According to architectural historian, Russell Wright, the American Picturesque home at 855 Main Street is uniquely detailed, which has become evident again with the restoration painting this year by its new residents. The circular pavilion porch, bracketed cornice, and elaborate window heads now draw the attention of the touring pedestrian when just months ago the home was neglected and deteriorated from its life as a medical office. 

Having faced the threat of demolition several times since it was built in 1878, the home of William L. Fernald, local IRS collector, had a checkered past after the early death of its first owner in 1885. Fernald’s widow, Julia Alberta Gravely, came from Henry County where her father headed the successful tobacco manufacturing firm of B.F. Gravely & Sons. Suffering extreme financial difficulties, she mortgaged the home to her brother and returned to Henry County until her death in 1939. In 1904, Montgomery Adkins Allen and his wife, Martha Isabelle Thompson, purchased the home for $4,000. Mr. Allen moved here from Reidsville, N.C., where he served as mayor while working as a tobacco buyer for American Tobacco Company and later Export Tobacco Company. 

Their only child, Ima Allen, married Edward Bickford Young who had relocated to Danville from Rochester, N.Y., with his parents. Mr. Young, a local tobacconist, formed a partnership with Emmett McGee in the Reliance Tobacco Company and Reliance Storage Company in a brick warehouse still standing below DIMON, Inc.’s headquarters on the corner of Bridge and Colquohoun Streets. The young couple resided here with her parents until they moved to 911 Main Street, which later was demolished for the educational building of First Presbyterian Church. 

In 193 1, Emma Throckmorton purchased the property for $6,500, but never moved from her home on Broad Street. During her twenty-one years of ownership, the home was rental property. In 1952, the home was sold to local real estate salesman, Henry Hobson Gordon, and his wife, Virginia Mann, who resided here for twelve years and converted the basement to apartments. In 1964, William L. Miller and Fred B. Leggett, Jr., purchased this home and an adjacent property, which was demolished, with plans to build an apartment complex or office building. Blocked by neighborhood opposition, the project never materialized. In 1975, its proximity to a project proposed on Pine Street, a high-rise apartment complex to house elderly and handicapped residents, again threatened demolition. Preservation-minded neighbors again rose in protest and this project was built instead as Holiday Village on Riverside Drive. 

Purchased in 1996 by Dr. and Mrs. Darrell Beverly for their son and his family, the future portends a hopeful life for this charming Victorian home, which is open for tour as a “restoration in progress.”