Staunton spectator and vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1896-1916, 1910-02-18


"How can such angels live in such
hovels"
Some of the biggest of the early col
onial houses still stand on the banks
of the Potomac and the James, but
many of the houses once occupied by |
famous Virginia families are neither
very large or of distinguished archi-
lecture. White House, the home OF
the Widow Curtis, who brought |
George Washington fortune, is a
good-sized wooden house of plain as
pect. George Washington himself was
born in a rather small and very plain
and the house to which he
was taken as an infant, on the planta-
ton on the Rappahannock opposite
Fredericksburg, was just such another.
One of the early Lee homesteads on
the Potomac not far from Wakefield,
the birthplace of Washington, is a
plain and rather small house. The
famous Nelson house at Yorktown Is
a fine example of Georgian domestic
architecture belonging to the middle
of the eighteenth century, but it is not
a great house tried by the standard of
well-to-do persons of to-day. In fact,
it has but twelve rooms.
All oyer Virginia arelate seventeenth
and early eighteenth century houses,
the homesteads of distinguished fami-
lies, but hardly ones in five is great
house. Few seventeenth century houses
are left in Maryland and the early
eighteenth century houses, whether on
the eastern or the western shore, are
mostly of moderate size.
Only the great landowners built large
houses even in the eighteenth century.
There are few large houses 200 years
old or more in and about Annapolis,
but some of the famous hrick mansions
in that little capital are distinguished
for symmetry and for the beauty OF
their woodwork rather than for their
size.
| There stands in Montgomery county
MARYLAND, one of the seventeenth CEN
tury mansions of the Calverts. The
house is historic. Here George Wash
ington was frequent visitor in col
onial times and there is a tradition
that upon one occasion he took toe
much toddy when visiting the Calvert
of his day.
Famous men frequented the house
for a century and half. Clay otter
visited the Calverts, and it used to bt
said that he wrote out part of his com
promise plan of 1850 in one of the bed
rooms of this house. The mansion is
symmetrical building of brick ant
stucco, handsomely panelled within
and roomy withal, but families to-da.
: that live on $4,000 year or less ar
building houses quite as large:
Beverly, on the Potomac river, is on
of the noblest of Eastern Shore mar
sions, but it dates from the period {
the Revolution, not from the sever
teenth century, and handsome and d
gnified as it is, it does not rank in si1
| with the considerable houses of toda.
| Some of the eighteenth century hom'
| of the same region, once the homes
| local magnates, would not comfortabl
= house moderately well-to-do famil
of this time.
There are few great old houses le
standing in Pennsylvania and almo
one that goes back much beyond Il
middle of the eighteenth century. Ste
ton. the historic mansion on the ed
of Philadelphia, in sight from the B'
timore and Ohio railroad, in an impe
ing eighteenth century house with
gnified rooms and beautiful woodwol
but there are half dozen mode
country houses OF much greater 81
within a few miles of Stenton.
Van Cortlandt Manor House in V
Cortlandt Park is not great house
Philipse Manori House at Yonkers
hardly larger. 1t is in New York
elsewhere in this country, there are
great houses that date much before
revolution. The New York Dutch
not build big houses because they W
not rich enough, and their case
that of most New Englanders and
most Southerners. The early sett
got to cover as soon as they could
there were few even in the second G
Grafton that could afford great hous
When New Englanders became
riched by trade in the period betw
the middle of the eighteenth and
first quarter of the nineteenth centu
they began to build big comfort
! houses. Many were merely enlal
from the early houses. Others,
the huge brick structures at Salem
other seaports, were built new from
foundation, up.
Warned by the fires that destr'
many seventeenth century nans
} the New Englanders who ehrl'
} themselves in whale oil, rum, 81
and the China trade often built
great mansions Of brick. The few
enteenth century houses left in
England are mostly of wood, and {
brick houses still standing are apt
} small. Six or eight rooms, often
feed for a well-to-do sixteenth cen
! family, and when there were
.,oms thew were often rather small