Clermont: Portrait of an Evolved “Virginia” House

CLERMONT HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT CHAPTER 5: ARCHITECTURAL DEVELOPMENT A. Introduction: Scratch the surface of almost any of Virginia’s surviving substantial 18th-century houses, and a complex story of expansion and reinvention is likely to emerge. Many of the state’s most revered residences, such as Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and George Washington’s Mount Vernon, fall into this category. The construction histories of these famous buildings epitomize the natural trend, found throughout Anglo-America, of owners expanding their homes, upgrading finishes and furnishings, and rearranging the surrounding landscapes, all in the name of the changing dictates of fashion and according to their means. As members of the highest level of Virginia’s planter elite, Jefferson and Washington had the knowledge, the resources, and the incentive not only to alter their homes in this way, but they also followed international design models and strove to meld the phases of construction behind the now iconic neo-classical façades. Less prominent owners erected less pretentious houses, such as Thomas Wadlington’s Clermont, which nevertheless underwent many of the same types of changes that occurred at the dwellings of their more famous and affluent neighbors.1 Over the years, the subsequent owners of Clermont made a variety of modifications – such as adding a kitchen in the 1770s and a dining room in the late 1780s, erecting and replacing partitions and moving doorways to create a new central passage a few years later, and repurposing interior spaces and attaching multiple generations of porches, then adding on even more rooms -- all according to evolving needs. These changes all were aimed at creating a more comfortable, up-to-date, and fashionable abode, appropriate for its owners’ role in polite society – either actual or only aspired. But where others were more successful in incorporating the modifications to create a unified assemblage to belie the additive nature of the building campaigns, Clermont’s complex construction history is laid bare, readily apparent to anyone inclined to view it with a critical eye. It was not until 1971, when the penultimate private owners of the property, Mr. and Mrs. Edward McCormick Williams, built the final major addition onto the house, that the many disparate elements were blended into a more or less cohesive whole. Even with the many modifications that were made over time, abundant evidence for the earlier conditions remains intact, and the entire house is a remarkably well preserved palimpsest of architectural evidence and a fascinating cultural artifact. As a result of closely examining the well preserved structural elements, and by conducting a program of dendrochronological testing that is unprecedented both in its scope and in its success in dating multiple building episodes, it has been possible to assign precise dates for the various major phases of construction, generally to within a given year.2 Page 5:1 CLERMONT HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT Image 5.1: This graphic illustrates the different phases of construction that occurred at the main house, smokehouse, and slave quarters based on dendrochronology and other investigations. Page 5:2 CLERMONT HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT Built in 1756, Wadlington laid out his house in a traditional three-room plan, and with an overall appearance and method of construction that would have made it right at home in Jefferson’s Albemarle County or Washington’s Fairfax, or almost anywhere else in the Chesapeake region, for that matter. The 1779 account of Thomas Anburey, an English army officer stationed in America, testifies to the ubiquity of the basic building style that by then had been adopted from one end of the colony to the other: “[Virginia] houses are most of them built of wood, the roof covered with shingles, and not always lathed and plastered within, only those of the better sort are finished in that manner, and painted on the outside; the chimneys are often of brick, but the generality of them are wood, coated on the inside with clay; the windows of the better sort are glazed, the rest have only shutters.” With a stone foundation, brick nogged walls and masonry end-chimneys, five attic dormers and glazed window sash throughout, a clipped gable roof, and plastered and painted interiors (although with a largely unpainted exterior), Anburey almost certainly would have considered Clermont the type of house that was appropriate for the “better sort.”3 Over the course of the 18th century the wealthier members of Virginia society increasingly selected full masonry walls as their most favored type of construction. In certain portions of the region, such as the Shenandoah Valley, the ready availability of high quality building stone further encouraged its widespread use. The more durable character of masonry also made those structures more likely to survive than even the most carefully constructed frame house, and as a result they are significantly over-represented in the catalogue of extant early buildings. Evidence in the form of a sample of almost 300 houses that were advertised for sale in the Virginia Gazette between the years 1736 and 1780 provides more context for considering Clermont’s place within Virginia’s 18th-century built environment. Buildings made up of wood with masonry components were by far the most popular type of construction found in the ads, comprising almost 77% of the total. At roughly 600 square feet in size, Wadlington’s dwelling was almost exactly in the middle of the range, with 52% of the houses listed below 620 square feet. With only three rooms on the main floor, Clermont again followed the norm, with 50% of the houses listed having three or fewer rooms (31% with two rooms, 19.4% with three).4 Houses with two or three first-floor rooms were a popular choice for Virginia home owners from all levels of society for much of the colonial era. In most instances, one of the rooms, known as the hall, was substantially larger than the other(s). The hall served as a multi-purpose living space, accommodating cooking, eating, sleeping, and a variety of other household chores. The hall was accessible directly from the exterior and often via opposing doorways positioned on either side of the building. The smaller rooms, called parlors or chambers, were meant to be more private spaces and often were only accessed by a doorway (or doorways) in the partition separating them from the hall. The hall was invariably heated by a substantial fireplace that also was used for cooking, although detached kitchens were becoming commonplace throughout the region by the mid-18th century, while the parlor(s) may or may not have been heated. If the second level of the structure was meant to be occupied, the stairway leading to that space most often was placed in the hall, either running along the partition or tucked into one of the corners flanking the fireplace.5 Beginning in the second decade of the 18th century, and accelerating in frequency over the succeeding years, a novel space known as the passage was introduced as an important feature in Chesapeake houses. The passage was a relatively narrow room, positioned in the middle and Page 5:3 CLERMONT HISTORIC STRUCTURE REPORT running the width of the building, and entered directly from the exterior. It generally separated the main ground-floor rooms and restricted access to those spaces. Scholars have represented this addition as reflecting “a growing desire on the part of planters to distance themselves, in a ceremonial way, from persons outside their closely knit circle of family and social peers.” There were practical considerations as well, as the passage with its two exterior doorways acted as a breezeway that would have been a particularly appealing space during the warm summer months, and it became the preferred location for the stairway leading to the upper level. The first recorded mention of a central passage in Virginia dates to 1719; over the succeeding decades, passages were inserted into many existing houses that had been erected following the earlier direct-entry plan.6 A second space known as the dining room often was added as well, sometimes but not always in concert with the passage. This room could be positioned toward the front of the house, and thus may have acted as a further buffer between the exterior and the other rooms, or it could be appended to one of the parlors. The appearance of the dining room was related to changing uses of the other two or three main rooms, the old hall and the parlor(s). The hall generally became a more formal public space, where visitors were entertained, and the old mixture of household activities such as cooking, eating, and sleeping, were now distributed among the other rooms and the increasingly popular detached kitchen. The dining room took on the role as the “heart of the family’s house, as opposed to the hall which was the center of the family’s social landscape.” The third room, the old parlor or chamber, became the most private space of all, often used solely as a bed chamber and sitting room. The central passage acted as the main entry point into the house and, since it was common for all of the other rooms to be accessed only via interior doorways leading from the passage, it served as a buffer between outsiders and the more private realm.7 It took almost two centuries before all of the elements of what is now the Clermont house were joined together both physically and, to a degree, stylistically. A major departure from the timber frame construction and overall detailing that had been used for the first 80 years of building occurred in 1836, when a two-story stone structure was erected that likely started out as a kitchen (with a chamber above), but which eventually superseded the frame wing (built in 1788, referred to below as the west frame) to serve as the dining room.

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