A black-and-white print hanging on the wall of Larry Chattoo’s spacious kitchen features some instantly recognizable song lyrics: I said a hip, hop, the hippie the hippie to the hip hip-hop and you don’t stop… These are the iconic first words of “Rapper’s Delight,” the 1979 hit by the Sugarhill Gang that first introduced hip-hop to the mainstream.
Across the room, on a bar stocked with a well-curated collection of bourbons, two stern 19th-century portraits of a white man and woman are displayed alongside coasters depicting icons such as Prince and Snoop Dogg. The photos are of the home’s original owners, George Washington Veitch and his wife, Margaret Birch. They seem at odds with the rest of the décor—especially when one learns that Veitch was a Confederate officer during the Civil War. He built the two-story farmhouse in 1865, the year the war ended.
Acknowledging this history is all part of how Chattoo has made peace with the ghosts of the Arlington house he bought in April 2023.
During the Civil War, Veitch was court-martialed for public drunkenness, so Chattoo thought it only fitting to acknowledge George and Margaret at the bar. He keeps a sense of humor about the twists of fate that brought them all to this place at different points in time.
Chattoo was born in Trinidad and Tobago, immigrated to Brooklyn as a child and eventually joined the Marines, serving in the Persian Gulf and in Okinawa, Japan.
After five years of military service, he went to college (William & Mary) and then law school (University of Southern California) and became a practicing lawyer. He is now a longtime executive with Bank of America. On the side, he performs as a DJ for festivals and special events.
“When I come in and I pour myself a drink, I kind of raise a toast to George,” he says. “I’m like, ‘George, history has brought us together at this moment. I’m sure you never would have imagined that I would own your house. And I’m going to do my best to preserve it.’ ”
The Veitch-Thomas house, as it is often called, is one of the oldest extant dwellings in Arlington. Margaret Birch Veitch was the great-granddaughter of Samuel Shreve, a Revolutionary War officer. At one time the Shreve, Birch and Veitch families owned a significant amount of land in what is now the Bluemont neighborhood near Ballston. Their holdings included several residences, but Chattoo’s clapboard farmhouse on North Jefferson Street is the only one that remains.
Its enduring presence is something of a miracle, given how much Arlington’s landscape has evolved over time. George and Margaret’s daughter Julia married Judge Harry Randolph Thomas, and Julia is notable for founding Arlington’s first Girl Scout chapter. The Thomas family owned the house throughout the 20th century, but by 2008 it had been acquired by a developer. Preservationists worried it would be demolished and the large lot subdivided.
That’s when Chattoo’s good friend Carrie Hartgen purchased the derelict home and began significant renovations to make it livable for her family. “It was like an unkempt frat house, with paneling on every wall, red shag carpeting and a groovy 1960s kitchen infested with mice,” Hartgen recalls. “There was just something that I saw in it.”
In the years that followed, the house was at the center of a tight-knit group of Bluemont families that included Hartgen, her two daughters and her fiancé, Chris Laughlin (himself a descendent of a Union officer), and Chattoo, who lived down the street with his kids.
But once her girls were grown, Hartgen laid plans to move with Laughlin to South Carolina. It was a good time to sell, she says, and Chattoo was the right buyer. His marriage had ended and he was house hunting.
“Larry was a beloved member of the neighborhood,” Hartgen says. “I knew he’d be a good caretaker.”
Chattoo worked closely with Arlington designer Samara Goodman to furnish the interiors with nods to Black history and the house’s storied past, as well as his own background and interests.
The front room, located in the oldest section of the house, has the most period touches; however, they are designed in a way that subverts the parlor’s Confederate legacy.
A stenciled ceiling motif by Arlington artist Pam Nemfakos mimics the star from the official Juneteenth flag. A throw pillow is upholstered in “Harlem Toile,” a pattern by New York designer Sheila Bridges that reimagines the narrative of the French Romantic period by depicting Black people in aristocratic garb, frolicking in pastoral settings.
The bold, graphic pattern in black-and-white drapery references Chattoo’s affinity for graffiti art—the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, specifically. Two Victorian-style chairs, reupholstered in a modern bright yellow, pop against a vinyl checkerboard reproduction of a 19th-century floor cloth. A sock on one chair leg honors Gabriel Perez, the Arlington furniture dealer Goodman worked with to source the chairs, who is known to put socks over chair legs to protect them upon delivery. Perez is part of the LGBTQ+ community and a Mexican immigrant. Chattoo wanted his story to be part of the house, too.
The rocks of the original foundation are still visible in the basement. Whenever he descends the stairs with Black friends to share this aspect of the home’s history, Chattoo says they instinctively touch the boulders, knowing who often carried the rocks and laid the foundations in 19th-century Virginia.
“So, we have this moment,” he says. “It means a lot for them to be like, ‘And now you own this house.’ ”
Kim O’Connell writes about the past and present from her circa-1942 home in Aurora Highlands.
The Project
Renovated in: 2008 and 2023
Year Built: 1865
Neighborhood: Bluemont
Square Footage: 2,213
Interior Designer: Samara Goodman, Samara Interiors