Virginia Department of Historic Resources Virginia Department of Historic Resources
For additional information, read the Nomination Form PDF
VLR Listing Date 11/05/1968
NRHP Listing Date 04/16/1969
NHL Listing Date 11/11/1971
DHR's Virginia Board of Historic Resources easement
NRHP Reference Number 70000882
Merchant Horace L. Kent commissioned Boston architect Isaiah Rogers in 1844 to design this Franklin Street mansion. Most of Rogers’s works have been destroyed; 12 East Franklin Street is his only surviving residential design. The house was originally a three-bay Italianate dwelling skirted by an intricate cast-iron veranda. In 1904 Granville G. Valentine, owner of a meat extract company, engaged the firm of Noland and Baskervill to expand the house into a five-bay composition, extending the veranda. The veranda was replaced by the present Ionic portico around 1909. The final result is a successful amalgam of antebellum and early-20th-century styles. Noland and Baskervill’s Georgian Revival drawing room provides an interesting contrast to Rogers’s Gothic Revival double parlors. The house was restored in the early 1970s to serve as the headquarters of the Garden Club of Virginia, and it is located in Richmond’s East Franklin Street Historic District.
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
