CityView Magazine

often includes such mouth-watering selections as: sautéed shrimp with boursin cream sauce, filet of beef with ginger, red pepper glazed shrimp or seared breast of duck with balsamic and blood orange sauce. Belmont has also become known for its holiday dinners around Thanksgiving, Christmas and Valentine’s Day. “We thought it would be fun on special occasions to offer a nice dinner,” Nunnelly said recently, “so we first decided to do our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners … the week prior so we didn't interfere with everyone's family time.” Belmont Village spares no detail for Christmas. The Victorian home is opulently decorated every year, and it’s not difficult to imagine the home’s early days when it was first built in 1840 by Capt. James Andrew Jackson Bradford, commander of the Fayetteville Arsenal. Back then, the house was called Halebron. It’s said that Williams Jennings Bryant once spent the night there, but families called it home until 2000, when Hamilton and Henrietta Underwood decided to move to a smaller house in Haymount. The Belmont Village Tea Room                   28|Winter 2008/2009 reflects the history of tea rooms that were enormously popular during the first half of the 20th century. Even though the traditions of that era are nearly forgotten, tea rooms represent a fascinating aspect of women’s history. Most tea rooms were owned or run by women, as is the Belmont Village. And Belmont Village is home to several other women-owned businesses, including Cake Decorating at Its Best by Donna Foley; Sweet Magnolia Cakes & Cheesecakes; Bowties, Ribbons and Lace and Women’s View magazine. Tea rooms were once the fashionable place for women to meet friends in small towns, big cities and suburbs alike, as is Belmont Village. Yet today’s women are just as likely to meet here for business meetings; Belmont fuses modern expectations to the epic tea room. As the inscription on the Hale sundial reads, “Time passes on, and as each generation makes its contribution, history is made.”CV

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