<p>The Greenville Downtown Historic District is a commercial historic district located in Greenville, Michigan along Lafayette between Montcalm and Benton, along with the adjacent blocks of Montcalm, Grove, Cass, and Washington on either side. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>In 1844, John and Deborah Green moved from Fulton County, New York to this site in Montcalm County. The Greens purchased a plot of land and built a dam and sawmill. More settlers quickly arrived, including a millwright, blacksmith, carpenter, and doctor (John Green&#39;s brother, Thomas), who all settled in Greenville in 1845. The first merchant arrived in 1846, and a small town grew from that location. John Green himself financed many of the early businesses, and the site soon became a commercial hub for the county. In 1853, John Green and Manning Rutan platted areas of Greenville that included Lafayette and surrounding streets. John Green died in 1855, but when the city was later chartered, it was officially named Greenville in his honor.</p><br>
<p>In the 1850s and 60s, Greenville&#39;s business district began developing along Lafayette between Washington and Cass. The commercial buildings of the time were a mixture of one- and two-story wooden structures, none of which survive today. In 1868, Greenville adopted a fire code prohibiting new wooden buildings. Coupled with the rise in population due to logging activities, this created a construction boom in commercial buildings along Lafayette, and by 1875, about twenty substantial brick commercial blocks had been constructed. The national economic downturn prevented more construction until the mid-1880s. At that time, a series of fires along Lafayette prompted a new wave of construction, and a dozen more buildings were constructed in the later 1880s and early 1890s.</p><br>
<p>Development in the early 1900s was slow, as buildings were replaced or lots infilled. Construction halted during the Great Depression, then picked up again after World War II before essentially ceasing in the mid-1960s.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The district contains 60 contributing buildings Most of the structures are commercial blocks located along Lafayette, housing businesses on the first floor and office space or social meeting spaces on the upper floors. The district also includes churches, houses, and a hotel.</p><br>
<p>The significant structures in the district include:</p><br>
<h3>Winter Inn (100 N. Lafayette)</h3><br>
<p>The Winter Inn was built in 1901-02 by Thomas B. Winter on a site that had previously hosted a string of hotel buildings. The Winter Inn has continued to serve as a hotel until the present day, and is significant as a still-functioning example of a modest, locally owned hotel of a type once common in small towns like Greenville. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
<h3>Grabill Block (226 S. Lafayette)</h3><br>
<p>Elliott F. Grabill was a Civil War veteran who settled in Greenville after the war. In 1866, he became the owner and editor of the Greenville Independent, and he constructed this building in the early 1880s. The Greenville Post Office was located in the building at the time Grabill was postmaster, and the Grabill ran the Independent out of this building well into the 20th century. The Grabill Block also housed a string of banks, starting with the First National Bank, which occupied part of the block starting in 1884, and then C. J. Church & Co. Bank and the Greenville State Bank, which occupied the same space until 1914.</p><br>
<h3>St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (305 S. Clay)</h3><br>
<p>St. Paul&#39;s Episcopal Church began life as the Greenville First Congregational Church, constructed in 1855/56. In 1879, the Congregationalists began construction of a new and larger church, and sold their 1856 building to the Episcopal congregation, who moved it across the street to the present site. The steep pitch of the roof, pointed arches over the windows, and triangular caps on the doorways and belfry openings give the building a Gothic Revival appearance.</p><br>
<h3>Rider & Potter Block (301 S. Lafayette)</h3><br>
<p>In 1870-71, Myron Rider and Thomas J. Potter constructed this brick building. It has a unique set of oculus windows above the third story, giving the structure a commanding appearance. At 50 feet high, it is still the tallest building located along Lafayette.</p><br>
<h3>First Congregational Church (126 E. Cass)</h3><br>
<p>The Greenville First Congregational Church was organized in 1852. In 1855/56 the congregation constructed a wood frame church on the site of the present church. In 1879, this church was sold to the Episcopalians and moved across the street, where it now serves as St. Paul&#39;s Episcopal Church. The Congregationalists hired Elijah E. Myers to design a new church, which was built in 1879-80.</p><br>
<h3>Post Office Block (328-332 S. Lafayette)</h3><br>
<p>In 1869, Hiram B. Fargo and James W. Belknap constructed the first brick building in Greenville on the corner of Lafayette and Washington, known then as the "Fargo & Belknap Block". In 1871-72, two additional store buildings of the same exterior design were constructed directly north of the Fargo & Belknap Block; the three together became known as the "Post Office Block" due to the early location of the post office in the center building.</p><br>
<h3>Rutan Block (400-404 S. Lafayette)</h3><br>
<p>In the late 1860s, Greenville eliminated what once had been a small public square at the corner of Lafayette and Washington, deeding the lots back to the original owners. One of those was Manning Rutan, one of the original platters of Greenville. In 1873-74, Rutan constructed a building on the site. The building initially housed his hardware stora and a stove business owned by Rutan&#39;s son, and a Grange Hall on the third floor.</p><br>
<p>The Winter Inn is a hotel located at 100 N. Lafayette Street in Greenville, Michigan. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1979 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. The building is significant as a still-functioning example of a modest, locally owned hotel of a type once common in small towns like Greenville.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>A string of different hotel buildings were constructed on this site beginning in 1850. These included two successive structures known as the Rossman House hotels, the Merritt House, and the Webster House (later renamed the Northern Hotel). The Northern House was destroyed by fire in 1900, and its owner, Thomas B. Winter, then constructed the present building in 1901-02. He added a rear wing containing a dance hall in 1902-03.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Winter Inn is a three-story, L-shaped red brick Late Victorian Vernacular hotel with a flat roof. The construction is generally utilitarian, with external decoration confined to brownstone beltcourses above the second and third story windows and a metal-bracketed cornice. Most windows are asymmetrically-arranged one-over-one sash windows, but three arched tripartite windows with leaded glass fanlights are arranged on the first floor. There is a double-door entrance at the canted corner.</p><br>
<p>The Andrew and James Dall Houses are a pair of historic residences in the Central neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, United States. Erected in the late nineteenth century, they were home to two of the city&#39;s leading builders, and they have together been named a historic site.</p><br>
<p>A native of Scotland, Andrew Dall, Sr., immigrated to the United States in 1852 with his family. Two of his sons, James (older) and Andrew Jr. (younger), established a prosperous construction business in Cleveland: they began as builders and contractors, and they later expanded into the role of craftsmen with their stonemasonry work. The brothers arranged for the construction of their homes in the 1870s: Andrews house was started in 1875 and finished two years later, and the construction of James house lasted from 1878 to 1881. During the time that the houses were under construction, the Dalls completed numerous prominent projects, including Adelbert Hall, St. Pauls Episcopal Church, and multiple mansions in the Millionaires Row on Euclid Avenue.</p><br>
<p>Architecturally, the two houses are typical of high-style residences of the period. Located on adjacent lots, they are brick buildings with foundations of sandstone and miscellaneous stone elements. Andrews house was built in the Italianate style, while James house features elements of the Eastlake mode of the Queen Anne style. A cobblestone driveway for carriages is located beside the houses.</p><br>
<p>In 1984, the houses were listed together on the National Register of Historic Places. Unlike many other Register-listed Cleveland residences from the period, they did not qualify for inclusion because of their architecture: they gained this designation because of their place as the homes of some of the most prominent builders in the city&#39;s history.</p><br>
<p>In 2020, the houses were extensively rehabilitated through an effort undertaken by surviving members of the family, the Cleveland Restoration Society, and the Building and Housing Department of the City of Cleveland, with support from a Federal grant from the USA Department of the Interior.</p><br>
<p>The Morrow County Courthouse is a historic government building in the village of Mount Gilead, Ohio, United States. Constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century, it has served as the county courthouse since Morrow County&#39;s earliest years, and it has been named a historic site.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>One of Ohios youngest counties, Morrow County was organized in 1848 to relieve local residents: its land had previously been part of five different counties, and the residents experienced substantial difficulty in participating in county government because the distance to all five county seats was excessive. Incorporated in 1839, Most county offices were located in a long two-story frame house, which stood on the two lots where the courthouse now stands, although the county courts met in the Baptist Church. In its early years, the courthouse served a wide variety of community purposes: for example, the countys first medical association was formed at the courthouse in 1850, the Universalist church worshipped in the courtroom until 1861, and the village spelling bee was held at the courthouse in the 1870s.</p><br>
<p>By 1880, the architecture of the 1850s had fallen into disfavor: a county history published in that year noted that the courthouse "possess, however, little beauty or modern appearance" and suggested that county money be spent on "modernizing the ungainly structure." Sixteen years passed before any substantial changes were made; in 1896, the building was expanded, and the facade was modified with some modernizing changes, but the buildings basic plan remained. The next substantial change occurred during the Great Depression of the 1930s: the increasing availability of federal money prompted local officials to apply for and receive a grant, with which they again modified the buildings appearance and added a new courtroom inside a new wing on the building&#39;s rear. No substantial changes have been made since that time.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>Built of brick on a stone foundation, the courthouse is covered with a slate roof and features elements of wood and stone. Before the modernization of 1896, the facade included a small cupola and a pediment with a fanlight, The interior is accessed through the southern (front) facade, with a rounded arch entrance in place of the original Greek Revival design, but some elements of the original design remain: for example, numerous pilasters on the walls once concealed the buildings many chimneys, and certain parts of the second story of the interior, left unchanged by construction, depict all three stages of the courthouses history. At the top of the building, a cornice and a plain frieze crown the walls, while a finial and pagoda-shaped roof sit at the peak of the fifty-foot tower.</p><br>
<h2>Preservation</h2><br>
<p>More than a century and a half old, the Morrow County Courthouse remains in use for its original purposes: no organizations except for local government operate within its walls, and the Morrow County and Mount Gilead village courts continue to meet in its courtrooms. In 1974, the courthouse and 1850 county jail were listed on the National Register of Historic Places together, qualifying because of their distinctive historic architecture.</p><br>
<p>The Perry–Payne Building is a historic commercial building in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States in the city&#39;s historic Warehouse District. Designed by prominent architects for a leading politician, it gained national attention as an architectural masterpiece upon its completion. Long home to the offices of manufacturing and transportation companies, it has been named a historic site.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>Built primarily of stone and designed by the firm of Cudell and Richardson, the eight-story Perry–Payne Building possesses unusual fenestration: its seven-bay facade is composed largely of windows, while the sides are almost windowless. Its design represents a crucial technological juncture: the exterior is primarily traditional stonemasonry, but reduced stonework – and thus exceptionally large amounts of window area – are permitted by the use of structural iron inside the building. Its floors are made of concrete and tile, unlike the wooden floors of earlier commercial buildings produced by Cudell and Richardson. At the time of its completion, the building included a large and unique lightwell, an interior court with a glass roof, which has since been covered with flooring. When the Perry–Payne Building was completed, architects from across the United States came to examine its revolutionary new design, with particular attention being drawn to the lightwell; the attention given to the building produced fame for Cudell and Richardson.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Begun in 1888 and completed in the following year, the Perry–Payne Building was named for its owner and his family: it was erected for politician Henry B. Payne, and "Perry" was his wifes maiden name. During the buildings early years, its offices were occupied primarily by firms in the shipping and iron-manufacturing businesses; such companies remained its tenants for many years, as these industries held crucial rôles in Cleveland&#39;s industrial economy. It is no longer used as offices or for any other commercial purpose: from 1994 to 1995, it was remodelled into a 92-unit apartment building.</p><br>
<p>In 1973, the Perry–Payne Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying because its historically significant architecture, and when Clevelands Warehouse District was listed on the Register as a historic district in 1982, it was named one of the districts contributing properties.</p><br>
<p>Aberdeen is a historic plantation house located several miles north of Disputanta, Prince George County, Virginia. It was built sometime between 1790 and 1810, by Thomas Cocke. In 1790 Thomas inherited a 1,685-acre portion of his fathers estate, Bonnacord, which he named "Aberdeen." Thomass brother, John P. Cocke, inherited the remainder of Bonnacord. Thomas married Sarah Colley, daughter of Nathaniel and Martha Batte Colley of Tar Bay Plantation located about five miles west of Bonnacord.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>Aberdeen is an imposing brick temple-form house. The main facade features an imposing pediment finished with horizontal flush sheathing. The walls are laid in Flemish bond with flat arches over the openings. A diminutive portico with Doric order columns is the central feature. It, and the main roof have cornices with block modillions. A lateral hall runs across the entire front of the house, which is reflected in the side elevations that each have a door and two windows on the first floor below three windows on the second floor. Aberdeen is one of a group of houses in Virginia that have this plan and front elevation. They occur over a long period and are scattered randomly across the state. Aberdeen also features important Federal interior woodwork in remarkably in undisturbed condition. The house sits in a picturesque grove of trees in front of woodland and wetlands. Between the fenced yard and the main road are flat farm fields typical of Tidewater Virginia still in cultivation, as they have been for at least three centuries. On these and other fields, Thomas Cocke and his close friend Edmund Ruffin conducted experiments in fertilization that led to Ruffin&#39;s publications that revolutionized agriculture.</p><br>
<p>Aberdeen was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.</p><br>
<p>Chester Plantation is a historic plantation house located at Disputanta, Prince George County, Virginia. The central section of the mansion was built circa 1845, as a two-story, single-pile, center hall-plan, Greek Revival style frame dwelling by Colonel Williamson Simmons. Chester remained in the Simmons family until 1918. The front facade features a two-story full-width porch, with full-height Doric order columns. A two-story rear wing was added in 1854, and flanking -story Colonial Revival style wings were added in 1949. Also on the property are the contributing icehouse and well house built in the 1840s, a secondary dwelling built in the 1920s, an open cart shed and concession building both constructed in the 1940s, and a swimming pool and pool house, dating from the 1940s when the estate was owned by prominent Petersburg businessman and politician Remmie L. Arnold.</p><br>
<p>Arnold, the president and owner of the Arnold Pen Company, at the time one of the largest manufacturers of fountain pens, launched a campaign for Governor of Virginia in 1949. As a Petersburg city councilman, Arnold had pushed through a budgetary increase earmarked for equality and fair access to public housing and recreational facilities for everyone including people of color, and increased budgetary considerations for the black schools in Petersburg. In a highly unusual move for a Democratic politician in the Jim Crow South, Arnold promised to deal with all Virginians fairly whatever their ethnicity which won him the endorsement of Arthur Wergs Mitchell, the first African American to be elected to the United States Congress as a Democrat. Arnold ultimately lost the Democratic primary to John S. Battle who went on to win the gubernatorial election.</p><br>
<p>In 1961 a developer purchased the 711-acre estate, and in 1963 opened an 18-hole golf course known as the Arnolda Ranch Country Club, and developed much of the surrounding farmland as a residential subdivision known as Country Club Estates. The mansion is now part of the Prince George Country Club Estates and Golf Course. The house is operated as a restaurant and country inn.</p><br>
<p>Chester was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.</p><br>
<p>Evergreen, one of the James River Plantations, is a historic plantation house located just east of Hopewell in Prince George County, Virginia. It was built about 1807 by planter, George Ruffin, and is a two-story, five-bay, Late Georgian / Federal style stuccoed brick dwelling. It sits on a high basement and has a hipped roof. The front facade features a one-story pedimented Doric order portico set on a brick podium. George Ruffin&#39;s son, ardent secessionist Edmund Ruffin, who is credited with firing one of the first shots at Fort Sumter at the start of the Civil War was born at Evergreen in 1794. The house was extensively renovated in the late-1930s, after prior use as a barn and stable.</p><br>
<p>Evergreen was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.</p><br>
<p>The Chief Noonday Outdoor Center, also known as the Chief Noonday Group Camp Historic District, is a recreational facility located on Chief Noonday Road , approximately one mile east of Briggs Road in Yankee Springs Township. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The land in what is now the Yankee Springs Recreation Area was originally settled in the 1830s, but by the 1930s the land was eroding and farms were failing. The US government purchased a wide tract of land in the area and began reforestation. The National Park Service&#39;s Recreation Development Area (RDAs) program was active during the Great Depression, providing jobs and constructing scores of organized camping facilities throughout the nation. Four of these facilities were constructed in Michigan, and two of those were located in the Yankee Springs Recreation Area: the Long Lake Group Camp and this Chief Noonday Group Camp (originally the Mud Lake Camp).</p><br>
<p>Construction on the Chief Noonday Group Camp began in 1936. National Park Service architect Ernest F. Hartwick designed many of the buildings, while landscape architect Theodore N. Zaetsch laid out the plans for use of the land.</p><br>
