After more than three decades as an apartment building, this rambling Queen Anne home built in Danville’s streetcar suburbs now is the residence for its caring owner. Since purchasing the house in 1993, Mr. Sakellaris has given it new life with a complete restoration to the interior rooms and the clapboard exterior. Filled with family memorabilia and unique antiques, the owner could be described as the collectors’ collector with his many acquisitions from Southside Virginia and neighboring states.

Built in 1900 by Asa T. and Maria Sue Holland, this property continued as a family home in 1950 when their daughter, Jane Holland Heard, and her husband, William C. Heard, Jr., lived here until the residence was sold in 1 956. Mr. Holland is listed in local city directories as a tobacconist associated with Imperial Tobacco Company and the Farmers’ Co-operative Tobacco Manufacturing Association, and in 1939 as President of the Holland-Gravely Corporation, a real estate and insurance firm at 533 Main Street. Mr. Heard was employed as a floor manager and buyer for Belk’s department store. The 1950 deed of conveyance to their daughter includes the surnames of well-known local families: Gravely, Williams, Holland, Leggett, and Heard.

In 1956, the property was conveyed to Joseph Martin Sauerbeck, Jr., a name well-associated with Danville Dairy Products on Loyal Street. Mr. Sauerbeck never resided here and converted the home to apartments, first two, then four units. An advertisement in the 1956 city directory boasted that his company was Danville’s only home-owned independent dairy plant selling Faultless milk and ice cream. 

In 1976, the property was sold to Victor R. Preska, who remained in ownership of the apartment building until it was sold in 1993 to Mr. Sakellaris, whose paternal grandparents owned and operated the New Deal Restaurant on Craghead Street from the I 920s until 1956. Their wedding portrait graces the grand foyer of the home. In the formal parlor, tour guests will marvel at the one-of-a-kind walnut vitrine, displaying an aviary of rare and exotic birds.

Antique clocks from the collection of his great aunt in Caswell County decorate every fireplace mantel.  A Depression era dining room suite, which was originally from Danville, was acquired from a local citizen who brought it back to the city after residing in Washington, D.C., for forty years. The spacious family parlor easily accommodates a rosewood Chickering square grand piano dating from the I 860s. 

According to Holland family legend shared by Sue Holland Leggett, the bay window in the dining room was the site of many family wakes and funerals while the bay window in the family parlor was used for family weddings.

The “game room” features an amazing collection of vintage memorabilia, which ranges from a 1 922 slate Brunswick pool table with side pockets, a 1956 RCA Victor black-and- white television owned by his paternal grandfather, a six-cent Coca-Cola vending machine, and a 1967 pass to the James E. Strates carnival shows, to name only a few of the items in Mr. Sakellaris’ collections.

Upstairs, in the front room used as his study, is a leather- top, walnut partners desk purchased at a Southern Railway auction. The most romantic of his collectibles also graces this room—an elaborate Oriental rug brought to Danville by his paternal grandfather, Harry Sakellaris, when he immigrated from Greece. After his death in the 195 Os, the rug was later sold and stayed out of family ownership for over 30 years until Mr. Sakellaris traced its ownership and re-purchased it for his home. Most unique among his antiques is a midget chair that was used in the Strates Carnival shows by Prince Albert, who was renowned as the smallest man in the world.