Mayhurst: the John Willis House, Orange, VA

Photo: Wikimedia

Drawings from HABS

This plantation house, one of the most exuberant I have seen, is in Orange, Virginia. It was built in 1859-1860 for John Willis, a relative of President James Madison who named the house "Howard Place". It passed through various owners before it was renamed "Mayhurst" in 1902. The house follows the symmetrical plan with a hip roof and cupola and is faced with wood that has been cut to simulate stone, an elegant and costly effect. The house may have been designed by Norris G. Starkweather, who designed a similar house that I have featured, Camden, nearby. The embellishments to the design and the inventiveness and variety are characteristic of his style. Another candidate is Charles Haskins, another architect in the area. Regardless of who designed it, it is definitely the product of the architect rather than the carpenter/builder. 

The symmetrical house features central gables on each side. The basement is brick with paired windows. The first floor features paired, shallowly arched windows with balconies and simple hood moldings. The front door is arched with a glass surround and is fronted by an unusually simple three bay porch that could be a later replacement for another porch. The second floor is where the eccentricities arise. The flanking windows are Palladian, an unexpected choice. They have a bracketed hood molding, and the center panel features Venetian tracery. The second floor side windows mirror the central panel's tracery and shape. The central window on the front has two arched windows supporting a large 'rose window' with spoke tracery. In essence this is a sort of exaggerated Venetian tracery, and is a very uncommon shape especially for a private home. I have only seen examples of this type of window on churches and public buildings, so its presence in a private home is noteworthy. On the sides, the rose window is repeated under the gable with a drippy hood molding. 

Approaching the third floor, the cornice is undulating and is pierced by small windows. The brackets are of the c and s scroll type and are placed in a somewhat odd pattern with one at each corner, then pairs, then two small brackets framing each window. Each gable is topped by an anthemion, a stylized palmette. These cut out appliques are also found on the impressive cupola. The cupola has an odd manifestation of Palladian windows with a pointed central window and flat flanking ones. The cornice follows the window line and is gabled, reflecting the general form of the house. The cupola roof is fantastic; it is bulbous and forms one giant spire that has cut out decorations ascending to it. The color choice for the house, all white, is unfortunate because it flattens out the details in a way that makes the house look more dull than it is. In the early 20th century, the way people handled Victorian exuberance was to tone it down with monochromatic paint schemes, which are not at all period appropriate and reflects a disdain for Victorian ornament and design. The house is currently a bed and breakfast; a look on their website will show you some interiors.

HABS has a plan on record for the house:

Camden: the William Pratt House, Port Royal, VA

Camden, Port Royal, VA. 1857-59 Photos: HABS

When we think of plantation houses, our minds usually conjure up Greek Revival mansions surrounded with white columns. The truth is, however, that though they are not as common southern plantations can be Gothic or even Italianate. They run the gamut of styles. Camden is a particularly well documented example of an Italianate plantation house. Constructed by William Pratt between 1857 and 1859 after he demolished his family's Colonial house, Camden is a star example of southern Italianate plantation architecture. The architect was Norris G. Starkweather, an important architect in Philadelphia and Baltimore who was responsible for the design of the Backus house in Baltimore. There is a certain similarity to these houses. The house is a symmetrical plan mansion, which originally included a tower which was destroyed during the Civil War. The plans show how the tower was integrated into the design at the back of the house, appearing as a large cupola from the front. After the war, the tower was not reconstructed, but Starkweather's elevations for this house survive. The siding is flush board, giving a smooth surface appearance.

The house is beautifully composed and detailed. The front facade is three bays with a central gable; all the gables in this house have semi-circular windows in them, a throwback to Federal design. The first floor windows are tripartite Greek Revival windows. Above them on the second floor, pairs of segmental arched windows flank a tripartite round headed window with a taller central panel, just like we saw in the Backus house. The right facade continues the segmental arched windows and is three bays, but the center features a tombstone window united under an arch, making it appear like Venetian tracery. While the hood moldings are very simple, they resemble the Backus house in the elaborate jigsawed rococo motifs over the windows. The right facade also has a unique feature, a massive bay window conservatory with Venetian tracery windows. The first floor is mostly surrounded by a large wraparound porch that is bracketed with trefoil flat topped arches and that features square posts elaborated with chamfered edges and inset panels. The cornice is also elaborate with paired double s-scroll brackets, finials at the bracket ends, drops at the base of each bracket, and long receding dentils. I particularly like how a bracket was cut carefully so that where the cornice breaks on the facade at the gable, there is a bracket in profile. From the plans it appears that balustrades and palmettes topped the porches and the bay window, but these must have been removed.

