Tasteful friends: Staunton, Virginia edition

$900k, a large house of 4900 square feet

The ground floor apartment in a former YMCA, $574k, 3000 square feet

A Gothic Revival board-&-batten cottage, $475k, 2800 square feet

Fantastic outside, but this style often had contrastingly plain interiors as I suspect was the case here, and renovated over the years to not the highest standard.

$350k, 2500 square feet

Nice house though it could do with so undoing of a previous owners d-i-y cornice treatment and the kitchen wouldn't mind a quality renovation.

The wild card, $179k, 6500 square feet of a former church.

R3 and R4 have such pretty views outside their windows.

Here's a great old farmhouse on some land.

R4 is nice but you are so right about those balistrades. Awful.

The balustrades on the front porch, R8. Those could be original (more likely replaced to match original): the flat, sawn-work balusters were popular in the 1870s and 1880s and there are quite a few examples in Staunton. They were cheaper to produce and install than turned balusters, but give a very different appearance and rhythm with their flatness and shadow effects than do turned balusters. I generally like them though can see why others may not.

I pointed out the bad cornice work down in recent years. Kits of these ugly fucking corner blocks are sold in home improvement stores so that D-I-Yers don't have to learn how to do difficult mitre cuts, they just chop off the wood molding (too inconsequential in scale in this case) and then add on a Lego block at each corner, proud of fucking up their new cornice. I would do some things to remove a few later elements and restore something fitting with the original, but the rooms have nice scale and proportions, and the rooms are light and have some great views looking out across the town to the valley and mountains beyond.

We drove through this area last winter. It is gorgeous and picturesque. But the people are like the meth version of Beverly Hillbillies. I think the population of educated is way outnumbered by mean local yokels

I found Stauton kind of hippieish/hipsterish. What maybe Asheville was before it was a thing. There were wine bars and brew pubs etc. What you would expect to find in an educated town. There is also a college, a prep school and a school for the deaf and blind. Our server at the restaurant we went to had moved from Charleston SC just a few years ago and she loves it.

My mother had a modern house built on 45 acres of land in Broadway Virginia, a mountain range at the end of the land and a river on each side. Pretty nice if you like to live away from other people.

Staunton just had a big flash flood Aug. 13, 2020.

Just remember that it's pronounced STAN-tun, not STAWN-tun.

All I know about it is that it's where Woodrow Wilson (hasn't he been cancelled?) is from.

Lots of that in Staunton I suppose, R14.

I would see the hotel sign when the train passed through Staunton just before crossing into West Virginia into White Sulphur Springs. It used to be a comfortable trip but they cut a lot of the extras from the train, like the observation car and dining car so now it's like a commuter train.

I live here.

The Stonewall Jackson hotel has been renamed. It called Hotel 24 South. He's been cancelled. Lol!

Not unexpected, R18, though "Hotel 24 South" seems to have taken the danger of association and names to an extreme of dull safety, with all the poetry of a highway route number.

Setting aside the Stonewall Jackson baggage, the red neon glow of the huge and unavoidable sign was one of the wonders of the town. The first time I went there the hotel had a number of permanent residents in evidence, old women with typewriters clicking away at some genealogy or murder mystery, maybe. The lobby had some horrible 1930s writing desks meant for women, small women, with barely room enough to lay out a sheet of paper and pen; I think they had racks for holding postcards of the hotel. The sign was the hotel more than anything about the hotel itself; too bad they didn't figure a way to save it as the "Hotel Staunton" sign, something.

I just stayed there R19 it's a nice enough hotel for a small town. I do love the sign though..I hope they redo it and I agree the new name is ridiculous. Hotel Staunton would be much better

$1million to live in Staunton!?! I don’t care if it’s 100 acres, that’s crazy. Symbolic of how insane real estate pricing has gotten. Staunton should be dirt cheap - like that church. The rich ruin everything.

R21 I agree, and those interiors are shit too.

Abingdon is quite a bit further down in Va, but a much nicer town plus they have a legitimately nice hotel there (I’ve stayed there before on the way to Memphis).

This looks really low rent and should be a lot cheaper given everything.

I prefer old homes to have more eclectic decor - I love modern art in a traditional home, for example. When it’s too much of one era, it feels suffocating and bland.

The decor seen in houses for sale in Staunton is very, how shall I say, JoAnne's Fabrics dowdy. The local taste is seriously underwhelming with its Live Laugh Love signs and homespun afirmational chick clutter.

But of course you're not buying the gingham ribbons on the Mason jars of preserves, or the crappy milk painted hutch they're shelves on, or the seller's furniture, the cleaning supies under their sink, their "art," the photos of their giant headed children, or the toothbrushes by the bathroom sink.