Elks National Home

Elks National Home is a district of about 100 acres in Bedford, Virginia, built to house elderly members of the Elks fraternal order. Its centerpiece is the Administration Building of 1916, a two-story Classical Revival and Mediterranean Revival structure with a six-column portico, stuccoed tile block walls and Spanish tile roofs. Arcades link it to seven dormitory cottages arranged in a crescent, with two more cottages, a power house and the 1938 Fred Harper Theatre behind. A farm complex, including a dairy barn of about 1920, supplied the Home and still serves as pasture. Other contributing features include a pond, garden, golf course, a 1925 Harding monument and an elk statue. The Home replaced an earlier hotel-based facility opened in 1903. It is considered notable as a prototype of later retirement communities, offering care at a time when poor farms and almshouses were the usual alternative. It housed more than 400 residents during the Great Depression.