A pioneer in the development of Holbrook Avenue above Col. William Rison's old estate, Matthew Pate Jordan completed this stylish early Queen Anne dwelling in 1883.  Its bracketed cornice and arched window openings featuring keystones and springblocks evidence Italianate design as well.  Here, Mr. Jordan and his wife, the former Alice Witcher, entertained friends and Mr. Jordan's business colleagues in richly appointed formal rooms with ornamental plaster ceilings and parquet floors which survive to this day.  Original late-19th-century chandeliers continue to illuminate some these handsome spaces, along with opulent gilded mirrors from the period.

The M.P. Jordan Company founder rose to prominence in Danville's flourishing tobacco business, serving as an early president of the Danville Tobacco Association.  Later, he became president of both the Commercial Bank and the People's Savings and Loan, as well as a principal investor in the Dan River Power and Manufacturing Company - later incorporated as part of Dan River, Inc.

A couple years after her husband's death, Mrs. Jordan sold the family home, in 1906, to John J. and Maria Westbrook, members of a family long identified with Westbrook Elevator, Danville's only maker of freight and passenger "lifts."  The couple resided here for about a decade.

If the Jordans' sumptuous residence helped make Holbrook Avenue itself a fashionable address, it was one of their successors, Mr. and Mrs. Chesley S. Anderson, who lived here long enough - from 1916 to 1966 - that even today some older Danvillians refer to 130 Holbrook Avenue as the Anderson House.

Since acquiring the property in 1997, Bill and Kay Trakas have taken seriously their stewardship role in caring for the historic Jordan-Anderson House.  Not only have they tended to such necessities as the previously long-neglected roof, but they also continue to refurbish the gracious rooms, enhancing their historic charm with a number of period-appropriate 19th-century furnishings.  Some of these pieces reflect the owners' enthusiasm for America's Aesthetic Movement, at its zenith in the late-19th century when this house was new.