Palladio…Italian architect and America`s greatest houses

Searching for Palladio
How did one Italian architect shape some of America’s greatest houses?
By Arnold Berke | From Preservation | July/August 2009
See an illustration and learn more about Palladio
The First Starchitect
Online Extra: Hitting the Palladian Trail
In September 2007, a mysterious photograph arrived at Drayton Hall, the
extraordinary 18th-century brick mansion that rises along the Ashley River
near Charleston, S.C. Mailed anonymously from Winchester, Va., the
photo showed a subtly tinted watercolor of the house and two flanking
pavilions, elegantly connected by a pair of sweeping colonnades.
No one had ever seen the watercolor or even heard of anything like it, so
the scholars at the National Trust historic site were stunned: The earliest
drawing of the house dated to 1845, but showed no colonnades at all—
only low iron fences connecting the house and "flankers."
By his own admission, Executive Director George McDaniel was among
the skeptics. The image was "folded up and had 'Drayton Hall, S.C.' on the
front and '1765' on the back," he says, "and the sender penciled in 'Att:
Back in the day' on the envelope ... The thought that came to me was, 'Is
this a forgery?'"
Archaeologists at Drayton Hall discovered bricks and soil
conditions suggesting that long-lost colonnades, visible in
the watercolor shown opposite, once flanked the imposing
house.
Credit: Regis Lefebure
Researchers and archaeologists investigate tantalizing clues all the time,
but this one held particular promise. If authentic, it showed Drayton Hall as it looked in the 18th century (before a large oval
vent was installed in the pediment in 1791). It also would tie the mansion more closely to the houses of Andrea Palladio—
perhaps the most influential architect in the history of the western world.
John Drayton was a minor planter of rice and indigo who amassed lands along the Ashley, hoping to prosper further. The size
and elegance of Drayton Hall, completed in 1742, testify to his success. If you stand in the sea of grass surrounding the
house, the harmony and order of its design are obvious. But what lies beneath the surface of the soil here—the trace of a
foundation—is equally noteworthy, because it could authenticate the existence of the typically Palladian colonnades.
When considering designs for his residence, Drayton looked to British country houses, many of them inspired by Palladio and
his famous 1570 treatise, The Four Books of Architecture. Did Drayton own the Four Books? We don't know. "Carolina
planters were very well read and sophisticated in architecture, material culture, and landscape," says George McDaniel.
"They were part of the intellectual currents of the transatlantic world, and the Four Books would have been part of that."
Perhaps the planter found an architect or a craftsman skilled in Anglo-Palladian design; certainly many craftsmen had
immigrated to Charleston.
Drayton Hall's most obvious Palladian feature is the two-tiered, pedimented portico on the west front. Palladio used porticoes
on most of his buildings, including the remarkable Villa Cornaro, to which the house is often compared. The porch at Drayton
Hall uses Doric columns on the first level and Ionic on the second, hewing to the ancient (and Palladian) prescription that the
classical orders progress from "lower" to "higher," a sequence culminating in the Corinthian mode of the noblest room, the
second floor's Great Hall. The highly figured wood paneling there and throughout the house, as well as the red-brick exterior,
show how much the inspiration from Italy was filtered through English sensibilities.
Like most Palladian designs, the house is symmetrical in form, facade, and floor plan, a balance originally reinforced by two
outbuildings that stood nearly perpendicular to the main block. These "flankers" were meant to be tied to the house by curving
structures, like outstretched arms, to form a classic Palladian ensemble. We know what the flankers, destroyed in the late
19th century, looked like. What about the arms? What did they look like? And what happened to those consummate Palladian
flourishes?
Enter the mysterious watercolor painting. The arms, or colonnades, visible in the watercolor intrigued the historians and
archaeologists at Drayton Hall. Previous evidence had led them to believe that railings atop low brick walls flanked the house,
but the tinted image clearly showed more substantial, covered connectors distinguished by rows of columns.
Once archaeologists began excavating last fall, more evidence came to light supporting the watercolor's veracity—and the
existence of colonnades. A dig at the northwest corner of the main house revealed a short row of bricks, extending outward.
"These suggested a colonnade on top of a brick foundation," says Carter Hudgins, Drayton Hall's archaeologist and director
of preservation. Its walls, roof, and columns may have been wood, perhaps plastered to look like stone. Artifacts from the
1720s and 1730s—pottery shards, mainly—imply that the structure rose about the same time as the house.
Hoping to prove the colonnades' existence more conclusively, Hudgins peeled back the soil near the north flanker's footprint.
There he found bricks he believes are a continuation of the row near the house. Tying them definitively to a colonnade is
difficult, but Hudgins did find another crucial piece of evidence: The earth directly below the bricks was darker than the
surrounding orange clay, indicating a builder's trench from the period when the colonnade would have been built. "This is our
most important find," says Hudgins, "Above-ground evidence of the colonnade has been lost, yet the construction footprint is
still visible from [this] organic material."
