New Additions to A Magnificent Anachronism

Americans look at their past through a special window and with special vision. Unlike the Greeks viewing the Parthenon, the Italians the Forum, the French the Louvre, Americans do not look for monuments of former greatness and glory. Their quest is rather that of a people who feel they have achieved much and expect to achieve more -- but who also want to understand the roots of that achievement.

No single place embodies that search as vividly as Colonial Williamsburg, the painstakingly restored former capital of England's oldest and most prosperous colony in North America. It sits on a broad ridge between Virginia's James and York rivers, ten miles from Jamestown and 13 miles from Yorktown.

Within this 23-mile span, the U.S. colonial experience began and ended--ushered in by the bedraggled settlers at Jamestown in 1607 and shouldered out with the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781. Geographically and historically, Williamsburg was a mid way point--where, almost simultaneously, colonial high living reached a gracious peak and the seeds of rebellion were born.

Old Skills. Since Colonial Williamsburg opened in 1934, it has drawn 17 million visitors. Over this Fourth of July weekend, 14,000 more are expected to walk through the town where Washington, Jefferson and Patrick Henry learned the skills and frustrations of representative government by sitting in the colonial House of Burgesses. Visitors can gawk at its carefully reconstructed saddle shops and taverns, watch trained 20th century craftsmen and their apprentices produce guns, weave flax, and cast candles with the laborious, loving skill of their 18th century predecessors. They can dine at the King's Arms, where costumed waiters slightly self-consciously ask the guests if they want their napkins tied around their necks, 18th century style. Best of all, they can wander beside ox-drawn carts along quiet, auto-free streets, amble through dozens of fragrant, carefully tended gardens, gaze over fields of maize or grazing sheep without seeing a telephone pole or TV aerial.

Decline & Rescue. One of America's first planned cities, Williamsburg was laid out in 1699 by Governor Francis Nicholson as a replacement for the outgrown capital of Jamestown. It thrived until late in the Revolutionary War, when the rebel government, fearful of a British attack from the sea, moved the capital inland to Richmond. With only the College of William and Mary and a state insane asylum left to support the town, Williamsburg slowly declined into a sleepy bastion of seedy gentility.

In 1902, a young Biblical scholar named W.A.R. Goodwin came to serve as pastor at Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church. Over the slow years of his pastorate, he walked much, looked long, thought constantly about the town's past and realized that behind the Victorian storefronts of the day there still survived the stubborn structure of the old town, along with a hard core of dilapidated but still sound colonial houses.

At a Phi Beta Kappa meeting* in Manhattan in 1924, he encountered the late John D. Rockefeller Jr. and talked earnestly of his vision. Rockefeller's imagination was kindled, and two years later he committed his fortune and his concern to the town's restoration. With proper Rockefeller practicality, he also built inns, swimming pools and a golf course to make Williamsburg a paying tourist attraction. Cost so far: $79 million. Despite its latter-day creature comforts, Williamsburg remained to Rockefeller a place "to sit in silence and let the past speak to us."

Time to Expand. Williamsburg became so popular that its 18th century "silence" was seriously endangered. One peak day in August 1966, when 5,000 visitors were clocked through the Governor's Palace, Williamsburg officials decided that it was time to expand. As a result, this year's visitors will see for the first time five newly refurbished buildings, equipped at a cost of $5,000,000 in Williamsburg's single largest expansion since 1934.

Most of the new buildings reflect less the town's official grandeur than its homelier aspects. James Geddy's house and adjoining silversmith's shop shows how a prosperous 18th century craftsman lived and plied his trade. Geddy's modest but comfortable living-dining room, furnished according to hints supplied by inventories and other records, includes a handsome 17th century English cane daybed and hand-blocked 18th century wallpaper. Even in small Colonial Williamsburg (pop. 2,000), Geddy had competitors. So he became one of the nation's pioneer discounters, advertising in the Virginia Gazette "for sale, very cheap, for ready money," silver teaspoons, sugar tongs and shoe buckles, gold and silver buttons.

Across Market Square from Geddy's house stands the imposing town house once occupied by Peyton Randolph, longtime (1766-75) speaker of the House of Burgesses and president of the First Continental Congress in 1774. His home, like that of most wealthy Virginia gentlemen, was filled with imported furniture, Turkish rugs, Chinese enamel. The original pieces have long since been dispersed, but Curator John Graham has carefully assembled others of the same period to replace them.

Brandied Cherries. Wetherburn's Tavern was presided over from 1743 to 1760 by Henry Wetherburn, a celebrated 18th century host who first managed someone else's tavern and then set up his own business, partly with the dowries furnished him by marriages with the widows of two rival innkeepers. When Williamsburg archaeologists excavated the tavern's basement and the foundations of its now-reconstructed outbuildings, they found 192,000 pieces of china and tableware plus 50 wine bottles containing the remnants of some 18th century brandied cherries.

Such an odd mix of folksy chat and scholarly detail is presented to all comers by costumed hostesses at the Geddy shop, the Randolph home and the Wetherburn tavern. Touristy? A little. In some ways, also a mildly misleading picture of the period, for reconstructed Williamsburg glosses over the more unhappy social realities of its slave society, just as it carefully paves what, by rights, should be muddy, manure-strewn streets. But, more vividly than any history book can and within the limits of reasonable accuracy, Williamsburg tells it like it was.

*Appropriately enough, since the Phi Beta Kappa Society was founded by students of William and Mary at Williamsburg's Raleigh Tavern in 1776.

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