Staunton Historic District

Author's Comments

Staunton does not announce itself. You arrive expecting a pleasant afternoon and find instead a commercial district that time forgot to update, block after block of Victorian facades still carrying their original cornices and cast iron and painted brick. Beverley Street in late afternoon is where I usually start. The light comes in low along the east-west axis and the ornament at the upper stories, the parts most people never look at, suddenly reads with real depth. Brackets. Pediments. The small decorative flourishes that the nineteenth century lavished on buildings meant to hold dry goods and hardware. I prefer the shoulder seasons here. In November the trees have thinned and the architecture stands cleaner against the sky. In March the light is similar but with a different quality, more silver, less amber. Winter mornings after a snow are something else entirely, though you have to be willing to drive the Valley in weather to find them. Gospel Hill rewards a slow walk. The Italianate mansions up the rise sit on lots that give them room to breathe, and the residential streets are quiet enough that you can work a single house for twenty minutes without anyone noticing. The Wharf, down along Johnson Street, is the opposite character - heavier, industrial, the old warehouses holding their weight in a way that photographs best in flatter light. What Staunton teaches, if you let it, is patience with detail. The wide streetscape is fine. The real photographs are the small ones. A single bracket against a sky going blue. A storefront transom with the original glass. The town is full of these if you are willing to look up.

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