{"nrhp_refnum":"89001808","name":"Blankenship Farm","other_names":["60-386"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"0.4 mi. S of jct. of VA 733 and 603","address_restricted":false,"city":"Ellett","county":"Montgomery County","state":"VA","lat":37.18440388500005,"lon":-80.36459977799996,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"1989-11-13","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A two-acre farm near Ellett in Montgomery County, Virginia, in the North Fork of the Roanoke River valley, with a circa 1920-1930 brick foursquare house and a fourteen-sided frame barn built in 1929.","why_significant":"The farm is argued to be a good example of an early twentieth-century agricultural complex. The house is an unusual rural use of the typically urban foursquare form. The barn is unique in the county and region, combining a regional center-aisle plan with a polygonal form drawn from pattern-book ideas about economy of construction.","narrative":"Blankenship Farm sits on the broad bottomlands of the North Fork of the Roanoke River near Ellett, east of Blacksburg and Christiansburg. It includes a two-story brick house from about 1920 to 1930 in the foursquare style, with a hipped porch on brick piers, a central hip-roofed dormer and a central-passage plan. East of the house stands a fourteen-sided frame barn built in 1929, with a conical monitor roof, a central aisle, lofts and an attached concrete block silo. Each side of the barn measures thirteen feet six inches. The barn reflects early twentieth-century writings that promoted polygonal barns as economical to build and efficient to work in, yet it uses a conventional center-aisle plan instead of the better-known circular layout around a silo. It is considered unique in the county and region. The house is an unusual rural example of an urban form. Together they form a well preserved farm group, with only a modern garage that does not detract.","period_of_significance":"1920-1930","architect_builder":"Unknown","architectural_style":"Late 19th and early 20th century revivals; American Foursquare; polygonal barn","criteria":["C"],"status_note":"Both the house and barn are described as well preserved; the house and barn remain in domestic and agricultural use, and the barn is in pristine condition with slight interior alteration.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:52:00.345512-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/41/6787/41678741/content/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_VA/89001808.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001808/a4dba6b222-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/89001808/a4dba6b222-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 3.0","author":"Skye Marthaler","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blankenship_Farm_House_and_Barn.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Skye Marthaler</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:Blankenship_Farm_House_and_Barn.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/41678741","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blankenship_Farm","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q14712039"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/virginia/montgomery-county/blankenship-farm-89001808/"}