Colonial Williamsburg
Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting a part of the historic district in Williamsburg, Virginia. Its historic area includes several hundred restored or recreated buildings from the 18th century, when the city served as the capital of the colonial era Colony of Virginia. The district includes 17th-century, 19th-century, Colonial Revival, and more recent structures and reconstructions. The historic area includes three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets, which are designed to represent how Williamsburg existed in the 18th century. Costumed employees work and dress as people did during the colonial era, sometimes using colonial grammar and diction.
In the late 1920s, the restoration of colonial Williamsburg was championed as a way to celebrate patriots and the early history of the United States. Proponents included W. A. R. Goodwin and other community leaders, the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, Colonial Dames of America, United Daughters of the Confederacy, the United States Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations, and John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.
Along with Jamestown, Yorktown, and Colonial Parkway, Colonial Williamsburg is part of the Historic Triangle in Virginia. The site was once used for conferences by world leaders and heads of state. In 1960, it was designated a National Historic Landmark District.
Overview
The core of Colonial Williamsburg runs along Duke of Gloucester Street and the Palace Green that extends north and south perpendicular to it. This area is largely flat, with ravines and streams branching off on the periphery. Duke of Gloucester Street and other historic area thoroughfares are closed to motorized vehicles during the day, in favor of pedestrians, bicyclists, joggers, dog walkers, and animal-drawn vehicles.Surviving colonial structures have been restored as close as possible to their 18th-century appearance, with traces removed of later buildings and improvements. Many of the once missing colonial structures were reconstructed on their original sites beginning in the 1930s. Animals, gardens, and dependencies add to the environment, such as kitchens, smokehouses, and privies. Some buildings and most gardens are open to tourists, with the exception of buildings serving as residences for Colonial Williamsburg employees, large donors, the occasional city official, and sometimes College of William & Mary associates.
Prominent buildings include the Raleigh Tavern, the Capitol, the Governor's Palace, the Courthouse, the Wythe House, the Peyton Randolph House, the Magazine, and the independently owned and functioning Bruton Parish Church. Colonial Williamsburg's portion of the historic area begins east of the College of William & Mary's College Yard.
Four taverns have been reconstructed for use as restaurants and two for inns. There are craftsmen's workshops for period trades, including a printing shop, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, a cooperage, a cabinetmaker, a gunsmith, a wigmaker, and a silversmith. There are merchants selling tourist souvenirs, books, reproduction toys, pewterware, pottery, scented soap, etc. Some houses are open to tourists, including the Peyton Randolph House, the Geddy House, the Wythe House, and the Everard House, as are such public buildings as the Courthouse, the Capitol, the Magazine, the Public Hospital, and the Public Gaol. Former notorious inmates of the Gaol include pirate Blackbeard's crew who were kept there while they awaited trial.
Colonial Williamsburg operations extend to Merchants Square, a Colonial Revival commercial area designated a historic district in its own right. Nearby are the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, operated by Colonial Williamsburg as part of its curatorial efforts.
History of Williamsburg
The Jamestown statehouse housed Virginia's government beginning in 1607, but talk of moving the capital gained momentum during Bacon’s Rebellion, when rebels burned the statehouse. The Crown did not agree to move the capital until after the establishment of the College of William & Mary at Middle Plantation, in 1693, and another fire at the statehouse, in 1698. In 1699, Middle Plantation became Williamsburg, after William III of England, and the colony’s new capital.Williamsburg, one of the nation's first planned cities, was laid out under the supervision of Governor Francis Nicholson. Nicholson had the city surveyed and a grid implemented by Theodorick Bland, taking into consideration the brick College Building and the then decaying Bruton Parish Church buildings. The grid seems to have obliterated all but the remnants of an earlier plan that laid out the streets in the monogram of William and Mary, a W superimposed on an M. The main street was named Duke of Gloucester after the eldest son of Queen Anne. Nicholson named the street north of it Nicholson Street and the one south of it Francis Street, both after himself.
For 81 years of the 18th century, Williamsburg was the center of government, education, and culture in the Colony of Virginia. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, James Madison, George Wythe, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, and others furthered the forms of British government in the Commonwealth of Virginia and later helped adapt its preferred features to the needs of the new United States. The government moved to Richmond on the James River in 1780, under the leadership of Governor Thomas Jefferson, to be more central and accessible from western counties and less susceptible to British attack. There it remains today.
