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The Restoration of Williamsburg
by Mark R. Wenger
The
restoration of Williamsburg is a mammoth undertaking that began in 1927 and
continues today. The prime mover behind this enterprise was Dr. William A.R.
Goodwin, then rector of Bruton Parish Church. Dr. Goodwin had first come to
Williamsburg in 1903. Fascinated by the town’s old buildings and historic
past, he launched a one-man campaign to restore the old church, a feat that
he successfully completed in 1907. 
In
commemoration, Goodwin published a short book titled Bruton Parish
Church Restored and Its Historic Environment. He expressed his
concern for the historical ambience of the entire town, pleading that citizens
should halt what he regarded as “the spirit of ruthless innovation which
threatens to rob the city of its distinction and charm.” Shortly afterward,
he left Williamsburg to accept the pastorate of St. Paul’s Church in Rochester,
New York. However, in 1923 he returned to Williamsburg and was eventually reinstated
as rector of Bruton Parish Church.
In the years since his departure, telephones, electricity, and worst of all,
the automobile had arrived in Williamsburg. Service stations and a string of
utility poles down the center of Duke of Gloucester Street had appeared as permanent
fixtures in the townscape. While these look harmless enough today, they must
have multiplied Dr. Goodwin’s fears that the old town’s charms were
being sacrificed in the inexorable march of progress. “Williamsburg,”
he noted, is a “canvas [whose] tokens and symbols of a glorious past”
are rapidly disappearing. With an increased sense of urgency, Goodwin began
to search for a solution. During his sojourn in New York, he had conceived of
and nurtured a grand vision of restoring not just a few key buildings,
but all of Williamsburg to its eighteenth-century appearance. Restoration on
such a scale was unprecedented, and would require enormous financial resources.
Mindful of this, Goodwin solicited Henry Ford about the possibility of funding
such a project, pointing out that it was Ford’s automobiles, after all,
which were threatening to do the town in. Evidently, Mr. Ford wasn’t impressed.
But
John D. Rockefeller, Jr. was impressed. Goodwin had met Rockefeller
in 1924 at a meeting of the Phi Beta Kappa society in New York City. It was
two years later, though, when the society met in Williamsburg, that Goodwin
introduced Rockefeller to his adopted town.
Impressed with what he saw, Rockefeller asked that he be left alone to stroll
about the town. During the course of his afternoon walk, Dr. Goodwin’s
dream of a restored colonial town laid its grip on Rockefeller. That night at
dinner, Goodwin’s new patron authorized him to hire an architect who would
prepare sketches of Williamsburg as it might appear following restoration.
As a result, Goodwin engaged the Boston architectural firm of Perry, Shaw &
Hepburn to begin the task. Working at night to avoid alarming residents of the
town, Dr. Goodwin assisted William G. Perry in charting the town’s layout,
property lines, and buildings. By 1927, preliminary drawings illustrating restoration
of the entire town were complete, and Rockefeller instructed Goodwin
to proceed with the acquisition of some key properties. The restoration of Williamsburg
was underway!
To
the men and women involved, the task was a labor of love. Immediately, they
found it necessary to collect source material on architectural precedents to
be used in their work. Working on weekends and holidays, eager draftsmen fanned
out over the countryside to collect data on Virginia’s eighteenth-century
buildings. In many cases, the fruits of these expeditions were put to immediate
use. The rapid pace of work in the drafting room demanded constant labor in
the countryside.
Equally urgent was the need for information on the history of the town and the
individual buildings that were to be restored or reconstructed. To meet this
need, a small group of historians began the mammoth job of culling the historical
record for relevant information. Through the efforts of these dedicated historians,
an immense body of data, now taken for granted, was assembled over an amazingly
short period of time.
The importance of this research to the restoration is clear when we consider
the reconstruction of the Governors’ Palace that occurred over a four-year
period between 1930 and 1934. As with other buildings scheduled for restoration
or reconstruction, 
voluminous
research notes were compiled relating to the Palace and the various governors
who lived there. While the entire picture of the Palace emerged only after numerous
bits of information had been assembled and analyzed, there were five basic sources
from which the essential form and appearance of the Governors’ Palace
were determined.
Among the most important of these sources was a dimensioned floor plan of the
Palace made by Thomas Jefferson in 1779. This sketch was discovered among Jefferson’s
architectural drawings, and associated with the Governor’s Palace prior
to 1916. The plan allowed an accurate interpretation of documentary and archaeological
evidence and, as one would expect, it provided a basis for the reconstructed
plans of the building’s first and second floors.
In
December 1929, Mary Goodwin discovered in England an eighteenth-century engraved
copper plate depicting among other things, the College of William and Mary,
the first Capitol building, and the Governor’s Palace. Because it afforded
carefully drawn views of all three early public buildings, this engraving remains
one of the most important finds made during the entire restoration effort. From
it came nearly all information available on the external appearance of the Palace,
its advance buildings, and the surrounding scheme of plantings.
Also discovered during the early stages of research was a map of Williamsburg,
made in 1782 by a French military cartographer. Now referred to as the “Frenchman’s
Map, this document offered crucial information concerning the layout of the
Palace grounds and outbuildings. The gardens and major outbuildings visitors
now see were reconstructed in general accordance with this map.