The tower was truly a lovely piece. The stump of it remains on the back of the house. From the designs, the base of the tower had an arched door like the front door that had a glass surround. The second stage copied the front as well with a triple arched window. The third stage was separated by a belt course and had semicircular windows that had jigsawed scroll work above them. The top of the tower had highly elongated brackets that filled the entire upper story. In the center were Palladian windows with balconies. The cornice had an arch in the center of each side that had anthemia (vegetable decorations at the peak of a gable) and palmettes. The whole was covered with a hip roof and an impressively tall spire. The tower would have been beathtaking and was certainly envisioned as the pearl of the entire composition. If anyone's looking to blow some money on a historic restoration...

Another interesting feature is the left facade of the house that has the servants' wing. This is simpler in detailing but nonetheless grand. A porch faces the front of the house. But the side has a reversal of the house's formula, with segmental arched windows on the first floor and round headed ones on the second. A pedimented door with a bracket surround (an interesting feature we have noticed in this area) is in the center bay. Another quirky detail are the paired tombstone blind arches on the chimney. The house betrays the careful thought and design of a real architect from tower to chimneys. Along with the Backus house, they remain two interesting Italianate works for this architect and deserve to be considered alongside each other. The interior also remains intact and retains some of the family's original furniture. All the following pictures are from HABS, and it is worth a look at their 38 photographs online.

Note how the triple arched window on the front is repeated in the doors of the front hall. Also the glass surround for the door is a particularly impressive specimen.

The parlor still has its original furnishings. The oval mirror is impressive!

Even the gasolier light fixtures are in place. This shows also the finely crafted plaster ceiling medallions.

The Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA

The Dodson-McKenny House, Petersburg, VA. 1859 Photo: Among the Ruin

Photo: Wikimedia

This house, across the street from the Ragland house, is another fine example of Italianate architecture in Poplar Lawn, a neighborhood named after a green park around which some wealthy Petersburg families grouped their homes in the late 19th century. The house was built in 1859 for John Dodson, a mayor of Petersburg. It was later owned by William McKenney, who donated it as a public library in the 1920s, a function it still serves today, although a new library is planned. The house is a five bay house that is particularly severe in its decoration. The design has some Anglo-Italianate influences in the closely spaced brackets, the classically detailed porch, and the simple surrounds. The cornice as well is very plain with some dentil molding and a strip serving as the architrave. The house is stuccoed without belt courses or other dividers between floors; the lack of definition in the basement (no rustication or belt course or anything) is surprising. The basement windows and those on the third floor are segmental arched, while the first floor has tall round headed windows. Each window is topped by a simple cast iron hood molding; the first and second floors include a keystone.

One thing I like about this house and have seen only in a few others (an example in Savannah comes to mind) is the tripartite window over the entrance that has flat sidelights and a segmental arched center. In essence, this is a sort of watered down Palladian. It is an uncommon window format, but an attractive one to me. Another thing to notice is the paired arched windows on the side. I've noticed that the Ragland house as well as some others have only two round headed windows in the center on the side. Perhaps this is another element of the Petersburg style. The house includes some servant outbuildings. Petersburg should be proud that many of its homes retain their original outbuildings. The current use as a library seems to have left the interior intact. One writer talks about the romance of wandering through the maze of shelves crammed in this house and about the experience of being surrounded by Victorian bric-a-brac as an enhancement to their library experience. One hopes that even if a new library is constructed, this house will remain a public building. There are a couple interior views here and here.

