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Maymont
Mansion
The Maymont Mansion in Richmond,
Virginia was started in 1886, when Sallie and James Dooley obtained
some farmland along the banks of the James River, and after making
plans for their new house, they commissioned Edgerton Stewart Rogers
to do the work. Rogers had been born and educated in Rome, so he
decided to combine the Romanesque revival style with the picturesque
Queen Anne style for the Dooley's dream house. The Dooley's would
move into their new 12,000 square foot home in 1893, with 33 rooms,
they would call it, "May Mont" using a name that put Sallie's maiden
name with the French word for hill. The Maymont is rather unique in
historic house museums since it rarely that a historical society or
any other facility should acquire a very historic and beautiful
house with only the original occupants having lived in it, and after
they were gone, everything they had, was left intact, and donated to
the nonprofit Maymont Foundation. The Dooley's would live there for
32 years, and within six months of Sallie's passing, the mansion
doors were opened as a museum. The interior and its marvelous
collections would be kept intact, with just some minor alterations
needed to preserve the magnificent house and property for all
posterity. Today, the mansion is a well preserved testament to the
gilded age of design and the personal tastes of well-educated,
cosmopolitan millionaires, with a influence of both the served and
server, working class and elite, as well as black and white, after
having gone through an exhaustive decade long research that was
finished in 2005. The main rooms has very distinct and individual
characteristics, with adjoining drawing rooms that mirror the French
18th century styles. The walls have been covered by the finest silk
damask, the hearths are made of white onyx, while the friezes and
ceilings have been finished with distinctive ornamental plaster
works and decorative paintings. The small den is definitely near
Eastern and the living hall has a marvelous English
renaissance-inspired mantlepiece, a library with the unusual mixture
of eclectic and artistic tastes that had been prevalent during the
1880s and 1890s. The plastered ceilings and friezes have been
embellished by stylistic stenciling and strapwork that is gorgeous
in mahogany, and used throughout the house, and that included the
original Venetian blinds. The more significant rooms have been
enhanced with stained-glass transoms, wall treatments, decorative
ceilings and carved woodwork. The second floor also has a central
living hall, which is lighted by a large Tiffany Studios stained
glass window that rises above the fabulous grand stairway, with the
morning room furnished with a painted satinwood set, along with the
famous swan room, two guest bedrooms and two tiled bathrooms. The
mansion also could boast about the most modern conveniences like
central heat, electric lighting, an elevator and three full
bathrooms. All told, there are 12 completely restored rooms located
on the first and second floor of the mansion that are open for
viewing. However, that is not the whole house, nor the full story,
since there were many men and women that came to the house, not as
guest, family or friends, but as employees. During their time at the
mansion, the Dooleys would employ anywhere from seven to ten
domestic workers, almost all of them being African American, so that
the couple could maintain the richness of their mansion, grounds and
own personal belongings. Some of the duties of these employees
included cleaning the mansion's 33 rooms, feeding at least a dozen
people every day for every meal and often that number would be
increased to include hundreds, helped the couple dress and bath,
transport them around in the latest well running carriages and
later, motor cars, washed, ironed and anything else that came up.
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The Museum of the Confederacy
 The
Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia houses a marvelous
collection of relics, manuscripts, photographs, and even the former
White House of the Confederacy, along with many other materials
pertaining to the Civil War and the Confederate States of America.
The White House of the Confederacy had been a private residence, a
grey stuccoed neoclassical styled mansion that had been constructed
by John Brockenbrough, the president of the Bank of Virginia, that
had been designed by Robert Mills. The magnificent house had been
constructed in 1818 in the city's affluent Shockoe Hill area, just
two blocks from the state capitol. Some of his neighbors included
future US Senator Benjamin Watkins Leigh, US Chief Justice John
Marshall, defense lawyer John Wickham and Aaron Burr. The house
would be sold by the family in 1844, and then owned by numerous rich
families during the antebellum era, and included US Congressman and
future Confederate Secretary of War, James Seddon. Lewis Dabney
Crenshaw bought the house just before the Civil War began, and added
a third floor, then turned around and sold it to the city, that in
turn rented it to the Confederacy as its executive mansion. In
August of 1861, Jefferson Davis, his wife, Varina and their children
would move in and then live in the lovely mansion until the war
ended. Davis had recurring attacks of malaria, facial neuralgia,
cataracts in his left eye, insomnia and unhealed wounds from his
time with the Mexican War. Because of the occasional severity of the
ailments, Davis stayed at the house and kept an office on the second
floor. Jefferson's personal secretary, Colonel Burton Harrison would
also inhabit the mansion during that period. Some of the
neighborhood children that played with the Davis' children included,
George Smith Patton, whose father was commanding the 22nd Virginia
Infantry, and whose son, George Patton, Jr. would command the US
Third Army during WWII. Joseph Davis fell from a 15 foot high
portico to his death in the spring of 1864 that would devastate the
family. Varina's mother and sister would often visit the family to
help in any way they could, as well as adding their support. When
the evacuation of Richmond began on April 2, 1865, the family would
abandon the mansion, and within 12 hours, the house would be seized
by Major General Godfrey Weitzel's XVII Corps. President Lincoln,
who had been close by in City Point, which has become Hopewell,
Virginia, would travel up the James River and tour the city and
mansion, where he spent some three hours perusing the first floor
since he felt it very improper for him to enter the private areas of
another man's house, even under the circumstances. Admiral David
Dixon Porter came with the president and they would hold a number of
meetings with the local officials there. One of those visiting was
Confederate Brigadier General Joseph Reid Anderson, the current
owner of the Tredegar Iron Works. While the Reconstruction happened,
the Confederate White House would be used as the headquarters of
Military District Number One, Virginia, and often became the
residence of the commanding officer of the Department of Virginia.
