Centerview National Register of Historic Places Listing

Jesse Hare got rich off tobacco. In 1839, he bought a tract of land just outside Lynchburg's city limits and raised a stately, two-story brick I-house that he called Centerview. He wanted to show off his new wealth. Local masons laid the red bricks in a tight Flemish bond pattern, capping the home with delicate Federal and Greek Revival woodwork. Elite planter style at its peak. Though the Civil War eventually wrecked Hare's tobacco empire, his brick house survived the conflict unscathed.

Today, things look totally different. Walk onto the porch today and you will search in vain for his old rolling fields. Strip malls surround it. The house stands obstinately as a physical anchor to Campbell County's agricultural past. It survived because later owners, like the Burton family, refused to demolish the structure when suburban developers came knocking with cash. By the time preservationists secured its spot on the National Register in 2000, Centerview was an anomaly. A brick ghost from 1839.