Colonial Williamsburg Informations

Colonial Williamsburg is a living-history museum and private foundation presenting part of an historic district in the city of Williamsburg, Virginia, United States.

Its 301-acre (122 ha) historic area includes several hundred restored or re-created buildings from the 18th century, when the city was the capital of Colonial Virginia; 17th-century, 19th-century, and Colonial Revival structures; and more recent reconstructions. An interpretation of a colonial American city, the historic area includes three main thoroughfares and their connecting side streets that attempt to suggest the atmosphere and the circumstances of 18th-century Americans. Costumed employees work and dress as people did in the era, sometimes using colonial grammar and diction (although not colonial accents).

In the late 1920s, the restoration and re-creation of colonial Williamsburg was championed as a way to celebrate rebel patriots and the early history of the United States. Proponents included the Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin and other community leaders; the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now called Preservation Virginia), the Colonial Dames, the Daughters of the Confederacy, the Chamber of Commerce, and other organizations; and the wealthy Rockefellers John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller.

Colonial Williamsburg is part of the part-historic project, part-tourist attraction Historic Triangle of Virginia, along with Jamestown and Yorktown and the Colonial Parkway. The site was once used for conferences by world leaders and heads of state, including U.S. presidents. It was designated a National Historic Landmark District in 1960.

In June 2019, its sixth president, Mitchell Reiss, announced that he would resign effective October, ending a five-year tenure distinguished by staff turnover, downsizing, and outsourcing.

Colonial Williamsburg is a historical landmark and a living history museum. Its core runs along Duke of Gloucester Street and the Palace Green that extends north and south perpendicular to it. This area is largely flat, with ravines and streams branching off on the periphery. At the City of Williamsburg's discretion, Duke of Gloucester Street and other historic area thoroughfares are closed to motorized vehicles during the day, in favor of pedestrians, bicyclists, joggers, dog walkers, and animal-drawn vehicles.

Surviving colonial structures have been restored as close as possible to their 18th-century appearance, with traces of later buildings and improvements removed. Many of the missing colonial structures were reconstructed on their original sites beginning in the 1930s. Animals, gardens, and dependencies (such as kitchens, smokehouses, and privies) add to the environment. Some buildings and most gardens are open to tourists, the exceptions being buildings serving as residences for Colonial Williamsburg employees, large donors, the occasional city official, and sometimes College of William and Mary associates.

Prominent buildings include the Raleigh Tavern, the Capitol, the Governor's Palace (all reconstructed), as well as the Courthouse, the George Wythe House, the Peyton Randolph House, the Magazine, and independently owned and functioning Bruton Parish Church (all originals). Colonial Williamsburg's portion of the historic area begins east of the College of William and Mary's College Yard.

Four taverns have been reconstructed for use as restaurants and two for inns. There are craftsmen's workshops for period trades, including a printing shop, a shoemaker's, blacksmith's, a cooperage, a cabinetmaker, a gunsmith's, a wigmaker's, and a silversmith's. There are merchants selling tourist souvenirs, books, reproduction toys, pewterware, pottery, scented soap, and tchotchkes. Some houses, including the Peyton Randolph House, the Geddy House, the Wythe House and the Everard House are open to tourists, as are such public buildings as the Courthouse, the Capitol, the Magazine, the Public Hospital, and the Gaol. The Public Gaol served as a jail for the colonists. Former notorious inmates include the pirate Blackbeard's crew who were kept in the 1704 jail while they awaited trial.

Colonial Williamsburg operations extend to Merchants Square, a Colonial Revival commercial area designated a historic district in its own right. Nearby are the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum and DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum, operated by Colonial Williamsburg as part of its curatorial efforts.

The Jamestown statehouse, housing Virginia's government at the time, burned down on October 20, 1698. The legislators consequently moved their meetings to the College of William and Mary in Virginia at Middle Plantation, putting an end to Jamestown's 92-year run as Virginia's colonial capital. In 1699, in a graduation exercise, a group of College of William and Mary students delivered addresses endorsing proposals to move the capital to Middle Plantation, ostensibly to escape the malaria – and the mosquitoes which transmit them – of the Jamestown Island site. Interested Middle Plantation landowners donated some of their holdings to advance the plan, and to reap its rewards.

Middle Plantation was renamed Williamsburg by Governor Francis Nicholson, who was first among the proponents of the change, in honor of the Dutch Royal Willem III van Oranje (William of Orange)[circular reference]. He was Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel in the Dutch Republic from 1672 and King of England, Ireland and Scotland from 1689 until his death in 1702 where he was known as king William III of England.[circular reference] Nicholson said that at Williamsburg "clear and crystal springs burst from the champagne soil". By "champagne," he meant excellent or fertile. Nicholson had the city surveyed and a grid laid out by Theodorick Bland taking into consideration the brick College Building and the decaying Bruton Parish Church building of the day. The grid seems to have obliterated all but the remnants of an earlier plan that laid out the streets in the monogram of William and Mary, a W superimposed on an M. The main street was named Duke of Gloucester after the eldest son of Queen Anne. Nicholson named the street north of it Nicholson Street, for himself, and the one south of it Francis Street.

For eighty-one years of the 18th century, Williamsburg was the center of government, education and culture in the Colony of Virginia. Here, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, James Monroe, James Madison, George Wythe, Peyton Randolph, and others furthered the forms of British government in the Commonwealth of Virginia and later helped adapt its preferred features to the needs of the new United States. During the American Revolutionary War, in 1780, under the leadership of Governor Thomas Jefferson, the government moved to Richmond, on the James River, about 55 miles (89 kilometres) west, to be more central and accessible from western counties, and less susceptible of British attack. There it remains today.

