Mount Airy, Richmond County, Virginia
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Mount Airy, near Warsaw in Richmond County, Virginia, is a mid-Georgian plantation house, the first built in the manner of a neo-Palladian villa; it was built in 1758-62 for Colonel John Tayloe, perhaps the richest Virginia planter of his generation. The five-bay main block is connected by quadrant passageways to matching outbuildings that enclose a forecourt. The architect responsible is thought to be John Ariss, a notable professional architect in colonial Virginia.
The shaped terraced levels of its gardens are still clearly visible beneath its modern covering of lawn. Mount Airy has the earliest surviving Orangery in North America. Col. Tayloe's son-in-law Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was housed nearby, in a house built for him by Col. Tayloe, Menokin Plantation.
A fire in 1844 gutted the house, which was rebuilt within its shell of brown sandstone with limestone quoins.
Mount Airy is a private house in the Tayloe family and is not open to the public. Tayloe family papers are at the Virginia Historical Society.
[edit] References
- National Park Service: Mount Airy
- Richard S. Dunn, "A Tale of Two Plantations:Slave Life at Mesopotamia in Jamaica and Mount Airy in Virginia, 1799 to 1828", William and Mary Quarterly, 34 (1977)
