THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412270065
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines
When historians at Colonial Williamsburg discover an original, 18th century feature during a building renovation, latter-day comforts such as air conditioning have to take a detour.
Renovations this winter to the Brush-Everard House next to the Governor's Palace revealed that a dining room china closet, long thought to be a 19th century addition, was actually from the 18th century.
Heating engineers had planned to replace 30-year-old pipes inside the closed closet. Instead, they returned to their computers to redesign the piping for the 277-year-old house.
``We had to fit 20th century air conditioning into an 18th century environment,'' said Tom Peck, director of mechanical maintenance at Colonial Williamsburg. ``It's a real feat to fit all this stuff in here. There's not a piece of duct more than 4 feet long without a bend in it.''
When the building reopens to the public in March, the closet will be open to display four shelves of silverware. The ductwork is behind the closet's rebuilt rear wall.
``We've promised we won't put anything very massive on the shelves in front of the heat ducts. They may need to get in there,'' said Colonial Williamsburg architectural historian Willie Graham said.
The closet cooperation is an example of what Colonial Williamsburg has learned from two earlier projects in its $2.5 million, three-year effort to renovate three of its showpiece buildings.
The project to add state-of-the-art air conditioning and heating, fire detectors, security systems and computerized humidity and temperature controls was funded in part by a $930,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The work gave historians their first chance in 30 years to explore in detail three of the foundation's most popular buildings and rethink what they had said about the 18th century.
In the Wythe House, they used microscopic paint analysis to discover where slaves probably slept on the second floor and where a door existed on the first floor. That allowed Colonial Williamsburg to reorganize the floor plan and accurately portray the room where Thomas Jefferson studied law with George Wythe.
Workers laying ductwork under the limestone flooring of the Governor's Palace - the last surviving pieces from the original palace - discovered markings identifying the English mason who cut the stones.
And at the Brush-Everard House, historians have discovered that a front passageway was also part of the original building, making it one of the earliest examples of a Georgian floor plan in Virginia.
``For 1717, this was on the cutting edge of fashion to have a symmetrical set of rooms and a central passage with a stairway,'' said architectural historian Mark Wenger. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS/File
Renovations this winter to the Brush-Everard House in Colonial
Williamsburg revealed that a dining room china closet, thought to be
a 19th century addition, was actually from the 18th century. So,
back to the drawing board went plans for new ductwork.
by CNB