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Historic Garden Week in Virginia 2010 includes three Richmond tours

The state-spanning schedule of events for the 77th Historic Garden Week counts a mid-week Church Hill Tour as one the highlights:

A walking excursion in Richmond’s oldest district, the tour features five handsome 19th century townhomes and two city gardens in the charming, historic Church Hill area.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first Historic Garden Week tour of Church Hill, sponsored by members of Historic Richmond Foundation, the Garden Club of Virginia and other concerned preservationists to showcase the restoration of Richmond’s architectural treasures. 

At 12:30 p.m., Garden Week ticket holders may pause in the beautiful interior of historic St. John’s Episcopal Church to hear a stirring re-enactment of Patrick Henry’s oration, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” first heard within those walls in 1775 at the dawn of the American Revolution.  One of the well-appointed homes on the tour is owned by the President of the Museum of the Confederacy, and all Garden Week ticket holders will be permitted free admission to the White House of the Confederacy during the week.  Homes open on this tour are filled with fine antiques, fascinating collectibles and noteworthy artworks.

Historic Garden Week

April 17-25, 2010
http://vagardenweek.org/

2010 Richmond Tours

Tuesday, April 20: Windsor Farms
Wednesday, April 21: Church Hill
Thursday, April 22: West Avenue

Keep an eye out for the visitors all week: the Virginia Garden Week site says that “any visitors make Richmond their headquarters for Historic Garden Week in Virginia, with three separate tours in the city and many others within an hour’s drive.”

Full tickets $35 per day purchased in advance.  Full tickets $40 per day purchased on tour day, $20 for single-site admission.  See below for local advance ticket sale locations or access http://www.VAGardenweek.org.  Children 6 to 12, $20, children 5 and under, free admission.  Minors 17 and younger must be accompanied by an adult. No credit card payments accepted, except in advance online at VAGardenweek.org.  

Regarding the Church Hill Tour:

RICHMOND’S HISTORIC CHURCH HILL

This tour of Church Hill marks 50 years since a climate of appreciation and renewal began to emerge around the oldest and only surviving colonial structure in the district, St. John’s Church, where in 1775 Patrick Henry famously asked, “Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” Thus he galvanized his audience, and the revolution based on freedom followed.  A special re-enactment of Henry’s oration will be held at 12:30 p.m. at St. John’s Church. (See previous notes, Special Activities.)

Fifty years ago, another revolution, one of careful and painstaking restoration, began with the efforts of Mary Wingfield Scott. Many capable individuals, members of the newly formed Historic Richmond Foundation, the William Byrd Branch of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia), the Garden Club of Virginia and private owners committed to good stewardship, took responsibility for physically restoring properties which had suffered neglect from absentee landlords or speculators looking for inexpensive rental properties.

Anchored by the Convent of the Sisters of the Visitation of Monte Maria, built as a place for nuns to pray for the city of Richmond after the Civil War and now an ecumenical Christian Community known as Richmond Hill, the area improved.  The Elmira Shelton House (one of the earliest restoration projects on Church Hill and former headquarters of Historic Richmond Foundation), the Pollard House, the Hilary Baker House, the Ann Carrington House, and the entire “Pilot Block” of East Grace and Broad between 23nd and 24th streets are testimony to the efforts of half a century of renewed interest in historic homeownership. “Carrington Row,” (1818) a fine example of neoclassicism, forms one face of the Pilot Block project. Undertaken to demonstrate how a Church Hill residence could appear if restored, its success is evident in its façade. Within ten years, all the Pilot Block homes were completed. The Patrick Henry Park, the St. John’s Mews and the gardens at Richmond Hill add carefully tended green space to the area. Restoration work continues to other blocks of Church Hill, Libby Hill and Chimborazo Park to this day.

2309 EAST BROAD STREET. Touring the center home in Church Hill’s three-dwelling “Carrington Row,” owned by artist and furniture designer Lee Baskerville, is like entering the Sakler Gallery in Washington, DC. Spare, clean lines showcase a Benin bronze leopard on a Chinese altar-table from 1350 AD. The silhouette of an 1805 Tidewater drop-leaf table suddenly seems modern when juxtaposed with dining room chairs by Meis Van der Roh. Chinese Neolithic pottery (2500-3500 BC) shares space on the living room mantel with a “Brutalist” print displayed in a Renaissance frame. The owner places objects in his home as skillfully as he does the brushstrokes of his oils. Using scale and texture to great effect, his goal seems to be to spark the imagination, to ask the viewer to think about mankind’s creative process while enjoying this home. Eleven-foot ceilings, wide moldings and doorways, and a neutral palette form an intentionally strong but quiet backdrop to his own contemporary realist paintings and collection of sculpture and found objects. The downstairs kitchen is a piece of modernist sculpture in itself: counter heights, materials, tile work, all designed and many installed by the owner himself, are carefully chosen to create a clean, functional space which although in a basement, almost floats. Mr. Lee Baskerville, owner

