Art: Old Williamsburg

Half forgotten now except by well-informed tourists, the townsfolk of Rothenburg, Bavaria, were mildly astonished one morning in 1631 when an invader rode up the hill from the Tauber River and announced his intention of burning their old city. The burgomaster begged him not to do so; Tilly, the invader, listened patiently to these speeches and announced, according to the likely legend, that he would spare Rothenburg if its mayor would drink, at one sitting, a hogshead of its famous beer. The burgomaster, with relish rather than resolution, did so immediately. Rothenburg, since that happy day, has been threatened by no soldiery. Having defied Tilly, the town has defeated time, lazily also, drinking beer and singing songs. The streets and houses stand now exactly as they stood in the middle ages.

In the U. S., there is no town that resembles Rothenburg. Enforced by the harsh government of time, the blind statutes of growth or of decay are everywhere obeyed. There are, however, a few garrisons, peaceful and rebellious, which refuse to acknowledge all of time’s taxations. One such is Williamsburg, Va., the Colonial Capital of Virginia, and the seat of the College of William and Mary. Sleepy and beautiful, darkened by huge trees, the town is full of old houses, old names. Here and there impertinent reminders of the present—high schools, garages, drugstores —have crept in to confuse its calm antiquity; last week John D. Rockefeller Jr. announced that he would provide the money (up to $5,000,000) necessary for removing all such incongruous landmarks and for replacing them with the houses that had originally occupied their sites. The agent who secured this magnanimous donation, without the aid of a beer barrel, was Dr. William A. R. Goodwin, professor of Philosophy of Religion at William and Mary, director of Williamsburg restoration work.

The Town. The capital of the crown colony of Virginia was moved from Jamestown to Williamsburg in 1699. The College of William and Mary had been founded in 1693 by royal charter; at the other end of the Duke of Gloucester Street, by the time the governing body of the cavalier colony arrived, the House of Burgesses had been set up.

There began then, for the green metropolis, the busiest years of its never bustling history. The great gentlemen of the colony lived in houses along Duke of Gloucester Street or in their manors, surrounded by wide and fallow fields, outside it. The Raleigh Tavern became a nourishing hostelry, in whose stables Negroes lolled or fought with each other and in whose tap room Henry Wetherburn brewed his “arrack punch,” a stronger potion than the beer of Rothenburg. The tap room of the Raleigh was the lobby of the lazy capital; for a hundred years, almost nothing happened in Williamsburg that could not be traced to that cheerful room where the Jeffersons, the Washingtons, the Randolphs drank.

The College was the second institution of higher learning in the colonies* and the first founded by royal charter. As a seat of education it catered to such sons of the great families who were not sent abroad to study and as a technical school to such as wished to follow professions in the untutored provinces. George Washington got there his surveyor’s license. The college had the first Law School in America, as it later developed the first School of Political Economy, the first History School and the first School of Modern Languages.

In 1776, some of its members met together in the Raleigh Tavern and established as a literary society the first Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, which met for biweekly discussions. This organization, which began more as a drinking club than anything else, was the first Greek letter fraternity. It spread as a learned society and became William and Mary’s most noteworthy contribution to U. S. education. It was at a meeting of Phi Beta Kappa that John D. Rockefeller Jr., one of its senators, was persuaded by William Goodwin to open his purse strings.

The campus of William and Mary contains the oldest group of college buildings in America, the Colonial College Quadrangle. One of these buildings facing the Duke of Gloucester Street is the lone U. S. sample of the architecture of famed Sir Christopher Wren. The building was erected in 1697. Since then, it has burned to a shell, three times. The thick walls, low and level under a Georgian roof, have never crumbled.

The other buildings follow its style. William and Mary has never permitted collegiate Gothic, pretty but entirely artificial, or other fashionable novelties to confuse the staunch simplicity of its colonial tradition.

The Restoration now planned, as it affects the campus, will consist of rebuilding such of the earliest halls as appear to be in a state of imminent collapse, of strengthening others, of putting up a few additions and enlargements. As it affects the town, the schedule is more complex and more difficult. Many of the old buildings have been torn down for generations, their sites are cumbered now with ugly excrescences. Dr. Goodwin has already bought in $2,000,000 worth of town property and on this he will reconstruct Williamsburg as it originally appeared.

The foundations of the first theatre in America will be used for a replica of the original; the modern First National Bank which stands in the way of the debtors’ prison will be demolished; the octagonal tower called the “Powder Horn,” which stands opposite the old courthouse, will be improved by razing some modern buildings which surround it.

The Sponsors. Dr. Goodwin is supposed to have contemplated the restoration of Williamsburg ever since he spent six years there as pastor of the Bruton Parish Church from 1902 to 1908. At the head of its operation will be a corporation; at the head of the corporation will be Arthur Woods, of Harvard and onetime (1914-18) New York City Police Commissioner, friend to John D. Rockefeller Jr., and at present actively engaged in the affairs of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial.

Francis T. Christy, a member of the legal firm of Murray, Aldrich & Roberts, will be vice-president; Dr. Goodwin will be secretary and assistant treasurer.

The building contractors, who recently erected the spectacularly modern Greybar Building, will be Todd, Robertson, Todd Engineering, Inc. The Todd of these companies is William Todd, friend to Rockefeller.

The architects who have been selected for the difficult and important business of giving Williamsburg the appearance it had 200 years ago are the comparatively obscure alliance of Perry, Shaw & Hepburn, of Boston. Their previous works are few, but they illustrate an adroit understanding of the Colonial manner. The Greenough School in Dedham, Mass., The Waban School in Newton, St. Paul’s Church in Newburyport, Mass.—these are neat examples of the trim New England style which indicate that the architects will be able to manage as fluent an interpretation of the more expansive symmetry that was popular in the South.

* The first was Harvard (1636).