It is a large 2+1⁄2-story, hip-roofed, Italian Villa style dwelling with a two-story rear service wing connected by an arcade.

Dunlop planted tobacco there, eventually more than doubled his land holdings, and constructed Ellerslie, a large plantation house that boasted a mosaic floor and an inner dome with frescoes.

Young, a native of Belfast designed Ellerslie in 1856 as a country house for the wealthy industrialist whose primary residence was in Petersburg.

At noon on May 9, the 63rd Tennessee Infantry occupied hastily dug rifle pits around the mansion as part of the Confederate reserve.

When Union skirmishers advanced to a fence line about 600 yards from Ellerslie, two Tennessee companies pushed them back.

Dunlop continued to reside at Ellerslie during the conflict and died, following a stroke, on May 25, 1864, leaving an estate including his tobacco factory, land and slaves valued at more than $652,000 (equal to over $10 million in 2019).

On the night of April 2, 1865, with the fall of Petersburg imminent, fires illuminated Ellerslie and explosions rocked the house as commissary supplies and munitions were burned at Dunlop's Station nearby on the Richmond & Petersburg Railroad to prevent them from falling into the hands of Federal forces as Jefferson Davis, his Cabinet, and the Confederate defenders abandoned Richmond and fled south.

[3][4] In 1910 Dunlop's grandson, David Dunlop III, engaged the Richmond architectural firm of Carneal and Johnston to extensively remodel the Ellerslie mansion, in a fanciful version of the Bungaloid style that was then popular, retaining the house's basic structure and tower but replacing the original flat roof and castellated parapet with a hipped roof and dormers.