Few, if any, sites in Danville are as revered as the Sutherlin Mansion. As the city’s only example of the ante-bellum Italian Villa style, it is singular architecturally, listed individually on the State and National registers. As the home of Mr. and Mrs. William T. Sutherlin—completed 185 7-58—it set the tone for the city’s subsequent residential development of the fashionable West End, a trend which continues to this day. As the Executive Mansion for President Jefferson Davis during his final week as Commander in Chief of the Confederacy, April 3-10, 1865, the house secured Danville’s rightful claim as the Last Capital of the Confederacy. As the focus of a fund raising campaign in 1912, when wives and daughters of Confederate veterans—and the veterans themselves—raised money to save this shrine from almost certain demolition, the mansion witnessed the birth of the historic preservation movement in Danville. As the fulfillment of the dream of Miss Jane Gray Hagan and others, it became the city’s first free public library, from 1928-1973. As the Danville Museum of Fine Arts & History, the mansion and its collections of history and art have, since 1974, become dynamic teaching tools and a tourist mecca for thousands of visitors each year. 

Visitors during the afternoon can see the Museum newly decorated for the holidays with fresh greens and other natural materials like those used by the Sutherlins during the Victorian era. Periodic concerts by handbell choirs and a brass ensemble also will be featured. Author Adrian O’Connor will be on hand to autograph copies of the second printing of his recent history of Danville, River City.