A 1930s house in the Rugby-Venable neighborhood has recently been granted Virginia historic status—but to its owner, it’s worth preserving as part of his own family’s history.
The wood-frame and stone house, built in the Dutch Colonial Revival style, was designed by noted local architect Milton L. Grigg. A Virginia native, Grigg attended UVA but left to work on the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. In the 1930s, he set up an office in Charlottesville, where he worked for more than four decades. Among his projects were historic sites including Monticello and Michie Tavern, public buildings like Emmanuel Church in Greenwood, and several residences in the UVA area.
This residence, known as the James Minor House, was designed by Grigg for a prominent local attorney associated with drafting the 1902 Virginia Constitution. The house had several owners over the decades, until it was purchased in the late 1970s by George Theodoridis, a professor at UVA. Theodoridis had a dramatic background: He fled the communist regime of his native Romania for the family homeland in Greece at age 14, coming to the U.S. on a Fulbright fellowship, earning a doctorate at MIT. He and his wife Lilly raised their family in the Minor House; their son Alexander is now teaching political science at the University of Massachusetts…