<p>The camp was used continuously for some time, but recently the decision was made to refurbish the cabins one at a time. As of 2013, one refurbished cabin, renamed the "Crane House cabin," was available for rental.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Chief Noonday Outdoor Center is located in the Yankee Springs Recreation Area. The camp contains four villages arranged around a central fire pit, in addition to a central administration area containing a dining hall and kitchen complex and miscellaneous camp service facilities. The buildings are primarily single-story frame structures with gable roofs, clad with rough-sawn vertical boards. The buildings sit on concrete foundations with fieldstone veneers. Many of the larger buildings have massive fieldstone chimneys.</p><br>
<p>The Long Lake Outdoor Center, also known as the Long Lake Group Camp Historic District, is a recreational facility located at 10370 Gun Lake Road in Yankee Springs Township. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The land in what is now the Yankee Springs Recreation Area was originally settled in the 1830s, but by the 1930s, the land was eroding and farms were failing. The US government purchased a wide tract of land in the area and began reforestation. The National Park Service&#39;s Recreation Development Area (RDAs) program was active during the Great Depression, providing jobs and constructing scores of organized camping facilities throughout the nation. Four of these facilities were constructed in Michigan, and two of them were located in the Yankee Springs Recreation Area: the Chief Noonday Group Camp and this Long Lake Group Camp.</p><br>
<p>The construction on the Long Lake Group Camp began in 1936 and continued until approximately 1939. National Park Service architect Ernest F. Hartwick designed many of the buildings, while landscape architect Theodore N. Zaetsch laid out the plans for use of the land. The Long Lake Group Camp is significant for hosting Camp Michiwana, an important Michigan camp organization, for over 40 years.</p><br>
<p>In 1943, the federal government turned over Yankee Springs to the State of Michigan. The Long Lake Group Camp has been continuously operated since then. In the early 1980s, the camp was renovated, and two of the four original cabin circles were demolished, with the remaining buildings renovated.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Long Lake Group Camp is located on 300 acres in the Yankee Springs Recreation Area The camp contains two villages, each containing eight cabins arranged around a central fire pit, in addition to a central administration area containing a dining hall and kitchen complex and miscellaneous camp service facilities.</p><br>
<p>Prince George County Courthouse Historic District is a county courthouse complex and national historic district located at Prince George, Prince George County, Virginia. The district includes 11 contributing buildings and 3 contributing objects. They include the 1883 courthouse, 1900 clerk&#39;s office, the jail dated to about 1900, and three mid 20th century Colonial Revival-style office buildings. A Craftsman-style dwelling was adapted for office use and added to the courts complex in the 1970s. The courthouse green includes memorials commemorating the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Also included in the district are the F.L. Buren Store , the Victorian-style Buren residence , and two contributing outbuildings.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003.</p><br>
<p>Effingham is a historic home and national historic district located at Aden, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built about 1777, and is a large, two-story, five-bay, Tidewater-style, frame residence set on a raised basement. It features a massive, exterior, brick, double chimney joined by a pent closet at each end of the structure. Also included in the district are a brown sandstone blacksmith shop, a smokehouse and former slaves&#39; quarters, as well as a terraced garden that is reputed to be one of the earliest in Virginia.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>Moor Green is a historic home located near Brentsville, Prince William County, Virginia. It dates to the early-19th century, and is a two-story, five-bay, Federal style brick residence, with a one-room, two-story ell. It has a standing seam metal gable roof and a single-pile, central-passage plan.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Although some speculated that the house&#39;s foundation dates to a blockhouse built in 1711, the earliest reference to what became that plantation was a 1793 deed for 482 acres from the heirs of John Bronough to young Howson Hooe. The plantation was one of the most valuable properties in Prince William County in 1815, when it was taxed to pay for the War of 1812.</p><br>
<p>Members of the Hooe family owned the property until 1909, when the surviving (second) husband of Jane Hooe (Howsons daughter) sold his life interest in what had become 375 acres. Howsons grandson Richard I Reid, enlisted in the Confederate Army, was wounded at Fredericksburg in December 1862, and later captured at Mechanicsville in May 1864. Released upon signing an oath of Allegiance to the United States in June 1865, he married moved to Fulton County, Kentucky, but both he and his younger brother John died at this plantation in 1885, and their mother in 1893. The Fletcher family then owned the house through the Great Depression, during which it was noted on the Historic American Buildings Survey. In 1941, John Cox and his family bought the property, and renovated it, as noted in a 1953 article in the local Journal Messenger.</p><br>
<p>After his widow died in a nursing home in 1970, the property passed through several hands and was vacant for 19 years as the area developed. In 1978, the historic house was placed on both the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.</p><br>
<p>The house was burned on March 4, 1984, but a local bank renovated it, and in 1992 it was bought by the Flory family, who made it their residence.</p><br>
<p>The property includes the Hooe/Reid family cemetery, which according to a Smithsonian Institution historic survey in 2004, might include up to 60 graves, especially if the home became a hospital during the American Civil War. A nearby slave cemetery was no longer part of the property by 2004, as a result of subdivisions and development.</p><br>
<p>The back of the surviving house and outbuildings are visible from Moor Green Road, which has more recently built houses.</p><br>
<p>The Barry County Courthouse is a government building located at 220 West State Street in Hastings, Michigan. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1969 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Hastings was originally platted in 1836 by the Hastings Company. The company reserved a location for a courthouse; Barry County was organized in 1839, and in 1842 the first courthouse was constructed on this spot by the county government. Hastings was chartered as a village in 1855, and both the village and the surrounding county grew. In 1886, a devastating fire swept through Hastings, and, although the courthouse was spared, suggestions began to replace it with a brick structure. By early 1892, money was appropriated, and the county hired Detroit architect Albert E. French to design a new courthouse. Construction began on the current courthouse in 1892, and finished in 1894.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Barry County Courthouse is a three-story red brick rectangular building with a central square tower and a complex system of hip roofs. It appears very similar to the slightly older Livingston County Courthouse, also designed by Albert E. French. The building sits on a rock-face foundation. The design of the building is eclectic, combining Late Victorian, Queen Anne, and Richardsonian Romanesque elements. Cut stone frames the building&#39;s windows and entrances. Decorative tiles and brickwork accent the window openings. The building has four arched entrance portals, one on each side. The main (and most ornate) entrance is on the north side, and includes flanking Romanesque columns and the inscription "Barry County" with the date of construction carved above the arch.</p><br>
<p>The old jail and sheriff&#39;s residence, is located to the rear of the court building. The jail is a -story red brick Queen Anne structure.</p><br>
<p>In 1994, a new Barry County Courts Building was constructed across the street from the old courthouse.</p><br>
<p>Oakforest is a two-story, frame composite house in the Federal and Greek-Revival style, located in Wake Forest, North Carolina. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on 11 June 1998.</p><br>
<p>The property is on a</p><br>
<p>6.86 acre</p><br>
<p>site that is the residual portion of a</p><br>
<p>200 acre</p><br>
<p>plantation begun in the first decade of the nineteenth century by John Smith.</p><br>
<p>In 1803 John Smith was deeded this tract by his father, Benjamin Smith, and began construction.</p><br>
<p>A map on a 1791 Land Grant shows that the tract contains a</p><br>
<p>51 acre</p><br>
<p>tract granted to Benjamin Smith.</p><br>
<p>Surrounded by mid-twentieth-century houses, Oakforest is an oasis of rare historical value. The tract contains three remaining original structures, including the Oakforest dwelling house, the core of the plantation, the mid-nineteenth-century smokehouse, and the early nineteenth-century corn crib. The unfenced, gently sloping tract, the small stream with its border of wild foliage, the old trees and mid-nineteenth-century boxwoods combine to retain much of the original rural atmosphere. A unique feature is the American boxwood allee which lines the original front drive. The boxwoods were thought to be planted prior to the American Civil War as they can be seen in the earliest known picture taken in 1886.</p><br>
<p>In 2008, it was designated a local historic landmark property by the Town of Wake Forest, North Carolina.</p><br>
<p>There is a cemetery on the grounds, the resting place of members of the family who lived in the house.</p><br>
<p>Evergreen, also known as Evergreen Plantation Manor House, is a historic plantation house located near Haymarket, Prince William County, Virginia. It is known for its association with Edmund Berkeley , one of four brothers who led the 8th Virginia Infantry during the American Civil War and who later became a local philanthropist and led many veterans&#39; peace and commemorative activities.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Lewis Berkeley (1777-1836) built the house about 1827 and moved from his plantation near Aldie, Virginia. His son Edmund inherited Evergreen. When Edmund married an heiress from Tennessee, Mary Lawson Williams, her father gave Edmund the choice of a dowry in land or slaves, and Edmund Berkeley chose the latter. Thus dozens of enslaved people walked to the northern Virginia plantation from Tennessee. The Berkeleys raised 13 children on the plantation, and owned 52 enslaved people by 1860. The plantation also included a spoke mill, which burned down either early in the war or shortly before the war, and was not rebuilt due to the conflict.</p><br>
<p>Edmund Berkeley raised a local militia company called the "Evergreen Guards" which was one of eight incorporated into the 8th Virginia Infantry regiment under Col. Eppa Hunton and Major Norborne Berkeley (Edumunds younger brother but an earlier VMI graduate). The unit served with distinction through many battles and was sometimes called the "Berkeley Regiment". Norborne Berkeley soon was elected lieutenant colonel (his brothers Edmund and William captained companies, with the youngest brother Charles as Williams lieutenant), and rose to become the units colonel with Edmund as lieutenant colonel, William as major and Charles as senior captain. Edmund, Norborne and William Berkeley were all wounded during Picketts Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg (during which the unit suffered 90% casualties). Only Edmund was not captured afterward; his three brothers were exchanged for Union prisoners by March 18, 1864, and returned to duty. Norborne would suffer from severe rheumatism which led to his resignation and hospitalization in Richmond as the war ended; William and Charles were also captured after the Battle of Sailor&#39;s Creek on April 6, 1865.</p><br>
<p>Edmund returned to rebuild Evergreen after the war, and would found a local agricultural society. Norborne and William would return to farm adjacent estates in Loudoun County, but Norborne especially had severe financial problems and would live at various family estates, including Evergreen, where he died in 1911. Immediately after the war, Norborne was elected as one of Loudoun County&#39;s delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1868.</p><br>
<p>After the war, Edmund Berkeley became involved in commemorative activities, including the United Confederate Veterans, noting that he was the highest-ranking Confederate officer in his home Prince William County. With Union veteran Lt. George Carr Round, Edmund Berkeley helped plan the Manassas Peace Jubilee in 1911, as well as contributed to Round&#39;s campaign to create Manassas National Battlefield Park (the 8th Virginia having fought in both the First Battle of Bull Run and the Second Battle of Bull Run). One of the earliest historic battlefield parks, it was authorized during the Great Depression more than two decades after his death. A historic marker for the Manassas Peace Jubilee, which prompted two larger reunions at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and the creation of Gettysburg National Military Park is on the Evergreen site.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The -story, five-bay, Greek Revival style stone dwelling has a -story east wing and two-story west wing in the Colonial Revival style added about 1940. It sits on an English basement, and has a gable roof and interior end chimneys. The front facade features a three-bay, one-story, gable-roofed portico with a pedimented gable. The rear facade has a full-length, five-bay, two-story portico with large Doric order columns.</p><br>
<p>The surrounding property was converted to a golf club about 1970.</p><br>
<p>Around 2007, local residents became concerned about the mansion&#39;s relative non-use by the golf club, and were concerned that it would become structurally unstable and razed. Instead, a preservation support group was formed and the structure added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. It was subsequently converted into the "Inn at Evergreen", with eleven bedrooms and modern amenities under the historic facade.</p><br>
<p>Mt. Atlas is a historic home and national historic district located near Haymarket, Virginia, United States. It was built about 1795 and is a -story, three-bay, Georgian style, frame dwelling with a single-pile, side hall plan. It has a -story rear ell dated to the late-19th century and a two bay front porch. The house features a single exterior stone chimney, a metal gable roof, and a molded, boxed cornice with modillions. Also included in the district are a smokehouse and the sites of the former kitchen and a carriage house.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>Pilgrim&#39;s Rest, also known as Belle Mont Grove and Mount Wesley, is a historic home and national historic district located near Nokesville, Prince William County, Virginia. It dates to the 18th century, and is a -story, three-bay, Tidewater style, frame dwelling with a double-pile, side hall plan. It has a one-story, gable-roofed, rebuilt kitchen and dining addition dated to 1956, when the house was remodeled. The house features a pair of unusual exterior brick chimneys on the south end with a two-story pent closet. Also included in the district are a late-19th century frame granary / barn, a frame, gable-roofed tool shed, and an icehouse constructed of concrete block with a metal gable roof. In 1996–1998, the Kinsley Granary was moved from the Buckland area of Prince William County, and is a -story stone structure that was rebuilt as a guest house.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, with a boundary increase in 2004.</p><br>
<p>The Kenneth and Phyllis Laurent House is a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Usonian house in Rockford, Illinois. It was the only house that Wright designed for a physically disabled client.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Kenneth Laurent was born in Illinois in 1919. In 1937, he moved to Rockford and began working as a statistician for the National Lock Corporation. It was in Rockford where he met his wife, Phyllis Carman. Kenneth Laurent served with the USA Navy during World War II, returning to Rockford on March 17, 1946. However, after only a few months, he began exhibiting severe pain in his midsection and lost the feeling in his legs. He was diagnosed with a spinal tumor that May, and though an operation successfully removed the tumor, he was rendered paralyzed. After rehabilitation at the Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital, he received compensation as part of the Specially Adapted Housing program. This program granted disabled veterans 50% of costs for a house to accommodate their disability. This provided an excellent opportunity for the Laurents to purchase their first home.</p><br>
<p>Phyllis read an article in a summer issue of House Beautiful, which featured the article "The Love Affair of a Man and his House." The article was a review of Frank Lloyd Wrights Loren Pope Residence in Falls Church, Virginia, which was built for the author. Kenneth wrote to Wright in August 1948, suggesting that he design a house on an urban lot that the Laurents had selected. The Laurents were invited to Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin to discuss the project. Wright disliked the lot that the Laurents had suggested and urged his clients to pick a site on the fringes of the city. The Laurents listened to Wrights request, and found a pleasant lot up against a creek. Wright approved the site and began his design in January 1949. The final plans were completed that August. The design was unusual for Wright because it had to be wheelchair-accessible. It is the only house that Wright designed for a person with a disability.</p><br>
<p>The house was built by local contractor Harry V. Johnson. The Rinehimer Manufacturing Company provided red tidewater cypress for the interior walls and exterior trim. John deKoven Hill was appointed by Wright to oversee the project. During construction, the Laurents befriended Wright. Wright would occasionally ask the Laurents to review some of his current designs at Taliesin. Wright also visited the Laurents, stopping by the house with Hill and Edgar Kaufmann Jr. In 1958, the Laurents again turned to Wright when they wanted an addition to their house. The Laurents did not like the first set of designs Wright made, and Wright died before he was able to draft a second. The addition was designed in 1960 by Evanston architect John H. "Jack" Howe, former Wright apprentice. The son of Harry Johnson was commissioned to build the addition. The Laurents were the only family to ever live in the house. On August 28, 2012, it was recognized by the National Park Service with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It was expected to open for tours in the summer of 2013, but a storm damaged the roof; the Laurent House Foundation intends to raise $500,000 to repair it. The house opened for tours on June 8, 2014.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The house is a hemicycle design, measuring approximately 2,600 ft&sup2; on a 1.3 acre lot. The Laurent House was Wright&#39;s first single-story building to use this design. The lot gently slopes toward the Spring Creek. It is primarily built with red tidewater cypress and Chicago common brick; plans originally called for limestone, but the Laurents rejected the additional cost. It is built on a poured concrete foundation set on crushed rock; the top layer of concrete was mixed with a red pigment. The house features two large chimneys. The central chimney is above the roofline with a wide copper drip edge. The other chimney is on the end wall of the east side of the master bedroom. The roof is flat and is made of tar and gravel. The house has deep eaves and a wide fascia. Recessed square lightboxes are found intermittently along the eaves. All windows have cypress frames and are single light. The main entrance is underneath a two-car carport. A 50 ft curved wall of glass faces the northwest. The house has radiant heat from water pipes. The only sub-grade area of the house is a small maintenance room where devices such as the water heater and water softener are located. The bathrooms are larger than in most Wright designs for improved maneuverability.</p><br>
<p>The Marion Cemetery Receiving Vault is a funerary structure in Marion Cemetery of Marion, Ohio, United States. Constructed in the 1870s, this receiving vault originally fulfilled the normal purposes of such structures, but it gained prominence as the semipermanent resting place of Marion&#39;s most prominent citizen, USA President Warren G. Harding.</p><br>
