A Graceful 1853 Upperville Home, The Maples

Written by Trish Donnally Photography by Daniel and Ayelet Shanken

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As you approach The Maples, the air smells of honeysuckle, horses, and freshly cut grass. The long, yellow maple-lined driveway gently curves in front of the gracious southern mansion with its inviting front porches on the first and second levels.

It’s almost as if time and character are captured in the worn path of the foyer’s pine floor, the inch-and-a-half thick cherry doors, and the two-foot thick stone and plaster walls throughout the house.

Andy and Michele Stevens purchased The Maples from Betty Carter Fletcher Burkholder, great-great granddaughter of Joshua Fletcher, who had the house built in 1853.

“We had 14 acres in Great Falls and I was going to build a new old house. I told one of the prospective builders I brought out to the lot to discuss what I wanted to do that I wanted a stone house, a barn, a pool, and a guesthouse,” Michele says. He suggested that she see his property, The Maples, in Upperville, VA. Michele recalls traveling with her husband out Route 50 and turning into the tree-lined driveway.

“I knew from the look on Andy’s face that this was it,” Michele remembers.

While the 6,000-square-foot house remained in the Fletcher family for generations, it almost seems custom built for Michele, who loves symmetry.

The Maples, a classic “four-square plan,” not only has the traditional four rooms of equal size over four other rooms of equal size, but also has another four rooms of equal size in the English basement. So the 12 main rooms of the house each measure almost 19 feet by 19 feet square. The sense of symmetry and balance they create gives Michele great pleasure.

A Family Farmhouse

“Mrs. Eliza Fletcher had 13 of her 14 children here,” Andy says. The garage, originally a one-room schoolhouse, was where her children were educated. “Mrs. [Betty Wise Gibson] Fletcher lived here for 17 years, alone, blind. She lived in the front parlor. Her galley kitchen was where the powder room is now. Her bathroom was where Michele’s office is,” Andy says. While Mrs. Fletcher had help, she basically lived on the first floor. “That’s why things got locked in time.”

The house, which had paint peeling off the walls, was vacant for two years before Andy, 54, a businessman, beekeeper, and former AOL executive, Michele, 46, a realtor with Long & Foster for 10 years, and their children, Nicola, 19, and Teddy, 17, bought the 60-acre property in 1999.

The Stevens kept the original footprint of the house, did a complete mechanical renovation, and restored the rest over three-and-a-half years. They collaborated closely with Betsy Barmat Stires, interior designer and owner of Frog Hill Designs, and Allen Kitselman, an architect, and president and owner of Main Street Architecture.

Fifteen tons of plaster from the drooping ceilings alone were removed from the house – one bucket at a time. The stone was re-pointed on the main house, bank barn, woodshop, former smoke house, former summer kitchen, and former caretaker’s cottage. The last now serves as their guesthouse. The boxes of the original nine-foot-tall windows were all opened and re-roped, the old, wavy glass is still in most windows.

Wood was reclaimed from the interior walls of the barn to build bookcases and an overmantle in the library, to panel the inside of the doorway that the Stevens cut through the wall from the library to the living room, and for two bathroom doors. The basement had dirt and brick floors. The Stevens used that brick to restore a path from the summer kitchen to the main house. “We recycled pretty much everything that we could here,” Andy says.

Glancing at the spindles of their stair banister, Michele says, “Everything the workmen did was by hand. A lot of it just needed serious cleaning.”

The Stevens also created a gorgeous, spacious, state-of-the-art kitchen, custom built by Rutt of DC. It includes a Carerra marble island and counters, butcher block counters flanking a Viking stove, and a delightful window seat with views of the stone barns, verdant back lawn, and meadows beyond, among other amenities.

They added a glorious owners’ bathroom, complete with an extra deep tub and Carerra marble, and flooded with natural light. Additional new bathrooms include vintage wooden dressers converted into sinks, which feel at one with the house.

As they restored their home, the Stevens found long forgotten documents that had fallen behind some of the nine fireplace mantles, including race cards, hunt cards, and a report card dated 1919 that had belonged to Robert Fletcher. It was simply addressed to “The Maples, Upperville, Virginia” with a return address, “The Episcopal School, Near Alexandria, Virginia.”

Remarkably, the Stevens actually have the original handwritten deed for the purchase of the property dated 1835. They also have the original handwritten contract between William Sutton, the builder, and Joshua Fletcher, the owner, which details the cost of construction in 1853. For instance, the graceful “open staircase with pine steps and mahogany railing” cost $40. The one-and-a-half-inch thick, eight-foot-high, four-panel cherry doors throughout their house cost $5 each. The total cost of materials was $1,090, and the total cost of labor was $1,105.18 at that time.

Andy says, “What I’ve always liked about this house is that it’s a very simple farmhouse. There are so many things you can’t duplicate today – the simplicity, the wood, the doors.” Or the original price.

But the smell of honeysuckle, horses, and freshly cut grass is as fragrant as ever. At least some things stay the same.