I’ve started biking this loop in the morning.
Category: neighborhood
Charlottesville Woolen Mill
Hudson House for sale
The Hudson house is located in the Woolen Mills Village historic district, 1516 East Market Street, Charlottesville, VA. Janice Kavanagh is the listing broker.
connectivity
Tiptoe in on 18 wheels
The City has put up signage but it is of the advisory type. Doesn’t speak to the wallet. Steve contradicts the GPS, free
pedestrian advice to errant drivers.
This truck was starting to turn turtle. Its drive wheels were no longer in contact with the pavement. Teetering between
two historic properties, the Pireus store (ca 1847) and the Woolen Mills Chapel (ca 1886).
In the future possibly the City will consider one of these signs, here protecting the John Warner Parkway.
Discipline vehicles. Context sensitive. Note to City regarding context: the Woolen Mills is a city treasure,
not a high speed industrial corridor. People old and young, walking, biking and driving.
Those with the most power, in the neighborhood context, should yield to those with the least.
framework street?
I wish I was going to Buffalo next week for CNU 22 , confab of new urbanists. My closest approach
was sitting in a room with Ian Lockwood this past week.
Ian shared his transportation philosophy, spoke earnestly about connectivity, and showed a map
that alternately intrigues and terrifies. What exactly is a framework street? Reserving judgement until it is
possible to learn more. Does the finish detail of the Duke of Gloucester Street qualify for a modern framework street?
Some new wine doesn’t belong in the old bottle.
paving season
I never complain about the pavement in neighborhoods because when the membrane is allowed to deteriorate sufficiently many benefits accrue.
There is the traffic calming benefit, travel speeds are reduced, drivers moderate their speed.
This is a poor man’s pervious pavement, allowing some recharging of groundwater levels.
I wonder if there is a correlation between condition of streets and median income of the surrounding neighborhood?
Bus Stop
As long as I can remember there has been a bus running east on Woolen Mills Road (aka Market Street).
Sixty or seventy years.
That service stops today.
(Woolen Mill/Park Street bus photo courtesy of the Bobby Taylor Collection)
Steve
One characteristic of the Woolen Mills historic houses is front porches, I love sitting on a front porch, having a visit. Steve was scraping paint so after saying hello we split.
quiet enjoyment
People have been living in this neighborhood, this place, for thousands of years.
We live in the bend of a state scenic River, on rich, fertile ground, Davidson Loam. Seated here we are eight tenths of a mile from the front porch of Monticello, a mile and 2/10ths from the downtown mall. Seated here we are home, in the center of our universe.
But often we feel, as a neighborhood, that we are in the center of the crosshairs.
Over the years our discussions with the Council have focused on a handful of issues. We’ve asked for reductions in traffic speed and volume, we’ve asked for a reduction of the sewage smell. We’ve asked for pedestrian safety improvements and we have asked that planning and zoning be used to conserve our cultural and natural resources as well as our quality of life.
We have partnered with government entities in the creation of a national historic district, in the design of a sewage pumping station and in the care of our City park. We plant streetscape trees. We pick up trash, we attend City meetings. We have accomplished much but still, we feel threatened.
We are reassured by statements from Mayor Huja and Vice Mayor Szakos in opposition to a bridge through the Woolen Mills. We thank Dave Norris for his enduring stand against the County using City neighborhoods as an interchange.
Diversity is a strength to our way of thinking. We are all kinds of people in this neighborhood. But our mixed status, our socio-economic profile, seems to attract locally unwanted landuses.
Please work with us in our effort to secure the quiet enjoyment of our own homes and the health, safety and welfare of our neighborhood. Together we can make it so.
water
Emma and I installed a waterline to my house July 31. Rented a model 1820 Ditch Witch, aka “the pipe finder”. Everyone knows, call Miss Utility (811) before you dig. I am on a first name basis with Miss Utility. She marked the underground gas and electric, the lines one really wants to avoid.
Lost in history when the Woolen Mills Village first got “government” water. The houses had wells. According to oral history, the Mill had a water system for portions of the village. Albemarle County installed a sanitary sewer and a water main to the WMV in the 1930’s. Emma and I found 3 retired supply pipes to my house with the ditchwitch. The last was polybutelene, “qest big blue”. These service laterals lasted less than 30 years on average. Hoping the newly installed one inch type K will last 100 years, or until the Ragged Mountain reservoir gets its fill pipe installed, whichever comes first.