Green Springs Historic District

Green Springs is a rural district of roughly 14,000 acres in Louisa County, Virginia, centered on a mineral spring and a band of unusually fertile clay soil. Settled in the 1720s, it grew prosperous on wheat, and by the 1840s and 1850s it supplied grain to the world by way of Richmond. The district holds some thirty-three listed groups of buildings, including colonial farmhouses, Federal and Italianate homes, Gothic Revival churches and the crossroads village of Poindexter. Hawkwood was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, West End reflects Jefferson-influenced Roman Revival taste, and Grassdale is a rare Italianate country house. Members of the Morris and Watson families built many of the principal houses. The nomination values the area because buildings and fields survive together in their original pastoral setting, largely untouched by depression or war damage. Descendants of early settlers still farm some family lands, and letters and plantation journals document rural Piedmont life.