History of Colonial Williamsburg
With the seat of government removed, Williamsburg's businesses floundered or migrated to Richmond, and the city entered a long, slow period of stagnation and decay, although the town maintained much of its 18th-century aspect. It was captured by General George McClellan in 1862 and garrisoned during the Civil War, so the town escaped the devastation experienced by other Southern cities.Williamsburg relied for jobs on the College of William & Mary, the Courthouse, and the Eastern Lunatic Asylum ; it was said that the "500 Crazies" of the asylum supported the "500 Lazies" of the college and town. Colonial-era buildings were modified, modernized, neglected, or destroyed. Development that accompanied construction of a World War I gun cotton plant at nearby Penniman and the coming of the automobile blighted the community, but the town kept its appeal to tourists. By the early 20th century, many older structures were in poor condition, no longer in use, or were occupied by squatters.
Goodwin and the Rockefellers
The Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin became rector of Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church in 1903 for the first of two periods. He was born in 1869 at Richmond to a Confederate veteran and his well-to-do wife and reared in rural Nelson County at Norwood. He was educated at Roanoke College, the University of Virginia, the University of Richmond, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. He first visited Williamsburg as a seminarian sent to recruit William & Mary students. He became rector at age 34 of the Bruton Parish Church, which at that time was riven by factions. He helped harmonize the congregation and assumed leadership of a flagging campaign to restore the 1711 church building. Goodwin and New York ecclesiastical architect J. Stewart Barney completed the church restoration in time for the 300th anniversary of the founding of America's Anglican Church at nearby Jamestown, Virginia, in 1907. Goodwin traveled the East Coast raising money for the project and establishing philanthropic contacts. Among the 1907 anniversary guests was J. P. Morgan, president of the Episcopal church's General Convention meeting that year in Richmond.Goodwin accepted a call from wealthy St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester, New York in 1908, and pastored there until his return in 1923 to Williamsburg to become a College of William & Mary fund-raiser and religious studies professor, as well as pastor of Yorktown's Episcopal church and a chapel at Toano. He had maintained his Williamsburg ties, periodically visiting the graves of his first wife and their son, using William & Mary's library for historical research, and vacationing. He saw the ongoing deterioration of colonial-era buildings.
He renewed his connections with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities, whose membership included prominent and wealthy Virginians, and he helped to protect and repair the Magazine. He and other William & Mary professors saved the John Blair House from demolition to make way for a gasoline station, and they turned it into a faculty club. In 1924, the college launched a building and fund-raising drive, and Goodwin adopted Barney's proposal for saving other houses in the historic section of the town for use as student and faculty housing. He worked for two years to interest individuals such as Henry Ford and organizations such as the Dames of Colonial America to invest. He eventually obtained the support and financial commitment of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the wealthy son of the founder of Standard Oil. Rockefeller's wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller also played a role. Goodwin returned to the Bruton Parish pulpit in 1926, keeping his college positions.
Rockefeller's first investment in a Williamsburg house had been a contribution to Goodwin's acquisition of the George Wythe House for next-door Bruton Church's parish house. Rockefeller's second investment was the purchase of the Ludwell–Paradise House in early 1927. Goodwin persuaded him to buy it on behalf of the college for housing in the event that Rockefeller should decide to restore the town. Rockefeller had agreed to pay for college restoration plans and drawings. He later considered limiting his restoration involvement to the college and an exhibition enclave, and he did not commit to the town's large scale restoration until November 22, 1927.
Rockefeller and Goodwin initially kept their acquisition plans secret because they were concerned that prices might rise if their purposes were known, quietly buying houses and lots and taking deeds in blank. Goodwin took Williamsburg attorney Vernon M. Geddy, Sr. into his confidence, without exposing Rockefeller as silent partner. Geddy did much of the title research and legal work related to properties in what became the restored area. He later drafted the Virginia corporate papers for the project, filed them with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and served briefly as the first president of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
That much property changing hands was noticed by newspaper reporters. After 18 months of increasingly excited rumors, Goodwin and Rockefeller revealed their plans at county and town meetings on June 11 and 12, 1928. The purpose was to obtain the consent of the citizens and enlist them in the project. The restoration project required a new high school and two public greens. The city retained ownership of its streets, an arrangement that forestalled later proposals to raise revenue by charging an admission fee.
Some townsmen had qualms. Major S. D. Freeman, retired Army officer and school board president, said, "We will reap dollars, but will we own our town? Will you not be in the position of a butterfly pinned to a card in a glass cabinet, or like a mummy unearthed in the tomb of Tutankhamun?" To gain the cooperation of people reluctant to sell their homes to the Rockefeller organization, the restoration offered free life tenancies and maintenance in exchange for ownership. Freeman sold his house outright and moved to Virginia's Middle Peninsula.