The 2024 Mount Vernon Symposium

Symposium Registration, Bookout Reception Hall

 Welcome and Introductions

Cosmopolitan and Local in Colonial Boston: Copley’s House

Jeffrey E. Klee

At the end of the colonial period, John Singleton Copley’s house was a prominent fixture on Boston’s Beacon Hill, then a pastoral and remote site with a handful of mansions facing the Common. In July of 1771, Copley planned a series of alterations that would make it more suitable for colonial America’s pre-eminent painter. He described the intended work to his step-brother, Henry Pelham—the subject of the painting with which he made his international reputation, “Boy with a Squirrel.” Though the house does not survive, Copley’s correspondence with Pelham shows how he sought to make the house accommodate both his trans-Atlantic aspirations and his more prosaic domestic requirements. Like his gentry peers on the eve of the Revolution, he inhabited multiple worlds, and used architecture to make himself at home in all of them.

Break

Britain Over the Blue Ridge: Architectural Impressions on Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley

A. Nicholas Powers

By the closing decades of the eighteenth century, Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley was one of the most dynamic regions of early national expansion. Once the fringes of the British empire, emerging markets like Winchester, the largest town west of the Blue Ridge by the Revolution, developed at the intersection of crucial trade and migration routes. Investment in the Valley’s grain and manufacturing trade generated wealth that led to the construction of numerous “mansion houses” near Winchester. Ready to meet this need for sumptuous architecture and furnishings was a mix of free and unfree labor and émigré craftspeople bringing knowledge of fresh, fashionable designs from Great Britain. Through the incorporation of British design elements and furnishings with agrarian motifs, Valley consumers joined a visual dialogue that spanned Virginia, the mid-Atlantic, and sites like Mount Vernon.

Between a Handsome Finish and Sorrowful Discouragement: Black Craftsmen and the Making of American Architecture

Tiffany Momon

On November 4, 1746, Charles Pinckney placed the construction of one of Charleston, South Carolina’s most famous mansions in the hands of enslaved master builder and carpenter John “Quash” Williams. For the next four years, Williams engaged with various Black craftspeople, free and enslaved, to finish the construction of the Pinckney Mansion. On May 20, 1750, Pinckney emancipated Williams and Williams went into business for himself.  While Williams’s life has been the subject of several authors, little is written about the enslaved and free Black craftspeople who labored alongside him. This presentation examines the impact of Black craftsmen on the built environment of eighteenth-century Charleston through the lens of Williams, his peers, and the famed Pinckney Mansion—with the latter long heralded by scholars as a landmark in the development of American architecture in general—treating this as a case study that shines light on the larger history of the city, the region, and everywhere in the nation where enslaved men made up large portions of the construction and craft workforce.

 Break 

Reimagining Hemsley's Cloverfields

Willie Graham

In 2017, a foundation representing the interests of descendants of the builder, purchased Cloverfields to restore it as a private museum. Research soon proved that the dwelling was older than generally thought, dating to 1705. During the restoration, an extraordinary amount of information was learned about the form and finish of this mansion as each successive owner molded the dwelling to fit the ever-changing needs and expectations of gentry families on Maryland’s Eastern Shore over the course of the century. This talk will explore discoveries made during the investigative and restoration phases and highlight how careful architectural forensics can reveal original treatments as manifested in this remarkable restoration.

George Washington’s Mount Vernon: From Revolution to Revitalization

Susan P. Schoelwer and Thomas A. Reinhart

In 1774, as discontent with British taxation roiled the North American colonies, Colonel George Washington began the second expansion of his Mansion house, creating the distinctive form that is today one of America’s most iconic structures. Following Washington’s footsteps 250 years later, carpenters and masons are again at work, on the most ambitious preservation project in Mount Vernon’s history. Designed to prepare the Mansion for its fourth century, the Mansion Revitalization project incorporates a holistic approach that aligns timber framing and masonry repairs with improvements to drainage and environmental systems. Leaders of Mount Vernon’s preservation team will offer symposium participants a behind-the-scenes peek at ongoing work and share highlights of recent discoveries about the Mansion’s evolution and Washington’s architectural and engineering innovations.

