The Evolution of Farmington
One of Virginia’s most historic buildings, Farmington unfolds in layers, with each generation leaving its mark, and each era still visible to those who know where to look.
George Divers, an Albemarle County landowner and merchant who served as paymaster in the 14th Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army, purchased the Farmington property 1785. Two years later, he completed construction of a late‑Georgian side‑passage dwelling that served as his home and forms the historic core of the current building. A longtime friend and correspondent of Thomas Jefferson, Divers’ house was not purely local in its inspiration. Like many Virginians of his generation, he drew on urban models he had seen in Philadelphia, adapting the proportions and plans of town houses there to a rural setting at Farmington.
What stands today is something more complex. It’s a house transformed by Thomas Jefferson, expanded by later owners, and adapted into its present life as a country club. To understand Farmington is to see how a house can change over time without losing the core of its identity.
Around 1802, Jefferson (who was president of the United States at the time) designed the octagonal addition for Divers. The Jefferson Room, with its Tuscan portico and round windows, gave the house a distinctly Jeffersonian profile.
Beyond the new wing, Farmington grew into a working plantation with an extensive set of outbuildings and a covered passageway that recalled Jefferson’s all‑weather passage at Monticello, linking the main house to the stable. Much of this fabric survives in altered form within the present‑day country club, offering a glimpse of how Jefferson’s addition plugged into a larger system of service spaces, even if only the octagonal wing can be firmly traced to his surviving plans.
Divers and Jefferson shared interests that went well beyond architecture. At Farmington, Divers maintained extensive brick-walled gardens and worked closely with Jefferson, growing and testing seeds Jefferson brought back from his travels. Both men were deeply interested in agricultural improvement, including livestock, and Divers collaborated on Jefferson’s broader experiments with imported sheep breeds.
That same spirit of experimentation carried into the house itself. Jefferson embraced the challenges of working with an existing structure at Farmington. He did not replace the original house, but instead extended and improved it. The octagonal room exemplifies his use of geometry to solve practical problems—bringing in light from multiple angles and creating a space that feels both open and structured.
The Jefferson Room is now a single, expansive space, but it was originally divided into smaller rooms functioning as parlor, passage, and dining spaces. Below the addition, Jefferson’s practical side is just as clear. Storage rooms, a kitchen, wine cellars, and barrel rooms were built into the design.
The original Divers house still remains in important ways. Much of the early fabric is still there, including heart pine floors, original window frames, fireplaces, moldings, and the hand-carved staircase.
Farmington continued to change after Jefferson’s addition. In 1852, General Bernard Peyton undertook major renovations, reworking interior spaces and altering the Jefferson wing by dividing its elongated octagonal room into two stories and four smaller rooms. The work has traditionally been attributed to Peyton himself, and no firm evidence links any outside architect to this phase.
In the late nineteenth century, Warner Wood expanded the house again, adding a two-story wing that increased the number of bedrooms and extended the house westward. Importantly, these changes did not erase what came before and the new construction was integrated into earlier elements. Fireplaces remained in place, original openings were preserved, and the house grew by incorporating its earlier forms rather than replacing them. That evolution explains why so much of Farmington’s history is still visible today.
In 1927, the property was sold and converted into a country club, bringing significant changes to the house. Interior walls were removed to create larger gathering spaces, rooms were opened up and repurposed, and spaces that had been private became communal.
Even so, the underlying structure remained intact. That tension between preservation and change helps define the Farmington building today. Earlier elements were adapted rather than being erased. A former exterior wall might now sit inside the house, old window frames mark where the building once ended, and additions from different periods remain visible alongside one another.
Farmington remains a building whose history is visible in its architecture. The original Divers house is still there and Jefferson’s octagonal addition still provides an elegant focal point. Later changes made by Peyton, the Wood family, and during the country club era are all part of the story.
“Farmington is a house you read in layers, and it keeps revealing itself the more you study it,” says Farmington historian Punkie Feil. “What’s remarkable is how much has survived. They kept adding and building around it, and that’s why you can still read the whole history. Every generation changed it, but they didn’t erase what came before.”