Some Virginian House Plans Reconsidered

Abstract

To DETERMINE the relative importance of the parts played by tradition, imitation and invention in the design of any building is no easy matter, and the difficulties increase when the building in question belongs-as most of the plantation houses of colonial Virginia belong-in a backwater rather than the main stream of architectural development. Westover, in Charles City County (Fig. 1), and Nomini Hall, Westmoreland County (Fig. 2), are cases in point. If Waterman's restoration of the latter is correct, these two houses were strikingly similar in plan. They were also, as Waterman pointed out,1 strikingly similar in plan-though only in plan-to Queensberry House, London, as designed by Leoni in 1721 and published by him in 1726.2 Neither Nomini nor Westover was begun much before 1730, so there would have been time for Leoni's book to reach the colony. Yet before we accept these as clear cases of imitation, we would do well to ask whether another process might not have produced the same results. We may then prefer to see Nomini and Westover as double piles formed by the duplication of the earlier standard type of Virginian house, with end chimneys and with its ground floor divided into hall, parlour, and central passage. The only innovation, according to this view, is the lighting of the passage or entry (rather unfortunately called by Waterman) by a window on one side of the door-a logical development following upon the enlargement of that part of the house to mansion scale. If we see the plans of Nomini and Westover in this light, we may well hesitate to refer to the typical four-square plan of eighteenth-century Virginia as Palladian, especially when we weigh the many instances of central stairs against the consideration that Palladio only once (in the Villa Ragona at Le Ghizzole) placed the stairs on the main front-to-back axis of a country house. The influence of Serlio, on the other hand, has probably been underrated. The unequal spacing of the windows in the main front of the Governor's Palace at Williamsburg, for example, may be traced back to Serlio,3 though the motif was introduced into English architecture by Sir Roger Pratt. Outside Vi ginia, Mulberry Castle in South Carolina has a plan which could have been suggested by one in Serlio's treatise; 4 if it was not, I would suggest that Scottish influence is more likely to have played a part than the French model proposed by Waterman.5 Similarly, in Virginia but outside our present subject, the College of William and Mar , had its qua rangular plan been completed, might have resembled a plan in Serlio's Book VII pretty closely,6 and at the same time would have resembled-on plan on y-Heriot's Hospital, Edinburgh (based, as Summerson has pointed out,7 on another plan by Serlio) more closely than it would have resembled any college building in England. S ratford, Westmoreland County, which was begun c. 1725, is perhaps the finest Virginian house of the colonial pe iod, as certainly it is the most atypical. It has been s ggested that its plan (Fig. 3) was inspired by the Capitol at Williamsburg, but the differences are fundamental. It has also be n r garded as a Baroque version of the Jacobean H-plan house-such as Vanbrugh's own house at Esher was.8 This will not really do, either. What distinguishes Stratfo d from Jacobean H-plan houses is the open longitudinal axis, through the central hall and the lobbies betwee he chimney stacks. For an H-plan with a corresponding feature we may turn to Serlio's Book VII, Cap. IX, la nona casa della citta (Fig. 4). Here we not only have the same theme, but the shape of one of the lobbies is sure y too close to those at Stratford for the resemb ance to be coincidental; another similarity is seen in the placing of the stairs. Although in elevation this house of Serlio's with its towers on the entrance front does not much resemble Stratford, he placing of the main rooms there on a piano nobile with a high basement below could ave been suggested by it or by any one of a number of ther designs in the same book. For a Virgi ian house of the period of Nomini Hall, Westover and Stratford that was undoubtedly inspired by existing English buildings we may turn to Rosewell, Gloucester County, which was begun by 1726 (Fig. 5). Waterman sought to derive the plan of Rosewell from Cound Hall, Shropshire, built in 1704 to the design of John Prince. In fact its architect, whoever he may have MARCUS WHIFFEN'S new book, The Public Buildings of Williamsburg, Colonial Capital of Virginia, will be published this fall by Colonial Williamsburg.