{"nrhp_refnum":"82004609","name":"Fairfax Hall","other_names":["Brandon Hotel","Fairfax Hall School"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"Winchester Ave.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Waynesboro (Independent City)","county":"Waynesboro","state":"VA","lat":38.070430680000044,"lon":-78.8701093936038,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1982-09-09","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Commerce","Education","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A large wood-frame Queen Anne style resort hotel on Winchester Avenue in Waynesboro, Virginia, built in 1890 as the Hotel Brandon in the former community of Basic City. It was designed by William Poindexter and later became Fairfax Hall School, with a 1926 gymnasium on the grounds.","why_significant":"The nomination presents it as one of the Shenandoah Valley's few remaining late-Victorian resort hotels, built during the railroad-driven land boom of the 1890s. It was architecturally better than most of its now-vanished contemporaries and was designed by Washington architect William Poindexter. Its later use as Fairfax Hall, a nationally known girls' preparatory school and junior college, adds to its educational significance.","narrative":"Fairfax Hall is a long, rambling wood-frame resort hotel on Winchester Avenue in Waynesboro, Virginia, built in 1890 as the Hotel Brandon. Designed by Washington architect William Poindexter in the shingled Queen Anne manner, it has towers at each end, a wide gabled central pavilion with a porte-cochere, and an octagonal belvedere and cupola above. It sits at the head of a long lawn with the Blue Ridge rising behind. The hotel was part of the resort boom that followed the railroads into the Shenandoah Valley, drawing summer visitors from the Tidewater. It closed in 1913 and became the Brandon Institute, then Fairfax Hall in 1920, a girls' preparatory school and junior college that gained national recognition until 1975. A stone-and-stucco gymnasium was added in 1926. The lobby, stair, and dining room survive well. Since 1976 the building has served as a state corrections training academy.","period_of_significance":"1800-1899, 1900-","architect_builder":"William Poindexter (1890)","architectural_style":"Queen Anne Style, shingled mode","criteria":[],"status_note":"Closed as a school in 1975; since April 1976 leased to the State Department of Corrections and used as a training academy. Interior described as excellently preserved.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:57.0722-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/79/6840/41684079/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/82004609.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/82004609/434b27a4b2-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/82004609/434b27a4b2-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Philip N. Wheeler","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairfax_Hall-4x6-300ppi.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Philip N. Wheeler</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 3.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fairfax_Hall-4x6-300ppi.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41684079","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairfax_Hall","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5430175"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/waynesboro/fairfax-hall-82004609/"}