The Reuben Ragland House, Petersburg, VA

The Ragland House, Petersburg, VA. 1856 Photo: R. W. Dawson

This house at 205 Sycamore Street in Petersburg is part of the Poplar Lawn historic district. It was built in 1856-7 for Reuben Ragland, whose family is responsible for a variety of Italianate and Greek Revival homes nearby on Sycamore Street, a fashionable residential address in the 19th century. The house is a symmetrical plan house with a hip roof and cupola. It is a four story Italianate, which is not particularly common outside of row houses. Thus, the house is a grand expression of the owner's wealth in its imposing size. The house probably takes its height from the other Ragland houses on the street which seem to be just as tall. The facade is rather plain, being a brick cube, but it is enlivened by details. The porch spreads across all three bays of the front facade, an odd choice for this type of house, and has impressive Corinthian columns with a bracketed cornice. The porch sits very low to the ground because the house does not sit on a high basement, which creates a strange effect for a grand house. The first floor windows on the front are Greek Revival tripartite windows. Their treatment with simple stone lintels perhaps represents a conservativism to the design. The other Ragland houses are more Greek looking than Italianate. The front door is Italianate with complex pilasters framing it.

The upper floors are pure Italianate. The central windows which are both taller and wider than the sides, feature Venetian tracery. The flanking windows vary between segmented arches on the second floor and round arches on the third, a variation we have seen in Petersburg. Despite the third story, we can see this house follows the pattern of the Scott and Williams houses in having larger windows flanking the door on the first floor and above the door on the second floor. All the upper windows are topped with cast iron hood moldings that feature in different places, egg and dart moldings and keystones. The cornice is simple in design with paired brackets of c and s scrolls. The cupola is also simple, although it has a triple row of windows with a larger central section. A view of the side of the house shows that there is a small enclosed hyphen with an undulating cornice connecting the house to a back building. One outstanding feature of the house is the windows themselves. A look at the house shows that there is an odd complexity to the tracery in the windows, which resemble typical Queen Ann tracery. A picture from an old website for the bed and breakfast that currently inhabits it, shows that the windows have beautifully etched stained glass, an impressive and very rare treatment. This was probably an addition of the 1880s, but it is a particularly beautiful feature.

The site for the Ragland Mansion Bed and Breakfast shows a great deal of the interiors which are very well preserved with some of their mid 19th century design intact.

The James M. Williams House, Petersburg, VA

The Williams House, Petersurg, VA. 1879 Photo: R. W. Dawson

This house, a few lots down on South Market Street, was constructed, according to its NRHP nomination in 1879 for James Williams, a grocer and mill owner. The house features the same window treatment as the Scott house, part of the style of Petersburg's Market Street. The Williams house, however, was constructed over twenty years after the Scott house, reflecting the continuing popularity of this composition and of Italianate well into the 1880s. Like the Scott house, it has a symmetrical plan, but here the central bay projects from the facade and is topped by a gable. The cornice is paneled, and the regularity and elaborateness of the panels reflects its later date. An interesting aspect is that under the triangular gable cornice's architrave curves, a very interesting mixing of shapes. The window treatments are far simpler, being confined to stone hoods. The house sits on a high basement with a stone belt course. Ironwork balconies connect the double windows on the first floor and ironwork is present above the porch too, which in its bulbous column composition reflects 1870s design. This house provides an excellent foil for the Scott house, showing some of the changes taste can create when applied to an older precedent.

The A. L. Scott House, Petersburg, VA

The A. L. Scott House, Petersburg, VA. 1858 Photo: Wikimedia 

The next few posts will be looking at Italianate house in Petersburg, Virginia. Petersburg, despite a bevy of economic problems, was a major manufacturing center before the Civil War and maintained its prosperity into the 20th century. South Market Street, which is a registered historic neighborhood, was one of the city's most fashionable addresses from the 1840s to the 1900s. Many Italianate homes were built on the street, although it seems the most impressive have been demolished. The Scott house is one of the grandest survivors.

