a large brick house deep within the low-income Afro-American neighborhood to the southwest of Charlottesville's Cherry Avenue off Ninth Street. When, in the Spring of 1997, Jen Fariello and friends sought a house, they looked over the Brick Mansion and fell in love. It was a beautiful mock-Jeffersonian structure, complete with a suspended (or "floating") porch, much like one that collapsed during UVA's 1997 graduation and strange rectangular columns capped by unusual rasterized capitols made of brick. Most impressive of all was the rent: only $700/month. Jen and friends enthusiastically signed the lease and moved in.
Around the mansion is a generous yard populated with large trees. In the back is a large woodlot, most unusual for an urban dwelling.
The lowness of the rent and the spaciousness of the real estate are no doubt related to the demographics of the neighborhood. It seems the economics of property values do not respond to liberal notions of racial blindness.
But the residents of the Brick Mansion of the Hood get along fairly well with their neighbors. Neighborhood children play in the yard and even came to the house to pet the kittens when they were small.
Residents of the Brick Mansion include (or included) such people as:
-
Jen Fariello, local photographer and Downtown Artspace owner/curator.
- Amy Sage, occasional lesbian and otherwise dynamic personality and longtime friend of Jen's.
- Alison, a very mature Jen friend.
- Sam, a buoyant dude who is into videotape, vinyl, things retro and Matthew Hart.
- An environmentalist guy named Jerry.
- God only knows how many cats, many descended from a pregnant Siamese that adopted Jen Fariello and Amy at their old place on Wertland Street.