HOME WITH A HISTORY: Whitehall

Whitehall

902 Magnolia St. SE

Story and photos by Linda Johnson

Tucked on a side street off of Whiskey Road is one of Aiken’s handsomest homes, the award-winning Georgian Revival villa, Whitehall II, built on the charred foundation of an earlier home. The original Whitehall, also called Barnard Villa, was built in 1904 for millionaire William H. Barnard of New York, who was a silk importer, a director of over a dozen companies including the International Salt Company… and a scoundrel.

In 1901, Barnard made headlines for racing his “red devil” – a French automobile – through Central Park, at the outlandish speed of fifteen miles per hour, then threatening the officer who arrested him. In 1904, the cad was front page news again with the Viola Livingston affair. Viola was an 18-year-old widow who placed an advertisement looking for a “benefactor” to support her acting career. Barnard responded and, using the name of a fellow club member, took young Viola for a long disreputable carriage ride. He then left, but she tracked him down, all the way to Aiken, where he attempted to buy her off. Instead, she filed public suit for ill-treatment.

Barnard’s estate in Aiken comprised 90 acres, with a frontage of 1,000 feet on the east side of Whiskey Road. He laid roads through the property and commissioned a grand twostory home with stables and outbuildings and eventually polo fields. The aptly-named Whitehall was a wood frame house sheathed in perforated sheet iron, which in turn was covered with white plaster, all to look “as if built of white marble.” For many winters it was leased to visitors, at a fee of up to $10,000 for 3 months. One notable lessee was Marshall Field III, heir to Marshall Field, founder of the Chicago department store.

After Whitehall I burned to the ground in June 1925, the 90 acres was subdivided. In 1927, Colonel Robert R. McCormick bought 30 acres

including the former homesite, then commissioned architect Willis Irvin, already renowned for designing other Winter Colony homes, to design Whitehall II. The home design was awarded a Gold Medal for Domestic Work at the 1929 Southern Architectural Exposition.

McCormick was a member of the wellknown McCormick family of Chicago; his uncle was inventor Cyrus McCormick, famed for his mechanical reaper. McCormick himself was a distinguished U.S. Army officer, a lawyer, a Republican politician, and eventually owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper. He was viewed as a remote and ruthless aristocrat, with one opponent describing him as “the greatest mind of the 14th century.”

McCormick’s time in Aiken began and ended with controversy. Early on was a dispute over a horse, waged against Winter Colony resident Warner Baltazzi and taken to the South Carolina Supreme Court. In 1941, he appealed his tax assessment on Whitehall and, upon rejection of the appeal, declared, “I’ll be d****d if I ever pay another dollar in taxes to the city or county of Aiken.” The next day he deeded the property to The Citadel, to be used as the retirement home for his former commanding officer and thenCommandant of the school, General Charles Pelot Summerall.

Today, Whitehall is once again in private hands, gracing a 5-acre garden at the end of Summerall Court.

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