The Gentleman's Farm: American Hunt Country Houses

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Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

Š 2016 Rizzoli International Publications. All Rights Reserved

SHIRLEY Charles City County Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hill Carter III Operated in association with e Shirley Plantation Foundation

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hirley is a family home that we share with the public, not some stagnant version of history,” reflects Charles Hill Carter III, seated with his wife Lauren on a stone terrace overlooking land that has been part of the Carter legacy for eleven generations. A portrait from c. 1700, now hanging in the great house at Shirley, depicts Edward Hill IV (1690–1706) as a boy in classical garb, gesturing toward an idealized version of the same pastoral landscape. Charles nods, “Agriculture is in our blood.”1 In 1613 Sir omas West, third Lord Delaware and royal governor of Virginia, received a land grant from James I of England and named a four-thousandacre tract of his Virginia property in honor of his wife, Lady Cessalye Sherley. Aer West’s death, Edward Hill I, a member of Virginia’s House of Burgesses and the ancestor of the current residents, was granted 450 fertile riverside acres of the plantation in 1638; with the proceeds earned over a lifetime in the lucrative tobacco trade, he bought more than 2,500 additional acres. In 1723 his grandson, Edward Hill III, began construction on a new, grand house facing the James River, the primary artery for communication, enabling up to nine-tenths of the plantation’s crops to reach market.2 Edward’s daughter, Elizabeth, and her husband, John Carter—eldest son of Robert “King” Carter, the wealthiest man in America—inherited

the property in 1726 and completed the house we know today as Shirley.

When the Carters moved into their new house in 1738, the residence was not merely grand in its own right, but stood as the centerpiece of a complex of buildings designed to serve the functions of the plantation, and visually refined by Dutch and Anglo-Palladian notions of formality of design. e distinctive verticality of Shirley was moderated, in its original form, by the weight of symmetrical, flanking, three-story outbuildings, located thirty-six feet from either side of the main block. ese outbuildings isolated the laborious work of plantation life from the ceremonial and private activities of the family in the main house. In addition to housing a laundry and kitchen, each with sleeping quarters above, these outbuildings defined a working courtyard in the shadow of the great house. A 1742 plat map of Shirley shows even more structures, including a bake house, blacksmith’s house, boat house, tobacco sheds, and “great quarters,” a dormitory for enslaved field workers. Two privies were artfully concealed by plantings in the gardens. Remarkably, seven dependencies built during the original construction period of 1723 to 1738 survive today, including the ice house, laundry, and stable, as well as a pump house added in the 1770s.3 Generations of Carter descendants placed their stamp on the house, refining its details to conform

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John Eyre’s ownership, Severn’s grandson, that Eyre Hall developed into the eighteenth-century estate we now know.

John Eyre (1768–1855) lived at his family estate for sixty-six years. He is credited with expanding the two-story wing on the east end of the original house (1807), as well as developing the ornamental gardens and constructing the orangerie (1818). Although not a merchant, John held mercantile interests, as well as extensive landholdings. Having abandoned tobacco, Eyre grew corn, oats, peas, and other cash crops and raised livestock. All of this created an “ample fortune,” as duly noted on his tombstone, and made Eyre the epitome of the gentleman farmer. At his death he was recalled as “a model for the man of fortune and the Virginia gentleman.”11 In 1800 he married Ann Upshur of Accomack County, and together they ushered in a period of Federal elegance at Eyre Hall. e house’s wide side passage, entered from the southern portico, runs the entire depth of the house and is divided by an elliptical archway into a front entry hall and a rear stair hall. In the eighteenth century most guests would have gotten no further in the house, but they would have been impressed with the finishes and furnishings that attested to the obvious good taste of the owner. is space, featuring twelvefoot ceilings, was used for entertaining, as evidenced by the presence of many musical instruments, and as a summer living space, cooled by doors opening to all sides. e entry hall is fully paneled and features fluted pilasters set on pedestals, a full Ionic cornice, and marbled wooden baseboards in the Georgian style. e stair hall holds paneling on the southern wall and paneled dado on the other three. e plaster walls were later embellished with panels of Dufour’s “Les Rives de Bosphore” wallpaper.12

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outbuildings, working fields, and ornamental gardens—was used as a means to create and communicate a hierarchy of spaces: between work and home, between owner, guest, and slave.17 In recognition of its preeminent position among America’s first estates, Eyre Hall was named a National Historic Landmark in 2012. Since 1941 the house and gardens have been open on the Garden Club of Virginia’s annual Historic Garden Week, but the Eyre Hall gardens are also open year-round to visitors without an appointment.

