The Graham Historical Society restored the house for use as a museum and community center, and it now serves as a public meeting space operating as the Sanders House Center.
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