Belmont's stone horseshoe staircase dates to about 1850, when owner Joseph B. Ficklen expanded the house. Although its wrought iron railing was likely fabricated in Philadelphia or another Pennsylvania community, construction of the stone steps almost certainly involved the Ficklen family's enslaved workforce. In 1929-30, the staircase appeared in Frances Benjamin Johnston's seminal photographic exhibition at the Library of Congress on southern architecture, and her pictures are the earliest known images of the entire staircase. The staircase was included in the inaugural list of Virginia's Top 10 Endangered Artifacts in 2011. A $100,000 restoration project from 2020 to 2022, funded by nearly 30 individual and organizational donors, restored the iron railing and the stone staircase. The staircase reflects the prosperity of Belmont's white owners while also recognizing the enslaved Black people essential to understanding the site's history, alongside the lives of enslaved and free Black people there during the Ficklen family's ownership from 1826 to 1916 and persons of color employed by Gari and Corinne Melchers from 1916 to 1955.