Baldwin explains that the present Eyre Hall is a result of each generation adding a layer of history to the historic property. Historians, landscape architects, and archaeologists have flocked to Eyre Hall to delve into the history of the place and learn what they can from this rare, surviving eighteenth-century Eastern Shore dwelling. One exploration that Baldwin has not undertaken is paint analysis. He says, “e paint colors have been selected to please me.”

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MONTICELLO Albemarle County Owned and operated by the omas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. Agriculture . . . is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness. 34 —omas Jefferson to George Washington, June 28, 1793

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hile Washington regularly turned to practical manuals and contemporary experts for advice on how to improve productivity at Mount Vernon and his other farms, Jefferson at Monticello pursued an elusive ideal, based in classical literature, of the gentleman’s farm as villa rustica. Necessity, animated by scientific curiosity, made Jefferson into a farmer who oversaw experimental and production crops— including tobacco, wheat, corn, cotton, and hemp, as well as fodder for livestock, and orchard fruits for table and for brandy and cider. But while Washington invested in barns and fertilizer, Jefferson sketched dozens of fanciful garden pavilions (only one, the South Pavilion, was ever built) and collected classically inspired portrait busts for his Tea Room “Gallery of Worthies.” He catalogued his gardening books under the category of “fine arts.” He even labeled his plants in Italian, which he saw, in essence, as modern-day Latin.35 And just as he sought to divine a perfectly appropriate American architecture from the study of ancient and Renaissance texts, “Visitors to Monticello were surprised to see Jefferson consulting his books by [ancient Roman writers] Cato and Varro for guidance in agricultural work. . . .”36 As Charles Sanford noted, “It is not too much to say that Jefferson lived in the classical world, adopting its ideals and virtues and adapting what was appro-

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priate and pleasing of the classical life to his own experiences and needs.”37 Latin agricultural texts by Cato (De Agricultura, c. 200 BC), Varro (Rerum Rusticarum, usually called De Re Rustica, first century BC), and Columella (whose De Re Rustica, c. AD 60, drew on Varro), alongside, in later years, Adam Dickson’s Husbandry of the Ancients (Edinburgh and London, 1788) complemented and, indeed, contextualized, ancient texts on politics and philosophy in Jefferson’s library. Varro and Columella, in particular, discoursed on the role and management of enslaved workers as part of the culture of the villa rustica, a topic that might have made the ancients seem more analogous to the Virginia planter than other, more contemporary, writers.38 Monticello was conceived and reconceived throughout Jefferson’s life not just as a productive rural retreat but as a carefully craed environment that promoted individual virtue. He believed that “cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. ey are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, & they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty & interests by most lasting bands.”39 Virtuous individuals for Jefferson were the basis of a democratic society. So while contemporaries in England and France inscribed superficial political emblems into their classically inspired country houses and landscapes, Jefferson took their work as just one (flawed) step

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convenience, or simply from the overarching desire that Oak Hill appear appropriately presidential, Monroe created the house at Oak Hill in the context of the rebuilding of Washington following the British burning of the capital in 1814. He had James Hoban, architect of the White House, coordinate the project, and Washington crasmen create the millwork in the city and ship it to Oak Hill for installation under the supervision of the farm manager.