This house, built according to its NRHP nomination in 1858 for A. L. Scott, a clothing merchant, displays an arrangement of windows that seemed particularly popular in this area and might represent a type of Petersburg vernacular. The arrangement consists of paired round headed windows on the flanking bays of the first floor and in the central bay of the second floor with segmental arched windows on the flanking bays of the second floor. The arrangement creates a triangle of double round arched windows on the facade. It was once more prevalent, since a mirror of this house was constructed across the street. The house is of the symmetrical plan with a hip roof and cupola that has pilasters and tombstone windows. It is faced with stucco but has wooden details, except for a brownstone belt course between the first and second floors. The window surrounds are wood, and consist of simple eared moldings with carved keystones. Two interesting aspects of the windows are that there is an oval panel inserted in the center of the double windows, and the segmental arched windows have a blind balcony beneath them. The paired windows on the first floor also have connecting balconies.

The cornice is paneled and is almost Anglo-Italianate with its thickly placed brackets. On the sides of the house, windows are placed in the paneled frieze. We have often seen that the sides of the house are more likely to include frieze windows, perhaps because on the front an unpierced frieze looks more monolithic and impressive. The porch echoes the simplicity of the cornice with wooden paneled columns and a simple cornice. A truly outstanding feature is the oriole window on the left facade, which, though not unprecedented, is a real rarity. It is delicately composed with segmental arched windows, panels, and a bracketed cornice. It is strangely the only window on that facade. Perhaps the neighboring house was too close; often in urban settings there will be less windows on a wall that is very near to someone else's house. Other goodies include a lot of the original ironwork, a carriage house, and a surviving heated outhouse. Outbuildings, when they survive, are always an important aspect for any Italianate house in understanding its original relationship with the property. The house is well takencare of and is currently the La Villa Romaine Bed and Breakfast. Their website includes some interior images.

The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA

The Swann-Daingerfield House, Alexandria, VA. 1802/1833-99
Photo: Wikimedia.

Photo: Wikimedia.

The Swann-Daingerfield house is the third house I am exploring in Alexandria. The house has gone through many interesting changes over the years. It was built in 1802 as a Federal style house by Thomas Swann. In 1833, it was purchased by Henry Daingerfield, who proceeded to remodel the house to suit changing fashions until it was purchased in 1899 by a Catholic School. The house is currently a private home after a stint as student housing for medical students. Although it has a shallow mansard roof, like the Kellogg house, it was probably remodeled as an Italianate before it recieved any Second Empire notions. One way to tell whether a cornice was designed for a mansard roof is to look at its depth. A very deep overhanging cornice is more characteristic of Italianate design that a mansard has been added to; a shallower cornice was probably added at the same time as a mansard. This cornice is certainly too wide for it to have been added with the mansard. Daingerfield owned the house from 1833 to 1899, a long span in which he probably made changes to suit prevailing tastes and to allow him extra space. The house is beautifully detailed. It follows the five-bay plan and is faced with brick that has been painted a bluish green.

The cornice is of particular interest. Although the brackets, horizontal moldings, and dentils are common enough, the architrave molding, instead of being broken by the brackets into horizontal segments, curves sinuously around them, creating an interesting, almost Spanish Baroque, pattern. The window surrounds are also a treat. They are jigsawed so that their rectangular shape is enlivened by suggestions of brackets and ears; they are topped with a dentiled cornice, which is curved on the central window. These seem to be characteristic of Alexandria; another house nearby also has similar cut-out window surrounds. The porch is interestingly designed on this house. Instead of just surrounding the central door, it covers the central three bays. Additionally, the posts are spaced and the stairs are built so that there are wider openings in front of the windows flanking the door where one walks up the steps. The central section is divided into two smaller bays without stairs. This diffusion of the porch ascent from the center to the sides can be seen in some fancier examples of Italianate, and it seems to me this suggests grandeur. The design of the porch is simple, consisting of arches and panels in the spandrels with carved cartouches serving as the keystone; the porch looks similar to that on the Marshall house. Although I am not sure about when the stylistic changes were made, I would guess they occurred sometime in the 1860s. I believe this partly because of the elaborate nature of the forms, which are, however, not as complex as one might expect from an 1870s remodel. The roundness of the porch arches also is a more 1850s/60s design; in the 1870s segmental arches and filleted rectangles were more popular.

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA

The John Marshall House, Alexandria, VA. c.1850 Photo: Wikimedia.