After Reconstruction ended, in October of 1870, the city would get
possession of the mansion and used it as the Richmond Central
School, one of the first public schools to reopen after the war. In
1890, when the city of Richmond announced plans to destroy the
mansion and build a new school, the Confederate Memorial Literary
Society was created to save the former Confederate White House from
that destruction, opening it as the Confederate Museum in 1896. The
museum would be housed in the mansion for many years, but as the
centennial approached, the museum's board decided that the mansion
should evolve from a type of shrine to a more modern museum, hiring
their first museum professional in 1963, and changing its name in
1970 to "The Museum of the Confederacy". It contains the biggest and
most complete collection of relics, memorabilia and personal effects
that pertained to the Confederacy, with thousands of objects, and
some owned by Jefferson Davis, Raphael Semmes, Robert E. Lee, Lewis
Armistead, Joseph E. Johnston, Wade Hampton, John Bell Hood, Thomas
Jonathan Jackson, Joseph Wheeler, Simon Bolivar Buckner and J. E. B.
Stuart. A newer and more modern structure was constructed in 1976
adjacent to the White House on the remainder of its three-quarters
of an acre; and the first ironclad warship, the CSS Virginia, that
fought against the USS Monitor, sits proudly in front.
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Car Rentals
Richmond
The
Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Virginia is not only the seat of
the government for the commonwealth, but it is also the third
capital the state has had since its early beginnings; but it does
house the oldest legislative body in the United States, the Virginia
General Assembly. The capitol structure would be completed in 1788,
and it is the eighth such building to serve the commonwealth since
its inception; with the majority of the older capitols being burned
down by fires, back in the colonial days, when wood was used more
until the hazards of fires were realized. This capitol building
doesn't have an exterior dome, and is one of the eleven in the
nation that don't. In the colonial days, the capital of the
commonwealth would be Jamestown, where the House of Burgesses would
meet in 1619 for the first time, and here the government would go
through four state houses blamed on fires. In the early 18th
century, a marvelous new capitol structure would be built in
Williamsburg, by Henry Cary, a contractor that had just completed
the work on the Wren building at the College of William and Mary,
which would be the legislature's temporary home. This new structure
would be a one story H-shaped building, but really was two buildings
joined by a covered arcade. On the first floor of the west building
the general court and the colony's secretary would be located, while
the first floor east would be for the House of Burgesses and their
clerk; completed in 1705, with the governor's grand palace located
nearby. The structure that sits on the old foundation in Colonial
Williamsburg today is the third capitol building that was
constructed there. Cary had constructed the capitol without
fireplaces, so they had to be added in 1723, to help the building
stay dry and also to give heat in the winters. In 1747, that
building would also burn down, leaving only a few walls and the
foundation. The governor at that time, William Gooch, would urge the
house to rebuild the capitol, but there were many of the legislators
that wanted the government to be moved to a city that was closer to
navigation and trade. While all this continued, the Burgesses would
meet at the Wren Building; with the reconstruction of the capitol
being approved in 1748 by a close vote of 40 to 38 against. The new
capitol would be occupied in 1753, and it was in this famous
structure that Patrick Henry stood tall and brave, and delivered his
outstanding speech against the Stamp Act on May 29, 1765.
Henry, along with men like George Washington, George Mason, George
Wythe, Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee, as well as others
would be instrumental in maneuvering the legislature into a
revolution. Fighting broke out in the north, and the building rang
out with the cries of Jefferson's first try to get a bill for
religious freedom, or Mason's Virginia Declaration of Rights or his
Virginia constitution. Finally, on June 20, 1776, the Virginians
declared their independence from Great Britain and wrote the state's
first constitution, which made a separate and independent government
four days before the Continental Congress would vote on their
Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The capitol in
Williamsburg would last until the Revolutionary War began, upon
which, Governor Thomas Jefferson urged the Burgesses to move the
capitol to Richmond, and the last time that the Williamsburg capitol
would be used was on December 24, 1779, when the General Assembly
adjourned to reconvene at their new home in 1780. When they
reconvened, in a makeshift structure by Shockoe Bottom, they made
plans to construct a new building to house a new state legislature
for the Commonwealth of Virginia. The General Assembly would meet in
the new capitol building, although not fully finished, in October,
1792.
