{"nrhp_refnum":"88002178","name":"Bon Air Historic District","other_names":[],"category":"district","location":{"address":"Roughly bounded by Forest Hill Rd., N. Robert, W. Bon View Dr., and McRae Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Richmond","county":"Chesterfield County","state":"VA","lat":37.52494179050004,"lon":-77.55728506224173,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1988-11-15","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Entertainment/Recreation","Architecture"],"significance_levels":["state"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A residential historic district at the intersection of Buford and Rockaway roads in Bon Air, near Richmond, Chesterfield County, Virginia, with 76 contributing and 36 noncontributing buildings, developed from 1877 as a summer resort and suburb.","why_significant":"The district is described as the best remaining representation of Bon Air in its heyday as a popular Richmond resort and emerging suburb. It contains an unusually complete range of late 19th and early 20th century buildings, from Stick-style summer cottages to Colonial Revival, Bungalow and American Foursquare houses, plus a hotel annex, church, library and post office.","narrative":"Bon Air is a small village-scale district of 112 buildings near Richmond, laid out in the early 1880s by the Bon Air Land and Improvement Company as a summer refuge for city residents. Its location near Richmond, pleasant climate and rail access made it a popular resort. Buford Road holds the earliest summer cottages, mostly Stick-style houses from the 1880s and 1890s, alongside Queen Anne and Colonial Revival dwellings. Side streets contain smaller early twentieth-century frame houses, including Bungalow and American Foursquare types. The Bon Air Hotel burned in 1889, but its Stick-style annex survives, along with a Victorian Gothic church of 1882, a granite library of 1902 and a post office of 1916. The Bon Air Inn of 1894 was later divided and its sections moved and remodeled as houses. As automobiles and better train service arrived, the resort gave way to year-round suburban living. Together these buildings document that change from resort to suburb.","period_of_significance":null,"architect_builder":"Bon Air Land and Improvement Company of Virginia (developer); Jacob Fraker, builder; Lee W. Payne, builder/contractor; Carneal and Johnston, architects (Gordon House); George R. Talcott, landscape designer","architectural_style":"Late Victorian; Late 19th- and 20th-Century Revivals (Stick, Queen Anne, Colonial Revival, Bungalow, American Foursquare)","criteria":[],"status_note":"The Hazen Memorial Library is stated to be vacant since the Bon Air Library moved in 1975; the district's houses remain in residential use.","vacant_flag":null,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:51:59.919886-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/56/6801/41680156/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/88002178.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88002178/5cdd356302-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/88002178/5cdd356302-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"User: Morgan Riley","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bon_Air_Hotel_Annex.JPG\" rel=\"noopener\">User: Morgan Riley</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:Bon_Air_Hotel_Annex.JPG"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41680156","wikipedia":null,"wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49475239"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/chesterfield-county/bon-air-historic-district-88002178/"}