Metzger House (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the house once stood. No visible remains exist.


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Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

The Metzger house is one of two early structures still standing on the site of the old port town of Colchester, which was established in 1753. This house and Fairfax Arms both face the old King's Highway right-of-way which was, until about 1805, the main road from Alexandria to Williamsburg.

In 1759, Alexander Henderson, a prominent merchant in Colchester and Alexandria, built a house on the property numbered lot 15. The chain of title is incomplete, but the property was purchased from the Muir estate in 1831 by Lewis Weston (Deed Book Z-2, page 284), and is still in the hands of Weston descendants. Mr. Metzger, the present owner, made major alterations to the structure in the 1920's. The roof was raised, two wings were added on the back and a porch was added on the west side. The 10 foot square front porch was replaced with a porch the full length of the front. He sold a plain wooden mantel and replaced it with brick. He believes the random-width floors upstairs are original. Each piece of flooring is grooved on both sides and separate tongue pieces join the floor boards together. The west chimney matched an opposing chimney (now gone) on the east side. They were both built on stone rubble foundations with the upper portions of brick worked in Flemish bond. Small windows flank the chimney at the attic. According to architectural historians Worth Bailey and Russell Jones, in 1959, only a few features, including wainscoting and some siding, remain of the original structure. There is an old brick-lined, dug well in the yard, similar in construction to wells at the Fairfax Arms and Mount Air properties.