<h2>Construction</h2><br>
<p>The vault is a limestone structure with a slate roof; it rests on a concrete foundation. Plans to build it were formulated as early as 1873, when the cemetery association voted to make plans for one; funds were insufficient, so the association decided not to build until sufficient money had become available. Six years later, the cemetery&#39;s trustees decided to build a vault, and to design it, they hired Toledo architect D.W. Giffs.</p><br>
<p>Among the associations reasons for building the vault was the desire to avoid a modern form of grave robbery: the practice of body snatching was still relatively common, and the association wished to provide a place where bodies could be laid without risk of theft until they had decomposed so much that they would be useless to body snatchers. Accordingly, the final design for the vault included iron gates with secure locks. Other elements of the design included a double-arched ceiling, the creation of ventilation and related systems, and the placement of fine marble and carpet to beautify the structure and retard the harshness of death for decedents family members at funerals. The entire structure is built into a hillside.</p><br>
<h2>Hardings</h2><br>
<p>Warren Gamaliel Harding died in early August 1923 while in office as President of the United States. The suddenness of his death produced chaos even on a personal level, as funeral services and a burial location had to be worked out suddenly, and his wife, Florence Harding, was forced to return to Washington, D.C. to wrap up her affairs and to move her possessions out of the White House in order to permit its new occupants, President Calvin Coolidge and First Lady Grace Coolidge, to move in. Accordingly, no permanent burial place was employed immediately after his death, and funeral services were held at the Receiving Vault: Harding&#39;s family already owned burial plots in the cemetery, but a grander destination was planned for the deceased chief executive.</p><br>
<p>In the meantime, soldiers from Fort Hayes in Columbus guarded the vault for six months. As plans were being made for the construction of a permanent presidential tomb elsewhere in the city, his body remained in the vault, being joined by Mrs. Harding&#39;s body after her death in 1924. The two continued to wait until the practical completion of the memorial in 1927; they were then moved to their permanent burial sites inside the memorial, although four more years passed before it was formally dedicated.</p><br>
<h2>Preservation</h2><br>
<p>Two weeks before Christmas 1995, the Receiving Vault was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, qualifying both because of its architecture and because of the place it had played in the events of 1923. It is one of two National Register-listed sites in Marions city cemetery — the chapel had been listed nine months before — and one of fourteen such locations throughout Marion County. Among these fourteen are Hardings permanent tomb and his home on Marion&#39;s east side.</p><br>
<p>The Albers Brothers Mill is a historic mill and contemporary apartment building located in Tacoma, Washington, United States. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The structure is owned by the Foss Waterway Development Authority. The building, located at 1821 Dock Street, is the only remaining remnant of the working waterfront on the western shore of the Thea Foss Waterway. With the entrance of viable railroad lines into the Puget Sound basin, trade and commerce with Asia and the Pacific Rim ports shifted northward. Albers Brothers Milling Company’s move from Portland, reflects this change. The company started in Portland and became a primary company in the grain industry with its mills in Tacoma, Seattle and Bellingham on Puget Sound. The Albers Milling Company’s headquarters moved to Tacoma to support its Washington operations.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Bernard Albers was born in Lingen, Germany, on March 6, 1864. His father Johann was a grain merchant and young Bernard was apprenticed in the grain marketing business. In 1887 he immigrated to New York. After spending two years in Terre Haute, Indiana he migrated to Portland, Oregon. He worked for four years for feed merchants, Rogge & Storp. In 1893, Albers left Rogge & Storp and established his own grain business as Albers & Tuke. He replaced his partner in 1895 and changed the company name to Albers & Schneider. About this time, Bernard&#39;s brothers, Henry and William, emigrated from Germany. Shortly after his two other brothers, George and Frank, joined them.</p><br>
<p>Together the five brothers increased business, requiring a larger mill. In 1898, they built a new building on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland. The company eventually controlled 600 ft of waterfront warehouse and shipping docks. The facility handled shipping, bagging, and milling for grain as well as feed, hay and silage for importation and export, from its position on both rail and maritime routes. Simultaneously (1898), major contracts with the American military in the Philippines as the Spanish American War began, supporting the expansion of the business. These government contracts were in addition to the demands for flour, sacked grain and pancake mix to gold seekers headed to the Klondike in 1897 and 1898. For decades a familiar pictorial label used by Albers depicted a miner bent over his gold pan placer mining a creek.</p><br>
<p>In 1901 the business was incorporated as the Albers Brothers Milling Company. Within a year a massive expansion period began and continued through the First World War. In 1903, Frank Albers announced that the grain and cereal manufacturing company was expanding with a new mill on Tacomas waterfront. The Albers Brothers bought the Cascade Cereal Company that had operated a mill on the waterfront since 1889. The Portland mill site was not adequate for expansion. With the dredging of Thea Foss Waterway, the Tacoma location could be expanded to meet the companys needs and it provided a more accessible port for trans-Pacific shipping. The Cascade Cereal site was vacant due to a fire in 1902 which reduced the wood-framed mill and warehouse to cinders.</p><br>
<p>The Col. Joseph Ellis House is located at 1009 Sycamore Street in Haddon Heights, Camden County, New Jersey, United States. The house was built in 1760, and was the dwelling of Revolutionary War hero Colonel Joseph Ellis. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on September 23, 1994, for its significance in architecture and military history. It is part of the Haddon Heights Pre-Revolutionary Houses Multiple Property Submission </p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The Col. Joseph Ellis House derives primary significance as the residence of Joseph Ellis (d. 1796), a political officeholder and important commander of local militia during the American Revolution. Born in Ellisburg, Gloucester (now Camden) County, Ellis married Mary, daughter of Jacob Hinchman, in 1760. The couple lived in this house.</p><br>
<p>The house stands on land that belonged to John Hinchman, Sr., then, after his death, to Jacob Hinchman his youngest son.</p><br>
<p>The Daniel Striker House is a private house located at 321 South Jefferson Street in Hastings, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Daniel Striker was born in 1835 in Rose, New York, to Gilbert and Rebecca Striker. Not long after his birth, his family moved to Jackson County, Michigan, where they lived until Daniel was a teenager. In 1851, the family purchased a large tract of land in Barry County&#39;s Baltimore Township, and moved once again. Daniel Striker attended schools in Hastings and what is now Spring Arbor University, then began teaching school. In 1855, he moved on to work as a clerk at a local firm, and in 1860 was elected as clerk of Barry County. In 1862, he married Sarah E. Fancher; the couple had one daughter, Rebekah, and adopted a son. Striker served as Clerk or Deputy Clerk of the county until 1870, when he was elected as Michigan Secretary of State, a position he held for four years. Afterward, Striker was several times elected as Barry County Supervisor or Assessor; he spent much of his time in financial dealings, acting as an officer or director of several banks.</p><br>
<p>Daniel Striker constructed this house in the 1880s; it was contemporaneously called "the handsomest residence in Hastings." Striker&#39;s wife Sarah lived in the house until her death in 1915. In the 1960s, it was converted into apartments and became a convalescent home. It was later refurbished into a single-family home.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The Striker House is a -story Queen Anne structure, measuring 42 ft by 60 ft. It sits on an ashlar foundation and is covered with clap board siding. The house is elaborate in design, and features numerous gables, bays, dormers, as well as a distinctive octagonal tower in one corner. The window pattern is irregular, including some stained glass windows.</p><br>
<p>The Herrick Cobblestone is a historic cobblestone residence in Rockford, Illinois. It may be the oldest house in Rockford.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The area around the Illinois-Wisconsin border once had the largest population of cobblestone houses outside of New York City. However, very few remain—the Illinois Historic Sites Survey in 1978 identified only two remaining. Cobblestone houses were popular among individuals who worked on the Erie Canal, and the style came to the border region from New York migrants. Little is known about original resident Elijah L. Herrick. Because of the nature of his house, it has been suggested that Herrick was a cobblestone mason. The stones are from the nearby Rock River. Herrick came from Massachusetts to Rockford in the mid-1830s, though he probably stopped in New York on the way and came to learn of the style. The house was recognized by the National Park Service with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places on May 14, 1980. It has been recognized as the oldest house in the city since the 1967 demolition of the Daniel Shaw Haight House (1842), although this has been disputed by a historian.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The Herrick Cobblestone is generally Greek Revival in style and resembles a common design for cobblestone houses. It measures approximately 36 x with a two-way pitched roof. Walls are 15 inch thick and consist of a backing wall of large stones with a face of smaller cobbles. Eleven 12 inch quoins decorate the exterior corners. The quoins are large blocks of Platteville limestone. The house is on a foundation of Galena Dolomite. Chimneys are found at the end of the two gables, on the east and west. There are thirteen windows, each six-over-six. Lintels are wooden and are found on all except on three rear windows. The doorways has four sidelights on either side and a five-pane transom overhead. The front porch was added later and is Victorian in style. A small shed-like addition was built on the rear.</p><br>
<p>The Ziock Building is a historic skyscraper in Rockford, Illinois. Throughout its history, it has also been known as the Amerock Building and the Tower Building. Originally the home to several manufacturing enterprises owned by William H. Ziock, Jr., the tower became the headquarters of Amerock in the 1940s.</p><br>
<p>Last used for manufacturing in the 1950s, the building was later used for storage, leading to its abandonment. In 2015, the Ziock Building was purchased, commencing renovation and redevelopment of the site into a high-rise hotel and convention center, which opened in 2020.</p><br>
<h2>Early History</h2><br>
<p>William H. Ziock, Sr. was a woolen goods maker in Hattingen, Germany who immigrated to St. Louis, Missouri in 1847. He rose to take over operations of the St. Charles Textile Mill. In the 1880s, the company was contracted to provide the Rockford Mitten Company with yarn. The two companies eventually merged, bringing Ziock to Rockford, Illinois. Ziock&#39;s son, William Jr., took over operations after his death. He expanded the company, selling wares under the B-Z-B Knitting, Ziock Paper Box Company, and King Company names.</p><br>
<p>In 1912, Ziock announced plans to build a ten-story building for B-Z-B Knitting operations. In 1913, Ziock decided to house all four of his companies in the new structure in an effort to improve efficiency. The building opened in late 1913, becoming Rockford&#39;s tallest building. By 1919, Ziock was seeking bids for an addition. In 1920, the thirteen-story addition was completed. Operations were successful enough to launch three subsidiaries: Beloit Hosiery in Seneca Falls, New York; Tenn-Rock Hosiery in McMinnville, Tennessee; and Manchester Mills, Inc. in Manchester, Tennessee. Production for the Ziock enterprises was slowed with the onset of World War II, as Japan had been their primary provider of silk. Furthermore, the labor shortages from the war greatly reduced the amount of product that could be manufactured. Ziock died in 1957 and the struggling company was dissolved.</p><br>
<p>However, the building continued to see use from a different source. The Aldeen Company rented space in the building in 1928 to produce hardware. Gedor and Ruben Aldeen came from Sweden in 1907 and founded the company in 1928. In the 1930s, they changed their name to the American Cabinet Hardware Corporation. In 1940, after years of sustained success despite overall economic hardship, the company combined the words Rockford and American to become Amerock, and used the name in their branding. In 1946, they purchased the Ziock building and operated on all thirteen floors. The company built the final, six-story addition to the building in 1950.</p><br>
<h2>Abandonment</h2><br>
<p>By the 1950s, American Cabinet struggled to provide enough parking for employees in the downtown location. This prompted the company to build a new building in 1953. The company sold the building to L. C. Miller & Associates and continued to use space there until 1956. The company officially changed its name to Amerock upon moving out that year. However, a few years later, they repurchased the building for storage space. By 1977, Amerock had 70% of the national market share for retail kitchen products. However, the company could not survive foreign competition in the 1980s. Newell Rubbermaid purchased Amerock in 1987. The last company operations in Rockford closed in the 2000s following relocation to Columbia, Maryland and Huntersville, North Carolina.</p><br>
<h2>Redevelopment</h2><br>
<p>On May 4, 2011, the building was recognized by the National Park Service with a listing on the National Register of Historic Places, making the property eligible for federal and state historic tax credits to cover a large part of the costs of renovation and reuse of the building.</p><br>
<p>In May 2015, the Amerock Building was purchased by developer., with the intent to re-purpose the building. In April 2018, the building began being renovated into an Embassy Suites Hotel and Conference Center, which was expected to open on April 1, 2020. On July 1, 2020, a few months behind schedule due to the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel welcomed its first guests with a soft opening. The hotels amenities include a pool and hot tub on the ground floor, arcade and fitness facility, gift shop, conference center, top floor restaurant with a rooftop bar, and 160 suite-style hotel rooms. In addition, Rockford Roasting Company opened its second location in the City of Rockford on the first floor of the building. On July 24, 2020, the aforementioned rooftop bar and restaurant opened to the general public after initially being open only to hotel guests since the hotels July 1 soft opening.</p><br>
<p>The construction of Arlington Memorial Bridge was a seven-year construction project in Washington, D.C., in the United States to construct the Arlington Memorial Bridge across the Potomac River. The bridge was authorized by Congress in February 1925, and was completed in January 1932. As a memorial, its decorative features were extensive and intricate, and resolving the design issues over these details took many years. Tall columns and pylons topped by statuary, Greek Revival temple-like structures, and statue groups were proposed for the ends of the bridge. Carvings and inscriptions were planned for the sides of the bridge, and extensive statuary for the bridge piers.</p><br>
<p>The bridge itself took far longer than the anticipated two years. Problems were encountered in building the foundations, accidents occurred, and the construction of the bascule (or drawbridge) span was complex and lengthy. Even though the bridge was finished by January 1932, construction of the termini and completion of the memorial details took another six years. Budget problems created in part by the Great Depression meant that portions of the bridge project were never completed.</p><br>
<p>Construction of the bridges western terminus involved extensively enlarging an island in the Potomac River, building bridges between this island and the Virginia mainland, building a new ceremonial entrance at Arlington National Cemetery, and creating a memorial drive to connect the cemetery to the bridge. The bridges eastern approaches were equally as complex, and required construction of a plaza to the west of the Lincoln Memorial, connecting the bridge to the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, and building a "watergate" (marble steps) to given the public access to the river.</p><br>
<p>The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
<h2>Genesis and over-arching design of the Arlington Memorial Bridge</h2><br>
<p>Congress first proposed a bridge at the site of the current Arlington Memorial Bridge on May 24, 1886. Numerous designs were suggested from official and unofficial sources, but no design was acceptable. On March 4, 1913, Congress enacted the Public Buildings Act which, among other things, created and funded an Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission (AMBC) whose purpose was to settle on a design for the bridge and report back to Congress. But Congress appropriated no money for the commission&#39;s operation due to the onset of World War I, and it remained inactive. In the wake of a major traffic jam on the Highway Bridge during the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Congress appropriated $25,000 on June 12, 1922, to fund the work of the bridge commission.</p><br>
<p>In December 1922, the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission held a joint meeting with the United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA). The two agencies agreed to build a bridge from the west end of the National Mall to Arlington National Cemetery. The parties also agreed to seek to construct a low (rather than monumental) bridge with a bascule (drawbridge) in the center to permit ship traffic to reach the Georgetown waterfront.</p><br>
<p>The AMBC chose the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White to design the bridge. Architect William Mitchell Kendall was the lead designer. Kendall&#39;s first design was submitted to the CFA in May 1923, and the basic bridge design—which included eastern and western approaches, a design for Columbia Island, a treatment for the main entrance at Arlington National Cemetery, and more—was given approval in late 1923.</p><br>
<p>Congress enacted legislation in early 1925 authorizing the AMBC to construct the bridge. Legal issues regarding the bridge commission&#39;s authority to issue contracts were resolved in early 1927, allowing construction to proceed. The goal was to construct a bridge from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. across the Potomac River to Virginia, aligned with a new main gate at Arlington National Cemetery.</p><br>
<p>The United States Commission of Fine Arts (CFA) had legal authority to approve the design and architectural style of the bridge. However, the United States Army Corps of Engineers had legal authority over the construction of public works in the District of Columbia. These two bodies agreed in late 1923 to construct a nine-span, 2,138 ft long drawbridge made of steel and reinforced concrete faced in white granite. The abutments had to be erected on bedrock. and the underside of each span just 10 ft above the low-water mark. A balustrade, 4,276 ft long, was also planned. The balustrade was solid over the piers and abutments but turned spindles over the spans to permit maximum views of the river by motorists using the bridge.</p><br>
<p>Initially, there was little concern that the bridge&#39;s construction would be lengthy. Major Joseph Mehaffey of the Army Corps of Engineers stated in November 1925 that it would take two years to construct the abutments, two years to build the spans, and a year to erect the draw or bascule.</p><br>
<h3>The eastern and western termini</h3><br>
<p>The AMBC and CFA were not only concerned with constructing a bridge, but ensuring that the approaches to the bridge were appropriate for a grand memorial.</p><br>
