FOLLY BUILDINGS WERE SMALL, WITTY, AND OF PROVOCATIVE. THEY WERE MEANT TO MAKE YOU THINK. AND SomETIMES SMILE. FOLLIES A folly in town. The Tayloe Office, with its medieval BY MICHAEL OLMERT touches, spoke to the fancy and finances of its owner. BOUT 1755, NEXT TO HIS WILLIAMSBURG HOME tecturally—along Nicholson Street in 1755? It was on Nicholson Street, John Tayloe built him- not an attempt to recapture the imagined purity of A self a one-room office like no other. At a medieval past. It would take the excesses of the least unlike any other building that survives from industrial revolution to bring that off. More likely, eighteenth-century North America. The small frame Tayloe’s office is an example of a folly, a small build- structure is a normal office with all the requisite ing put up mainly for aesthetic and self-regarding windows, doors, and walls, and it has an S-shaped reasons rather than for shelter, safety, or work. HABS HABS ogee-style roof, a bow in the direction of medieval ar- chitecture. Inside, its ceiling is plastered and groin HE WORD “FOLLY” IS DEEPLY ASSOCIATED WITH vaulted, suggesting a small chamber in a castle or Virginia’s Eastern Shore, especially with two in a medieval chapel. You expect incense and chimes Tlarge estates along Folly Creek, which leads —“smells and bells”—in such rooms. But not in colo- from the Atlantic to the market town of Accomac. nial North America. Legends explain the names of two eighteenth- The Middle Ages and the eighteenth century are century plantations there, Bowman’s Folly and The kindred eras. The medieval Gothic details on the Folly. The Bowman’s Folly tale involves an unheeded Tayloe office were beginning to appear in pattern warning not to build unwisely on dodgy ground. books published for builders, carpenters, and furni- At The Folly, the name is said to derive from a hill ture-makers. This little building fits easily amid the with a copse of trees on top, a striking feature of the Georgian confidence of Williamsburg’s architecture. original land patent as seen from shipboard. Such It hints at a revered and shared medieval past. a natural eye-catcher, a clump of trees on high, was The triumph of the pointed arch and interlaced called folly in Britain. Folly Creek probably got its neo-Gothic over the neoclassical would not fully name because of the two Folly plantations on its occur until after 1834 and the postfire rebuild of banks. the Houses of Parliament in London, but medieval The estates have a full complement of early out- building stylistics were known to English architects buildings: kitchen, smokehouse, privy, and dovecote. and travelers on the Grand Tour. The Folly also has a brick icehouse. The dovecote’s Plenty of money and power must have changed details set the circa-1800 building above the normal hands inside this office. Tayloe was wealthy, a standard for cotes. The one-story board-and-batten landed farmer, an iron merchant, and a member of dovecote is octagonal with a ball finial on its seg- the House of Burgesses. And here the building still mented rooftop, and has diapered bargeboards to is, nestled between his Dutch-gable house and his frustrate hawks from easily swooping down on the standard-gable colonial kitchen. The three build- doves at rest on the flight platforms. It is so well ings line up like an illustration of roof types from designed and appointed that it is much more than an architecture handbook. His extraordinary office dovecote. It’s a temple in honor of birds. And a folly. existed to make Tayloe look good, a sophisticated man of refined taste, not afraid of pushing the boat OLLIES BEGIN AS PLAYTHINGS OF THE EDUCATED out into deeper cultural waters. and wealthy. They are unnecessary and often So what was going on—culturally and archi- Olmert Michael Fwhimsical buildings, based on Roman or 2 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 3 Greek models. In Italy especially, we see them OLLY BUILDINGS ARE OFTEN USEFUL. THAT IS, still: lots of temples, many copies of small classical they are outbuildings that contribute to the shrines in honor of particular gods and goddesses; Flife and produce of their country house or or faux archaeological ruins, raising concerns about plantation. Yet they are meant to be seen as some- unforgiving Time; or elaborate bridges, garden walls, thing profound and historic: a castle, a temple, a and memorials, on which classical bucrania—ox charming though elite cottage or dairy. In 1783, skulls—and floral and leafy swags were carved in Louis XVI built a rustic retreat near Versailles; it limestone. Oddest of all, were the grottoes—baroque had an elaborate dairy so the queen and the ladies assemblages of shells and curious rocks often built of the court could pretend to be couturier