Suffolk tour shows off homes decked for the holidays

SUFFOLK

A 120-year-old dollhouse, antique circus toys, a well-worn and child-sized rocking chair: These playthings will help visitors celebrate the delights of Christmases past during the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society's Candlelight Tour.

The 35th annual event, Saturday and Dec. 4, will feature the artifacts, historic homes and churches of the city's center.

Most stops are within a walkable three-block area downtown. One of the featured homes offers a peek at toys that belonged to children who lived in the neighborhood.

An antique dollhouse built in the 1890s was for a little girl who lived a few doors away. It will be showcased inside the grand, French Second Empire-style Phillips-Dawson House on Bank Street. The original owner of the dollhouse was Bess Holland Creekmore, the daughter of Col. E.E. Holland, a congressman.

In the weeks before the tour, the miniature two-story structure was lovingly renovated. Members of the historical society painted it inside and out, sanded its wood floors and spruced up its furnishings.

The result is a whimsical child's fantasy: A tiny china cat sleeps on a four-poster bed's coverlet, mouse-sized silver flatware is tucked into its own small silver-cloth wrapper, and furniture - like one gate-leg table- has moving parts.

Other items on loan will show how children once lived. A child's chair on exhibit shows wear on its back and legs where it was turned upside down years ago and shoved along the floor by a toddler learning to walk.

A set of painted circus figures by Schoenhut once belonged to another neighborhood youngster. A horse, three elephants, three mules with most of their leather ears, four clowns and two lady acrobats make up a group that once sold for only 75 cents each, depending on the piece.

The colorful and articulated wooden figures, some clothed, were featured in an ad in The Ladies' Home Journal in December 1917.

"The ringmaster is missing," said Sue Woodward as she examined a copy of the old advertisement.

Woodward, who started this annual tour 35 years ago and who rattles off local history and old-Suffolk-family details as if they were all relatives of her own, jokingly calls herself a "perpetual volunteer."

She is pleased to have the stuccoed Phillips-Dawson House on the tour. Built in 1880, a later portion was added in 1920. The original owner, Horace B. Phillips, was in the lumber business, allowing him to dress the mansard-roofed house with substantial woodwork both downstairs and up.

The central hall, illuminated by leaded glass sidelights around the egg-and-dart-embellished front door, is grand. A sweeping staircase leads to a second-floor landing, a view of Phillips' portrait and that of his wife, Evalyn Whaley Phillips.

During the tour, a horn quintet will play from that vantage point, and a pianist will entertain from the parlor.

The music is a nod to the home's next owner, Dr. Challis Haddon Dawson, and his wife, Yvonne Dienne Dawson. Yvonne Dienne was a French concert pianist. She married the man who courted her in France during World War I and eventually moved with him to Suffolk, where she taught piano lessons in the home.

Her portrait hangs above the piano in the parlor; her husband's can be seen in the study.

Their son, Gerard Challis Dawson, grew up to work at Tiffany and Co. on 5th Avenue in New York for more than 30 years. He left the house to the Suffolk-Nansemond Historical Society after his death in 2002, and it became the society's headquarters.

His gift is both a blessing and a responsibility.

"Soup suppers, croquet parties, English garden teas," mused Woodward, as she ticked off the ways the historical society has devised ever since to raise money for restorations and upkeep.

The home, which Woodward likes to say is on what once was "the coolest street in town," promises to be the source of countless projects for years until it is returned to its original elegance.

Woodward is curious to see what's under layers of paint in the parlor, what the painted fireplace mantels looked like years ago, what its embossed radiators could be if they were refinished.

She hopes tour visitors will take advantage of a variety of vendors that will be on site: dealers in miniatures, a maker of miniature quilts, as well as homemade sweets and baked goods.

After the Phillips-Dawson House, a stroll down Main Street will lead to College Court, a remnant of the Suffolk Female Institute and now part of the National Register of Historic Places. The tour will feature three addresses there: the Brown home, Meechan home, and Woodward home.

Across the street, visitors can visit the home of the Obici Healthcare Foundation.

The brick building, completed in 2010, is a Victorian design constructed to look like the Gay House previously on the same property. Inside is most of the hanging art collection belonging to Amedeo Obici, founder of Planters Peanuts.

A short walk away are four historic churches of Main Street: Suffolk Christian Church, built in 1860; First Baptist Church, built in 1957; St. Paul's Episcopal Church, built in 1895; and Main Street Methodist Church, built in 1916. All will be open for the tour from 3 to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday with live or recorded music.

Also, Main Street Methodist Church will feature an organ recital each day at 4 and will display a 12-foot-tall Chrismon tree - decorated with handmade white and gold Chrismon ornaments made by the church's Needlework Guild.

Heading north on Main Street, visits can enjoy the restored Suffolk Seaboard Station Railroad Museum and Riddick's Folly.

The railroad museum was reconstructed after a fire in 1994 destroyed the building's interior. It reopened in 2000 and is home to items of railroad history, an HO-scale train model that shows part of Suffolk around 1907 when six railroads passed through town, and a gift shop.

Each day of the tour at 5:30 p.m., visitors can enjoy music on its front porch.

Riddick's Folly was built in 1837 by Mills Riddick, who was mocked at the time of its construction for its Greek Revival style, then unusual in Suffolk. During the Civil War the home headquartered Maj. Gen. John J. Peck, commander of the Union forces occupying Suffolk in 1862 and 1863.

One of the fourth-floor rooms still has graffiti left by occupying Union soldiers. Riddick's Folly has 21 rooms and 16 fireplaces. All four floors are open for the tour, including parlors, the library, bedchambers, the dining rooms, the kitchen and gift shop.

Krys Stefansky, (757) 446-2043, krys.stefansky@pilotonline.com