<p>The eastern approaches consisted of the end of the bridge, a plaza, a watergate, and the streets which approached the bridge. For the bridge&#39;s entrance, the agencies approved two 40 ft high pylons inscribed on all four sides with images representing national unity and common purpose. The agencies also planned major changes to B Street NW, a major D.C. city street funneling traffic to the bridge. B Street would be significantly widened to turn it into a vast ceremonial avenue, and its length extended past 23rd Street NW to the shore of the Potomac River (where a new pedestrian overlook would be constructed). B Street would also be connected to the Lincoln Memorial by a new road (now called Henry Bacon Drive). 23rd Street NW was also to be widened to provide a more grand north–south route to the Lincoln Memorial. These roads, along with Ohio Drive SW, came together west of the Lincoln Memorial, where Kendall proposed a large, granite and marble traffic plaza across which traffic would flow. Since Congress authorized construction of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway in March 1913 and principal construction began in 1923, a grand entrance to the parkway became part of the bridge project as well. Two 40 ft high pylons with sculpture groups clustered about their bases were planned for this entrance.</p><br>
<p>Columbia Island would be the western terminus of the bridge. In the center of the island, the two agencies planned a vast granite plaza. Two 166 ft high columns (inspired by the Colonne de Juillet in Paris, France) representing the North and South would be erected in the center of this space. Additional structures, not yet defined, were intended for the eastern shore of the island (flanking the bridge), and for the plaza. Because the goal of the bridge was to link Arlington National Cemetery with the District of Columbia, the AMBC and CFA planned a "bridge extension" across the Boundary Channel (the slight waterway which separated Columbia Island from the Virginia shore). A "memorial avenue" was planned from the bridge extension to the cemeterys main gate. An ornate ceremonial gateway would also be built at the cemeterys entrance as part of the bridge project.</p><br>
<p>Design considerations extended to the smallest details of the bridge. Slightly larger-than-life statues representing peaceful pursuits were planned for the top of each pier of the bridge. Similarly, the keystone of each arch on each side of the bridge should be inscribed with a bas-relief bison head 6 ft across. The design for the eagles proved controversial. The draft design for the sculptures showed some of the eagles facing right, and some facing left. This was publicly criticized by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. Dickson, a retired United States Army chaplain, who argued that left-looking eagles are "Mexican eagles". His public attack on the design led to a public rebuttal from the Army Corps of Engineers, who argued the eagles were ornamental and not heraldic.</p><br>
<h2>Designing the D.C. approaches</h2><br>
<h3>Parkway and bridge: Traffic circle or underpass</h3><br>
<p>In May 1927, McKim, Mead & White architect William Mitchell Kendall presented preliminary designs for the D.C. approaches to Arlington Memorial Bridge. His refined plan addressed the B Street NW approach, the plaza west of the Lincoln Memorial, the "watergate" monumental steps from the plaza to the Potomac River. He also included a new sea wall along the shore of the river. The CFA recommended very strong design elements on the north end of the bridge.</p><br>
<p>But traffic problems complicated the CFAs deliberations. The National Capital Park and Planning Commission (NCPPC) had the legal authority to approve all transportation planning-related construction in the D.C. metropolitan area. Concerned with the impending construction of Federal Triangle, the NCPPC worried that the plaza traffic circle would not only fail to accommodate the expected increase in traffic volume but also impair the dignity of the memorial as large numbers of fast-moving automobiles whizzed around it. Lieutenant Colonel Ulysses S. Grant III, assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers and acting as Executive Officer of the AMBC, suggested that the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway pass beneath the bridge via an underpass or beneath the plaza in a tunnel. Kendall was deeply upset by these suggestions, and argued that the traffic circle was a critical element of his plaza and watergate proposals. CFA members also resisted the idea, with CFA member James Leal Greenleaf arguing that the traffic issue was a red herring; new bridges would completely alleviate all traffic issues within 50 years, he said. Nonetheless, the CFA agreed to study Grants traffic data.</p><br>
<p>By June 30, 1927, engineering drawings and specifications for the bridge itself were complete. Models of the bridges piers went on public view in July. But the D.C. approaches were not. Grants traffic data had not yet been fully analyzed by the CFA, and the commission was still studying the advisability of an underpass.</p><br>
<p>The CFA met again to discuss the D.C. approaches in September 1927. At this meeting, the CFA agreed that the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway should be delinked from the plaza and pass through the Arlington Memorial Bridge via an underpass. But the CFA and Kendall continued to wrestle with the architectural and aesthetic implications of this decision. Kendall then submitted a revised design showing the parkway passing through a tunnel beneath the watergate steps. The CFA initially approved this design, but in December 1927 endorsed a new proposal to have parkway traffic pass through an underpass in the eastern abutment of the bridge.</p><br>
<p>The CFA submitted a revised plaza traffic circle plan to the AMBC in March 1928. The plan showed the parkway passing beneath the bridge in an underpass, and the AMBC approved the change on May 31. However, this meant that the bridge had to be 35 ft longer, and the width of the watergate steps had to be shortened by a similar length. It also required a change in the engineering design of the bridge&#39;s superstructure and foundations—some of which had already been poured, and had to be torn out and replaced.</p><br>
<h3>Parkway and plaza: Traffic circle or tunnel</h3><br>
<p>The CFA to meet at the New York City offices of McKim, Mead & White on February 4, 1928. The commissioners gave their views on the draft designs for the bison-head sculptures to be carved into the keystones in the spans of the bridge. The AMBC announced that Hunkin-Conkey Construction of Cleveland, Ohio, had won the $1.5 million contract to build the bridge superstructure, while the North Carolina Granite Co. of Mount Airy, North Carolina, won the $42,000 contract to carve the sculptural granite.</p><br>
<p>But the main purpose of the February 4 meeting was to discuss the parkway again. Although the CFA had agreed on how the parkway was to get past the bridge, it had yet to consider whether parkway traffic should still cross the plaza via a traffic circle or whether it should bypass the plaza. Kendall continued to advocate that parkway traffic access the plaza. A tunnel seemed to be ruled out when Grant told the CFA that a tunnel would be too expensive. Grant suggested that, if the commission wished to delink the parkway from the plaza, it should consider two options. One would be to construct an uncovered tunnel through the watergate steps, providing pedestrian access via narrow bridges. Another would be to eliminate the steps completely, build a retaining wall, and have the parkway run along the shoreline below the wall.</p><br>
<p>Neither of Grants options were completely satisfactory, so after the February 4 meeting the CFA hired aesthetics scholar William Ordway Partridge to consult on the issue. Partridge reported that the watergate steps were not integral to the plazas design. Furthermore, he said, the National Park Service had closed the back side of the Lincoln Memorial to the public since Kendalls design had first submitted been submitted. There was no longer any need for watergate steps with this public access lacking, he said. Kendall hotly disputed Partridges analysis, and again asserted that the steps were integral to the plaza&#39;s design. The CFA agreed to wait a month before making a decision.</p><br>
<p>The CFA discovered that it was divided internally and could not come to an agreement regarding the parkway and watergate steps. In April 1928, the CFA sponsored a special meeting to help resolve the issue. Held at the office of architect John Russell Pope in New York City, meeting attendees Pope and architects Cass Gilbert and Milton Medary; landscape architects Louis Ayres and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Partridge; and representatives from McKim, Mead & White (MMW). Pope, Gilbert, Medary, Ayres, and Olmsted were all former members of the CFA. Medary and Olmsted were current members of the NCPPC, and Partridge represented Grant. MMW protested against deletion of steps, arguing they were integral to the design and encouraged boating and swimming. MMW again expressed its preference for a covered tunnel. CFA chair William Adams Delano sympathized with their concerns, but said a majority of CFA members questioned whether the steps should be included at all. Delano and Olmsted agreed that a tunnel would be aesthetically unpleasing, although Gilbert and CFA member Benjamin Wistar Morris said a tunnel was acceptable. Olmsted felt the plaza as a whole was a bad idea, and Medary opposed the steps as "stage scenery". Pope argued that the steps had to be retained in order to avoid building an ugly retaining wall. After lengthy discussion, the CFA agreed to retain the steps but reduce their width even further. The paved plaza was eliminated in favor of a grass one.</p><br>
<p>In a critical decision, the CFA decided that the parkway would no longer pass beneath the Arlington Memorial Bridge to connect with Independence Avenue SW south of the Lincoln Memorial. Instead, the parkway would end at the northwest arc of the Lincoln Memorial traffic circle. A partial cloverleaf interchange here would permit parkway traffic to access either Arlington Memorial Bridge or Ohio Drive SW. Ohio Drive SW would be extended north past Arlington Memorial Bridge and the parkway (via underpasses) very near the shoreline at a level below the plaza. It would cut through the watergate steps to connect with this interchange. Parkway traffic wishing to access Constitution Avenue NW could do so by passing around the Lincoln Memorial circle to Henry Bacon Drive or 23rd Street NW. Another partial cloverleaf interchange at the foot of Arlington Memorial Bridge would allow bridge traffic to access northbound Ohio Drive SW and on-ramps to the parkway, or (via the Lincoln Memorial traffic circle) 23rd Street SW and then either Independence Avenue SW or southbound Ohio Drive SW.</p><br>
<h3>Finalizing the details of the bridge and its eastern approaches</h3><br>
<p>With the basic design of the eastern plaza, parkway entrance, bridge entrance, and watergate now established, the CFA moved on to aesthetic details of these aspects of the Arlington Memorial Bridge project. It discussed the aesthetic design of the bridge approaches in April and May 1929, July 1930, and November 1930.</p><br>
<p>The lighting of the bridge now began to take up some of the CFAs time. The commission held a meeting on the unfinished bridge at night on November 7 to view mock-ups of some proposed lampposts. Kendalls design called for highly detailed carved granite lampposts. But the worsening federal budget situation made these problematic. The CFA discussed whether the lampposts had to be granite or whether wrought iron standards would serve just as well.</p><br>
<p>Other aesthetic issues also took up the commission time. During the November 7 meeting, the CFA discussed the placement and appearance of the proposed statues for the bridge piers. Inscriptions on the bridge were another vexing issue. The Kendall design called for a number of inscriptions from famous advocates of the bridge (such as President Andrew Jackson and Senator Daniel Webster) to be carved into the bridge itself and into the pedestals of statues on the bridge and at the bridge entrances. But the number of inscriptions, their placement, and quotations themselves had never been decided. It was not until February 1931 that the first quotation (from Daniel Webster) was approved.</p><br>
<p>The Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission tentatively approved aesthetic designs for the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway approaches to the Arlington Memorial Bridge on February 9, 1931. Although not all design issues related to the plaza had been resolved, the partial cloverleaf and underpasses were now ready to move forward. The cost of their construction was estimated at $1.4 million.</p><br>
<p>The CFA further studied design problems facing the Lincoln Memorial and Columbia Island plazas in late September 1931. Many of these issues remained unresolved into February 1932, including the lamppost design.</p><br>
<p>Kendall and the CFA never agreed on lampposts for Arlington Memorial Bridge. A wide range of lighting schemes were suggested including gas, fluorescent, and neon lighting. Not lighting the bridge, or lighting it only in part or only on certain nights, was also considered. Kendall and the CFA agreed that the standard lamppost used in Washington, D.C., (an iron lighting standard designed by Frances D. Millet) should be used temporarily to improve safety on the bridge. These "temporary" lampposts remained in place into the 1990s.</p><br>
<h2>Construction</h2><br>
<h3>Early construction work: 1925</h3><br>
<p>Congress appropriated $500,000 on March 11, 1925, to begin construction on the bridge. The initial work (which began April 1) consisted of borings by the Corps of Engineers into the riverbottom to determine the type of rock below the sand and grit. The results of these borings were used to determine the parameters of the contracts for abutment and pier construction. Bedrock was found 48 ft below the riverbottom, but drilling went 10 ft further to be certain. The borings showed that, near Columbia Island, the bedrock was not flat but sloped downward. Construction companies blasted the bedrock and created a level surface. By late April, boring work moved to the D.C. shoreline. On-shore borings there were complete by mid-May, with off-shore borings just beginning.</p><br>
<p>Based on the boring work, Lieutenant Colonel Clarence O. Sherrill, Director of Public Buildings and Parks in Washington, D.C., declared that the bridge&#39;s construction would be simple and the structure would open in 1928 or early 1929.</p><br>
<p>Some work began even as the core borings were continuing. To raise the height of Columbia Island, in May the Army Corps of Engineers began dredging more than 2,500,000 cubic yards of fill from the Potomac River. About 2,000 ft of seawall and 15,000 ft of levee were built around the island to stabilize this work. Altering the shape of the island began in September. About 40 acre of the eastern part of the island were removed to enhance the flow of the Potomac River. This fill was also used to raise the islands elevation. By the end of the project, Columbia Islands mean elevation rose to 22 ft from 6 ft. The project&#39;s total cost was $500,000.</p><br>
<p>Although Congress had not yet appropriated money for bridge construction, Comptroller General John R. McCarl permitted the AMBC to advertise and sign contracts. (However, the agency could not begin work, McCarl said, until the money was appropriated.) Engineers for the bridge were hired in September 1925. These included consulting engineer J.W. Douglas, chief designing engineer John Nagle, and assistant engineer for field construction Earl G. Marsh. Lieutenant Colonel Sherrill said that their work would take little time, and construction could begin by the end of 1925, and abutment and pier work should be complete by the end of the summer of 1926. Bids for the $3 million abutment and pier job were advertised in mid-November 1925.</p><br>
<h3>Construction of the piers: 1926</h3><br>
<p>A major problem arose on January 6, 1926, when Comptroller General McCarl announced that the AMBCs contracts with McKim, Mead and White and with J.W. Douglas were illegal. McCarl pointed to a federal law which barred the government from hiring a general contractor. The AMBC, he said, must make the architect and the consulting engineer federal employees. The bridge commission decided to go ahead with the signing of construction contracts despite McCarls decision, and met in special session on February 17, 1926, to decide what to do. At first, the commission believed that minor amendments to the contracts would suffice to placate McCarl, but they did not. The issue required congressional action. The Senate passed legislation exempting the AMBC from the civil service hiring requirement on March 9, 1926, but the House did not. However, the legislation was subsequently added as an amendment in the Independent Offices appropriations bill, which passed both houses and was signed into law.</p><br>
<p>As the 69th United States Congress began to wind down its second session in January and February 1927, there was concern that the 1926 legislation was not adequate. The Senate passed an appropriations bill containing new civil service hiring exemption language, but in the House the amendment was ruled out of order. However, Representative William R. Wood argued that the 1926 legislation remained valid as it contained no language limiting the exemption to just the 1927 fiscal year.</p><br>
<p>Construction on Arlington Memorial Bridge began in March 1926 after Congress appropriated $2.5 million in fiscal year 1927 construction funds. A $1.3 million contract to construct the abutments and piers was awarded to the H.P. Converse Company of Boston, Massachusetts, on January 28. Work began on March 15. On May 4, a $1.615 million contract was awarded to the North Carolina Granite Co. for the provision of granite for the sidewalks, balustrades, and masonry facing of the piers, and a $207,000 contract given to the Stone Mountain Granite Corp. of Stone Mountain, Georgia, for granite for the bridge&#39;s substructure. The substructure granite was delivered by June 30, 1927, and 125 railroad cars of granite for the superstructure arrived shortly thereafter.</p><br>
<p>Work on the bridge began on the D.C. side, moving toward Virginia. By June 30, steel sheets were driven into the riverbottom to allow construction of the cofferdams for Abutment No. 1, Pier No. 1, and Pier No. 2, and excavation was under way on Abutment No. 1 and Pier No. 1. The first load of granite (from Stone Mountain) arrived on July 31. To accommodate the immense quantities of stone being used, the AMBC contracted with the G.B. Mullin Co. to build a stoneyard on the Virginia shoreline. The Rosslyn Connecting Railroad built a spur from the Rosslyn Branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad to the stoneyard. A 40 ST crane, on loan from the War Department and mounted on a railroad car, was used to unload and handle granite in the stoneyard, and another 3,500 ft of siding constructed in the yard to maneuver railroad cars about.</p><br>
<p>Concrete for the bridge was first poured on September 23, 1926, for Abutment No. 1 and Pier No. 1. Concrete work on these structures continued into November. Construction of the cofferdam for Pier No. 3 began in mid-November. About this time, engineers began expressing concern that the granite facing would prove so heavy that the concrete in the arches would deform, causing the bridge to collapse. But studies published in November 1926 showed that not only would the granite facings be supported, the weight of the roadway superstructure actually helped strengthen the arches. This meant the spans did not need to be as massive as previously thought, and more than $25,000 in concrete was saved.</p><br>
<p>Potentially major changes to the bridge arose in late 1926. On December 27, the Army revealed its plan to allow Arlington National Cemetery to expand eastward past Arlington Ridge Road to the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad. This made it unclear whether there would be room for the Boundary Channel bridges, Memorial Avenue, and new ceremonial gate for the cemetery, and extensive restudy of the Virginia approaches to the bridge was undertaken. Lieutenant Colonel Grant worried that the bridge itself might need lengthening past Columbia Island to the Virginia shoreline (which would have required adding a span), and he asked McKim, Mead & White to study this issue.</p><br>
<h3>Construction of the piers and spans: 1927</h3><br>
<p>Work on the abutments and piers proceeded quickly. By late 1926, the steel forms for the pouring of Cofferdam No. 1 (the nearest to the D.C. shoreline) had been removed, and the steel for Cofferdam No. 3 was being driven. Concrete was being poured for Pier No. 2 and for the D.C. shoreline abutment.</p><br>
