Charles B. Holt Rock House

Charles B. Holt was born in North Carolina in 1872. Eventually he moved to Charlottesville, where he worked as a carpenter, locksmith, and umbrella and furniture repairman. Holt became proprietor of his own repair shop and, in 1916, bought property at 115 4th St. NW in Vinegar Hill, the city’s prominent African-American business district. In 1917, he married Mary Spinner, at which time he also purchased property on Preston Avenue. This property lay directly across from the land which would become Charlottesville’s all-black Washington Park. Holt’s Preston Avenue property had been three of the thirty-two adjacent lots owned by a prominent African-American barber and real estate developer named John West. The Rock House was officially listed on the Virginia Landmarks Registry and National Register of Historic Places in the spring of 2006. The Legal Aid Justice Center also received the Public Preservation Project of the Year Award from the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Thomas Jefferson Branch.