2703 Rivermont Ave

2703

Mrs. Samuel Harriss House

1933

Everette Fauber

--

Single Family / Multi-Family

Dutch Colonial. 1 1/2 story gambrel-roofed Dutch Colonial-style frame house with attached apartment (1955) Historic landscaping intact.

Interview with Frances Harriss on June 15, 2010: Frances Harriss came to Lynchburg during WWII to work in the office of the Craddock-Terry factory where she earned $12.00 a week. She initially lived at the YWCA downtown, “the safest place for a girl to live in those days.” During the war she remembered ration lines were long, power blackouts were a regular occurrence, the city would fill with soldiers from Camp Pickett, and there was a shortage of nurses. Given that, later during the war, she worked as a nurse’s aide at the old Lynchburg General Hospital located at Federal Street and Hollins Mill Road. After she was married she moved with her husband into an apartment on North Princeton Circle and then, in 1955, they moved into 2703 with her mother-in-law. They had an apartment built onto the back to live in until her mother-in-law passed away. She and her husband then moved into the main house and started renting out the apartment in the back. Over the years she often had professors from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College as renters, including Chemistry Professor Muriel Dahlgard and German Professor Linda Thomas. Passionate about art though not an artist herself, she was a long standing member of the Lynchburg Art Club at 1011 Rivermont Avenue, enjoyed many performances and exhibitions at R-MWC and Randolph right across the street from where she lived, and owned Virginia Handcrafts located at the Farm Basket for forty years. As she thought back about her role in the final successful effort to establish the Rivermont Historic District she ended her interview with this statement: “I think getting Rivermont designated as a historic district is one of the most important things I ever got involved in and I’m glad I did.”