<p>By mid-March, the steel had been driven for Abutment No. 2 (the eastern abutment for the bascule span), and the concrete pouring for Pier No. 2 was finished. The steel sheets were removed from Pier No. 2 and used to create the forms for Pier No. 4. Abutment No. 1 (on the D.C. shoreline) had risen to just 9 ft below mean low water level, and Pier No. 1 and Pier No. 2 were just 7 ft below mean low water level. Granite facing for Pier No. 1 was being installed, and Corps officials said that the last pier should be completed by the end of 1927 — about the time that half of the superstructure was done.</p><br>
<p>As construction continued, several decisions were made which enhanced the bridge&#39;s structural strength. The granite voussoirs in the spans were thickened so that each span could now form a true arch. A concrete wall was also added to the end of each span, which supported not only the roadway superstructure but also the walls of each spandrel. Each spandrel wall was now 94 ft wide. This significantly increased the dead load as well as strengthened the bridge, and allowed the bridge to be 2 ft higher than planned. These changes also meant that each of the outer lanes of the bridge could now carry 40 ST.</p><br>
<p>A managerial change also led to significant cost savings. Originally, the AMBC used a general contractor. But it changed this practice in 1927, dividing the work into smaller contracts. This meant that smaller firms could now compete for the contracts. With more firms bidding, many bids came in lower than expected. Financing costs were also reduced, and the cost-plus contract of the general contractor eliminated. The speed of work also increased, which led to lower costs over the long run.</p><br>
<p>By June 30, 1927, about 70 percent of the substructure was complete. Abutments No. 1 and No. 2 and Piers No. 1, No. 2, No. 3, and No. 4 were constructed up to 10 ft below the mean water line (where the granite masonry was to begin), and some granite facing was in place. The cofferdam for Pier No. 6 and Abutment No. 4 had been driven to bedrock, and Abutment No. 4 excavated. Steel sheeting for Abutment No. 3 began to be driven and the wooden guides for the steel sheeting for Pier No. 5 were in place in late June.</p><br>
<p>Congress authorized $2.5 million to be spent on the bridge between July 1, 1927, and June 30, 1928. That same month, C. Paul Jennewein was awarded a contract to design the 8 ft tall eagles which would be sculpted on each pier. Jennewein also won the contract to design bison heads for the arch keystones. At the end of July, the government learned that the H.P. Converse Co. was forcing its workers to begin the workday several hours early. Lieutenant Colonel Grant reprimanded the firm, and enforced the federal eight-hour day law. In late August, the federal government advertised contracts for the carving of the bison heads on the keystones and the fasces on the piers. Bids for this contract were opened in September 1928. However, the single bid came in too high, and the contract was split in two. This time, the bids were low enough, and in January 1928 North Carolina Granite Co. was awarded both contracts.</p><br>
<p>The bridge commission advertised bids for construction of the superstructure in October 1927. The following month, Stone Mountain Granite completed delivery of the granite for the substructure facing. By December, North Carolina Granite had delivered about 68 percent of the superstructure granite. The contract for construction of the superstructure was awarded to Hunkin-Conkey Construction Co. that same month.</p><br>
<h3>Construction of the foundations: 1928</h3><br>
<p>At the end of January 1928, construction of the foundations for the abutments and piers was complete. The AMBC and H.P. Converse Co. signed a supplemental contract to raise the piers to 15 ft above the average low water level from 10 ft. This work was largely finished by late February, and the Hunkin-Conkey Construction Co. began pouring concrete for the arches in April 1928. By June 30, the four arches on the eastern side had been poured and the centering frames below them removed. Additionally, the foundations on the eastern and western ends of the bridge were about 50 percent complete, and much of the granite placed on top of Piers No. 1, No. 2, and No. 3. This meant about 20 percent of the superstructure was now complete.</p><br>
<p>A major flood struck the D.C. area in May 1928. Although the floodwaters topped the unfinished piers, there was no damage.</p><br>
<p>Aesthetic issues regarding Columbia Island appeared to finally be resolved by the CFA in mid-1928. In May, after nearly three years of work, the commission finalized its plans for the design of Columbia Island. The design featured a huge central plaza with a traffic circle around the edge. Two 40 ft high columns framed Arlington Memorial Bridge as it terminated on the island. Two more 40 ft columns stood on either side of the roadway exiting the western side of the plaza, and two more 40 ft high columns framed the roadways termination at Arlington Ridge Road. At the base of each column was a massed sculptural group reflecting the unification of North and South, the achievement of national goals, and personifications of national values. One or more large Neoclassical structures were also placed on Columbia Island. The architectural style of this structure (or structures) had not yet been worked out, but it was agreed that something should be built. The CFA envisioned a Neoclassical temple-like structure in the center of the plaza, but other proposals were for two smaller temple-like structures on either side of the bridge (facing east). The CFAs plans called for yet more changes to the physical structure of Columbia Island, so that the main axis of the island ran along a north–south line through the center of the grand plaza.</p><br>
<p>By June 30, 1928, the carving of the bison heads for the span keystones and the fasces for the piers was nearly complete. These items were fashioned in studios and later installed on the bridge. The eagle disks, however, were carved in place, which meant their manufacture had to wait until the bridge was nearly complete.</p><br>
<p>The first major accident to occur during construction of Arlington Memorial Bridge happened on July 31, 1928. A 110 ft tall steel crane on the D.C. abutment snapped while pulling steel sheeting from the riverbed and killed 36-year-old worker Roy Deavers. Four of the other 325 men at work on the bridge at the time were injured. A month later, on September 5, a fierce thunderstorm wrecked a concrete mixer on the site. Despite the two accidents, AMBC officials said that concrete for all the arches would be poured by late October. Work on the bridge was six to eight months ahead of schedule, the commission said, and the bridge was on track for completion in the winter of 1930–1931.</p><br>
<h3>Construction of the superstructure, watergate, and eastern approaches: 1929</h3><br>
<p>Construction of the Arlington Memorial Bridge superstructure continued through 1929. There was a serious delay, however, when in the spring of 1929 the H.P. Severin Co. discovered an unstable rock shelf 13 ft thick under the western abutment of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. This "rotten rock" had not been revealed by borings two years earlier. Additionally, a thin layer of sand and gravel was discovered under the eastern abutment of the main bridge. Both had to be removed and the abutments stabilized before construction could proceed further. This work caused extensive delay in the bridge&#39;s completion.</p><br>
<p>Work on Columbia Island and the D.C. approaches continued, however. The CFA approved the placement of the two 40 ft pylons at the Columbia Island terminus of the bridge in March 1929. But it was no closer to finalizing the details of the Columbia Island plaza and roadway. The complicating issue was the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway, a major new highway to be built along the Virginia shore of the Potomac River. This parkway was approved by Congress in May 1928, and it was designed to link Mount Vernon, Virginia (George Washington&#39;s home) with the Arlington Memorial Bridge. Although some civic groups, businessmen, and civic planners wanted the parkway to run along a series of inland ridges and then turn east to the bridge, the favored route was a shoreline one that would require extensive land reclamation south of Columbia Island as well as new roadways and bridges on the island. (The shoreline route was approved in January 1929.)</p><br>
<p>How the parkway should look as it neared the bridge, how to link it to the bridge approaches, and how it should exit Columbia Island were new and complicated issues that involved not just aesthetics but transportation and civil engineering expertise the CFA did not have. In March 1929, the CFA and NCPPC (which had this staff expertise) agreed to study the problems together. CFA member and landscape architect Ferruccio Vitale was assigned to study whether the planned connection between Arlington National Cemetery and Columbia Island was affected. Vitale was instructed to consult with Major General Benjamin Franklin Cheatham Jr., the USA Army Quartermaster General, whose department managed the cemetery.</p><br>
<p>Meanwhile, work on the eastern approaches was beginning. Initial contracts for ground clearing and preparation were awarded in mid-April. The Grier-Lowrance Construction Company won a $328,700 contract in late May to begin excavating the foundations for the watergate and eastern terminus grassy plaza. The contract specified that the work had to be completed in 200 days. By the end of June, excavation of the foundations for the grassy plaza and watergate were nearly finished. Grier-Lowrance then began work on the cofferdams that would allow construction of the foundation for the parkway approaches.</p><br>
<p>Work on the bridges abutments resumed once stability issues were addressed, and the two structures were almost complete by mid-1929. The H.P. Converse Company finished the western abutment (except for exterior masonry facing) in June, and construction raised the eastern abutment to just 3 ft below the average low water level. The North Carolina Granite Co. delivered the last of the granite for the superstructure in late June, and Hunkin-Conkey completed the eastern half of the bridges superstructure except for erection of the balustrade and pointing of the granite. The concrete work and most of the granite work on the western superstructure was also nearly complete.</p><br>
<p>As this work progressed, two more accidents occurred. On May 10, 27-year-old Benjamin Ramos fell about 10 ft and fractured his skull. On June 22, 22-year-old John Beck fell 30 ft and was impaled on an iron rod. Both men survived.</p><br>
<p>Bids for the $500,000 eastern terminus grassy plaza and watergate construction project were opened on July 29 and awarded to the National Construction Co. of Atlanta, Georgia, in August 1929. By December, the seawall and the watergate steps were finished, and National Construction also was well advanced in constructing the parkway&#39;s underpass and its approaches to the bridge.</p><br>
<p>Construction of the bridge (apart from the roadway) largely ended by November 1929, when Hunkin-Conkey finished the masonry facing. The only work which remained was the carving of the eagles on the piers and some carving on the abutments.</p><br>
<h3>Construction of the eastern approaches and Columbia Island plaza: 1930</h3><br>
<p>In January 1930, Congress appropriated $58,270 to begin construction of the roadways on Columbia Island connecting Arlington Memorial Bridge to Arlington National Cemetery.</p><br>
<p>A major fire broke out on the western terminus of the bridge on March 12. The cause of the fire, which erupted at about 5:30 P.M., was unknown but it was very large and required five fire companies and a District of Columbia Fire Department fire boat to put it out. The fire completely destroyed the wood frames constructed for the pouring of concrete for the western abutment, and caused the partial collapse of the westernmost span. Severn Construction Co., the contractor working on that end of the bridge, said all the concrete for the abutment and the span was damaged and would have to be ripped out and replaced. There was no damage, however, to the granite masonry. Since no insurance was carried on the bridge, Severn Construction bore the $10,000 loss.</p><br>
<p>Work continued on the rest of the bridge despite the fire. The contract for the sculpting of the eagles was awarded in March 1930 to the firm of Grenci and Ellis of Peekskill, New York. Freestanding eagles for placement atop four pylons on Columbia Island were included in the contract. By late October, sculpting of the eagles and fasces on the Arlington Memorial Bridge were under way. The sculptural eagles for the pylons were also being fabricated. The foundations for the watergate and eastern terminus plaza were also almost complete by March.</p><br>
<p>The contract for the placement of granite on the eastern terminus plaza and eastern approaches was awarded to the John Swenson Granite Co. of Concord, New Hampshire, and to the North Carolina Granite Co. Shipments of granite began arriving immediately afterward, and a stoneyard was constructed just south of B Street NW near the Lincoln Memorial to receive it. Granite arrived via rail at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad freight yard on K Street NW, and was trucked to the site. A 9 ST crane unloaded the stone on B Street. Nearly all the granite was on-site by June 30.</p><br>
<p>In late June, the AMBC advertised contracts for the construction of fenders around the piers. (Fenders are large structures of wood filled with soft earth designed to protect the piers if they are accidentally rammed by passing ships.) The contracts were not immediately let, however. The Army Corps of Engineers said in July that it needed more time to study the type of fender to be built.</p><br>
<p>Two more accidents occurred on the bridge in July. George Rossman, a 31-year-old iron worker, fractured his back on June 30 when steel pilings being removed from one of the piers fell on him. Twelve days later, 31-year-old apprentice Albert Canter died after plunging 30 ft from the superstructure to a barge.</p><br>
<p>Additional improvements were also made to Columbia Island. Congress appropriated $11,200 in late June 1930 so that 370,000 cubic yards of fill could be dredged from the Potomac River adjacent to the island. This fill was used to construct and maintain levees on the island and protect it from flooding. The work began immediately and was scheduled for completion in the fall. Part of the work included removing a triangular piece of shoreline between the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway and the eastern abutment so that the view of the bridge from the parkway would not be blocked.</p><br>
<p>With studies for the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway (soon to be renamed the George Washington Memorial Parkway) complete, Grant submitted revised plans for the island in mid September. These included new designs for the great plaza and its pylons, for the bridge&#39;s island western approaches, and for the new ceremonial entrance gate at Arlington National Cemetery.</p><br>
<p>AMBC officials said in November 1930 that Arlington Memorial Bridge would be all but complete in January 1931. All that remained was the surfacing of the roadway and regrading of roads on the Virginia side. The placement of topsoil on Columbia Island was proceeding quickly, and would be complete in time for spring. The type of surfacing for the bridge roadway was under review by the end of the year.</p><br>
<h3>Finishing the bridge: 1931</h3><br>
<p>As the bridge entered its final year of construction, the CFA continued to discuss the design of the Columbia Island pylons and other final touches to the bridge. But budget matters largely made the CFA&#39;s deliberations moot. The AMBC announced that the bridge was $780,000 above its $14.5 million budget. This was largely due to the raising the spans, removing the bad rock and sand beneath the abutments, and other structural changes which added more than $4.5 million in additional costs. By not carving statues for the Boundary Channel Bridge or the Arlington Memorial Bridge piers and by eliminating all balustrades, statuary, and buildings on Columbia Island, the budget overruns were minimized.</p><br>
<p>On January 22, President Herbert Hoover inspected the nearly-complete bridge.</p><br>
<p>On February 9, the CFA finally approved the design for the approaches of the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway. The entire project was expected to cost $1.4 million. The AMBC said bids for the first $500,000 of granite would be opened March 4. The AMBC also began work on linking Columbia Island to the Virginia mainland by advertising bids for the construction of an underpass to carry the Pennsylvania Railroad beneath Memorial Drive.</p><br>
<p>Contracts were awarded on March 4 for the granite for the $900,000 Arlington National Cemetery gateway (the Hemicycle). The North Carolina Granite Co. won a $185,000 contract for the Hemicycle wall, the New England Granite Works won a $72,000 contract for the balustrades, the John Swenson Granite Co. won a $244,500 contract for the gates and pylons, and the New England Granite Co. won a $45,000 contract for the curb stones and stairs. Work on the gate was to begin on July 1.</p><br>
<p>By late summer, nearly all the work on Arlington Memorial Bridge was complete. On August 19, the contracts for paving the bridge roadway with granite blocks were advertised. The bridge was structurally complete on September 7. Grant said placement of the granite surface would begin immediately, but that the bridge would not open until early 1932 "because there is nothing to open it to".</p><br>
<h3>Opening the bridge and adding finishing touches: 1932</h3><br>
<p>Arlington Memorial Bridge was informally dedicated in January 1932. Grant and members of the Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission inspected the bridge on January 14. On January 16, President Hoover, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, and members of the AMBC, CFA, NCPPC, and D.C. office of the Army Corps of Engineers informally dedicated the bridge by driving over its length. Although only one lane in each direction was open, the caravan of 12 automobiles traveled from the White House to the bridge, and then across the bridge to the entrance of Arlington National Cemetery and back again. The same day, the George Washington Memorial Parkway opened to traffic.</p><br>
<p>Arlington Memorial Bridge opened on January 17, 1932. However, access was limited to Saturdays and Sundays from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Nearly 31,000 vehicles traversed the $21 million bridge the day it opened to the public. The first funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetery to cross the bridge did so on January 18, the second day the bridge was open.</p><br>
<p>Work continued on finishing minor details of bridge and its approaches after the structure went into use. Projects included the grassy plaza on Columbia Island, widening and extension westward of Constitution Avenue, widening of 23rd Street NW, the paving of Memorial Avenue, and the Hemicycle. Design work for plaza statuary also continued. In mid-March 1932, 200 American elms were transplanted around the Lincoln Memorial to improve the landscaping around the bridge approaches.</p><br>
<p>More lanes on the bridge were open by early April. There were delays in opening the Pennsylvania Railroad underpass, however, and debates about the best type of paving for Memorial Drive continued—and it remained a gravel road. But the AMBC was moving forward on completing the Hemicycle, and the commission said bids for placement of granite would be awarded within a month.</p><br>
<p>Funding cuts stopped much of the remaining work on the bridge. On April 7, the House of Representatives deleted the entire $840,000 appropriation for completing the Arlington Memorial Bridge project. The funding cut meant that no further work could be done on the Columbia Island great plaza nor any decorative statuary added to it. The Memorial Drive work, however, received funding from other sources, which allowed paving of it to move forward. Arlington County officials said that a pavement surface had been chosen, and the 30 ft wide gravel road would be widened to 60 ft and paved with asphalt by July 1.</p><br>
<p>Another major portion of the approaches was finished in July 1932. Although the roads from the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, Ohio Drive, and Constitution Avenue were completed in time for the bridge&#39;s informal opening in January, the watergate itself was still under construction. This structure was not finished until the middle of July.</p><br>
<h3>Final funding battles: 1933</h3><br>
<p>By 1933, most of what remained of the Arlington Memorial Bridge project concerned streets and approaches. Virginia still had not settled on a route for any roads to link to the bridge, and work on Memorial Drive was nearing completion. In the District of Columbia, work remained to be done on Constitution Avenue NW and on 23rd Street NW. The Hemicycle was still incomplete, as were bridges leading from Columbia Island to the Virginia shoreline.</p><br>
