Violet Bank served as Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's headquarters beginning on June 17, 1864, at the start of the siege of Petersburg, after Lt. Col. Walter H. Taylor established it there. In 1864 the house was surrounded by tents and busy with couriers, officers, and aides, while a nearby turnpike and railroad let Lee travel quickly to Richmond to confer with Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who visited on June 30. From Violet Bank, Lee heard the explosion that opened the Battle of The Crater on July 30 and rushed to the front to direct the Confederate counterattack. After three months, Lee moved his headquarters to Chaffin's Bluff on August 15 and later to Petersburg, both to be closer to the front and because U.S. artillery had found the exact range and sometimes shelled the yard. Union troops briefly occupied Violet Bank after Lee evacuated Petersburg on April 2-3, 1865. Taylor recalled Lee's field headquarters as an unpretentious arrangement of five or six army tents, burdened by constant paperwork and day-and-night couriers, yet marked by camaraderie between Lee and his staff. The site's first house was built about 1796 by Thomas Shore and burned in 1810; the present dwelling was completed by Shore's widow in 1815 and reflects Richmond domestic architecture influenced by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, with three-part bays, intricate woodwork, and elaborate plaster ornamentation based on designs from Asher Benjamin's American Builder's Companion (1806). From 1947 until 1959, Colonial Heights Post No. 284 of the American Legion was based here.