The John Marshall house was formerly the neighbor of the Vowell-Smith house on Wolfe Street in Alexandria. It was built around 1850, was used as a hospital during the Civil War, and was, in 1927, made a synagogue (certainly a bizarre sanctuary choice!). Unfortunately, the house was demolished in 1961 for the construction of several smaller houses, depriving the Vowell-Smith house of an important contextual element. I only have this single photograph of the house from Wikimedia. It is an interesting example; following the irregular plan, the house appears to be faced with brick with stone and wood detailing. The tower on this house breaks through the cornice line, giving the house a great deal of vertical thrust; this verticality is softened a bit by the projecting balconies on the third stage of the tower. The use of double rectangular windows in the tower (the cornice-bracket combination looks almost identical to some of the windows on the Vowell-Smith house) and a fourth stage with tombstone windows is odd. The tower is much taller than the usual three and a half stages found on most towered Italianates, and the finial at the top increases the sense of height. Many Italianate towers and cupolas were originally topped with wooden or metal finials. These, as one might expect, tended to rot or decay, so they remain somewhat rare today. This one looks particularly interesting because the pointed finial is seemingly supported by four curving s-scrolls at its corners.

The house has an interesting mix of ornamental schemes. While the arched windows in the tower and gable and simple arched porch are securely Italianate features, the window hood moldings appear to be in the Gothic idiom. The hood moldings are pointed and extend slightly at the ends, which is a Gothic feature. I suppose the architect or the client simply couldn't decide on one style or the other. Another interesting feature is the way the door surround at the base of the tower projects slightly and has a blind balcony on top. Visually this provides continuity with the decoration of the particularly large porch without actually having the porch wrap around the tower. Oddly, the porch seems not to have had a balustrade on top, a feature one might have expected in a house like this. The hip roof is also strange; it seems to be steeply sloped near the cornice line but flat on top, making it almost a proto-mansard. One other odd thing is that, although I cannot see the other side of the house, there appear to be no bay or box windows, which is almost expected in any Italianate, especially one of this size. The house is an interesting specimen, particularly for its Gothic features. It was certainly a grand Italianate with its tall tower and luxurious trimmings, and it's unfortunate for its surviving neighbor that it didn't last. There is a carriage house visible in the image that I provide a close-up of below.

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA

The Vowell-Smith House, Alexandria, VA. 1854

Alexandria is a city famous for its impressive Colonial and Federal architecture, but the city also has some excellent examples of Italianate that can be overlooked when exploring George Washington's town. One of the houses I posted in Springfield, 383 Union Street, reminded me of this house in Alexandria, VA because of its entrance with a surround of oversized brackets. The Vowell-Smith house also has a resemblance to the Brearley house and Henderson Hall type in that it is a three story symmetrical plan house with a projecting center bay and a pediment. This house was built in 1854 by Francis L. Smith, a lawyer, on a quarter of a block he inherited. The house was built on Wolfe Street, which by the 1850s had been so improved that several people built impressive mansions on the street, and the Smith house was one of the most impressive. The ornament on the house is grand without being bombastic. The cornice is made of simple stepped brackets and large dentils, which interestingly are not hanging from a molding but are simply flush with the board above them. The brackets are paired in the same way as the Brearley house; doubled brackets accentuate the corners while single brackets mark the placement of the windows. The windows are doubled on the front facade topped by two brackets and a cornice; on the third floor, the tombstone windows are arched with Venetian tracey and eared molding surrounds.

This treatment only applies to the front facade; the side facade looks almost Greek Revival with its simple windows, plain lintels and shutters. The house was obviously designed to impress from the front angle, but economy was employed on the sides. In the simpler sides, one can see the influence of Alexandria's Federal architecture, since, except for the cornice, the design is reminiscent of late 18th and early 19th century designs. The door surround has doubled s-curve brackets and finials like those at 383 Union St., but these are much simpler in the carving and shape with only raised swirls for decoration. The flat roof and the length of the windows above the overhang suggest there was originally a balustrade making this a balcony. Two notable features are the balustrade on top of the hip roof where a cupola might be expected, and the survival of the elaborate iron fencing around the property and the iron balconies on the first floor. The posts of the fence are even topped with what seem to be original urns. The following images by me illustrate a couple of the details.