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Branch House in Richmond, Virginia, was designed in 1916 by the firm of John Russell Pope as a private residence of financier John Kerr Branch (1865–1930)〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Find A Grave )〕 and his wife Beulah Gould Branch (1860–1952).〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Find A Grave )〕 The house lies within Richmond's Monument Avenue Historic District, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1967. Branch House itself was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.〔 The district's status was extended in 1989 and subsequently upgraded to a National Historic Landmark in 1997.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = LivingPlaces.com )〕 After a Branch family heir gifted the home to a local charity in the 1950s, the house changed ownership several times until it was purchased in 2003 by the Virginia Center for Architecture Foundation and reopened in 2005 as headquarters of its successor, the Virginia Center for Architecture (VCA), offices for the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects (VSAIA) and its publication, ''Inform'' magazine, and an architectural museum. As of 2015 the former residence is known as the Branch Museum of Architecture and Design.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Branchmuseum.org )〕 ==Background== John Kerr Branch was born in Danville, Virginia,〔 to Mary Louise Merritt Kerr (1840–1896)〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Findagrave )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Cornell University Library )〕 and John Patteson Branch (1830–1915), both originally of Petersburg, Virginia. The elder Branch was a noted Richmond banker, investor, financier and philanthropist. On his death in 1915, the ''New York Times'' called him the "Nestor of Richmond Bankers."〔(【引用サイトリンク】 work= The New York Times )〕 John Kerr Branch grew up in Richmond and attended the McGuire School, subsequently studying in Paris and Germany (1882–1884). At age 21 he began clerking with his father's firm, Thomas Branch & Company. Branch invested successfully in real estate and railroads;〔 ultimately inherited his family's banking fortune;〔〔 and became director of the Continental Insurance Company of New York (chiefly involved with Southern cotton mills and railroads) and the Petersburg Savings and Insurance Company. He became President of Merchants National Bank of Richmond (having founded the bank in 1871);〔 President of Thomas Branch and Company, later Branch & Company, (1837–1976);〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Virginia Historical Society )〕 and President of Bankers and Brokers, Richmond.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Findagrave )〕 He was a member of the New York Stock Exchange and in addition to numerous Richmond clubs, also a member of the New York Yacht Club and the Downtown Association of New York. Branch met Beulah Frances Gould in Germany on a retreat in the Black Forest.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = VCU Oral History Archive )〕 Both Quakers,〔 they married in 1886〔 at the Gould family's rural estate, ''Elmwood,'' at Quaker Hill, Pawling, New York,〔 and subsequently had three children: John Akin (born 1887), Zayde Bancroft Branch (born 1891), and Louise Branch (born 1900).〔 Branch had already begun a career as an avid collector at age 19, when he acquired two 16th-century chairs. He and his wife Beulah later became widely known as collectors of Italian Renaissance paintings, furniture, tapestries, woodwork and armour.〔〔 For the design of their new home, they began working with the firm of John Russell Pope in 1914,〔 well before the firm's noted commissions in Washington, D.C. At the time when the Branches commissioned the home, Pope's firm had just won the competition to design Richmond's Broad Street Train Station, just two blocks to the north〔 on land owned by Branch's father near Monument Avenue's Jefferson Davis memorial.〔 The elder Branch gifted an entire city block to his son and daughter on condition that they build their homes there.〔〔 John Kerr built on one half of the block, and construction was complete in 1919〔 at a cost of $160,000,〔 roughly the equivalent of $19 million in 2010. The Branches lived "seasonally," maintaining ''Elmwood'', their farm estate at Quaker Hill, Pawling, New York〔 and later also acquiring a 15th-century Italian Renaissance villa near Florence (Villa Marsilio Ficino in Fiesole).〔 Branch House was their winter home.〔 John Kerr Branch died in Fiesole on July 1, 1930, at age 65 of bronchitis,〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = The New York Times, July 1930 )〕 and was buried in Richmond. Beulah Gould Branch continued to live in the home until her death in 1952. Their daughter, Zayde Branch Rennolds (Mrs. Edmond Addison Rennolds Sr.) subsequently gifted the home to a Richmond charity.〔 A decade later, in the late 1960s, their granddaughter Zayde Rennolds Dotts (Mrs. Walter Dotts, Jr.) created the Monument Avenue Preservation Society to protect the surroundings of the home her grandparents had commissioned.〔(【引用サイトリンク】 publisher = Richmond Times Distpatch, Sept 29, 2007 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Branch House」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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