Fredericksburg Parent

22 Fredericksburg Parent and Family • March 2025 Cecil Reid's Reid's Court and Caroline Terrace on Franklin Street in the College Terrace neighborhood are examples of historic designs that could solve today's affordability problems. In 1946, the Book of Houses described the five small pastel- colored concrete block houses at 1420-1428 Franklin Street in Fredericksburg as individually "undistinguished." But all together, the book's authors found the miniature develop- ment of five homes grouped around a shared green space—known as "Reid's Court" after architect Cecil Reid—to be delightful: …by combining them in a pleasing neighborhood plan, the group takes on a character which the individual house does not possess. And a neighborhood of this sort has many advantages in livability which go far beyond the mere pleasant appearance of the structures. With land as plentiful as it is in the United State and with the raw land comprising such a small part of the total cost of a com- pleted house, we may ask ourselves why all our neighbor- hood developments are not so intelligently planned and constructed as the one shown above. Reid's Court was constructed in 1938. It was an original concept in Fredericksburg, but it reflected the early 20th-century "Garden City" movement in urban planning, according to research con- ducted by Michael Spencer, professor in the University of Mary Washington's department of historic preservation, for the Historic Fredericksburg Foundation. "The movement emphasized affordability as well as interaction with green spaces," Spencer wrote in a blog post about Cecil Reid. "Both developments [Reid's Court and Caroline Terrace, which is located next door at 1430 Franklin Street and named after Reid's wife], while vastly different in scale, created neighborhood court- yards that provided residents with community green space free of automobiles, which were relegated to the street or rear of the development." Reid's Court and Caroline Terrace are both approaching 100 years old but are examples of developments that could solve housing shortage and affordability problems that plague Fredericksburg today, experts told the Advance in January. growing up on historic ground WRITTEN BY ADELE UPHAUS Reid Court on Franklin Street, designed and built by Cecil Reid in the late 1930s, is an example of "cottage court" housing. Photo by Adele Uphaus. "If you can take a single lot and group eight cottages on it," said Robert Steuteville, who is director of publications at the Congress for the New Urbanism in Washington, D.C., "it's not only nice socially and a nice environment, but it also reduc- es the land cost for each unit. Then you can factor that in to get a smaller house with a smaller number." Cecil Reid was a forward-thinking residential architect, but he only started designing homes late in his career. His earlier work, which brought him to Fredericksburg from South Carolina in 1906, was designing hydroelectric power plants. He designed the Embrey Power Station, which was completed in 1911, as well as numerous other plants across Virginia. Reid was also responsible for creating the Department of Manual Training at Fredericksburg High School (now James Monroe High School), according to Spencer, and he served on City Council from 1933–1942. According to a 1938 profile in the Free Lance-Star, Reid was a "peculiar type of public official" who "has never asked a person to vote for him." "When he was a candidate for reelection four years ago, as he is today, he made no canvas, no solicitation, and on the day of election, he was away on a trip," the article states. "He received the highest number of votes ever attained in a contested Council election." Reid was only willing to serve, according to the article, because the citizens wanted him. "But I believe that every citizen should put public duty above self for it is through this we can better our community and make the world a bit better for our having existed in it," he told the Free Lance-Star. COTTAGE COURTS

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