Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
For additional information, read the Nomination Form PDF
VLR Listing Date 05/18/1982
NRHP Listing Date 08/26/1982
NRHP Reference Number 82004587
Holly Lawn in northside Richmond is remembered as the home of the esteemed physician Dr. Ennion G. Williams, who lived here from 1913 until his death in 1931. Under Dr. Williams’s leadership as the Commonwealth’s first commissioner of public health, a post to which he was appointed in 1908, Virginia’s health board became one of the first such departments in the country to apply scientific knowledge to the improvement of public hygiene by a system of prevention as well as cure. Built in 1901 for Andrew Bierne Blair, a Richmond insurance agent, the ambitious Queen Anne-style residence was designed by Richmond architect D. Wiley Anderson for what was then a turn-of-the-20th-century streetcar suburb (now the Hermitage Road Historic District). Typical of its mode, the house has a complex roofline, irregular plan and wrap-around porch. For many years the house served as the headquarters of the Richmond Council of Garden Clubs.
Many properties listed in the registers are private dwellings and are not open to the public, however many are visible from the public right-of-way. Please be respectful of owner privacy.
Abbreviations:
VLR: Virginia Landmarks Register
NPS: National Park Service
NRHP: National Register of Historic Places
NHL: National Historic Landmark
Updated: September 22, 2021