<p>Funding sources for these projects, however, was diversifying. The Arlington Memorial Bridge Commission received some funding, but funding was also now flowing from the Public Works Administration (PWA). Funds no longer came solely from general tax revenue, either. Road work could now be paid for by federal fuel taxes.</p><br>
<p>On February 1, an attempt was made in the House of Representatives to delete $282,675 for completing the outstanding projects of the Arlington Memorial Bridge. This effort was easily defeated on the House floor.</p><br>
<p>In late February, the CFA met to discuss how to proceed with completion of the Hemicycle. But funds for the project were not available.</p><br>
<p>Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as President of the United States in March 1933. Convinced that massive federal spending on public works was essential not only to "prime the pump" of the economy but also to cut unemployment, Roosevelt proposed passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act. The act contained $6 billion in public works spending, which included $400 million for road, bridge, and highway construction. With passage of the act moving forward swiftly, D.C. officials asked Congress on June 12 for the funds to finish widening Constitution Avenue NW. The act passed on June 13, 1933, and Roosevelt signed it into law on June 16. The Public Works Administration (PWA) was immediately established to disburse the funds appropriated by the act. The District of Columbia received a $1.9 million grant for road and bridge construction, and the city said on July 8 it would use a portion of these funds to finish Constitution Avenue. Construction on the $200,000 project was scheduled to begin at the end of August 1933 and employ 150 men.</p><br>
<p>The Hemicycle was also completed under the National Industrial Recovery Act. Funding for the structure&#39;s completion was included in a $3 million grant made by the PWA in July 1933.</p><br>
<p>In September 1933, the city received the first disbursement of revenue from the federal gasoline tax. This tax was imposed in the Revenue Act of June 1932. The city used $30,494 in PWA grant money and $45,741 in federal gas tax revenue to widen Constitution Avenue to the full width between North Capitol Street and 2d Street NW. This project began in late September 1933.</p><br>
<h3>Completing the final touches: 1934 to 1938</h3><br>
<p>The first public concert was held at the Lincoln Memorial watergate on July 14, 1935. The National Park Service paved the D.C. approaches to Arlington Memorial Bridge that same month.</p><br>
<p>It was not until September 1936 that the Washington Post reported that federal officials considered the Hemcycle "finished". The structure&#39;s fountain was in place, and the Hemicycle was now lit at night. Lighting had also been installed along Memorial Drive, and holly trees and additional oaks had been planted along road.</p><br>
<p>In 1938, Arlington Memorial Bridge was finally connected to the Arlington County road network. By that year, more than 18,000 vehicles a day used the bridge to access the George Washington Memorial Parkway (formerly the Mount Vernon Memorial Parkway). On October 18, Virginia finally opened its first connection to the bridge, via Lee Boulevard (now Arlington Boulevard) at the north end of Columbia Island.</p><br>
<h2>Constructing the bascule span</h2><br>
<p>Because the 216 ft long bascule (or draw) span was so wide, the AMBC and the Army Corps of Engineers decided to hold a competition to determine which type of draw was best suited for the bridge. Six prominent engineering firms were asked to submit designs, which were received on June 14, 1926. Two designs were selected for consideration, and the Corps chose the Strauss bascule bridge (which used a trunnion and counterweight) design submitted by the J. B. Strauss Bascule Bridge Co.</p><br>
<p>The bascule span was designed to be concealed as much as possible. The AMBC required that the counterweights be hidden within and below the superstructure of the bridge so as not to mar the appearance of the Neoclassical design. The fascia (the band running horizontally along its upper edge) was made of pressed metal that looked like masonry, and it was painted the same color as the rest of the granite on the bridge.</p><br>
<p>Work began on the engineering and architectural drawings for the bascule span in July 1927.</p><br>
<p>Bids for construction of the bascule span were opened on July 16, 1928.</p><br>
<p>After nearly another year passed, the bascule neared completion. Part of the issue was the bascule span&#39;s counterweights. The counterweights needed to have a density of 265 lb per 1 cuft, or about 5,000 ST in total. Usually, large concrete counterweights would be used, but there was so little space inside and beneath the bridge that there was not enough space. Scrap steel punchings and iron ore (from a Swedish cargo ship) were crushed to a mostly uniform size and added to the concrete to create a density of 271 lb per 1 cuft. The span could open in 60 to 90 seconds.</p><br>
<p>The east leaf of the bascule went into operation in May 1930. The west leaf was nearly complete by June 30. Pouring of the deck slaps and installation of the operating machinery took place in June 1930 and continued into July.</p><br>
<p>The bascule span was finally finished in late October 1930. The total cost of the draw span was $1 million. At the time it opened, it was the longest, heaviest (3,000 ST), and fastest bascule span in the world.</p><br>
<h2>2005 realignment of the D.C. approaches</h2><br>
<p>Little construction occurred on Arlington Memorial Bridge after its informal completion in January 1932. Work continued, however, on the Boundary Channel between Columbia Island and the Virginia mainland, primarily the construction of bridges across the channel, filling in of the Pentagon Lagoon, and similar work. Work on Columbia Island occurred as well, primarily the completion of the road system on the island and some beautification. Widening of the western portions of Constitution Avenue were also completed. By 1938, construction of the Arlington County, Virginia, approaches to Arlington Memorial Bridge was also complete, creating the first link between Virginia&#39;s road system and Arlington Memorial Bridge.</p><br>
<p>In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., there was extensive concern that many monuments and memorials in the District of Columbia were vulnerable to car bombs. Enhancing the security around these memorials began to be considered after Congress enacted legislation requiring all federal monuments and memorial to have a security plan.</p><br>
<p>To enhance security at the Lincoln Memorial, in 2003 the grassy circle surrounding the memorial was raised slightly and a 30 in high masonry retaining wall added to its border on the north, northwest, west, southwest, and south sides.</p><br>
<p>In April 2004, a $12.2 million, 18-month realignment of the approaches to the Arlington Memorial Bridge and the road system around the Lincoln Memorial began. In part, these changes were driven by traffic patterns. A District of Columbia Department of Transportation and National Park Service study showed that more cars were using the bridge to travel inbound (to D.C. from Virginia) than were using it to travel outbound. As originally constructed, there were five lanes of traffic on the northeastern side of the grassy plaza behind the memorial. Three were outbound, two were inbound. This was changed to two outbound, three inbound. Traffic leaving the approaches to access 23rd Street NW was now forced into the far left lane, while the two right-hand lanes could access Henry Bacon Drive NW (the major connecting street to Constitution Avenue NW). Repaving of all the approaches in the area was scheduled for spring 2005. Safety was also enhanced around the area. Pedestrian crosswalks with traffic lights were added throughout the entire area of the approaches, to slow traffic and make it easier for pedestrians to cross the busy approaches and connecting roads. These construction projects were due for completion in 2006.</p><br>
<h2>Federal court of claims case</h2><br>
<p>Many problems were encountered during the construction of the Arlington Memorial Bridge, but only a single lawsuit was filed.</p><br>
<p>The Phoenix Bridge Company was awarded the contract to install the bascule span. Numerous delays were incurred during the installation of the span, leading to budgetary overruns. The contract between the bridge company and the AMBC imposed a penalty for delays, and the federal government duly assessed a penalty of $12,300 on the firm. The Phoenix Bridge Company filed suit in the United States Court of Federal Claims, arguing that the penalty was not the fault of the company but due to government-imposed changes in the bridge&#39;s construction. The company also asked for the federal government to pay the additional costs. At trial, the Phoenix Bridge Company claimed it could have rented its equipment and labor for $27,433, and that the federal government owed the company this rental income. The Court of Claims agreed, and ordered the government to withdraw the penalty as well.</p><br>
<p>The Walker Ranch is a historic ranch in Boulder County, Colorado. The ranch was built by James A. Walker, who first settled in the Boulder area in 1865. Walker and his family initially lived in a log cabin on the ranch, which was built in 1865. In 1881, Walker and his family built and moved to a new ranch house. Walker engaged in a number of business ventures on the ranch and leased parts of the ranch to other businessmen, and the enterprises which took place on the ranch represent many of the regions industries at the time. Walker mainly raised cattle and milled lumber on the property, and an English firm mined gold using a cyanide mill; payments from the latter operation allowed Walker to eliminate his debt and purchase additional land for the ranch. Of the remaining historic buildings on the ranch, eleven are from Walkers homestead and his ranching operations, fourteen were part of Walker&#39;s sawmill operations, and fourteen are related to the cyanide mill. The ranch also includes five archaeological sites; three of these are remnants of aboriginal settlement in the area and two of these are Arapahoe sites, including a site Walker may have shared with the Arapahoe when he first came to the area.</p><br>
<p>The ranch was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984 as the Walker Ranch Historic District. In 1988, two additional parcels of land were determined to be associated with the ranch&#39;s historic activities and were added to the historic district.</p><br>
<p>The John Carveth House, also known as the Aaron Clark House or the Lone Willow Farm, is a private house located at 614 West Main Street in Middleville, Michigan. It was designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1992</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>John Carveth was born in 1841 in Saranac, Michigan. He worked for a time as a teacher, He was admitted to the bar in 1868 and established a practice in Middleville, and in 1885-86 served as a state senator from the district. In 1886, he built the house for his own use. Carveth lived here until 1895, when he sold the house to his brother-in-law and one-time law partner, Aaron Clark.</p><br>
<h2>Description</h2><br>
<p>The John Carveth House is an elaborate, asymmetrical two-story Queen Anne structure. It has a wood frame with a steep cross-gable and hip roof and sits on an ashlar fieldstone foundation. The house is covered with clapboard siding, with additional patterned shingling and decorative siding in the gables. A broad veranda features decorative spindlework, broad arches, and bull&#39;s eye motifs, as does the balvony above. Many first floor windows contain an upper sash with tinted margin lights flanking a clear center light. The interior boasts decorative Eastlake designs around windows, fireplace, and other trim.</p><br>
<p>A two-story frame side-gable carriage house/barn is located near the house, as is small milking parlor and a modern garage.</p><br>
<p>Bel Air Manor is a colonial-era plantation manor located in Minnieville, Prince William County, Virginia. Built in 1740 as the Ewell family seat, the home was regularly visited by Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, who was a cousin. It later served as the home of Mason Locke Weems , the first biographer of George Washington and the creator of the cherry tree story . Extraordinarily well preserved for its age, Bel Air was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. Bel Air is not to be confused with "Bel Aire", a similarly named house five miles to the east.</p><br>
<h2>Colonial era</h2><br>
<h3>Construction and early history</h3><br>
<p>Bel Air was originally constructed as an English fort in the 1670s by order of Virginia colonial Governor William Berkeley, who occupied the fort himself in 1673. Described by Washington in his journals as a "man of affairs," Charles maintained mill interests in Occoquan together with his brother-in-law, John Balladine. Like other planters in northern Virginia, he sent his harvest to the nearby port of Dumfries to be loaded on ships for Glasgow, Scotland. During this time, Dumfries was a thriving tobacco port, and it easily outstripped in population and importance the rival town of Alexandria, further up the river. As a center of culture, the great families in the area would drive into Dumfries in their chariots to attend balls and "tea drinkings". After organizing a joint stock company in 1744, Charles built a warehouse and began a successful mercantile business in Dumfries.</p><br>
<p>In 1739, Charles purchased 800 acres from Ralph Walker, on which he would construct Bel Air. Ewell purchased an additional 1184 acres just west of the town of Dumfries, Virginia from Lord Thomas Fairfax on July 10, 1741. On the crest of a hill 90 feet above Neabsco Creek, the location was ideal for protection from Indian attacks as well as malaria.</p><br>
<p>Charles set about constructing Bel Air upon the stone foundation of the old fort, replacing the wooden frame with an all-brick structure. Like other affluent men in the colonies, Charles designed a refined home that imitated the georgian architecture of Great Britain. As the house was constructed before the days of saw mills, every lath was rived, and every timber, joist and even cornice was hewed out of the surrounding woods (as evidenced today by the axe marks on the reverse sides). Every nail, spike and hinge was individually hammered out. Tradition says that the bricks were imported from Scotland in the hold of tobacco ships.</p><br>
<h3>Ewell Family seat</h3><br>
<p>In what may have shocked the community somewhat in 1736, Charles married Sarah Ball (b. 1711), the daughter of his step-father, Major James Ball (1678–1754). Through her father, Sarah was the first cousin of Mary Ball Washington, George Washington&#39;s mother. Charles and Sarah had four children born at Bel Air, including three who lived to adulthood: Mariamne (1740–1813), Col. Jesse Ewell (1743–1805) and Col. James "Jimmie" Ewell (1746–1809). The Ewells were staunch Episcopalians, and both Charles and Jesse would serve as vestrymen and wardens of Dettengen Parish, where they were regular communicants. Charles appears to have died suddenly in the fall of 1747. Sarah died shortly thereafter, leaving the children as orphans.</p><br>
<p>Mariamne married James Craik at Bel Air on November 13, 1760. Craik would become the Continental Armys chief physician and surgeon, but he is best remembered for being the close friend and personal physician of George Washington. Craik was the first of three physicians called to Washingtons deathbed.</p><br>
<p>As the eldest son, Jesse Ewell inherited Bel Air and its slaves. In 1760, he enrolled in the College of William & Mary, where he befriended Thomas Jefferson, a classmate. During his fifty years as master, Ewell—who was sometimes referred to as "Ole Marster" or "Ole Colonel of all"—created a fortune. Described as an eccentric "man of distinction and liberal fortune," Ewell was said to ride to Dumfries to tend to his business affairs on his "fiery black steed." He also served as the County Sheriff. Although Ewell was known for his keen mental abilities and literary talent, he was apparently indolent and slow in movement, and even Thomas Jefferson needled him for not exercising his talents.</p><br>
<p>In 1767, Ewell married his cousin, Charlotte Ewell "Madame Charlotte" (1750–1823), and they had 18 children. Two of the sons, James (1773–1832) and Thomas "Tommy" (1785–1826), would become physicians under the tutelage of Craik, thus beginning an Ewell family dynasty of physicians. Ewell borrowed money and sold land in order to send Thomas to Philadelphia to study medicine under the renowned Benjamin Rush. Thomas had already been apprenticed to a Virginia doctor before his university studies.</p><br>
<p>By all accounts, Ewells children held him in high regard. In a letter to his father in December 1802, Thomas Ewell wrote: " intention in coming to was not to dance—but to add to your pleasure and happiness—which is among the first wishes of my heart." Ten years after Ewells death, his daughter Charlotte (not to be confused with her mother of the same name) authored an elegy in memory of her father:</p><br>
<p>Early he wood fair virtue for his guide, And rarely wanderd from her guardian side, By him the needy never were denied, He soothd their sorrows, and their wants supplied. He mournd the contests of the neighbouring poor, And opend wide his peace-restoring door; Where soon his wisdom taught their strifes to cease, Revivd their loves, and sent them home in peace.... As friend—as father—who his praise can tell ? Where first begin, or with due raptures swell? To check our wrong, his frowns, were ever light, And sweet his smiles when&#39;er we chose the right.</p><br>
<h3>Guests at Bel Air</h3><br>
<p>As a wealthy family of substance and culture, the Ewells hosted many extravagant balls, christenings, and other grand events at Bel Air. Guests would arrive by carriage via the mile-long plantation road, catching glimpses of the mansion through the rows of flowering catalpa trees. Upon their arrival, guests, dressed in the latest fashion, were escorted to the reception room. For large events, the partition wall between the drawing room and central hall was removed, making a huge combined space for "merry-making and match-making in full swing." It is said that the crowds were so great at Mariamne and James Craik&#39;s wedding reception that the drawing room floors had to be propped up by big cedar posts in the basement as the guests engaged in a rousing Virginia reel.</p><br>
<h4>George and Martha Washington</h4><br>
<p>George and Martha spent the night as newlyweds at Bel Air on April 5, 1759, on their honeymoon journey to Mount Vernon from Williamsburg, where Washington had just started his first term in the House of Burgesses. Numerous sources indicate that Washington was regularly entertained at Bel Air. Even after Washington&#39;s death, the Ewells apparently kept touch with Martha Washington, as indicated by a December 1802 letter from Thomas Ewell to Jesse in which he notes his intention to call upon "Mrs. Washington" to pay his respects.</p><br>
<h4>Thomas Jefferson</h4><br>
<p>As a lifelong friend of Jesse Ewells, Thomas Jefferson was a frequent overnight lodger at Bel Air. The two men corresponded frequently and remained friends until Jesses death. However, several letters between Jefferson and Jesses son, Thomas, have been preserved. In an 1805 letter to then-President Jefferson, Thomas Ewell expressed Jesses continued regard for his old college chum:</p><br>
<p>Before I conclude my Father Col. Jesse Ewell desires me to offer to your excellency assurances of the greatest respect and regard. With much delight he often speaks of the days spent in the walls of William & Mary college in company with the president; And with still more Joy he views the glorious work in which you have since been so successfully engaged; altho at one time he dreaded the effects of a change in the government.</p><br>
<p>Jefferson responded to Thomas Ewell&#39;s letter, recalling his early friendship with the elder Ewell:</p><br>
<p>I recall with pleasure the many happy days of my youth spent at College with your father. the friendships which are formed at that period are those which remain dearest to our latest day. I learn with great pleasure also that he approves the course of administration of the public affairs which I am pursuing. I am more uneasy under the disapprobation of my friends than others because it does not arise from hostile dispositions. in all cases I know that whatever your father thinks is from honest motives. Accept my salutations & assurances of respect.</p><br>
<h3>Slavery at Bel Air</h3><br>
