Groundbreaking set for $37M joint Charlottesville

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For several weeks this winter and spring, the yard of the long-gone Swan Tavern was an archaeological site where some of the oldest history in the state was was getting uncovered. However, gravel has been poured over this downtown dig, and on Wednesday, a $37 million Charlottesville-Albemarle courthouse is slated for its official groundbreaking there.

"After more than 23 years of discussion, the renovation and expansion of the Courts Complex Project downtown will break ground on the first phase," reads a statement from Albemarle County.

While this new building may gratify court officials, who have long yearned for additional space, news of the groundbreaking is landing with a bit of a thud among some in the history community.

The $37 million project on Court Square would reuse the former Levy Opera House and build a new structure for Charlottesville's and Albemarle County's general district courts.

"It just seems like a god-awful shame when there's a lot more we could learn," historian Rick Britton told The Daily Progress.

Britton said that Swan Tavern was much more than a watering hole for weary travelers. He said that it functioned in tandem with the smaller hewn-log Albemarle County Courthouse as the seat of state government during the American Revolution.

"For a few weeks in May into early June in 1781, that was the capitol of the entire state of Virginia," said Britton. "Both houses of the legislature were meeting there trying to deal with this British invasion."

Britton was among the historians encouraged by the reports of as many as 10,000 artifacts emerging via the excavations by Rivanna Archaeological Services. In late March, however, the county imposed a gag order on the archaeologists. The clampdown seems to extend even to architects.

Contacted by the Progress, Eric Amtmann of the Charlottesville-based firm DGP Architects said that county policy forbade him from discussing his new design. Fortunately, documents that he and his partners filed with the BAR, the Board of Architectural Review, share some of their vision.

The new two-story structure, designed in partnership with Fentress Architects of Denver, will rise on the lone south-of-High Street block of Park Street beside an 1861 building commonly referred to as the old Levy Opera House.

"The primary cornice is slightly lower than the Levy and thus deferential to the historic structure," the architects wrote to the city's Board of Architectural Review in August.

From Court Square, visitors will approach the complex via a large brick plaza featuring an ellipse outlined by blocks of bluestone and six thornless honey locust trees.

Distinctive features of the new building include taller-than-average floor heights and a modern metal portico supported by four slender steel columns. A trio of metal solar screens near the cornice offers the promise of reduced summertime glare in the interior.

Within the portico, the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows are "butt-jointed," which means that just a thin bead of clear silicone will separate the glass panels to make the structure "more transparent and open to the public."

The plans also call for renovating the adjacent former opera house and demolishing its 20th-century additions. In all, according to a fact sheet, the size of the new and renovated space will measure 58,850 square feet. Rockville, Maryland-based Grunley Construction has taken a role similar to a general contractor but named in the plans as design consultant.

A new joint courthouse building will rise between the Levy Opera House, left, and the Redland Club, which now occupies part of the footprint of the long-demolished Swan Tavern.

The Swan Tavern began appearing in local records in the 1760s, became associated with John Jouett Sr. by 1773 and was still standing in 1781 when his son, John "Jack" Jouett Jr., made a famous midnight journey. This Paul Revere-styled ride carried the younger Jouett over a back road from Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa to warn the Virginia legislators of the impending British advance.

Charlottesville's preservation planner Jeff Werner has submitted a grant application to the state Department of Historic Resources to fund an analysis of some of the thousands of bits of bone, pipes, ceramics and other relics that the archaeologists uncovered.

"An in-depth analysis," Werner wrote, "would inform about the general diet, food preferences, food preparation, butchering practices, etc. providing insight into the type of work performed by free and enslaved labor, as well as tavern fare and cultural practices."

Hawes Spencer (434) 960-9343

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UVA board member wants ideology tracked; David Cross at the Paramount Theater