Exciting
new sources continued to turn up. In September 1930, Ms. Goodwin located an
estate inventory for the Governor’s Palace made after Lord Botetourt’s
death in 1770. Found among records at the Virginia State Library, this minutely
detailed document provided a room-by-room listing of both his Lordship’s
personal effects and of the building’s publicly-owned contents. Assisted
by the inventory, the architects were able to identify more than twenty-five
rooms and spaces on the site.
During the preceding summer, archaeologist Prentice Duell had excavated the
site of the Governor’s Palace, uncovering the foundations of the main
building and its immediate surroundings. These and subsequent investigations
permitted a synthesis of existing documentation and provided valuable information
bearing on the layout of the grounds and detailing numerous architectural features.
From these five sources, architects assembled the primary facts concerning the
general form and appearance of the Governor’s Palace.
Bringing together this evidence to recreate the front elevation of the Palace
was one of the really outstanding achievements of the reconstruction project.
The copper plate, of course, showed the general appearance of the building.
Because Thomas Jefferson included the room heights of the first-and second-floors
on his measured plan, it was possible to establish the front facade’s
vertical dimensions with an unusual degree of accuracy. The exact elevation
of the first floor, with respect to the ground outside, was calculated using
the rise of the steps at the building’s west entrance. This floor elevation
was then checked against the reconstructed height of the cellar vaults, and
proven correct.
Archaeology
provided amazingly detailed information about the character of the building’s
brickwork. From intact fragments of masonry, the architects deduced the bonding
pattern, rubbing details, and joint treatment used by Palace bricklayers more
than 250 years earlier.
By 1934, the College of William and Mary had been restored, and the Governor’s
Palace and Capitol had again risen from their old foundations. As in the early
years of the eighteenth century, these great structures became the centerpieces
of a new beginning—a first step that would ensure the future of a brave
new enterprise. Gradually, as surviving houses were restored and missing buildings
reconstructed, the street-fronts between these monuments were transformed.
In many cases, surviving buildings had been so radically altered over the years
as to obscure their identity as colonial period structures. One of which is
the Margaret Hunter millinery shop [millineryshop.jpg]. Only a trained eye would
have recognized the eighteenth-century brickwork of the store’s side walls.
Quite often, the old buildings had been enlarged in some fashion—in this
case with an extension nearly as large as the original house. When such extensions
were early features, or unusually fine examples of later work, they were allowed
to remain as can be seen at the Coke-Garrett House. The portion at the left
was erected during the latter decades of the eighteenth-century. Those in the
center and to the right were added shortly after 1837.
A
few of the town’s eighteenth-century dwellings had survived the centuries
in nearly unaltered condition. Such was the case with the house, once owned
by the Reverend John Bracken, Rector of Bruton Parish Church from 1773 to 1818.
As can be seen this house was virtually intact at the time of its restoration.
The house of Robert Nicholson belonged to a tailor mentioned earlier as living
among other tradesmen in the [Benjamin] Waller suburb. This house had come through
the nineteenth century with few alterations, besides the installation of a window.
Most buildings, though, bore numerous accretions, often dating from the Victorian
era. At the Brush-Everard House, was a veranda erected during that period with
its characteristic jig-sawn ornament. Porches of this kind usually provided
a usable area on the upper level of the house. As a result, it was common to
find a second floor window enlarged for access to the upper porch deck. In Williamsburg,
this alteration was almost universal among houses having an added porch. As
one house after another was restored, the porches and second floor doors began
to disappear.
In the years preceding the restoration, many buildings had disappeared entirely.
In such instances the findings of archaeologists and archivists proved extremely
useful. For some structures, such as Shields Tavern, there were room-by-room
probate inventories which assisted in the interpretation of architectural evidence.
In
other cases, drawings, paintings, or even photographs provided invaluable evidence
about the appearance of structures long since vanished. Sources of this kind
were crucial in reconstruction of the John Crump House.
Just up the street, was the Scrivener House. It is what we call a side-passage
dwelling, since the hallway runs down its side, rather than through its middle.
An old photograph was an important source of information, enabling reconstruction
of the dwelling as it appears today . . .
Photos were also used in the reconstruction of the Printing Office. Next time
you are near the Printing Office, notice the positioning of the building’s
windows and doors—an arrangement that was typical for structures serving
as shops or stores. The right-hand door led into a square, unheated room (the
retail area) where stock was displayed and transactions were handled. Through
the left-hand door was a smaller, heated space usually called the “counting
room,” where the merchant kept ledgers and account books. The retail area
is lit by two windows arranged symmetrically on either side of the main door;
the counting room is lit by a single window. This seemingly random jumble of
doors and windows tells us, then, that the structure was originally built for
commercial use.
There
were other ways of packaging this same form. Often the long axis of the building
was turned perpendicular to the street, with the heated counting room behind—not
beside—the retail area. As a result, the chimney stands at the rear of
these buildings. This is noted at the Prentis Store [Prentis.jpg], one of the
best surviving eighteenth-century commercial buildings in Virginia. Except for
the front wall, the brickwork of this structure, and most of its exterior trim,
were more or less intact when restoration began in 1932. At the time, this building
was serving as a garage and gas station. Seen in the light of an old photograph,
Dr. Goodwin’s objections to automobiles in Williamsburg would seem to
carry greater credit.
Throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, the restoration work continued. During
World War II, building activity came to a temporary halt. At war’s end,
however, the work was resumed, and has continued to the present day.
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