Reception, Mansion East Lawn

Mansion Open House

Dinner, Ford Orientation Center

Continental Breakfast, Bookout Reception Hall

Welcome and Introductions

Free versus Will: Craftspeople in Early Maryland

Brittany Luberda

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American Art galleries, one name—often a white male—is usually listed as the artist, but this belies the diversity of artistic production during the period of slavery and indentured servitude in the United States. In spring 2024, the Baltimore Museum of Art reopened the c. 1773 parlor room of Haberdeventure, the plantation of Declaration signer Thomas Stone, with a display of artworks by free, enslaved, and indentured artists from Colonial and Federal Maryland. The exhibit takes the parlor’s builders and painters, likely enslaved, as its inspiration. Disrupting histories that privilege workshop owners and formally educated painters, the display conveys how artists in early Maryland came from all economic, gender, racial, and national backgrounds through the biographies of hitherto underacknowledged artists. From this, a new body of Maryland makers are restored to the forefront of Chesapeake object, furniture, and painting histories.

Sleuthing Out a Portrait: From Mount Vernon to the British Island of Dominica

Dorinda Evans

A bust-length, oil portrait of an African man in white attire, dating from about 1780, surfaced mysteriously in London by 1940 with a false provenance.  The art dealer involved jumped to assign it to the English-trained, American Gilbert Stuart, and, because the sitter's strange hat resembled a cook's toque, a second leap was made to identify him as George Washington's cook.  But the portrait is not convincing as by Stuart, the hat is not a toque, and Washington's cook (later a run-away slave) was unlikely to have sat to a prominent artist.  Although the hat resembles headgear worn only on a Caribbean island conquered by Britain, it could also be otherwise explained.

Break

Drawing the Lines of Revolution: Pastel Portraits, Boycotts, and American Independence

Megan Baker

During the 1760s, pastel—or crayon—images attained immense popularity, becoming a prominent medium for portraits of colonial Americans. Despite barriers preventing access to necessary imported supplies, the medium experienced explosive growth as political tension grew. Why did pastel portraits rise and fall in different places across British and French North America, and subsequently in the new American nation? As ideas of race and national identity were promulgated, contested, and reformed across the Atlantic, the ephemeral pastel sketch provided an ideal vehicle for recording shifting ideas and allegiances. This paper reconstructs the early history of the pastel in North America to emphasize the politics of media specificity, demonstrating the different ways pastel contributed to the making and breaking of empire.

Disasters in the Eighteenth-Century North Atlantic: Art, Gardens, and Novel

Joseph Litts

Encountering hurricanes and shipwrecks was not unique to the eighteenth century. However, images of destruction became widespread as period garden designs, paintings, and novels featured both natural disasters and their aftermaths. The surge of artistic interest in catastrophe intersected with the growth of real bodies exposed to tragedy through increased circulation—coerced or voluntary—around the Atlantic. In landscape designs, literature, and paintings, representations of disasters and their aftermaths brought calamity into everyday existence. Why did those exposed to the vulnerabilities of the Atlantic world routinely create and enjoy representations of the destructive forces that could end their life or fortunes? I argue this fascination with imagining destruction was a form of risk management adjacent to the growing insurance industry, and both art and finance offered a perverse means of naturalizing settler colonialism.

Lunch, Founders' Terrace

The Endless Round: The London Town House, Politics and Society in the 1770s

Jeremy Musson

In this paper, Jeremy Musson explores the architectural and aesthetic character of the aristocratic London houses of the Georgian period. Among these houses were the homes of the leading political figures of the British establishment at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the war which followed. Located close to the all-important Court of St. James, and also to Parliament, and westward of the financial centre of the City, these town houses, funded by landownership, property and mineral exploitation as well as investments in international commerce, were expressions of wealth, fashion and power. A constellation of prestigious glamour around the Court, these houses were designed for the endless round of social and cultural interaction which helped reinforce attitudes about Britain’s place in the world. While a number of the famous country houses of the Georgian aristocracy remain to illustrate political and special prestige of the age, the London houses - or town palaces - are less well known and understood today as few survive in their former splendour, but it is the town houses that should perhaps be regarded as the real ‘power houses’ of the age.