<p>During the Ewell family&#39;s ownership of Bel Air (1740–1825), the number of slaves ranged between 5 and 18, but by 1840 the plantation was operated as a farm with no slaves:</p><br>
<p>There appear to have been multiple family groups of slaves, suggesting that there were several slave cabins. Located 137 feet at a 45-degree angle from the northwest side of the mansion was one slave cabin built around 1825 atop the ruins of an 18th-century brick building. Nearby was a horse graveyard and the well-tilled gardens of the slaves. (Today, adjacent to a magnolia tree, boxwoods mark the corners of the cabin site next to the stone ruins of the cabin chimney.) Several other outbuildings associated with the plantation were located close by—including a barn, stable, kitchen, blacksmith shop, icehouse, smokehouse, and drying shed.</p><br>
<p>According to Jesse Ewells daughter, Charlotte, Jesse did not treat the slaves harshly. In an elegy about her father written several years after his death, she wrote: "The slaves whom Heavn to his care consignd, Neer felt the terrors of a slavish mind; Well fed, warm clad, to moderate labours prest, They loved their fetters, and their bondage blest." The existence of a slave dungeon in the basement of Bel Air, however, belies this romanticized view of slave life.</p><br>
<h3>American Revolution</h3><br>
<p>Like many early American patriots, Jesse Ewell was a freeholder, a wealthy landowner who was not connected to the Crown nobility or the government through social class. Because British policies to punish the colonies often directly affected the freeholders, they were often the most active politically in opposing these policies. On December 9, 1774, Ewell joined other freeholders in the county to take action to sustain the First Continental Congress, which had been formed in September 1774 in response to the Intolerable Acts. A few months later, on March 22, 1775, he helped form a Committee of Safety to prepare for potential hostilities with the British. They did not need to wait long. On April 22, an American militia unit seized British gunpowder supplies at Williamsburg, and the Special Committee passed a resolution thanking Patrick Henry for leading the mission. In 1776, Ewell was selected as one of two Prince William representatives to the newly created Virginia House of Delegates.</p><br>
<p>Ewell also commanded the County militia as the County Lieutenant. In the fall of 1781, Ewell was ordered to march his regiment to the outskirts of Philadelphia as part of a decoy mission to mask Washington&#39;s movement to Yorktown. Along the way, he learned that the battle at Yorktown was over, and was ordered back home. He then brought his entire regiment to Bel Air, where, under catalpa trees on the southeast lawn, he feasted them on the flocks and herds from the plantation. In a 1974 archaeological excavation, various artifacts were unearthed indicating the presence of British soldiers at Bel Air, but it is not known whether the soldiers occupied or were held captive at the property. In 1789, a local planter named William Helm accused him of nepotism for a militia appointment of his nephew, Charles Ewell, Jr., but was exonerated after a speedy trial.</p><br>
<h3>Decline of Dumfries and the Ewell fortune</h3><br>
<p>The Revolution devastated the fortunes of the Ewell family as many of the Scottish traders left Dumfries during the war. Making matters worse, years of siltation into Quantico Creek gradually choked up the approach to the wharves at Dumfries. As the port decayed, so did the family&#39;s tobacco trading and warehousing businesses. In 1787, Jesse Ewell and Bertram Ewell formed a group with other business leaders in Dumfries for the purpose of reviving the port by building new terminals called "Newport" and "Carrborough" (current site of Marine Corps Base Quantico) on either side of the mouth of the creek on the Potomac River, and barging cargo between the new terminals and Dumfries. In 1795, the group formed the "Quantico Company", which tolled the waterway and used the proceeds to dredge the creek in an ultimately forlorn attempt to keep it navigable.</p><br>
<h2>19th century</h2><br>
<h3>Home of Parson Weems</h3><br>
<p>After Jesse Ewell died at Bel Air on September 30, 1805, the family became so reduced in circumstances that Charlotte Ewell was compelled to borrow considerable sums from her son-in-law, Mason Locke "Parson" Weems, who had married her daughter Fanny Ewell (1775–1843) at Bel Air in July 1795. In partial satisfaction of the debt, Charlotte allowed Weems to move his family into Bel Air around 1806. Weems&#39;s home in Dumfries, which was subsequently sold to Benjamin Botts, has been preserved and is now the Weems–Botts Museum.</p><br>
<p>Weems, an Episcopal clergyman who began writing and peddling books out of a Jersey Wagon to supplement his income, had met Fanny in Dumfries during one of his book selling trips. Although Weems wrote several biographies and moralistic tales, he is best known for authoring the first and most famous biography of George Washington, The Life of Washington (1800). The book would go through 70 accredited and varying editions and greatly influenced Abraham Lincoln, who read the book when he was 11. Weems would do much of his writing at Bel Air, including the fifth edition (1806) of The Life of Washington, in which he added the famous tale of the cherry tree.</p><br>
<p>At home, Weems consulted with Fanny, whom Washington Irving, a family friend, described as a "chimney critic." Together they would decide which books were the "best sellers," a term coined by Weems, and restock the wagon before leaving on another book selling trip. They had ten children, eight of whom survived infancy, and it was said to be a happy time when the husband and father came home from one of his trips to entertain the family with stories and music played on his fiddle, which had been given to him by a French refugee he had befriended on one of his trips. As the violin was too precious to carry with him, he kept it at home.</p><br>
<p>Over the next twenty years, Charlotte continued to borrow from Weems, and by January 1812, these loans amounted to $2300. Charlotte then gave Weems a mortgage on the estate to cover the debt. Four months later she was compelled to borrow $1,000 more from him to avoid a forced sale of the estate. Charlotte Ewell died in 1823, and in August of the following year, Bel Air, which at the time had 700 acres, was sold at public auction to Weems for $2212 (~$ in ). Weems was a Freemason and member of Lodge No. 50 in Dumfries. On May 23, 1825, Weems died during a book-selling trip in Beaufort, South Carolina, and the following winter his remains were brought to Dumfries by boat and buried at a corner of the Ewell family cemetery at Bel Air. Fanny was buried by his side 18 years later.</p><br>
<h3>Pre-War</h3><br>
<p>After the death of Weems in 1825, Bel Air was passed to his son-in-law, Henry Slade. Sometime before 1840, Bel Air was acquired by Jesse Davis, a resident of King George County who owned it until 1848, when it was sold at auction for $1501 to Chapman Lee, who operated it as a farm with no slaves. With the decline of Dumfries, however, Bel Air became increasingly isolated and its road became nearly impassable. Although various people tried living there after the Ewells and Weemses went away, the "old time society was gone, with none to take its place." Bel Air passed through several different owners through the remainder of the 19th century and it stood empty for long periods of time.</p><br>
<h3>Civil War</h3><br>
<p>As evidenced by miniballs, a union belt buckle and other artifacts unearthed during a 1974 archaeological excavation, Bel Air was occupied by union troops during the Civil War. The artifacts were found at the location of the slave cabin, where troops were apparently quartered during the winter of 1863–1864.</p><br>
<p>A more notable connection to the Civil War, though, is that Confederate General Richard S. Ewell, who succeeded Stonewall Jackson in command, was the son of Thomas Ewell and grandson of Jesse Ewell, whose silver-hilted rapier he wore into battle. Richard visited Bel Air throughout his life, including several years before the war when he served as the best man at a wedding between his cousin, the "beautiful Fannie Weems," and his friend, Robert Tansill, a United States Marine who would later resign his commission to serve as a colonel in the Confederate States Marine Corps.</p><br>
<h3>1885 restoration</h3><br>
<p>In 1885, George Carr Round, a prominent Manassas attorney and member of the Virginia General Assembly, began an ambitious and costly restoration of Bel Air, which had suffered through long periods of abandonment. To help restore the mansion to its colonial-era appearance, Round enlisted the help of Dr. Jesse Ewell (1802–1897), who grew up at Bel Air between 1805 and 1820. Dr. Ewell was born in Dumfries to Lt. Jesse Ewell (fourth child of Col. Jesse Ewell), but as he suffered from malaria in his infancy, he was moved to the "good air" of Bel Air to live with his grandparents. Despite his advanced age, Dr. Ewell, who had not seen Bel Air in 60 years, apparently maintained clear recollections of the plantation and his forebears.</p><br>
<p>At considerable expense, about one fourth of the stone and brick walls had to be torn down and relaid. The floors and roof were leveled up and down. The entire lathing and plastering and much of the woodwork had to be removed, as well as rubbish appearing to date from colonial times. The only material change made to the house, however, was the addition of a door and window to the dungeon as it was converted into a root cellar. The restoration also revealed evidence of earlier repair work performed around 1825.</p><br>
<h2>20th century and beyond</h2><br>
<h3>Decline</h3><br>
<p>Over the next several decades, Bel Air again fell into a state of decay. Upon visiting Bel Air in 1931, Alice Maude Ewell, an author and granddaughter of Dr. Jesse Ewell, described the mansion as "empty; silently eloquent of Colonial and Revolutionary days; shut in, moss-grown, mellow in the tones of its old red brick; dream-like on its hill, under its trees." Shattered windows gazed hollowly out at once beautiful grounds which had overgrown. In an attempt to repair the separated walls of the foundation in 1890, the beautiful ground floor stone walls, originally mortared with Virginia red clay, were surrounded by forms and cased in an unsightly layer of cement. But because the walls were not braced, they continued to buckle, and by 1915 the house, along with plans to restore it, were abandoned. For the next 33 years, vandals pilfered items from the house and destroyed others. Hunters camped in the house and used window frames, balusters and furniture as firewood. A wife of a neighbor who was supposed to take care of the house stripped it bare of its original furnishings. A rumor that $50,000 in gold was hidden in the house led treasure hunters to tear into the walls and floor boards. Unappreciative former owners stabled livestock in the drawing room, as evidenced by the shreds of hay found behind the moldings.</p><br>
<h3>Second restoration</h3><br>
<p>In 1948, Dr. William E. and Ann Flory purchased Bel Air as a weekend home and were determined to restore the estate to its colonial-era splendor. Having restored another old home Alexandria, the Florys approached the restoration with experience and an obsession with historical accuracy. With the assistance of the Virginia Park Service and after conducting extensive research, the Florys began a careful, 30-year restoration in 1949. Workmen peeled away the cement from the exterior of the foundation walls, chipped away the crumbling old clay that held the large stones together, and mortared them back into the foundation.</p><br>
<p>As the grounds were cleared pieces of missing woodwork, including the drawing room mantle, emerged from the brush, where they had been tossed by vandals during its dormancy. A facsimile of old square brick was laid in the basement kitchen. Utilities and facilities necessary for modern living—such as heat, water, electrical wiring, plumbing, and kitchen and bathroom facilities—were installed. Features added in 1885 and 1926 that were inconsistent with its colonial-era appearance were removed, such as the southeast covered porch, which the Flory&#39;s replaced with a porch thought appropriate for the era. The roof was replaced and dormers on the northwest side that had been covered over by prior owners were restored.</p><br>
<p>As the work continued, the Florys eventually moved to Bel Air, using the kitchen as living space until the rest of the interior was renovated. Originally hoping to complete the renovation in 10 years, the Flory&#39;s continued their work for 30 years, suspending their efforts at times due to lack of funds.</p><br>
<h3>Continuing restoration efforts</h3><br>
<p>The Flory children, William Flory Jr. and Anne "Randi" Naedele, continued their parents&#39; restoration efforts in the 1990s. Structural repairs, made necessary by the foundational issues, were made by Randi and Bill Naedele at great expense in the 1990s. A Unico small-duct central air conditioning system was added in the 2000s, making the house even more comfortable for modern living.</p><br>
<p>Restoration efforts continued under the Stewart family, who purchased the home in 2012. The colonial revival gardens were completely restored between 2013 and 2015, when the blighted English boxwoods were largely replaced with the disease-resistant green velvet variety. A major roof renovation was completed in 2016 with the repair of the dormers on the northwest side of the house and the complete replacement of the asbestos roofing tile with slate. Using historically accurate lime-based putty, repointing of the brick exterior is ongoing to repair loose mortar joints and fix prior repairs that improperly used Portland cement.</p><br>
<h3>Current use</h3><br>
<p>Bel Air remains a private residence that also serves as a venue for weddings and other events.</p><br>
<h2>Landscape and architecture</h2><br>
<h3>Landscape</h3><br>
<p>Bordered by 25 acres of rolling, wooded countryside protected by a Virginia historical easement, Bel Air rests at the crest of a rolling hummock, its broad front lawn on the southeast side of the home set with huge black walnut trees and oaks. The house is framed on the northwest by two massive willow oaks, beyond which opens a bowling green lined by towering magnolia trees, a saucer magnolia, and boxwood and spice bushes. Beyond the bowling green is the Ewell family cemetery ringed by azalea and big rhododendron bushes. On the southwest are sprawling formal colonial gardens with terraced rectangular beds of boxwood hedges, which were planted by the Florys on the site where the original gardens are presumed to have existed. Adjacent to the upper garden is an alley of large cedar trees leading to livestock and pole barns. On the northeast side of the home is a well house shaded by black walnut trees and a large American elm. The perimeter of the house itself is ornamented with boxwood bushes, with various species of English ivy garnishing the stone foundation.</p><br>
<p>The original landscaping plan had shade trees planted in squares and circles. The entrance to the plantation was lined with long rows of southern catalpa trees, through which fashionable visitors would arrive for grand events. According to tradition, it is under one of these trees that Col. Jesse Ewell fed his regiment from the flocks and herds at Bel Air. Somewhere on the property was the Lafayette pear tree, once a sprout at Mount Vernon, from a tree brought from France by the Marquis de Lafayette himself. There was originally no shrubbery around the house since it was thought that it gathered "dampness and death." A "sparkling pool" in the creek was used by early inhabitants of Bel Air for bathing.</p><br>
<h3>Exterior architecture</h3><br>
<p>Remarkably well preserved for its age, Bel Air is pre-Georgian brick house on a raised stone basement. The house measures 38 × 51 feet. It contains elements of Tidewater architecture while using a center plan typical of later Georgian period homes. It appears to be a transitional house between the southern colonial and the Georgian styles or a vernacular attempt to imitate one or the other or combine elements that Charles Ewell desired. The current front entrance faces northwest, but the southeast entrance was the original approach to the house. The house is oriented at exactly 45 degrees from the cardinal points, ensuring year-round sunlight on each side of the house.</p><br>
<h4>Façade</h4><br>
<p>The overall facade is simple yet graceful in its appearance with a dogleg staircase leading to an entrance stoop at the main level.</p><br>
<p>Like other houses from the period, Bel Air has a double front. In a style that was prevalent before 1700, the main entrance is unbalanced, with two windows to the left and one to the right. Despite this asymmetrical design, the façade does not appear either awkward or unbalanced to the eye. The wooden double-leafed main door has a simple beaded trim surround and a rectangular transom above with two rows of six panes over each other. A simple jack arch supports the brick above. The northwest side of the home is symmetrical, five-bays wide, and has a square-shaped opening approach. Although replacements, the windows are of the narrow 18th century type, with double hung, wooden sashes and nine-over-nine panes. They are painted white with wooden non projecting sills below and brick jack arches above.</p><br>
<p>The bricks, which were imported from Scotland as ship ballast around 1740, are laid for the most part in Flemish bond, although it lapses at times on the northwest side into five-course American bond, where considerable rebuilding is obvious. Repointing with historically accurate lime-based putty began in 2015 and is ongoing to repair mortar joints and fix prior repairs that improperly used Portland cement. The southeast façade has four bays with two of the windows to the left and one to the right of the door.</p><br>
<h4>Basement</h4><br>
<p>The elevated basement is almost completely above ground and has windows that are directly under those of the main floor above. The basement walls range in thickness from 1 to 3 feet and are constructed of rough fieldstones believed to have been excavated from the nearby fields. The basement windows are double hung-wooden sash with six-over-six panes. The water table which starts the brick construction contains relieving arches above the window openings. The water table is laid in English bond and separates the stone foundation below and the brick work of the first level above. It is unclear whether the water table is original or a later addition, but it is entirely mortared together with Portland cement, and not historically accurate lime based putty that is found in the brickwork above. Buttresses were added to the northeastern side in the 1950s.</p><br>
<h4>Chimneys</h4><br>
<p>The house has one interior and one exterior chimney. The enormous 22-foot-wide exterior chimney is double pented and has a somewhat larger cap. The cap and upper portion of the chimney was reconstructed in the 1990s. The interior chimney is engaged into the roof at the gable end.</p><br>
<h4>Roof</h4><br>
<p>The gable roof was originally made of clay tile fastened in one corner by a three-cornered peg. Thinking that the weight of the clay tile was buckling the exterior walls and causing the northeastern side of the house to subside, owners of Bel Air in the early 19th century replaced the tile with cedar shingles, which were later replaced with asphalt shingles in the early 20th century and then asbestos tile in the 1950s. This was a mistake, as the cause of the sinking was defective foundation walls, not the weight of the roof. The subsidence was finally corrected with the addition of buttresses to the northeastern side of the building in the 1950s and repairs to the roof trusses and other structural repairs in the 1990s. All of these repairs made possible the installation of a period-correct slate roof in 2016. The cornice below the slightly projecting eave is plain and unadorned with painted wood molding. As the brick gutters run on the ground, roof gutters are unnecessary and copper gutters span the entrances only. On each side of the roof are three small and evenly-spaced pedimented gable-roofed dormers, sided with beaded clapboards, and containing a double hung-wooden sash window with four-over-four panes. Dormers on the northwestern side of the home were repaired in 2016.</p><br>
<h3>Interior architecture</h3><br>
<p>Bel Air is a -story central-passage house with a walk-out basement. With the finished basement, it contains 4375 sq. ft. of living space. There are currently five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and eight fireplaces. Two stairways connect the basement to the main floor, including a steep servant stairs from the kitchen to the reception room (now an office). Typical for the period, an open, wide staircase with two commodious landings connects the main to the upper floor. Also consistent with 18th century fashion, the guestroom is on the main floor to provide privacy.</p><br>
<h4>Ground floor</h4><br>