He even went so far as to follow federal pricing guidelines for materials and wage rates.52 By the end of Monroe’s second term in 1825, the accumulated debt from his properties and from entertaining (government officials were expected to pay for state occasions out of their own pockets), meant that he had to choose between his farms at Highland and Oak Hill. With a better offer on the table for Highland, Monroe chose Oak Hill as his retirement estate.53 At first approach, from the north, Oak Hill presents a traditional, three-part, Palladian-derived form, with a three-bay center block flanked by symmetrical wings (originally one bay wide and one story in height). e stark entrance facade—the entrance articulated with an arch rather than a portico—recalls not only Hoban’s State, Navy, War, and Treasury Department buildings (none of which survives today), but also the French-tinged, radical Neoclassicism of Latrobe’s Decatur House (1817) on Lafayette Square, the most fashionable residence in Washington at the time. e fact that Monroe chose to place the monumental, temple-front portico on the opposite, south side, overlooking the fields, is perhaps also a nod to the French tradition of reserving the grandest facade of a chateau for the garden front. is choice invites the viewer to stroll into the garden and turn back to enjoy the “best” view of the house, and thus defines the house’s pri-

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mary importance in relation to the open landscape rather than to the approach road and driveway. rough the arched entrance, ornamented with finely wrought fan and sidelight windows, the entrance hall invites visitors—and an ex-president could surely expect many—into one of two double parlors. Jib windows open to full height, turning each opening into a doorway with access to the balcony and the view beyond. irty-foot Doric columns— stucco over brick—rise from an arcaded base to a finely detailed pediment, creating a temple form that recalls the official architectural language of Washington. e choice to use five columns (rather than the usual even number) was undoubtedly a practical, if unconventional, way to ensure that each parlor window retained an unobstructed view.

Monroe cleared a central vista to the south, on axis with the center of the house, and lined it with oaks and tulip poplars. is was the spine of a plan to elaborate his practical kitchen garden at Oak Hill into decorative planting beds, intended to give way gradually to a landscape park. But, sadly, he never quite got around to it. Following his wife’s death in 1830, Monroe reluctantly moved to New York with his daughter. He died on July 4, 1831, the fiy-fih anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and five years to the day aer Jefferson and Adams famously expired in tandem.

Oak Hill subsequently passed through several owners, each of whom took remarkably reverent care of the place, while adding just a few fashionable embellishments. Even during the Civil War, Union General George G. Meade forbade its destruction because of its presidential associations (although a chip in one marble mantel is attributed to his departing troops’ carelessness). By the late nineteenth century, the gardens gained promenades of roses and lilacs (some still extant). In 1920 Leesburg stockbroker Frank Littleton purchased Oak Hill and the 1,700 acres; he brought in Harvard-trained architect Henry Davis Whitfield to reconfigure the main stairs on the north front, add some stairways inside for convenience, and expand the wings. As part of his ambitious plan to create

formal gardens to the south, Littleton leveled the basin at the foot of the hill, constructed walls, and planted 450 American boxwoods (some of which also line the driveway)—the essence of Colonial Revival garden design in the shadow of Williamsburg. Littleton also installed twenty-eight massive, siltstone pavers near the house. e pavers, quarried on the property, feature fossils and dinosaur tracks, bringing a whole other level of Virginia history to the story of Oak Hill.

In 1948 Oak Hill was purchased at auction by omas N. DeLashmutt, who was a civil engineer by trade and, with his brothers, a successful building contractor in pre-war Arlington County. At the time that he purchased the 1,700-acre property (five hundred acres of which he sold to his brothers), DeLashmutt conceded that his wife liked old houses and that he liked farming. DeLashmutt had operated a livestock farm at Evergreen Plantation near Haymarket for a decade, and he intended to do the same at Oak Hill, while making the house, “livable, without major alterations in the historic mansion.”54 To ensure that the alterations were done accurately and correctly, he retained Beaux Arts–trained architect Frank Almirall to remove a staircase Littleton had installed in the library and updated the heating and wiring. Fiy years later, their son, omas DeLashmutt, his wife Gayle, and their two daughters moved to Oak Hill and took on the family tradition of stewardship. ey soon realized the curious irony of successful gardening: the plantings had flourished so much over the decades that they all but obscured the fundamental design.

With help from family and friends—and a chainsaw—Tom and Gayle DeLashmutt removed overgrown boxwoods to recover the primary garden axis and refined the terraced vista from the arcade to the surrounding fields (now leased for cattle, corn, and sod cultivation). e flagstone path invites strolling, toward a ring of eye-catching Golden Vicary privet that surrounds a birdbath at the foot of the terraced garden; the birdbath sits in the center of an outdoor “room” defined by specimen trees, including an old crab apple tree and a cherry, and

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