ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION: THE MANSION HOUSE [85] Mrs. Michael Straight, interview December 1969. Certain pieces of the garden sculpture are from Peking, China. Others include "Frog Girl" by Willi Soukop. [86] _Alexandria Gazette_, November 6, 1839. [87] John Mosby Beattie, interview April 17, 1969. [88] David Condon, AIA; interview December 11, 1969. The earlier room layout of the central block of the house had two rooms, each about 12 by 12 feet, on each side of the central hallway which ran through the house widthwise. Each of these four rooms had its own fireplace located in the end wall. This pattern was duplicated in the four rooms on the second floor. A somewhat unusual feature of this building was that the joists for the first and second floors ran lengthwise rather than across the house. They were anchored in the brick outer wall and in a brick bearing wall running the width of the house in the basement and extending up to the second floor. In 1960, it was found that this wall was crumbling and in danger of allowing the second-floor joists to pull out of their sockets. The installation of a series of steel columns holding up a steel beam had the effect of taking all bearing weight off this original segment of brick wall. [89] _Ibid._ The location of this masonry wall in the basement and its extension upward to the second floor made it possible for the original house to have the floor joists set lengthwise with the house instead of front-to-back. The joists were thus anchored in the outside walls at each end of the house and in the center wall running midway through the house. [90] Walter Macomber, interview held July 16, 1968, at Green Spring Farm. Mr. Macomber's description of these shingles is as follows: "This shingle is something I helped develop for Williamsburg. We never did use it extensively, but it was made ... in Richmond [by] a man named Hendricks.... It's made of concrete reinforced with two or three wires to the length of it." [91] _Ibid._ This stairway was also reversed when it was moved into the library. As it originally stood in the hallway, the stairway ran upward from front to rear of the house, and a stairway to the basement was constructed underneath so as to run down to the basement from the rear to the front of the house. A second stairway between the first and second floors was also installed in a new staircase constructed in the new kitchen (west) wing built in 1942. [92] _Ibid._ Transcript of Mr. Macomber's description of the library is as follows: _Mr. Macomber_: Now this room--the library--is a designed room.