2308 EAST BROAD STREET. The Burton Farrar House, also known as the Curd House, was built between 1818 and 1824. A side-hall town home, this is the first in a row of five brick houses marching west on Broad Street. Its Federal lines and dignity set the tone for the block. This home has the distinction of having the only surviving antebellum slate roof in Richmond. The slates are larger near the base of the roof and become smaller toward the apex.  The third and fourth floors (attic) served as places of refuge during the troubling years of the Civil War and the Great Depression.

Probably built by Dr. John Adams as a speculative house, after several owners Lucy Burton purchased the property and lived there with her children for more than 25 years. Later, Dr. William F. Farrar, a highly regarded physician and gentleman, resided here. He used the basement as a medical office, as did another subsequent owner, Dr. Isaac Curd.  The two-flight, closed-string stairway is a fine example of its kind, with the wear of 200 years bowing the treads. In 1899, former owners added a kitchen and a porch on the front of the house that were removed in the 1970s. Ivy transplanted from St. John’s churchyard by one of Dr. Curd’s daughters draped the east side of the home for many years. Now it merely trims a delightful herb bed on the east side of the house. Inside, the heart-pine floors, the parlor and dining room chandeliers, opalescent glass window panes and lovely family heirlooms, such as the oval portrait over the dining room mantel and a piano owned by the late Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, are of note.  The library, built in the 1920s, contains bookcases added by the current owners. Double-back porches are among the many places to read in tranquility in this most charming of Church Hill residences. Mr. and Mrs. Douglas P. Rucker, Jr., owners.

2215 EAST BROAD STREET. The brick Greek Revival William J. Yarbrough House, built in 1861, features a grand main living area with two floors above an English basement. The large entrance hallway is warmly punctuated by needlepoint pillows designed and executed by the homeowner, historian and President of the Museum of the Confederacy Waite Rawls. Other examples of his skillful needlework abound.

William Yarbrough, the original owner, and his partner in the tobacco business, Miles Turpin, married sisters; a duplicate of this house stands at 2209 Broad Street. Despite a neighboring twin property, much in this home is one-of-a kind: intricate plaster ceiling work in the front and rear parlors, an Adam mirror, a J. Frank Jones secretary, and oil paintings collected in New York. Conversely, two 1920s Parisian chandeliers, purchased at different shops in Connecticut, turned out to be identical when unpacked to the amazement of the owners. A large chandelier in the dining room was bought by the owner’s grandmother from an antebellum New Orleans home in the 1930s. Furnishings, paint colors, lighting fixtures and many structural improvements testify to the energy, good taste and historical sensibilities of the Rawls. On the rear of the house, broad porches overlook a tastefully landscaped brick courtyard and a two-story servants’ quarters which is now used as a guest house. 

Over the years, the house has seen many uses. A doctor employed the English basement as office space at the turn of the last century. The Rawls’ 2009 kitchen renovation on this level showcases the boldly patterned mosaic floor. The floor was laid for cleanliness in 1901 when patients were seen in the space.  After World War II, the house was divided into 12 separate apartments. When the previous owner Polly Cole purchased the house from Douglas Fleet in 1995, a stereo equipment store occupied the main floor. The current owners purchased the house in 1995 and commenced their renovation in 2006.  Mr. and Mrs. S. Waite Rawls III, owners.

THE ST. JOHN’S MEWS. Along the stone alley behind “Carrington Row,” in what used to be a parking lot on the site of two demolished buildings, lies a carefully constructed landscaping project known as the St. John’s Mews. In 1963, Historic Richmond Foundation approached the Garden Club of Virginia and landscape architect Ralph Griswold, to design and implement a small oasis within the city. Nineteenth-century ornamental cast iron recovered from abandoned Richmond buildings decorates the Mews, along with boxwood, crape myrtle and other shrubs and flowers. The work began through a very generous grant by the Garden Club of Virginia. Historic Richmond Foundation owns and maintains the garden on a daily basis. Other accomplishments include contributing gas lighting on the city block.

