Ellen Glasgow House - Richmond

The Ellen Glasgow House is located on West Main Street in the Monroe Ward District of Richmond, Virginia.  The Federal and Greek Revival style house was built in 1841 for tobacco merchant David Branch.  In 1846 the house was sold to Isaac Davenport, a member of the Franklin Manufacturing Company, who owned it until his death in 1865.  Davenport’s heirs sold the house to Frances T. Glasgow in 1887.  It is from Glasgow’s daughter, Ellen, that the house gets its name.  Ellen moved here with her family when she was 13 and remained in the home until her death in 1945, inheriting the home from her father in 1916.  She published her first novel, The Descendant, in 1897.  This would be the first of 20 novels she would complete during her life, all but one of which were written here, and most of which revolved around the local Virginia community.  In 1938 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  Her career culminated in 1941 with the publication of In This Our Life which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1942, the same year Warner Bros. adapted it into a movie.  She died here in 1945 and was buried in Hollywood Cemetery.  Her autobiography, The Woman Within, was published posthumously in 1954.  After her death, her brother Archer donated the house to the Virginia Historical Society.  It is now privately owned.  The Ellen Glasgow House was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1971, and added to the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.

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