milkmaids, cave-like into the sides of hills, pushing architec- milking their cows into gilded buckets. tural imagination into the realm of fantasy. On a lesser scale, but in the same category, in When the folly craze achieves its apex of popu- 1812, a graceful but massive dairy or springhouse larity in Britain in the eighteenth century, garden was designed by neoclassical architect Benjamin follies seem to be cast like bread crumbs throughout Henry Latrobe and erected on a Baltimore planta- the landscapes designed by such architects as Wil- tion owned by Senator Robert Goodloe Harper, who liam Kent, Capability Brown, and Humphry Repton. had married into the influential Maryland family of By the start of the nineteenth century, nearly every Charles Carroll of Carrollton. This was a folly dairy architecture style had been employed to improve masquerading as a Greek temple, with a grand pedi- the grounds of the great country estates. There mented front and four gleaming ionic columns. It are Chinese pagodas and medieval castles, towers was also large enough to be a refreshing assembly and triumphal gates, pyramids and obelisks, deer shelters and stray columns on hilltops serving as Follies’ forms and fashions roller-coastered from octag- eye-catchers, situated where they could be seen and onal Chinese pagoda to round Moorish garden house, their owners’ whimsy and extravagance the only limits. admired from afar. Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections 4 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 5 room in summer—and well in excess of the ordinary Folly,” or Stultitiam Huberti. But that’s merely how Another early sense of folly is any building so 1588, His Grace, Edward de Vere, the seventeenth needs of a dairy. The constant flow of underground the contemporary Latin account seems to translate recklessly expensive it would bankrupt its builder. Earl of Oxford, was himself forced to abandon this water coursing through its troughs would have his words. More likely, the Norman Hubert used the In 1580, for instance, Edward de Vere bought a economically haunted house. In 1771, in Annapolis, cooled humans as well as the cheese and butter. French folie, meaning his “favorite house.” There are London house called Fisher’s Folly, a townhouse Maryland, the expensive and unfinished house once You wonder if Senator Harper ever asked him- houses in France called La Folie. so costly it had ruined Alderman Jasper Fisher. In intended for Governor Sir Thomas Bladen was sati- self, “Why build only a springhouse when you can rized as: also get an Ionic temple into the bargain?” This was a structure erected to make its owner appear Old Bladen’s place, once so famed, serious and philosophical. And good. Still, such And now too well “the Folly” named, follies amount to little more than reputation and Her roof all tottering to decay, disposable income transubstantiated into wood and Her walls a-mouldering away. brick and stone. In 1932, the folly was moved to the grounds of the Baltimore Museum of Art to save it Costly extravagance always indicates a streak of from demolition. foolishness in builders or owners. LTHOUGH THE WORD “FOLLY” IS RELATED TO YE-CATCHERS ON HEIGHTS—TOWERS, OBELISKS, FOOL and foolish, its meaning can be a bit columns, even clumps of trees—are gener- A contradictory, suggesting a stupid act, from Eally considered follies. Perhaps the most re- the Latin stultitia, or something pleasing and de- markable is the Broadway Tower, built in 1799 on a lightful, from the French folie. In 1228, Herbert de Burgh’s castle had to be torn down because the bor- Top: the dovecote, opposite, and the icehouse at The der between England and Wales suddenly shifted. Folly, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Bottom: the main This thrilled his jealous neighbors, who noted that houses at The Folly, opposite, and at Bowman’s Folly, Hubert had originally called his place “Hubert’s below, eighteenth-century homes on Folly Creek. Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections Colonial Williamsburg Special Collections 6 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 Colonial Williamsburg, Summer 2013 7 Below, the folly dairy or springhouse in Baltimore The neo-Gothic tower on a ridge in Worcestershire, left, designed by Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Right top, the with turrets and parapets but also windows in the Geor- Caryatids on the Acropolis and, below, their early nine- gian style. Below, teenth-century sisters at St. Pancras church in London. Michael Olmert Library of Congress Michael Olmert Michael Olmert Wikimedia thousand-foot Cotswold ridge on the edge of Worces- of St. Pancras New Church, designed by William fragile nature of life and the sublime thump of Time.