With the seat of government removed, Williamsburg's businesses foundered or migrated to Richmond, and the city entered a long, slow period of sleepy stagnation and decay. Bypassed by progress, in its isolation the town maintained much of its 18th-century aspect. Captured by General George McClellan in 1862 and garrisoned by the Union for the duration, Williamsburg mostly escaped the ravages of the Civil War, though federal soldiers burned the college and others plundered private homes. The site stood on high ground away from waterways and was not served by the early railroads, whose construction began in the 1830s, and only was reached by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway in 1881.

Williamsburg relied for jobs on The College of William and Mary, the Courthouse, and the Eastern Lunatic Asylum (now Eastern State Hospital),; it was said that the "500 Crazies" of the asylum supported the "500 Lazies" of the college and town. Colonial-era buildings were by turns modified, modernized, protected, neglected, or destroyed. Development that accompanied construction of a World War I gun cotton plant at nearby Peniman and the coming of the automobile blighted the community, but the town never lost its appeal to tourists. By the early 20th century, many older structures were in poor condition, no longer in use, or were occupied by squatters, but, as Goodwin said, it was the only colonial capital still capable of restoration.

The Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin became rector of Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church in 1903 for the first of two periods. Born in 1869 at Richmond to a Confederate veteran and his well-to-do wife, and reared in rural Nelson County at present-day Norwood, Goodwin was educated at Roanoke College, the University of Virginia, the University of Richmond, and the Virginia Theological Seminary. He first visited Williamsburg as a seminarian sent to recruit William and Mary students. Returning as an energetic 34-year-old, he became rector of a Bruton Parish Church riven by factions. He helped harmonize the congregation, and assumed leadership of a flagging campaign to restore the 1711 church building. Goodwin and New York ecclesiastical architect J. Stewart Barney completed the church restoration in time for 1907's 300th anniversary of the founding of America's Anglican (Episcopal) Church at nearby Jamestown, Virginia. Goodwin traveled the East Coast raising money for the project and establishing philanthropic contacts. Among the 1907 anniversary guests was J. Pierpont Morgan, president of the Episcopal church's General Assembly meeting that year in Richmond.

Goodwin accepted a call from wealthy St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Rochester, N.Y. in 1908, and pastored there until his return in 1923 to Williamsburg to become a William and Mary fundraiser and religious studies professor, as well as pastor of Yorktown's Episcopal church and a chapel at Toano. He had maintained his Williamsburg ties, periodically visiting his first wife's and their first son's graves, using William and Mary's library for historical research, and vacationing. What he saw in the deterioration of colonial-era buildings saddened and inspired him. He renewed his associations with the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities—the membership of which included prominent and wealthy Virginians—and helped to protect and repair the town's 18th-century octagonal Powder Horn, a structure now called the Magazine. With other William and Mary professors, he saved the John Blair House from demolition to make way for a gasoline station—and turned it into a faculty club. In 1924, as the college launched a building and fundraising drive, he adopted Barney's proposal for saving other houses in the historic section of the town for use as student and faculty housing. After working for two years to interest such individuals as Henry Ford and such organizations as the Dames of Colonial America to invest in his hopes, Goodwin obtained the at first limited and later complete support (and major financial commitment) of John D. Rockefeller Jr., the wealthy son of the founder of the Standard Oil monopoly. Rockefeller's wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller was also to play a role. In addition to working as Rockefeller's agent Goodwin returned to the Bruton Parish pulpit in 1926, keeping his college positions.

Rockefeller's first investment in a Williamsburg house had been a contribution to Goodwin's acquisition of the George Wythe House for next-door Bruton Church's parish house. Rockefeller's second and better known was his almost simultaneous authorization of the make-safe purchase of the Ludwell-Paradise house in early 1927. Goodwin persuaded Rockefeller to buy it on behalf of the college for housing in the event Rockefeller should decide to restore the town. Rockefeller had agreed to pay for college restoration plans and drawings. He later considered limiting his restoration involvement to the college and an exhibition enclave. He did not commit to the town's large scale restoration until November 22, 1927—the now-uppercase Restoration's birthday. As Goodwin later put it: “Mr. Rockefeller then stated that he would associate himself with the endeavor to restore colonial Williamsburg!” Until that moment, Rockefeller had always spoken in terms of “if” he would become involved, though all the while acquiring property and proposals.

Concerned that prices might rise if their purposes were known, Rockefeller and Goodwin at first kept their acquisition plans secret, quietly buying houses and lots and taking deeds in blank. Goodwin took Williamsburg attorney Vernon M. Geddy, Sr. into his confidence, without exposing Rockefeller as silent partner. Geddy did much of the title research and legal work related to properties in what was to become the restored area. Geddy later drafted the Virginia corporate papers for the project, filed them with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and served briefly as the first president of what became the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. That much property changing hands was noticed by the courthouse crowd and by newspaper reporters. After eighteen months of increasingly excited rumors, Goodwin and Rockefeller revealed what had become an open secret — their plans, at county and town meetings on June 11 and 12, 1928. The purpose was to obtain the consent of the citizenry at large and enlist them in the project. No African Americans attended the meetings, or were formally consulted about their town's future. Town and county controlled properties the restoration project required—a new high school and two public greens, among them. The city retained ownership of its streets, an arrangement that forestalled later proposals to raise revenue by closing the historic area to unticketed tourists.

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