The mansion house at Huntley has remarkable refinement for a secondary house of a Virginia planter's family. This includes not only concept, scale, and the manner in which the component parts hold together, but extends to detail as well. For example, both the center first floor room and the east wing have corner blocks, of two different designs, as a part of door and window architraves. The architect Benjamin Latrobe used corner blocks, for which the drawings still exist, in some of the rooms at Decatur House in 1818.[58] Fiske Kimball, the architectural historian, believes that: In the Forrester House and the Andrew House there [Salem, Massachusetts] at this time [1818], and in the Decatur House, Washington, just before, we find the first examples of doors framed, not by a mitred architrave, but by moulded bands with corner blocks, which remained characteristic through the middle of the Century.[59] That Huntley, c. 1820, should have corner blocks, is probably too much to expect from a local carpenter's design, if Mr. Kimball's dates are correct. Inasmuch as the corner blocks are an integral part of the design of the center first floor room at Huntley, there can be no question that they were original. It is interesting to note that at Decatur House, as at Huntley and Arlington, corner blocks are used only in some rooms, and not uniformly throughout the house, as is common later. Of course, Thomson Francis Mason could have had easy access to the works of Gibbs, Morris, Benjamin and others. George Mason IV had enough knowledge of architecture and design to employ William Buckland to design the interiors at Gunston Hall and his library was extensive. Mrs. Rowland, in speculating on what was in that library, notes that it was divided among his five sons, including T. F.'s father, and further notes that: The editor of the "Spotswood Letters" notices the libraries, really extensive for the time, of the second William Byrd of "Westover," of Sir John Randolph of Williamsburg, and of John Mercer of "Marlboro," and numerous others nearly as large, among them that of George Mason of Gunston.[60] Books might have given Mason an appreciation and knowledge of architecture and design, but it is highly unlikely that the design for Huntley derived from a book. In discussing the design of houses in this period architect Robert Mills noted in his "Autobiographical Notes" that: