323. W. Ernest Dalton House (FY 955)
1209 Clover Street
Contributing, 1914
Like so many of the houses in the West End, the Dalton House has a handsome granite retaining wall and front steps which provide a stately entrance to the house. It is a large two-story weatherboarded Colonial Revival dwelling with features typical of its period, including a hip roof with widely overhanging eaves, a pedimented front dormer, a front entrance with sidelights and transom, and a heavy Classical wrap-around porch with fluted Doric posts, a plain balustrade, and a broad pedimented entrance bay. As with several of the larger houses in the neighborhood, the little-altered interior has a vestibule with doors separating it from the large center stair hall, floors with parquet borders, and a combination of Colonial Revival and Craftsman style mantels.
The house is one of the few in the West End which remains in original family ownership and occupancy. Halter Ernest Dalton purchased the property in 1912, and by 1916 he and his wife, Eleonor, were listed at this location in the city directory. Dalton was one of the owners of Dalton Brothers Tobacco Factory and Dalton Brothers Hardware. One of his brothers, Robert, built the house at the southeast corner of Summit and Fifth Streets, #105. The Dalton’s son, Ernest Berry, who was an employee of Wachovia Bank and Trust Company, became the next owner, occupying the house with his wife, Aleene, and their family. The house is currently owned by their daughter, Barbara Dalton Smitherman.
Garage, Contributing: One of the most unusual features of the property is the two-car rubblestone and concrete garage which is built into the hillside on the Jersey Avenue side of the property. Narrow steps lead up the side of the garage from the sidewalk to the balustraded terrace above. The garage may have been built prior to 1930 and is a significant landscape feature.