The Macmurdo House, centrally located within the Ashland Historic District, remains one of the best examples of Greek Revival architecture—and one of the least altered mid-19th-century dwellings—in the Hanover County town of Ashland. To serve his extended family, C.W. Macmurdo had the two-story, three-bay, frame house built on a ten-acre lot in 1858, when he was treasurer of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad Company as it first developed in Ashland. Among the earliest homes built in the then new village, the Macmurdo House is one of the few Greek Revival residences standing in Ashland and in Hanover County that was not “updated” with Italianate details after the Civil War. In 1937, the Macmurdo family sold the by-then two-thirds-of-an-acre property. The original house, along with its late-19th-century rear addition, a 1920s garage, and sensitive additions of modern mechanical systems, represents several generations of the Macmurdo family who actively developed Ashland, witnessed the Civil War at their doorstep, and transitioned to the postwar Reconstruction era and early-20th-century modernization.
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