A portfolio of eighty-eight original Williamsburg buildings.

For more than thirty years, the architectural research department at Colonial Williamsburg has engaged in comprehensive study of early buildings, landscapes, and social history in the Chesapeake region. Its painstaking work has transformed our understanding of building practices in the colonial and early national periods and thereby greatly enriched the experience of visiting historic sites. In this beautifully illustrated volume, a team of historians, curators, and conservators draw on their far-reaching knowledge of historic structures in Virginia and Maryland to illuminate the formation, development, and spread of one of the hallmark building traditions in American architecture. The essays describe how building design, hardware, wall coverings, furniture, and even paint colors telegraphed social signals about the status of builders and owners and choreographed social interactions among everyone who lived or worked in gentry houses, modest farmsteads, and slave quarters. The analyses of materials, finishes, and carpentry work will fascinate old-house buffs, preservationists, and historians alike. The lavish color photography is a delight to behold, and the detailed catalogues of architectural elements provide a reliable guide to the form, style, and chronology of the region's distinctive historic architecture.

COLONIAL WILLIAMSBURG Its Buildings an gardens. FOREWORD: THE VALUE of history lies in the perspective it gives us as we take up the problems of the present. Lawrence Koc. her and Howard Dearstyne, by making us see here the intimate daily family life of eighteenth-century Wil liamsburg and the society of which it was a part, help us even more to see ourselves and our own time in sharper focus. And insight, above everything else, is the purpose of Colonial Williamsburg one-time capital of the great and powerful Virginia colony and the only capi tal of our colonial period which, after more than a century of sleep, coidd be awakened and reconstructed in its original form. We hope that millions of Americans will find time and opportunity to visit Colonial Williamsburg in order that they may have the experience of stepping out of the present and losing themselves temporarily in the significant past. There is no better way for the modern American, man, woman, or child, to get a real emotional sense of the depth of his roots and the meaning of our nation's past. Those who read this book like those who come to Colonial Williamsburg are urged to consider it. only a foundation. The building of a free world can never be finished. We in our time must make our contribution. Colonial Wil liamsburg lives today to help all of us to feel strongly our heritage of liberty in order that we may build a better America and a better world in the twentieth century. Colonial Williamsburg reminds us that the foundation of modern America is spiritual a faith which began to lake shape in Williamsburg and to be ex pressed there by some of the greatest of our forefathers. Nowhere else in co lonial America was the democratic faith on which our nation has been built more eloquently expix\ ssed. I think we cannot: drink too deeply at this spring of our history. I think the authors in this book have helped you and me immeasurably to see the past so that we may understand and deal more effectively with the present. Office of the President the Colonial Williamsburg The bell of Brttton Church rang out in iy( i6 to announce the repeal of the Stamp Act. Ten years later, on May 15, 1776* it pealed again to pro claim Virginia's separation from England, six \ veeks before the independence of all the colonies was sounded by Philadelphia's Liberty Bell. Contents include: FOREWORD v I. THE VIRGINIA PLANTERS' CAPITAL i II. BUILDINGS AND BUILDERS. III. THE MANNER OE FURNISHINGS 25 IV. THE GARDENS OFWILLIAMSBERG, 35 V. THE RESTORATION OF AN AMERICAN TOWN 43 VI. A PHOTOGRAPHIC TOUR OF WILLIAMSBERG. 51 VIII. CREDITS FOR ILLUSTRATIONS. IX. INDEX