{"nrhp_refnum":"07000399","name":"Bon Air","other_names":["Adam and Susan Bear House","Bear Lithia","VDHR File No. 082-5157"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"2477 Bear Lithia Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Elkton","county":"Rockingham County","state":"VA","lat":38.435933369000054,"lon":-78.61921078899996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2007-05-02","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Social History"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-story brick house with a surviving meat house/storage outbuilding, located at 2477 Bear Lithia Road near Elkton, Rockingham County, Virginia. It was built circa 1870 for Adam C. Bear and his wife Susan, next to Bear Lithia Spring.","why_significant":"The house is considered a well-preserved example of Greek Revival and Italianate styles, with Greek Revival-derived mantels, bay windows and plaster cornices. It is also tied to the tradition of springs-going, as the Bear and later Keiser families took in lodgers who came for the spring water and marketed the water commercially. Significance is at the local level.","narrative":"Bon Air is a two-story brick house near Elkton in Rockingham County, Virginia, built around 1870 for farmer and miller Adam C. Bear and his wife Susan. It combines Italianate and Greek Revival elements, including a hip-and-deck metal roof, bay windows at the front, a bracketed cornice and a center-passage plan with Greek Revival-derived mantels. A late nineteenth-century meat house stands nearby. The house sits beside Bear Lithia Spring, a strongly flowing spring that the Bear family commercially exploited through leases, bottling and rail shipment of its water. The Bears and, after 1909, the Keiser family took in guests who came to drink the water, a practice that continued into the mid-twentieth century and included Confederate General John S. Mosby by family tradition. The property was recognized for its architecture and for its link to Virginia's springs-going tradition, with a period of significance from about 1870 to about 1930. The spring itself, covered in the 1960s, is not part of the listing.","period_of_significance":"circa 1870 - circa 1930","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"Italianate; Greek Revival","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Still used as a single-family dwelling with a secondary structure; the adjacent spring is covered by concrete, owned by the Town of Elkton, and excluded from the nomination.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:02.660123-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/9/6835/41683509/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/07000399.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/07000399/660cbfec05-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/07000399/660cbfec05-1600.webp","licence":"Public domain","author":"Nyttend","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bon_Air_farmhouse_from_northwest.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Nyttend</a>, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bon_Air_farmhouse_from_northwest.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41683509","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Air_(Elkton,_Virginia)","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15202950"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/rockingham-county/bon-air-07000399/"}