Huntley: A Mason Family Country HouseWrenn, Tony P.
History
Huntley: A Mason Family Country House
Wrenn, Tony P.
Huntley (Va.)
None of the storage rooms in the outbuildings show any evidence of ever
having been used as a smoke house, though the structure over the root
cellar may have been used for that purpose. It has been completely
remodeled inside, including a floor and roof, and any evidence of smoke
house use has been eradicated. Though one would expect to find, in a
complete southern plantation complex, barns, slave quarters, and a smoke
house, none of these now exist at Huntley, as is the case with most
surviving eighteenth and nineteenth century mansions.
Chapter 3 Notes
[Footnote 51: All quotes in this section unless otherwise credited are
from E. Blaine Cliver who visited the site with the author on November
11, 1969, and taped his comments. Mr. Cliver is with the firm of
Geoffrey W. Fairfax, AIA, Honolulu, Hawaii, where he is working as
restoration architect for Iolani Palace. Calder Loth, architectural
historian with the Virginia Historic Landmarks Commission visited the
site with the author on May 12, 1969. Their comments were of
immeasurable value in the investigation.]
[Footnote 52: All measurements are approximate, and are only used to
suggest scale and distance.]
[Footnote 53: In this area examples include Arlington House, 1802-17;
Tudor Place, about 1815; and Oatlands, Loudoun County, 1800-27.]
[Footnote 54: Similar moldings may be found at Sully, 1794, Fairfax
County, and at Monticello, about 1770-1808.]
[Footnote 55: This was a relatively common cornice line in the
Washington area. It appears on, among others, Earps Ordinary in Fairfax,
last half of the eighteenth century; Millers House, Colvin Run, about
1825; servants wing of Decatur House, 1818, Washington.]
[Footnote 56: This design is used, among other places, in the
outbuildings at Bremo, about 1820, Fluvanna County, and the jail, about
1848, Palmyra. In the immediate area the use is known to the author only
in the barn at the Oxon Hill Childrens Museum, Prince Georges County,
Maryland, early nineteenth century.]
[Footnote 57: The icehouse at Belle Grove, Middletown, late eighteenth
century, is the former type, while Woodlawn, Fairfax County, 1805, is
believed to have been the latter type.]
[Illustration: Figure 24.
Architect George Hadfield's exhibit at the Royal Academy, 1780-82.]
[Illustration: Figure 25.
Hadfield's design, bed chamber story plan.
Courtesy, Avery Library, Columbia University]
CHAPTER IV
THE ARCHITECT OF HUNTLEY
The construction of Huntley was probably not supervised by an architect.
There are too many imperfections for that. At the same time, it is too
architectonic to have either evolved or been put together from style
manuals. It is likely instead that the building derived from an
architect's plan.
The Architectural Plan
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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