{"nrhp_refnum":"02000587","name":"Grassdale Farm","other_names":["VDHR file no. 44-0010"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"187 Spencer Penn Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Spencer","county":"Henry County","state":"VA","lat":36.61601453000006,"lon":-80.01042361198581,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2002-05-30","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"Grassdale Farm is an approximately ninety-acre farm in the community of Spencer, Henry County, Virginia, with a two-story frame main house of about 1860 to 1880 and 22 other resources dating from the mid-19th century to about 1950.","why_significant":"The farm preserves a main house of Greek Revival character with Italianate influence, along with domestic outbuildings, a possible former slave dwelling and mid-20th-century farm buildings. It is also tied to the Spencer family, whose members were landowners and tobacco manufacturers in Spencer. The 1948 Spencer Store and Post Office is part of the nominated property.","narrative":"Grassdale Farm occupies about ninety acres at the center of Spencer, in southwestern Henry County, Virginia. Its principal building is a two-story, center-passage frame house of Greek Revival character with Italianate bracketed cornices, reaching its present form by about 1880 and given Colonial Revival interior detail in 1949. Around it stand a frame kitchen, a brick smokehouse, a cook's house, a caretaker's house that began as a farm office, and a square-notched log dwelling that family tradition says first served as a slave house. Farther away are late 1940s barns, a granary and a tenant house built for Mack Watkins. A 1948 brick store and post office stands near the main road. The farm is associated with the Spencer family. David H. Spencer held large landholdings and forty-two slaves in 1860 and ran a tobacco factory with a partner. After his 1869 bankruptcy, his son David W. Spencer took over the business and bought back the home tract by 1874.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Greek Revival; Italianate; Colonial Revival","criteria":[],"status_note":null,"vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:00.008932-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/67/6812/41681267/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/02000587.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/02000587/beaa03c0f4-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/02000587/beaa03c0f4-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Nyttend","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grassdale_Farmhouse_from_the_road.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Nyttend</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Grassdale_Farmhouse_from_the_road.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41681267","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grassdale_Farm","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14712382"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/henry-county/grassdale-farm-02000587/"}