Reid Court on Franklin Street, designed and built by Cecil
Reid in the late 1930s, is an example of “cottage court” housing.
Photo by Adele Uphaus.
In 1946, the Book of Houses described the
five small pastel-colored concrete block houses at 1420-1428 Franklin Street in
Fredericksburg as individually “undistinguished.”
But all together, the book’s authors found the miniature
development of five homes grouped around a shared green space—known as “Reid’s
Court” after architect Cecil Reid—to be delightful:
…by combining them in a pleasing neighborhood plan, the
group takes on a character which the individual house does not possess. And a
neighborhood of this sort has many advantages in livability which go far beyond
the mere pleasant appearance of the structures. With land as plentiful as it is
in the United State and with the raw land comprising such a small part of the
total cost of a completed house, we may ask ourselves why all our neighborhood
developments are not so intelligently planned and constructed as the one shown
above.
Reid’s Court was constructed in 1938. It was an original
concept in Fredericksburg, but it reflected the early 20th-century “Garden
City” movement in urban planning, according to research conducted by Michael
Spencer, professor in the University of Mary Washington’s department of
historic preservation, for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation.
“The movement emphasized affordability as well as
interaction with green spaces,” Spencer wrote in a blog
post about Cecil Reid. “Both developments [Reid’s Court and Caroline
Terrace, which is located next door at 1430 Franklin Street and named after
Reid’s wife], while vastly different in scale, created neighborhood courtyards
that provided residents with community green space free of automobiles, which
were relegated to the street or rear of the development.”
Reid’s Court is featured in the 1946 “Book of
Houses.”
Reid’s Court and Caroline Terrace are both approaching 100
years old but are examples of developments that could solve housing shortage
and affordability problems that plague Fredericksburg today, experts
told the Advance in January.
“If you can take a single lot and group eight cottages on
it,” said Robert Steuteville, who is director of publications at the Congress for the New Urbanism in
Washington, D.C., “it’s not only nice socially and a nice environment, but it
also reduces the land cost for each unit. Then you can factor that in to get a
smaller house with a smaller number.”
Cecil Reid was a forward-thinking residential architect, but
he only started designing homes late in his career. His earlier work, which
brought him to Fredericksburg from South Carolina in 1906, was designing
hydroelectric power plants. He designed the Embrey Power Station, which was
completed in 1911, as well as numerous other plants across Virginia.
Reid was also responsible for creating the Department of
Manual Training at Fredericksburg High School (now James Monroe High School),
according to Spencer, and he served on City Council from 1933–1942.
According to a 1938 profile in the Free Lance-Star, Reid was
a “peculiar type of public official” who “has never asked a person to vote for
him.”
“When he was a candidate for reelection four years ago, as
he is today, he made no canvas, no solicitation, and on the day of election, he
was away on a trip,” the article states. “He received the highest number of
votes ever attained in a contested Council election.”
Reid was only willing to serve, according to the article,
because the citizens wanted him.
“But I believe that every citizen should put public duty
above self for it is through this we can better our community and make the
world a bit better for our having existed in it,” he told the Free Lance-Star.
Adele Uphaus Conner is the managing editor of our sister
publication, the FXBG Advance
Before designing houses, Reid designed hydroelectric power
plants, such as the Embrey plant.
Reid began to design and build homes in the College Terrace
neighborhood while he was serving on City Council, according to Spencer. He had
bought and sold real estate before, but design was new to him.
In addition to Reid’s Court and Caroline Terrace, he
designed and built homes on Grove Avenue, Sunken Road, and Canal Street.
Cost was always an important factor for Reid, according to
Spencer, which is why he designed with concrete block instead of brick. The
entire Reid’s Court project had a permitting cost of $7,000, according to
Spencer—about $155,732 in
today’s dollars—and the Reid house at 312 Canal Street was even more
cost-effective at $1,200.
The “economical designs [Reid] used … when coupled with the
introduction of quality materials [such as slate roofs and concrete blocks] and
green space, serve as one of Fredericksburg’s few noteworthy references to the
interwar (1918–1939) Garden City planning movement,” Spencer wrote, and still
help define the College Terrace neighborhood.
Cottage
courts like Reid’s Court and Caroline Terrace are gaining attention as
examples of “missing middle” housing, along with duplexes, fourplexes, and
live-work buildings, that used
to be more common in neighborhoods before World War II.
The City of Waynesboro last month approved an
amendment to its zoning ordinance that would allow for cottage court
housing, which it describes as “a group of small, detached houses, attached
houses, townhouses (limit of 4 attached units per structure and up to 50% of
development), or tiny homes fronting around a common space