Other questions remain about the colonnades' function, and when and why they might have come down. "Since the property
was occupied by the British during the Revolutionary War," says Craig Tuminaro, Drayton Hall's director of museum
interpretation, "they may have cut them down for firewood. Then they may have been replaced in the early 19th century with
the railings, typical of the landscape approach of that period."
Tuminaro and other experts hope to learn more when excavations resume this fall. Subsequent research may lead them to
Winchester, Va. "If we find the person who has the watercolor …" says McDaniel hopefully. "Another piece of sleuthing will be
to see if the paper itself has a watermark or other feature showing it to be from the 1760s." Who knows what may surface
next, under the grass or in an archive? "That's what history is so much about—trying to solve mysteries."
If Drayton Hall is the polished gem—a beautifully preserved Palladian building where archaeology helps to illuminate the
past—the house called Battersea in Petersburg, Va., is a rougher diamond.
At first glance, Battersea seems entirely different from Drayton Hall. It is smaller, longer, lower, and whiter, and wears an
almost fragile air—as if someone had gently set a line of little boxes onto this 37-acre site along the Appomattox River. Yet
Battersea, like its Carolina cousin, was born into the Palladian family.
John Banister, an early industrialist who ran flour and lumber mills at the nearby falls of the Appomattox, completed Battersea
in 1768. Banister was the first mayor of Petersburg, a growing commercial center, and rose in colonial politics, signing the
Articles of Confederation in 1778. His house, at the west end of town, is an Anglo-Palladian five-part villa—a two-story central
block flanked in a straight line by one-story "hyphens" and end pavilions. It is mostly one room deep. "Rather than build a
huge house," says John Zeugner IV, a board member of Battersea Inc., which plans to restore the property, "he wanted
something more suited to his needs—like Italy in the late 1400s when they started to cautiously move out into the
countryside."
As with Drayton Hall, the architect is unknown, but the plan resembles that of Palladio's Villa Barbaro. It was also influenced
by a plate in a 1755 pattern book of modest-sized houses by Robert Morris, a British Palladian, which shows a similar sevenpart house. "The clarity of its use of the scheme is special," says Calder Loth, senior architectural historian at the Virginia
Department of Historic Resources, "more elegantly proportioned than any other, even many of Palladio's." Later owners
made Battersea yet more Palladian—with larger windows, redesigned porticos, and stucco walls—but much original fabric
survives, like the fine latticework railing of the main staircase. "There must have been some great craftsmen united in putting
the place together," says Zeugner. "The detailing inside is like a fevered imagination pushing out wonderful work."
After Battersea's last resident died in 1980, the city of Petersburg acquired the property, with plans to restore and open it. A
solid start, however, soon melted into inactivity, and the house sank into decay. Today the interior feels a bit gloomy, with
room after room of flaking paint, fallen plaster, worn woodwork, and other signs of invasive weather and inattention. But
Battersea Inc., formed by locals in 2006 and armed with new research funded in part by the Richmond, Va.-based Center for
Palladian Studies in America, aims to change all that. In partnership with the city, it is taking a fresh approach.
"We don't need another house museum," says Battersea Inc. President Barbara Moseley. "People visit but don't come back.
We have to work toward sustainability." This means, she says, creating a "campus for civic, cultural, and educational
activities" that will engage the community at large. Invite the craftsmen doing the restoration to explain their work to the
public, for example, and enlist the latter to pitch in. Sponsor talks by historians on the entrepreneurial exploits of John
Banister, and by archaeologists on Battersea's Native American and African American histories. (Recent archaeological
surveys shed light on how people have used the site since pre-colonial days) Open the house for events and conferences,
and the spacious grounds for fairs, concerts, and plays. Already, amateurs have joined professionals for archaeological digs
and a lime-wash workshop.
"There are so many ways to involve people, from volunteering to writing a check," says Moseley. "But the participation has to
have relevance, because then you have ownership. When people come by, it's not 'Oh, look at that nice house over there, but
'Look at our house.' It becomes theirs, and they want to protect it."
The group also wants to physically link to the city via the nearby riverbank, with its rich vein of natural and human history. A
conservation organization is building a recreational trail there that connects to the heart of Petersburg. "Battersea is perfectly
positioned," says Zeugner. "A hike-and-bike hookup with the path would give people another way to come explore the villa."
Conservator John Greenwalt Lee has now begun to administer the cure for years of water damage—gutter and drain
improvements, window and roof protection, brick and mortar repairs. After this wraps up comes the restoration itself, but not
before further fundraising. "That is critically important, to make our visions a reality," says Battersea Inc. Executive Director
Tempy Barbru. "When you have that much history wrapped up in a single place, it's only fitting that this treasure once again
becomes a center for modern life."
Battersea's restoration will salute Palladian form as well as its spirit of innovation. Just as Palladio broke new ground by
adapting ancient architecture to contemporary needs, so did John Banister (and John Drayton) adapt the Palladian ideal to
new uses at the edge of the American wilderness. And so will Drayton Hall and Battersea, as they find new ways to discover
and share their stories.
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