Negotiating Purcellville’s Identity

By Adam Stevenson

Walking Orchard Lane, or Nursery Avenue, or 32nd Street, or G Street, or any of the town’s old streets around dusk, and especially in the summer, is a meditation. The landscape to the west gently rolls up toward the Blue Ridge, and the sunset plays over a set piece of deep blue and green that gradually fades to a shimmering dark—washing over your soul and settling it.

Wandering around Purcellville at this hour is to find 21st Street gently active at its downtown poles—Bia Kitchen and the American Legion on one end, and Magnolia’s at the other. Lingering there, you may see the occasional group of people strolling south towards Main Street, perhaps heading to Gruto’s while light-heartedly passing judgment on the car’s sitting at Purcellville Motors. 

If you head west on Main Street from 21st Street the activity quickly subsides, and the quiet deepens. You could turn down Orchard Lane, continue around Nursery Avenue, or walk down Hatcher Avenue. There are many routes one may take, but all, at this hour, will be equally quiet. And this relative absence may be something of a companion to you. At this moment, you may even begin to reflect on the town’s identity. You may find yourself trying to justify this identity, defend it, or simply understand it. 

What makes up a place’s identity? A non-exhaustive summary of its constituent parts would surely include the undeserved and unmade part, the part delivered by a sort of landscape-level grace, and the endlessly negotiated built environment, and of course the people who live out their lives in the built and natural environment; the people identifying themselves with both.

However, it would be inaccurate to think of the current residents of a place as the only people involved in securing and constructing a place’s identity. For there’s an obligation to, and dependency on, those who came before us.

And what about our responsibility to the place’s future residents? What will we leave them? How long do we expect them to be here—and for what reasons? Will the stories we tell about this place make sense to them? Is there any flexibility in these stories, and in our identity? As a tentative response, following is a mix of theoretical and specific suggestions on this theme.

First, we should approach our individual conception of Purcellville with some amount of flexibility and openness. We should love it and relate to it with the obligations our lives and affections require of us, while allowing the town to change, to grow, to assume new shapes and forms. Importantly though, such change should be directed by us, and though the forms may change gradually, we should strive to preserve the essence amidst change.

I’ve come to see Purcellville as an eclectic place that never took itself too seriously. This is perhaps partly due to it being a ‘late bloomer,’ at least relative to the old Quaker towns scattered throughout the Loudoun Valley. Because of this, the town doesn’t have a recognizably colonial architectural style—I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a building in quite the same architectural pattern as White’s Palace. 

This eclectic nature, I believe, allows Purcellville to continue to experiment with new architectural forms, even as these styles draw inspiration from its graceful historic monuments—including Bethany United Methodist Church, Purcellville National Bank, and the Queen Anne-style Walter Hirst home on Main Street.

Second, the town should lean into the parts of its identity that are most self-evident. One of Purcellville’s clearest comparative advantages is the fact that the W&OD trail ends in town. The town should be a pedestrian paradise. Currently, however, there aren’t any dedicated bike lanes in town and there are too many missing sidewalk connections. The town should remedy this and install rectangular rapid flashing beacons at as many pedestrian crossing points as is feasible while constructing raised crosswalks at especially important connections.

Third, the town should prioritize infill development in a way that promotes graceful density. Row houses, low-rise apartments, and accessory dwelling units should all be part of the housing mix.

Fourth, the town should ensure that those cultural amenities (libraries, parks, schools, etc.) which provide some of the most tangible benefits of proximity, are kept within the town. 

Loudoun County recently purchased Chuck Kuhn’s property west of town and intends to build a recreation center and library at the site. Although the property is contiguous to the town limits, there is currently no sidewalk access on Main Street west of Rt. 690 South. 

By contrast, Purcellville Library’s current location is eminently walkable and well-loved, and an essential part of our built environment. If the library is relocated, such a development will only further contribute to the low-densification of place which makes it all but impossible to have walkable, bikeable, and environmentally sustainable communities—and to live in a place in a real and meaningful sense.

Finally, as the Purcellville Planning Commission works to create a more intuitive form-based zoning code, the town should also consider developing a master street plan, detailing its preferred road network. 

This should not be confused with County plans for a Northern Collector Road, which crudely imposes the highway bypass concept on a small town, in effect strangling it and freezing development in suburban limbo. A master street plan, done right, can ensure that any future annexation and development follows the contours of a walkable community in that public rights-of-way are, to quote urban planner and lecturer Luke Juday, “organized with maximal intersection density to allow the shortest possible trip destinations” for pedestrians.

Acknowledging that a place’s identity is collectively constructed, we can strive to honor our place’s past, present, and future identities by preserving the essence of Purcellville and Western Loudoun while allowing the forms to change gradually and gently.