In The Middle Of It
Exploring the quaint, rich small town of Middleburg, Virginia
Middleburg, Virginia is in the middle of two things: “horse and hunt country,” which I can barely bring myself to say, and the middle point between Alexandria and Winchester, which is the origin of its name.
A fellow urbanist described Middleburg as weirdly and ostentatiously rich, different from the gaudy but kind of buttoned-up Northern Virginia new money. Maybe that’s true. Middleburg is so rich, it has a nice public restroom:
Middleburg was founded in 1787, which makes it newer than Annapolis in Maryland, or Alexandria, Winchester, or Culpeper in Virginia.
As is often the case with places that have been around for a long time, there isn’t exactly a clear narrative or trajectory. After growing and developing in the early 1800s, Middleburg declined after the Civil War, and it was only in the early 1900s that it found its equestrian and fox hunting identity, which it still holds today and which powers its economy. From a Virginia Department of Historic Resources report:
Middleburg stopped growing by the late 1870s and entered a period of decline, which continued into the twentieth century. According to census records, Middleburg’s population steadily declined during the last decades of the nineteenth century: from 419 in 1880, to 296 in 1900, down to 263 in 1910.
The advent of the Piedmont and Orange Hunts in 1904 helped to jump start Middleburg back into a period of prosperity. The Hunts were founded by a New Yorker named Harry Worcester Smith and several of his New York friends, who also leased the Colonial Inn (old Noble Beveridge House) in Middleburg as a clubhouse. Local interest in foxhunting and horseracing culminated in the organization of the Middleburg Hunt in 1906 and continued with the settlement of well-known equestrians to the area in and around Middleburg. This type of activity attracted investment capital to the area and resulted in a renewed interest in new construction and the preservation of historic buildings. The town, whose population once again began to increase in the late 1920s, succeeded in becoming a seat of international reputation for the breeding, showing, and racing of thoroughbred horses.
Middleburg has continued to grow and prosper since then, while still maintaining a small town ambiance.
More:
In 1932, the Glenwood Race Course was laid out north of town by sportsman Daniel C. Sands, and placed the Middleburg Races among the premier steeplechase meetings in the world. The weekly publication of The Chronicle of the Horse, headquartered in Middleburg, further validates the town’s reputation as the center of the hunt country. The frequent weekend visits of President John F. Kennedy and his family in the early 1960s brought even greater public prominence to the town. More recently, the opening of The National Sporting Library, home of one of the world’s most extraordinary collection of books on turf and field sports, has brought even more distinction to Middleburg.
That’s interesting, because it was the postwar years and the general turn away from old-fashioned urbanism that served as a low point for a lot of American small towns. When I was reading about Culpeper, Virginia, for my piece on that town, there were people saying that in the 1970s and ’80s, Culpeper was in rough shape, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that “quaint Americana Main Street small town” became a tourism selling point. So it doesn’t seem like that happened in Middleburg. The slump came earlier, and the recovery did too, for reasons not having much to do with attitudes about urban renewal or suburbia or small-town nostalgia.
What that means is this: it may be Middleburg’s wealth, combined with its distance from what turned out to be the region’s major population centers, that has preserved its old English village feel. However it is that it still looks like this, it still looks like this:
There was not any edge development in the form of strip plazas and big-box stores to poach local business from Main Street. Unlike most small towns today, Middleburg retains a proper supermarket; one of its newer buildings is this compact Safeway, right in the middle of town. The Safeway dates to 1966, at which time Middleburg was home to two other grocery stores. This is common. What is uncommon is for any of them to still be on a Main Street today.
The main road running through the middle, in that satellite view, is U.S. 50, which serves as Middleburg’s Main Street. 50 will take you from D.C. to Winchester (and from Ocean City, Maryland to West Sacramento, California).
When I say that Middleburg “still looks like this,” what I mean is, this is a legacy small town from the era of the American Founding that still looks pretty much exactly as it looked some time in the 19th century. Not just in terms of its historic architecture, but in terms of its surroundings, too. It’s a small but genuinely urban place with no ring of sprawl at its edges.
This is a place where you can still observe the immediate transition from urban center to working countryside. There are certainly places like this in the rest of the country, but often they’re the sort of places that have lost industry and population. At the edges of a major metro area, it’s very cool that we have a piece of evidence of the way we used to build.
In other words, Middleburg is remarkable not because it is rare, but because it shows us what used to be common.
I’ve been to Middleburg a few times, and have taken pictures over the years, but I drove in recently to take some new photos for this piece. The drive along 50 going west is kind of dismal: expanded lanes, traffic lights every 100 yards (at least it feels like it), new subdivisions and data centers. But eventually 50 narrows back down, and after the tiny town of Aldie and some forests and fields, you pass a few old stone buildings, an Exxon, and suddenly you’re on a Main Street. Which, technically, is Washington Street.
Most of the buildings here are historic, and many of the ones that aren’t look like they are. Part of the urbanist in me sees this and sees something artificial and questions whether it tells us very much if it’s just a rich little town with stick-in-the-mud attitudes about change. But the other part of me—the bigger part, I think—likes that this is here. Even if the people who live here don’t see their own town as making the point I see it making. They might see the merits of being NIMBYish and private and far from the city; I see a tiny city of its own, a living piece of America’s urban heritage, even amid rural surroundings.
From a 2005 New York Times writeup of the town, I noted this:
Like most old-money retreats, Middleburg is a guarded, private place, but visitors can get a glimpse of the horsey life in garden walks and estate tours in spring or at Christmas, at polo games on summer Sundays, and especially at the steeplechase races that draw thousands of spectators in spring and fall.
You’ll come upon no Starbucks or McDonald's in a walk around Middleburg's tidy and tiny downtown, and none are likely to get by the vigilance of its well-financed preservationist guardians.
My favorite photos of Middleburg are these little vistas you get where you can literally see the town end and the country begin. Like I said, this is not impossible to find in small towns, but it is not common in my experience.
Here’s looking away and then back at Washington Street, from the edge of town going east:
A town just appears on the horizon and then ends.
The old auto garage housing a distillery tasting room is probably one of the town’s newer buildings!
I also love the three-dimensionality of small towns: how you can be standing in a parking lot looking at backs of buildings, or in alley between two buildings. A strip mall does not have that element of moving in all directions while outside.
These types of places, in many ways, are “all the same.” And like all seemingly similar things, they have their own histories and stories. But even simply as a visitor, there’s something engaging about a classic town. And when its original context survives along with it—the working countryside—the experience is all the more interesting, for being forgotten or obsolete as a building pattern, but unquestionably American.
Not two minutes outside town, this view opened up.
If this be NIMBYism, let us make the most of it.
Related Reading:
America’s Urban Heritage: Culpeper, Virginia Edition
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Addison, another town near WDC that gives the sensation of being frozen in the past is Sharpsburg MD near the Antietam Battlefield. When I went down Main Street, I got the impression that many of these same houses were there at the time the battle was fought. I also don't think that it has accumulated big box stores on the periphery. Nearby is the unique Washington Monument thrown together by local farmers with dry stone. Looks like a beehive. you will never see anything like it.