Bringing one of Norfolk’s oldest homes back to life: The Taylor-Whittle House is 231 years old and has sat vacant for more than a decade.

Not much attention has been paid to the historic Taylor-Whittle House over the past decade.

The home — built in 1791 and one of Norfolk’s oldest — sits at the corner of Freemason and Duke streets, just a couple doors down from the historic Freemason Abbey Restaurant.

The two-story, red-brick, Federal-style mansion was owned by the same family for 170 years, starting in 1802, after being home to a mayor of Norfolk.

It became city property in the 1970s, however, when a Taylor family descendant left it to the Historic Norfolk Foundation, which then transferred ownership to the city. The house served as headquarters for the Norfolk Historical Society and the Junior League of Norfolk-Virginia Beach for decades until 2011, when the city deemed it structurally unsafe and told both organizations to move out.

The building has remained shuttered ever since, said Catheryn Whitesell, Norfolk’s deputy city manager over administration. And it’s continued to deteriorate, with only essential repairs and maintenance work being done, she said.

“The trouble with the city owning historic homes is they don’t compete well with other needed funding projects like schools, flooding and road repairs,” Whitesell said. “We’d like to see (the Taylor-Whittle House) restored and used again but it’s going to take a lot of money.”

While city officials and local historians occasionally bounced ideas around on how to breathe new life into the stately old home over the past decade, discussions started to pick up again earlier this year.

A committee of four Norfolk Historical Society members and four city administration officials was formed and is set to meet for the first time Wednesday to brainstorm how the building can be used again and — more essentially — how to pay for it. Several experts in real estate, historic tax credits, and building preservation also have signed on to help.

“Norfolk doesn’t have many historic houses like this left,” said Bob Garris, the historical society’s vice president and a committee member. “Our first and foremost goal is to save it.”

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The Taylor family

The Taylors were well known in Norfolk’s social, political, and business circles for decades. The first to own the house was Richard Taylor, a British immigrant and importer.

Among the family’s most famous members were prominent 19th century Naval officers like Taylor’s son-in-law, Captain Richard Lucien Page, who accompanied Commodore Perry on his historic voyage to open up trade with Japan in 1854; and Page’s son-in-law William Conway Whittle, the executive officer and navigator of the Confederate blockade runner CSS Shenandoah.

Col. Walter Herron Taylor II, who served as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s chief of staff during the Civil War and is the namesake of Taylor Elementary School in Norfolk’s West Ghent, was another well-known member. He later became a state senator, bank president, railroad executive and a major developer of the city’s Ocean View area.

The house was passed down from generation to generation through the female line, according to city records. The family’s ownership came to an end after Edmonia Lee Whittle — an unmarried and childless descendant — died in 1968 and left it to the Historic Norfolk Foundation to be preserved as a historic landmark.

Whittle’s will, however, instructed that the house not be turned over until two nieces who’d lived there with her had died or moved out. The last of the nieces left in 1972, saying the house was too much for her to maintain, according to a 1989 story in The Virginian-Pilot.

Lydia Taylor, a retired Norfolk Circuit Court judge and Taylor family descendant, is among those who hopes the home will be restored and used again.

Taylor, now 82 and the first woman to be appointed to a judgeship in Hampton Roads, remembers going there for Christmas parties. The house’s street is one of the last remaining in the city made of cobblestone, and was once filled with homes owned by the Taylors, she said. Now, most of the old houses that remain have been turned into law offices.

“It was a really grand place at one time,” Taylor said of the house.

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Falling into disrepair

Despite its condition, the Taylor-Whittle House “ranks among the finest late 18th century Federal-style townhouses in Virginia,” according to city records. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

The home features 13-foot-high ceilings with large, arched entryways and fireplaces framed in marble in nearly every room. Most of the interior remains the same as when the house was originally built, but an expansive kitchen area was added to the back decades ago, as well as a two-story open porch on the east side.

On a recent tour of the house, chipped paint littered the wide-plank wood floors of most every room. A crystal chandelier and a portrait of a girl sat on the floor of one of the main rooms. The kitchen area in the back of the house has a large, gaping hole in the ceiling.

“It’s just a shame to see it continue to slowly deteriorate,” Whitesell said.

Last year, the city tried getting the PBS show “This Old House” to take on the Taylor-Whittle House for one of its restoration projects. A video and application were submitted, but the house wasn’t chosen, Whitesell said.

By the time Edmonia Whittle took over ownership and allowed her nieces to live there with her, the house had already begun to fall into disrepair, Lydia Taylor said. It was sparsely furnished then, she said, and it had lost much of its grandeur.

“They were able to keep it in decent shape,” Taylor said. “But they were three unmarried women who didn’t have a great deal of money. They couldn’t afford all the upkeep a big, old house like that required.”

In addition to instructing that the house not be turned over until after her nieces had left, Whittle’s will also stated that if the house’s new owners were unwilling to maintain it as a historic landmark, it should be reverted back to the Taylor family.

No family member has ever expressed any real interest in taking ownership of it, Whitesell said.

“A gentleman (descendent) came forward about 20 years ago,” Whitesell said. “When he saw the shape it was in, well ...”

Whitesell said that most every time she visits the property, a resident walking by will stop and ask if they can come inside to take a look. She has to say no, she said, because of safety concerns.

Joanne Berkley, who was active in the Junior League when the organization was using the house, said she didn’t understand why the city made the league and the historical society move out in 2011. She thought the house was in good shape. She also questions the high estimates that have been quoted for restoring it.

A study done in 2016 put the price tag at somewhere between $2 million to $3 million. It’s expected to be much more than that now, Whitesell said.

“I think the house is so worthy of being saved and used,” Berkley said. “We don’t have many historical houses left in Norfolk. We’ve been very remiss in our care.”

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com