2306 EAST GRACE STREET. Circa 1810-16, the Ann Adams Carrington House was built by Dr. John Adams for his widowed sister. With a Flemish-bond brick face, this is one of the earliest houses to survive on Church Hill and the only Federal Period “bow-front” residence remaining in Richmond.  The many original features that make this home a delight to tour include the floors of “old growth” pine with traces of the “tack” marks from seasonal carpeting being pulled up and re-laid over the centuries. As a former Chair of the City of Richmond Commission of Architectural Review, Jean Wight’s care for detail is evident. Opening their home to the public for the first time in 10 years, she and her husband have completed an extensive renovation, including scraping 13 layers of paint on carvings using dental tools, replacing the entire roof with standing-seam copper, raising ceilings back to original heights and putting back into place side and rear porches, while staying faithful to the original plan.

The entry floor level includes four elegant Federal doorway entablatures, each hand-carved with a different pattern, as if to display the carpenter’s skills. A penchant for travel and collecting has filled the interior with many objects d’art, from French, American, Asian, Latin American and English paintings and artifacts to a framed collection of early American documents. The second floor includes furniture dating from the successive ownership of Tuckahoe Plantation, after its sale from the Randolphs first to the Wight (1830) and then to the Allen families. The master bed has passed through the generations from its first location at Tuckahoe to the current owners. An 1835 map of Richmond drafted by Macajah Bates while he lived in the home hangs downstairs; a letter dating from the War of 1812 hangs upstairs.  After 10 years of restoration, the owners are now constructing a traditional kitchen garden which will include laying antique cobble, brick and beds. Dr. Jonathan and Jean Wight, owners.
Richmond—Church Hill—2212 East Grace Street

2212 EAST GRACE STREET. A herringbone brick courtyard, an American elm and wrought-iron fencing welcome viewers to this Italianate home built in 1881-82, which is on the National Historic Register. The house was acquired in 1996 by Robert Mitchell, an avid collector who purchased most of the pre-Civil War pieces of furniture from Millstone Antiques in Hanover County.  The bird wallpaper in the dining room was “love at first sight.” The owner, who resides in the Kingdom of Bahrain where he administrates a private bi-lingual school, refinished all floors before moving in.  He also installed gas logs in the parlor and dining room and later added the lively cockatoo wallpaper in the front hall. The house is furnished with a combination of American antiques and carpets from the Middle East. The entry hall reflects the owner’s love of children. Stacked wooden pantry boxes are topped with petite late-19th century leather button-up children’s shoes. On the staircase, each tread displays a charming pair of these shoes carefully placed on a miniature Oriental carpet. In the front parlor, three exquisite porcelain antique dolls hold court over an extensive collection of “salt glaze” stoneware from the early 20th century. Chinese blue and white Canton pottery also reflects the owner’s background and interest in collecting. In the dining room, an early 19th century walnut step-back cupboard holds a modest collection of green and cream stoneware. An extensive miniature iron collection and a family of African dolls add to the warmth of the room.

A newly renovated (2006) sage-green kitchen with granite countertops is at the rear of the house. Beyond is the den, which once served as a first-floor bedroom. Everywhere in this home, a love of family, nature, wholesome American life and high levels of craftsmanship abound.  Mr. Robert Mitchell, owner

THE GARDENS AT RICHMOND HILL COMMUNITY—2209 EAST GRACE STREET.  Col. Richard Adams built his attractive home on the crest of Richmond Hill about 1780. He was an original member of Richmond’s Common Council and later mayor.  In 1866, the Sisters of the Visitation came from Baltimore to open a girls’ school and pray for the devastated city. The Adams house became the monastery of Monte Maria, which in the 1880s grew to include the Italianate Adams-Taylor house, built in 1811. The Chapel was built in 1894. A new brick wall enclosed the beautiful garden designed and tended by the Sisters. In 1928 the original house was taken down due to disrepair. Today, a holly bower and bench in the garden overlooking the river are located where the back stoop once stood.

In 1987 the Sisters moved to Hanover County and conveyed Monte Maria to an ecumenical Christian Community, Richmond Hill, which continues a rhythm of daily prayer for metropolitan Richmond. Twelve persons, married and single, of various Christian denominations live here under a modified Benedictine Rule, which includes a commitment to hospitality, healing, racial reconciliation and spiritual development, maintaining a retreat center with 40 overnight beds. The Community is host for this Historic Garden Week visit. 

NOTE:  While walking in the neighborhood, please observe the exterior of the historic Elmira Shelton House at 2407 East Grace Street.  This classic 1844 Greek Revival residence was the home of Edgar Allan Poe’s childhood sweetheart.  The house served as a model for restoration in the Church Hill district and was the first headquarters for Historic Richmond Foundation.