Break

Enlightened Eclecticism: The Grand Design of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland

Adriano Aymonino

The central decades of the eighteenth century in Britain were crucial to the history of European taste and design. One of the period’s most important campaigns of patronage was that of the 1st Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. This lecture examines their houses—Stanwick Hall, Northumberland House, Syon House, and Alnwick Castle—alongside the innumerable objects they collected and their persistent engagement in Georgian London’s public sphere. Over the years, their commissions pioneered styles as varied as Palladianism, rococo, neoclassicism, and Gothic revival. Patrons of many artists and architects, they are revealed, particularly, as the greatest supporters of Robert Adam. Their development sheds light on the eclectic taste of Georgian Britain, the emergence of neoclassicism and historicism, and the cultures of the Grand Tour.

The Transatlantic Design Network: Thomas Jefferson, John Soane, and Agents of Architectural Exchange

Danielle S. Willkens

Political, economic, and literary historians have studied the transatlantic connections between America, England, and the European continent. More consideration, however, needs to be given to how transatlantic exchange influenced architectural culture. The contours and impact of the Transatlantic Design Network on architectural culture can be traced through a detailed study of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Sir John Soane (1753-1837). Although they never met, they were connected by key figures, such as Maria Hadfield Cosway (1760- 1838), an artist, designer, and educator who corresponded with each man for over four decades. The architectural pilgrimage sites of Monticello and Soane’s Museum are at the heart of this JefferSoanean study, yet the book contextualizes the house museums beyond their nationalistic lenses by uncovering forgotten places, designers, and attributions.

Reception, Mount Vernon Wharf

Dinner, Mount Vernon Wharf

Continental Breakfast, Bookout Reception Hall

The Irish War of Independence and Burning the Big House, 1920-21

Terence Dooley

The burning of around 300 Big Houses, or country homes of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, in Ireland during the War of Independence and Civil War 1920-23 is a phenomenon of the revolutionary period not tackled by historians until recently. This talk provides a broad overview of the reasons for this destruction, with particular reference to the period of the War of Independence (1920-21), and the consequences of the same. It further delves into other related issues including looting and compensation, thereby offering fresh and original insights to the history of the Irish revolution.

Tory, Whig, Empire: The Implications of Classical Style in the Early Modern British Empire

Sarah Hutcheson

Classical architecture, throughout the British Empire, allowed for a smoothing out of cultural and geographic differences, providing a literal façade of uniformity throughout the empire, and linking colonies firmly back to England by privileging English style and taste. In the colonies, classicism signified allegiance to the British Crown. Within Britain itself, though, English Palladianism of the 18th century was linked to a tradition of Whiggish opposition to the Crown, a reclamation of classical ideals of citizenship and democracy and a necessary antidote to absolute monarchy. As political situations between Crown and colonies changed, so too did the political implications of architectural style. 

Public Architecture and Imperial Reform on the Eve of the Revolution: Governing the British Atlantic after the Treaty of Paris

Christian Koot

Following the Treaty of Paris in 1763 a remarkable array of architectural drawings as well as city and town plans arrived at the offices of the Board of Trade and the Secretary of State in London. These included designs for new or improved public buildings scattered around British America but concentrated in places newly acquired in the Treaty of Paris such as Pensacola and Mobile in West Florida, or those sites deemed to be in need of better integration into the empire including Nassau in the Bahamas and New Bern, North Carolina. What all these images and proposals for buildings had in common was their embrace of the Anglo-Palladian architectural style. Best characterized by its use of balanced, symmetrical and classical design elements, Anglo-Palladian structures embraced neoclassical design for its ability to promote virtue, commerce, and good government. Collectively these planned public buildings would help re-make the architectural image of the British Empire in North America.

Break

Educating the Next Generation in Historic Trades and Preservation

Markus Damwerth, Professor of Architectural Carpenter and Christina Butler, Professor of Historic Preservation at the American College of the Building Arts, will be joined by two of their alumni, Joseph Zemp and Steve Fancsali, now of Mount Vernon, to discuss training in the traditional trades and hands-on preservation. The panelists will address the challenges facing historic sites today from a paucity of rising historic trade artisans, voids in the present preservation curricula, and ACBA’s response through their academic and trade curriculum. The discussion will highlight preservation projects and real-world project applications, including work that Joseph and Steve are undertaking at Mount Vernon.

Symposium Adjourns