<p>The cooking, dining and laundry work were all provided for on the six-room, brick-floored, stone-walled, walk-out English basement. The large dining hall was called the "wool room" by the Ewells, who used it as their prime living space until it was converted for more menial uses when the upper floors of the mansion were finished. This room contains a massive fireplace, the stone hearth and brick floor of which are original. In the room there used to be a window, low but wide enough across to roll in great pine logs, just as they came from the wagon, and a fireplace big enough to accommodate them. The brick floor in the room is an exact replica. Connected via a butler pantry is the kitchen, which contains its own fireplace for cooking, although modern appliances have been added to accommodate contemporary living. Connected to the kitchen is a laundry room, but the iron shackles that were found imbedded in the wall point to the original use of the room—a dungeon for quarrelsome Indians and disobedient slaves. During the 1885 restoration, a window and second door were added to the room, and it was converted into a root cellar.</p><br>
<h4>Main floor</h4><br>
<p>Like the main floor plan of nearly every other colonial-era manor home near the Potomac—including Belvoir, Gunston Hall, and Mount Vernon before George Washington added to it—Bel Air contains a wide central passage flanked by two rooms on either side. The stately main floor—with 11-foot ceilings, wide pine-plank floors, and large central hall adorned by Greek key cornices and reeded archway—was designed for entertaining. Noted for its intricate woodwork, the drawing room, sometimes called the "state dining room," "red room" or parlor, contains large deep-welled windows, 18th century paneling, and Greek key cornices with troy motif. The room is dominated by an architectural fireplace with an extremely fine mantel and overmantel with dog-ear motif supported by consoles. Above the mantel is a copy of Grant Woods painting of Parson Weems tale of the cherry tree.</p><br>
<p>Perhaps the most notable feature in the house is a wooden partition that can be removed (by taking out the baseboard and kicking the panels out on dowels) to join the drawing room and the central hall into a 20 x 30 foot room for great occasions. The partition is fully paneled on both sides, both above and below the chair rail. Complete with a 10-pane casement window on either side of the partition door, the design is extraordinary.</p><br>
<p>Connected to the drawing room by a door with a 12-pane transom above is the Washington guest chamber, where George and Martha Washington and other guests would have spent the night. In the absence of guests, however, the room was used as Jesse and Charlotte Ewells bedroom and was referred to as "Ole Misss" or "Ole Marstar&#39;s" room.</p><br>
<p>Directly across the hall from the drawing room is the formal dining room, beautifully ornamented with dentil moldings, built-in shelves, dumbwaiter and large fireplace. At the northwest corner of the house is the reception room (sometimes used as the family dining room or office), which was nearly destroyed by a fire in 1840. The room has since been altered to make room for a bathroom and closet.</p><br>
<h4>Top floor</h4><br>
<p>The top floor originally contained five bedrooms, with fireplaces in four of them. During the 1949 restoration, the fifth bedroom was converted into two bathrooms and closets, and its fireplace was removed. The small bedroom above the stairs was Parson Weems&#39; study; it is said that he selected the remotest room as his own in order to secure sanctuary from his mother-in-law. A full-length attic spans the building.</p><br>
<p>Park Gate is a historic home located near Nokesville, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built about 1750, and is a -story, three-bay, Tidewater Style frame dwelling. It has a steep gable roof and exterior end chimneys and measures 36 feet by 30 feet. The front facade features a 12 feet deep full width front porch. Colonel Thomas Lee, eldest son of Richard Henry Lee, signer of the Declaration of Independence, resided at Park Gate from about 1790 to 1805.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.</p><br>
<p>Beverley Mill, also known as Chapman Mill, is a historic grist mill located north of Interstate 66 and Virginia State Route 55 in Thoroughfare Gap near Broad Run, Virginia, straddling the county line between Prince William and Fauquier Counties. It was built about 1759, and is a five-story, four bay by three bay, rubble stone structure. The water power was provided by Broad Run which, in its 1,300 ft passage through the Gap, drops 87 ft. Exterior mill machinery included a 29 ft metal waterwheel and sluice gate as well as a stone mill race. The mill continued in operation through World War II. It is included in the Thoroughfare Gap Battlefield.</p><br>
<p>The mill was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. On October 22, 1998, a fire resulting from vandalism gutted the mill, which is awaiting restoration.</p><br>
<p>St. Paul&#39;s Episcopal Church is a historic Episcopal church in Haymarket, Virginia, United States. It was started in 1801 and is a two-story, gable-roofed brick church building. The building originally served as the district courthouse for Fairfax, Fauquier, Loudon, and Prince William counties. It later housed Hygeia Academy. It was consecrated as a church in 1834, and remodeled in 1867, after being gutted during the American Civil War. The remodeling added the frame chancel, bracketed cornice, and octagonal belfry and spire.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.</p><br>
<p>The Lawn is a historic home and national historic district located near Nokesville, Prince William County, Virginia. The main house was built in 1926 to replace the original Gothic Revival style dwelling that burned in a fire in 1921. It is a two-story, three-bay, Tudor Revival style, stuccoed dwelling. The house features half-timber framing and a complex cross gable roof. Attached to the house is a brick kitchen wing that survived from the original house. Also included in the district are a board-and-batten schoolhouse, barn, smokehouse, overseer&#39;s cottage, privy, stone dairy, and stone root cellar.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>The Prairie Homestead is a sod house located at 21070 South Dakota Highway 240 north of Interior, South Dakota. The house was constructed by Ed Brown and his wife in 1909. The Browns built their home with sod bricks and topped it with a grass roof. Western South Dakota was one of the last regions of the state to be settled by homesteaders, and the house is now one of the few remaining sod homes in the state. The home is now open to visitors for tours and houses farm animals and prairie dogs on its grounds.</p><br>
<p>The house was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 11, 1974.</p><br>
<p>Alexander Johnston Hall is a historic building located on the corner of Somerset Street and College Avenue, New Brunswick in Middlesex County, New Jersey and is the second oldest building on the campus of Rutgers University. It was built in 1830 to handle the expansion of the Rutgers Preparatory School and the two literary societies, Philoclean and Peithessophian. The building, described using its historic name, Rutgers Preparatory School, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 18, 1975 for its significance in architecture and education.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>Designed by local architect and builder Nicholas Wyckoff in 1830, Alexander Johnston Hall served as the home of the Rutgers College Grammar School, later known as the Rutgers Preparatory School. In 1870, the Rutgers College trustees hired architect Henry Janeway Hardenbergh (1847–1918) to design a two-story addition for the building. It was the first of three commissions Hardenbergh designed for the college—the other two being Geology Hall (1872) and Kirkpatrick Chapel. The Rutgers Preparatory School used this building from 1830 to 1963. The school, which was chartered with Rutgers as "Queen&#39;s College" in 1766, is now an independent school located on a 45-acre campus on Easton Avenue in Somerset, New Jersey. In 1964, the university renamed the building to honor 1870 graduate, Alexander Johnston, a historian and classics instructor at the school. Johnston had taught future Rutgers president William H. S. Demarest here.</p><br>
<p>Brentsville Courthouse and Jail is a historic courthouse and jail located at Brentsville, Prince William County, Virginia. The courthouse was built in 1822, and is a two-story, Federal style brick building. It features a fanlight over the main entrance, within a keyed, semicircular brick arch and an octagonal-roofed, frame-built cupola. The Brentsville Jail was built about 1820, and is located 30 yards from the courthouse. It is a well-constructed, two-story, gable roofed structure. The county seat was moved to Manassas in the 1890s to the Prince William County Courthouse and the courthouse and jail were abandoned.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<h2>Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre</h2><br>
<p>Brentsville Courthouse Historic Centre is an open-air museum centered around the restored 1825-period courthouse. The museum is owned and operated by Prince William County Historic Preservation Division and interprets the history of Brentsville and Prince William County through three centuries.</p><br>
<p>The Brentsville site consists of 28 acres with five historic buildings and several archaeological sites. Visitors can tour the interior of the restored courthouse, Union Church and 1853 Haislip-Hall House. There are plans to restore the jail and a one-room schoolhouse.</p><br>
<p>Prince William County Courthouse is a historic courthouse located at 9248 Lee Avenue, Manassas, Prince William County, Virginia. Rehabilitated in 2000–2001, it currently houses some offices of the Prince William County clerk, and the historic courtroom upstairs can be rented for events.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>The countys fifth courthouse was built in 1892–1893, on land donated by former Union officer and Virginia lawyer and delegate George Carr Round. After several legal disputes, including one decided by the Virginia Supreme Court, the county government moved to this building near the countys most important railroad station, from the centrally located but increasingly isolated Brentsville Courthouse and Jail. This became the county&#39;s courthouse in 1897. On July 21, 1911, USA President William Howard Taft and Virginia Governor William Hodges Mann shook hands on the courthouse lawn during the Manassas Peace Jubilee commemorating the 50th anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major conflict of the American Civil War.</p><br>
<p>The town of Manassas became large enough for the Virginia General Assembly to incorporate it as a city in the 1970s, which caused several complications for the old courthouse. After negotiations, title to the courthouse building and the jail (razed years later) remained in the County, and various town (city) offices moved out of the building. The county property became surrounded by city land, much of which became included in a national historic district in 2004. Meanwhile, by 1980, the space had become too cramped for judicial operations in the growing county, so another courthouse was built about a mile away. This building continued actively use as a county courthouse until 1982.</p><br>
<p>The current (modern) courthouse containing both the Prince William Circuit Court and the Prince William District Court is at 9311 Lee Avenue in Manassas, VA 20110, and has several parking lots nearby.</p><br>
<h2>Architecture</h2><br>
<p>The two-story, Romanesque style polychromatic brick building measures 52 feet by 60 feet and has a hipped roof. The front facade is symmetrical and features a projecting central bay forming a three-story clock tower topped with a cupola.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.</p><br>
<p>Davis–Beard House, also known as Glee Hall and Davis House, is a historic home located at Bristow, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built after the American Civil War, and is a two-story, five-bay, frame dwelling with later additions. The rambling dwelling has a number of Late Victorian style decorative elements. It features a one-story wraparound porch, decorated gables, bay windows, and storefront. Also on the property are a contributing brick hip-roofed carriage house and a small lattice-covered frame privy.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>Ben Lomond, also known as Ben Lomond Plantation, is a historic plantation house located at Bull Run, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built in 1837, and is a two-story, five-bay, red sandstone dwelling with a gable roof. The house has a central-hall plan and one-story frame kitchen addition. One-story pedimented porches shelter the main  and rear  entries. Also on the property are the contributing frame two-story tenant&#39;s house, brick pumphouse, and a bunkhouse dated to the early 20th century; and a meat house, dairy, and slave quarters dated to the late-1830s.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
<p>The house is owned by the County and is open for tour as a Civil War-period historic house museum.</p><br>
<p>Old Hotel, also known as Williams Ordinary and Love&#39;s Tavern, is a historic inn and tavern located in Dumfries, Virginia.</p><br>
<h2>History</h2><br>
<p>It is dated to about 1765, and is a two-story, five-bay, Georgian style brick building. It features stone quoins and a stone doorway. The building has a fully molded wood cornice with modillions, hipped roof, and four interior end chimneys.</p><br>
<p>In the fall of 2016, new evidence emerged from dendrochronology testing by the Oxford Tree Ring Laboratory in Baltimore that the building may not be as old as previously thought. The dendrochronology testing, which examines the wood in the building, reveals the structure may date to 1786–87, just before George Washington took office. The building, one of the oldest in Prince William County, is currently used by the county for its Historic Preservation offices.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.</p><br>
<p>Locust Bottom, also known as Rollingwood Farm, is a historic home and national historic district located near Haymarket, Prince William County, Virginia. The main house was built about 1811, and is a two-story, four-bay, Federal style, brick dwelling with a single-pile, modified central-hall plan. It has end chimneys, a metal gable roof, a molded brick cornice, and a kitchen wing which predates the main house. The two-story rear frame addition was added in the late-19th century. Also included in the district are the shop, the carriage house, the two chicken houses, the brooder house, the milk house, the horse barn, the tenant house, corn crib, and the remains of a smokehouse.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>Brentsville Historic District is a national historic district located near Bristow, at Brentsville, Prince William County, Virginia. It encompasses 23 contributing buildings and 2 contributing sites in the village of Brentsville platted in 1822. These include the former Brentsville Courthouse and Jail, a one-room school , three churches, 11 houses, one ruins of a dwelling, a tavern square site, and 14 outbuildings.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990.</p><br>
<p>Buckland Historic District is a national historic district located at Buckland, Prince William County, Virginia. It encompasses 30 contributing buildings, 11 contributing sites, and 6 contributing structures in the town of Buckland. The district is centered on a grist mill , Buckland Mill, the third such structure located on the site. Besides the mill, the most significant buildings include an early 19th-century wagon tavern and a small church . For the most part the houses are small, simple, 19th-century dwellings constructed of log, frame or stone; most were intended to serve a commercial as well as a residential purpose. Other contributing resources include the mill race and dam, Cerro Gordo plantation, portions of the Civil War Buckland battlefields, the Kinsley Mill and miller&#39;s house, and Buckland Hall .</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, with a boundary increase in 2008.</p><br>
<p>Occoquan Historic District is a national historic district located at Occoquan, Prince William County, Virginia. It encompasses 60 contributing buildings in the town of Occoquan. The buildings are predominantly frame, two-story,</p><br>
<p>residential structures although the earliest examples are constructed of stone or brick. The Ellicott&#39;s Mill House (c. 1760) houses Historic Occoquan, Inc. The district also includes several notable non-residential buildings including the Hammill Hotel (c. 1830), Ebenezer Church (1853), Methodist Church (1926), and Crescent Lodge #3 (1889). Located in the district is the separately listed Rockledge.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.</p><br>
<p>Nokesville Truss Bridge is a historic Pratt truss bridge carrying Virginia State Route 646  across the Norfolk Southern Railway near Nokesville, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built in 1882 by the Keystone Bridge Company. The single-span bridge measures 73 ft long, and is constructed of wrought iron.</p><br>
<p>The bridge was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.</p><br>
<p>Freestone Point Confederate Battery is a historic American Civil War gun emplacement located at Leesylvania State Park, Woodbridge, Prince William County, Virginia. The battery has four individual gun emplacements, which are fairly simple in configuration. All are formed by a large, deep, rectangular depression with high earthen berms built</p><br>
<p>up on the north and south side of each depression. Three of the batteries are located on the cliff about 90 feet above the Potomac River. For five months, from October 1861 to March 1862, the batteries contributed to the Confederate military&#39;s success in blockading the Potomac River.</p><br>
<p>It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.</p><br>
<p>Commanding General&#39;s Quarters, Quantico Marine Base, also known as Building Number 1 and Quarters 1, is a historic home located at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Quantico, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built in 1920, and is a large, two-story, concrete-block-and-frame, Dutch Colonial Revival style house. The main block consists of a two-story, five-bay, symmetrical, gambrel-roofed central block with lower level walls covered with stucco. It has flanking wings consisting of a service wing and wing with a porch and second story addition. Also on the property is a contributing two-car, hipped roof, stucco-covered garage. The house is a contributing resource with the Quantico Marine Base Historic District.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.</p><br>
<p>Cabin Branch Pyrite Mine Historic District is a national historic district located at Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Prince William County, Virginia. It encompasses 4 contributing sites and 42 contributing structures associated with the Cabin Branch pyrite mine. The pyrite mine opened in 1889, and remained in operation until 1919 or 1920. The property includes a number of capped mine shafts, and the remains of a commissary building and an old mill; and mine structures, including crusher house, mill, mechanical and support buildings, numerous rail lines.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.</p><br>
<p>Old Town Hall and School, also known as the Haymarket Museum, is a historic town hall and school located at Haymarket, Prince William County, Virginia. It was built in 1883, and is a front-gable, two-story, wooden structure clad in weatherboard with Greek Revival and Victorian style decorative elements. It features a square, pyramidal-roofed belfry situated above the front gable that has louvers, sawn brackets, and gables on each face. Its use as a school stopped around 1900. It continued to serve as the Town Hall as well as a community meeting place until 2001. The building currently houses the Haymarket Museum.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2011.</p><br>
<p>Liberia is a historic plantation house located at Manassas, Virginia, United States. It was built about 1825, and is a two-story, five-bay, Federal style brick dwelling. It has a parapet side-gable roof and a molded brick cornice with a saw-tooth design. It has a single-pile, modified central passage plan. During the American Civil War, it was used as headquarters by both Confederate and Union forces. Both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, in addition to other statesmen, visited Liberia during the War.</p><br>
<p>The house was acquired by the City of Manassas on December 31, 1986, for use as a museum. The house is being restored and is open for special events and tours by appointment.</p><br>
<p>It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.</p><br>
