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One of Tim the cat’s favorite spots, this sunny sitting area reminds homeowner Zarina Fazaldin of her favorite sitting room in her childhood home in Tanzania.
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Fazaldin and her Newfoundland, Bonnie. The framed black-and-white photographs are by Dale Quarterman.
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The kitchen before renovation
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“Anyone entering my home, I want them to know who I am,” says Fazaldin, whose apartment is decorated with mementos of her African and Indian heritage, her world travels, and her friends’ art.
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Photographs and documentation gathered from community members helped Fazaldin and her team restore the Dr. William Henry Hughes house to its original 1915 appearance.
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The exterior of the house today
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Fazaldin's business partner, Lonnie Shifflett, used the trolley for his tools before giving it to Fazaldin for her bar.
When it was built for Dr. William Henry Hughes in 1915, the mansion on St. James Street was unlike any other house in Jackson Ward, where Italianate, Greek Revival, Federal and Victorian-style rowhouses prevailed. The spacious Colonial Revival style of the residence — which would have been more at home on the North Side or in Woodland Heights — was a testament to the burgeoning success of the Black community.
Zarina Fazaldin was intrigued in 2005 when she first saw the house, which was designed by Charles Thaddeus Russell, the first African American architect in Virginia, and built by Black craftsmen. But it wasn’t until Historic Richmond approached the preservationist/developer in 2016 about buying it that she fell in love with the home.
A committed preservationist, Fazaldin and her business partner Lonnie Shifflett (L&Z Historic LLC), have rescued more than 30 derelict historic homes in the Jackson Ward, Carver and Woodland Heights neighborhoods over the past 20 years, developing them into affordable housing units. Her focus is to preserve and honor the African American history and heritage of the communities.
Although no stranger to the immense challenges encountered during historic restoration projects, she says that the condition of the Hughes house was so bad — it was on the city’s imminent endangered list — that friends thought she was crazy to take on the project.
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The mask is by local artist Danny Finney. The sisal rugs and concrete floor remind Fazaldin of home.
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The living room before renovation
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The eclectic furnishings include a pair of antique Spanish chairs and a Sam Forrest coffee table. The painting is by Catherine Venable, and the outfit on display is from India.
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The new en-suite bath was designed within the parameters of the preexisting floor plan — the shower was placed where a closet had been — and the window was added.
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The laundry room, which was placed in one of the '50s-era institutional bathroom spaces, includes a large dog shower for Bonnie.
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The laundry area before renovation
It was the history of the house that spoke to her. Dr. Hughes had a prominent role as the doctor who led the Black community through the 1918 influenza pandemic and was the personal physician to Maggie Walker and other affluent Jackson Ward residents. The Hughes family donated the house in 1952 to the Negro Training Center for the Blind, the only school for blind African Americans in Virginia. Finally, the house was a neighborhood community center before it was boarded up in the 1970s and neglected.
Then there was the underlying beauty of the original architecture, which despite the building’s condition was evident to Fazaldin. That the original house and medical office had been designed by Russell, the architect of Maggie Walker’s St. Luke’s Penny Savings Bank and many other buildings on Richmond’s Black Wall Street, was a bonus, as was the expansive open space in the 1952 three-story, midcentury-modern-style school addition.
I like minimal. I like functional. My design needs to flow.
—Zarina Fazaldin
“When I came and looked at this place, it was like … wow!” Fazaldin says. “I could develop two areas — the original house, which gave me the opportunity to maintain the old and historic, and the open modern space, where I could create what I really love, an open floor plan with my living, my kitchen, my dining all in one place. It was one of the main reasons for me to purchase it.”
The roof was caving in, the porches were missing, and there was extensive termite and water damage, to name just a few of the issues with the structure. Undaunted, Fazaldin conceived a plan to create a small affordable-housing complex with apartments for herself and three others, and she purchased the building.
To undertake the top-to-bottom restoration and preservation of the original house and 1950s structure, Fazaldin and Shifflett worked with Historic Richmond, following the exacting construction requirements for historic tax credit projects.
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The current chair of the Richmond Folk Festival music selection committee, Fazaldin frequently hosts guests from out of town. The blue and white color palette and minimal furnishings offer a serene welcome.
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During the renovation a long-hidden skylight into the attic was uncovered and restored, and an en-suite bath and walk-in closet were added.
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The attic before renovation
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Taking advantage of every inch of usable space, Fazaldin tucked a little craft area under the attic eaves.
Shifflett and their crew took the house down to the studs to preserve and strengthen the building envelope. Using documentation and photographs provided by members of the community as their guide, they rebuilt the missing porches and restored the stairs, fireplaces and a newly uncovered skylight.
Because the footprint of the original house had been altered during its conversion from residence to school, Fazaldin’s design had to preserve a little of both. (When working with historic tax credits, you must keep the original layout of the space, so things like walls can’t be removed or added if not in the original plan.)
The second floor of the Hughes house — now part of Fazaldin’s private apartment — had been altered by the school. Walls had been removed and plumbing added to transform the bedrooms into two very large, institutional bathrooms. To maintain historic tax credit project standards, Fazaldin incorporated those spaces into the designs for her primary bedroom and guest suites. She added a sleek modern kitchen and great room in the 1950s-era addition, where she was required to keep the industrial aesthetic of the room, painting the original cinder-block walls a pristine white and restoring the metal-framed windows.
In 2021, Fazaldin and her team received the Golden Hammer Award for Best Restoration from Historic Richmond and Storefront for Community Design for the work done to save the Dr. William Henry Hughes house.
“My design focused on being functional,” Fazaldin says. “I like minimal. I like functional. This is very important to me. My design needs to flow. The challenge became — in this big space here with the concrete floors and block walls — figuring out how to create a place that will be sophisticated, nice, and warm and cozy.”
