Historic Fredericksburg Foundation Appealing City Building Official's "Notice of Unsafe Structure" Issued to 204 Lewis Street
Historic structure is at the center of a 2025 Virginia Supreme Court decision and an ongoing case between HFFI and the city.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
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The Historic Fredericksburg Foundation, Inc. is appealing Fredericksburg Building Official John Schaffer’s decision to issue a Notice of Unsafe Structure/Order to Vacate to the owners of 204 Lewis Street in downtown.
The structure is at the center of a December 2025 decision by the Virginia Supreme Court, which remanded back to the Circuit Court HFFI’s appeal of the city’s 2019 decision to permit demolition of the designated historic building.
HFFI argued in that appeal that it was “aggrieved” by the decision to allow demolition of the structure because it has “a direct, substantial, immediate, and pecuniary interest” in preserving it; that demolition would “have a direct and substantial negative impact on the value” of the organization’s headquarters, located 46 feet away at 1200 Caroline Street; and that demolition would “would have a detrimental effect on the ‘overall historic character and feeling’” of the area.
City Council and subsequently the Circuit Court denied HFFI’s appeal, citing the organization’s “lack of legal authority or ‘standing’ to bring the appeal.” In December of 2024, the Court of Appeals affirmed the Circuit Court’s decision.
The Virginia Supreme Court in December of 2025, however, determined that the Court of Appeals was wrong to dismiss the case based on HFFI’s lack of standing before Council, and sent it back to the Fredericksburg Circuit Court with instructions to make its own determination of standing.
The structure in question is an outbuilding built between 1910 and 1912 for John W. Masters, a local lumber dealer, and located at 204 Lewis Street, on the same property as the Charles Dick House. According to research compiled and conducted by Danae Peckler for an article on the structure, it was occupied by Andrew Parker, a Black carriage driver working for the Masters family, and another Black servant, 17-year-old Sarah Carter.
Several months after the Virginia Supreme Court’s decision, Schaffer issued the Notice of Unsafe Structure/Order to Vacate to the property’s owners, Loretta and Brian McDermott. The notice, issued on February 26, states that an inspection carried out on February 13 by an independent engineering firm “revealed characteristics consistent with the active and progressive failure of the structure.”
It acknowledges that the inspection was “limited in some aspects,” but that it found evidence that the retaining wall supporting the structure is failing. The notice orders that the structure be vacated and secured against entry.
HFFI filed an appeal of this order on March 11.
“The structure that is the subject [of the order] is the same structure that is the subject of the Virginia Supreme Court’s December 30, 2025 [decision sending the case back to the Fredericksburg Circuit Court], where the case is now pending,” the appeal states.
The appeal argues that “to the best of HFFI’s knowledge,” there have been no inspections of the structure since the Certificate of Appropriateness for demolition was issued four years ago, but that the City commenced an inspection in February “upon the Virginia Supreme Court’s remand” and using “the same entity that performed engineering analyses on behalf of the property owner in 2022.”
“To the best of HFFI’s knowledge the engineering firm did not disclose its prior representation of the property owner as required by State regulation,” the appeal states.
In a statement, HFFI preservationist Danae Peckler told the Advance that, “The structural integrity of the frame building at 204 Lewis Street and masonry retaining wall wasn’t the pressing crisis the City claimed it to have been four and five years ago—yet they are now charging forward to demolish this contributing historic resource without any new or substantial evidence. This rush looks like an attempt to circumvent the pending circuit court decision on HFFI’s standing to protect the property while the Supreme Court remand is still unresolved.”
The Local Board of Building Code Appeals will meet on April 13 to decide on whether to uphold HFFI’s appeal.
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