In a list of objectives and inquiries meant to guide and make
profitable the European travel of two young Americans in 1788,
Thomas Jefferson noted, "Architecture [is] worth great attention.
As we double our numbers ever 20 years we must double our
houses.... It is then among the most important arts: and it is
desireable to introduce taste into an art which shews so much."
Referring both to the large physical presence of architecture, as
well as the ability of a structure to reveal its owner's character,
Jefferson articulates the telling relationship in
eighteenth-century Virginia between architecture and construction
of the self. In "Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the
Native Elite," Barbara Burlison Mooney employs Jefferson's theory
to examine twenty-five great eighteenth-century Virginia mansions,
and offer an analytical overview of Virginia's elite residential
architecture from a patronage perspective.
Though it focuses on architectural history, the book concerns
itself less with issues of design and construction than with the
social and cultural context in which the Virginia gentry
commissioned their imposing dwellings. In her examination of such
places as Stratford Hall, Carter's Grove, and Gunston Hall --
mansions whose grandeur has become synonymous with the image -- if
not the reality -- of life in Colonial Virginia -- Mooney
illuminates the fortunes, motivations, and aspirations of the
wealthy and powerful owners who built their "homes" with the
objective of securing their status and impressing the public. In
choosing to spend astonishing sums to provide themselves with grand
houses that far exceeded their living requirements -- in some
cases, by a disastrousmeasure -- the owners of these mansions
advanced grand claims to social and political prestige.
Clearly and accessibly written, "Prodigy Houses of Virginia"
will appeal not only to architectural and social historians of the
Colonial period but also to the general reader interested in these
mansions and the people who inhabited them.
General
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