Resembling nothing so much as a giant wedding cake with wreaths, swags, and other classical decorations, this mansion stands today as an example of architecture in transition; its freewheeling Queen Anne form is bedecked with Classical Revival details. Typical 189Os Queen Anne features include the three-story corner tower and projecting bays. Its Classical embellishments, an architectural mode that became the rage after the turn of the century, include not only the bas relief Adam-type decorations near the roofline and over the second-story win— dows, but also the graceful Ionic porch that curves around the base of the tower. Completed in 1902. by local contractor James Fitzgerald after a design by architects Frye and Chesterman of Lynchburg, Virginia, the two-and-a- half-story clapboard house remains to modern eyes a well-proportioned design of exceptional craftsmanship. It was a gift from James Gabriel Penn to his daughter Mary Katherine Penn and her husband of five years, Barnes R. Penn. 

As a girl Mary Katherine Penn lived with her parents James 0. and Sallie Penn two blocks down the hill in the elaborate Italianate mansion at 862 Main Street. Barnes Penn was one of eight sons of Greenville and Kate Rucker Penn who resided at 138 Holbrook Avenue. Both these families, and all the Danville Penns, came originally from Penn’s Store in Patrick County. After their marriage in 1897, Mr. and Mrs. Barnes Penn first lived at 1031 Main Street and in this narrow American Picturesque style house, currently under restoration, their daughter Elizabeth was born. Upon completion of their house at 1020 Main — originally painted yellow with white trim — Elizabeth moved here from across the street where she lived for the next eighty-three years, first with her parents and later with her husband Everett E. Carter, whom she married in 1925. Mr. Carter, a native of Bluefield, West Virginia, and long associated with the Penn family’s venerable tobacco business, Pemberton and Penn, also became a city councilman and served several terms as Danville’s mayor before his death in 1960. 

Since purchasing the house earlier this year, new owners Howard Casey, Jr., and Robert Gibson consider themselves fortunate, as only the second owners of the house, to have acquired a property that was never altered substantially. Although some major repairs to the structure are in the offing, the owners will not have to undo any earlier “remuddling,” only ensure the preservation of the house and its fine interior. Modillioned crown moulding, and Adam Revival ornaments on the woodwork, staircase and some mantels are among the interior details that reflect the more delicate, post-Victorian mode after the turn of the century. This Classical Revival influence is reinforced in the motifs in the stained glass windows above the stairway landing and in the crystalline light of leaded glass in the public rooms. Complementing this setting are several pieces of the Penn-Carter furniture, acquired recently from the Carter children. These pieces again occupy rooms where they stood for decades.