With all due respect, a restoration and a replica are two different things.

The Wren Building has its foundations, crypts and most of its brick walls
intact and so it considered by the National Register to be an original
building.  When it was restored in the 1930s it was based on a copperplate
engraving from the second quarter of the 18th century that was discovered at
Oxford in 1929.  With few exceptions it is as close to the building
Jefferson and Washington knew as we can get it.  It is not a composite as I
know the term.

As far as the Williamsburg Lunatic Hospital, it was nearly totally destroyed
by fire in 1885.  The builings that remained were largely built after that
date.  The remaining buildings were razed in the 1960s, not by Colonial
Williamsburg, but by the College of William and Mary for the new law school
campus.

I agree that replicas can be a whole different ball of wax but they are
seldom thown up without due consideration.  Mr Rockefeller was famous for
demolishing new construction if it was found to be inaccurate.  I would
never claim that Williamsburg is without inaccuracies but I am not really
aware of any gross ones.

Regards,
JS Freeman


On 3/1/07, [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> I find it very difficult to consider restorations and replicas as
> originals.
>
> The Wren Building is circa 1932 and is a composite replica of first 2
> version
> of the building to carry the name "The College"...please note the Chapel
> was
> added after the completion of the second building, which was built after
> the
> first one burned down
>
> How do you qualify "architecturally insignificant?"   Would the numerous
> architecturally significant buildings of the Eastern Lunatic Asylum that
> were
> knocked down to put in the replica of the original 1 building constitute
> insignificant buildings?  Here is a photo of some such architecture and
> history
> ploughed under to make room for a the replica building.
>
>
>
> More insignificant stuff
>
>
> In a message dated 3/1/2007 12:27:34 AM Eastern Standard Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
> Far be it for me to criticise anything about Charleston, for if I did
> not live in Williamsburg, Charleston would be my logical next choice.
> My comments are not meant to slight Charleston but these are comparing
> apples and oranges.
>
> Colonial Williamsburg has 88 buildings that are original to the 18th
> century.  To be accurate, one  is from the 17th since the Wren
> Building of the College is original to 1695.  Virtually none of the
> extant buildings are post-Revolutionary; between wartime shortages and
> the capital moving to Richmond in 1780, the bulk of the buildings were
> built well before the Revolutionary period.
>
> There were a few 19th century buildings removed by Mr Rockefeller but
> most of those were architecturally insignificant except for the 1864
> Greek Revival Williamsburg Baptist Church.  Most of those that were
> removed were moved to other parts of Williamsburg, not demolished.
> While the number of buildings reconstructed by the Colonial
> Williamsburg Foundation is vastly higher than the 88 figure, I find
> arguments about authenticity to be spurious at best.
>
> Remember that Williamsburg was among the very first planned cities and
> was built strictly as governmental center.  There has never been a
> deep water port, and at its height in the third quarter of the 18th
> century it never surpassed 2000 permanent residents.  Charleston was a
> thriving port city, hence its larger size, but I think that you will
> find that almost all of the extant historic buildings are from the
> first two quarters of the 19th century, which explains the vastly
> different architectural styles between the two cities.  I hope that it
> is not sacreligious of me to say that I believe Charleston to be the
> more interesting city architecturally but that is only an opinion.
> Most of the restoration was done privately, without a wealthy
> benefactor, and it has been of the highest order.
>
> If Mr Rockefeller were restoring Williamsburg nowadays he might be
>
> pursuaded to preserve more post-Revolutionary buildings in their
> original settings, there are really too few of such buildings to merit
> a realistic complaint about the focus of the Restoration period.
>
> Regards,
>
> J. S. Freeman
> The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
> Member, Williamsburg Baptist Church, est 1828
>
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