Front View
Rear View
The oldest house at Chippokes--and probably the earliest standing
structure in the park is the building commonly known as the River House. Built
ca.1830 and expanded to its present form ca. 1847 (when tax records indicate
$1.000 worth of improvements were made to the property), it is a
one-and-one-half story wood-frame structure set on a tall brick basement. The
house stands in an open level yard with long vistas in three directions. The
surrounding open pastureland drops off at the edge of the yard about 25 yards
north of the dwelling, and slopes gently toward the James River, 350 yards
north. An antebellum kitchen-cum-servants' quarters stands about sixty feet
southwest, just across the farm road known as Quarter Lane.
The River House is oriented on a northwest-southwest axis, perpendicular
to Quarter Lane and facing the point where College Creek joins the James River.
This would have been a natural site for an early dwelling, and recent
archeological test excavations indicate that the finger of land extending
between the house and the river served as a domestic site during the 17th and
18th centuries as well.
The
44'-4" x 36'-6" house follows a standard Virginia format in both plan
and elevations. Built as s single-pile, central-passage plan house, it was
doubled in size by adding double-pile form ca. 1847. The entire house stands on
a brick basement of three-course American bond, lighted by large six-over-six
sash windows on both land and river fronts. Four exterior end brick chimneys
heated the house, the west pair being joined at main floor level by a wood-frame
chimney closet with single six-over-six-light windows. The five-bay longitudinal
facades are identical, being fitted with nine-over-nine-light sash windows.
Presently the gable roof is pierced by five pedimented dormers per slope, but
the central dormer on each side was added in this century. No additions have
been made to the house since the original mid-19th-century expansion.
Most exterior detailing is original, including the beaded weatherboards,
box cornice, and simple window frames with plain rectangular sills. The front
and rear double-leaf doors with single vertical panels are of mid-19th century
Greek Revival form, as is most of the interior trim. Both doors are topped by
four-light transoms. The present round-butt wooden roof shingles were installed
in the late 1960s. As late as 1963 a projecting shed roof extended from the base
of the suspended chimney closet to shelter the basement entryway, but this has
been removed. A 1913 photograph of the house shows that a raised, single-story
postbellum porch covered the central three bays of the land façade, and this
was probably matched by a similar porch on the river front. Both porches
deteriorated and were removed in the mid-20th century, so presently the only
access to the house is via the basement.
Each of the four chimneys is laid in three-course American bond at the
base, but the bonding pattern changes on the upper half of the two chimneys on
the original section of the house. (This bonding pattern indicates that the
basement walls could not have been built before the early 19th century. This
contradicts the commonly held supposition that the house was built on l7th- or
18th-century foundations). Curiously, the chimneys on the ca. 1847 unit are not
bonded into the brick basement walls. All four chimneys are stabilized by
cast-iron tie rods with star-shaped terminals. These tie rods were probably
added when the upper stacks of all four chimneys were rebuilt in this century.
The interior of the house was stripped to the frame during an abortive
mid-20th-century attempt at restoration, and it remains exposed today, making it
easy to read the changes the house has undergone. (Current park plans call for
leaving the frame exposed and eventually opening the house to the public. Museum
displays would explain those 19th century Virginia house-construction
practices illustrated by the exposed framing).
The interior of the house exhibits standard Virginia framing techniques
of the period, in which large hewn and straight-sawn timbers are interlocked by
mortice-and-tenon joints. Many of
the timbers in the original portion of the house have been reused, and may
represent the remains of an earlier, 18th-century house that preceded the
present one. Some of the timbers are spliced together, while others exhibit
empty mortise holes. Cut, rather than wrought, nails are used throughout.
Evidence that the house was expanded in the second quarter of the 19th
century is clearly visible on all three levels, both in the brickwork and in the
framing. At basement level, the newer foundations and partition walls are not
bonded into the earlier brickwork. On the main floor, it is clear that the
original windows on the river side of the house were moved to the northwest
(river side) wall of the new unit. The roof was entirely rebuilt during the ca.
1847 expansion, and the dormers may have been all added at this time.
Most the interior detailing dates to the third quarter of the 19th
century--probably ca. 1872, when Albert Jones, builder of the 1860 brick mansion
a half-mile east, gave the older River House to his daughter Mary Sutton. Some
vestiges of the original late-Federal-style trim survive, however, including
the chair rail and architrave window trim in the northeast parlor. The original
part of the basement, as well, exhibits Federal architrave door casings.
Fireplaces in the basement of the original unit have brick segmental arches with
wooden relieving lintels, whereas those in the addition lack brick arches
altogether, the openings being supported by slightly crowned iron lintels.
The house's
postbellum; Greek Revival style interior detailing is largely intact. Main-door
mantels are nearly identical, featuring plain pilasters, plain frieze and a
simple shelf with minimal moldings. (Mantels on the west side of the house are
embellished with channeling on pilasters and frieze). Door and window frames
have three-tier architrave casings
with flattened Greek moldings. Paneled bibs beneath the windows decorate t he
northwest room, and the northeast room (probably used as a dining room) features
a large glazed cupboard dating to the same period. These two rooms are joined by
a wide opening with double-leaf doors having two vertical panels each. In the
southeast room, a set of two steps leads up to a six-panel door opening into the
large, lighted chimney closet suspended over the exterior basement entry.
The present straight-run open string stair may have been installed ca.
1847, when the house as expanded, but the present Greek vernacular detailing
matches that of the rest of the house. The stair runs from the basement to the
loft, and features a two-thirds-open spandrel on the main floor, a molded
stringer, and plain rectangular balusters (two per tread) supporting a thick
oval handrail. Newel posts are square with simp1y-molded caps.
On the top floor, the openwell stair well is surrounded by a railing
matching those of the lower two floors. A second stair leads from the southwest
upstairs chamber to the large attic, which is lighted by single four-light
casement windows at either gable end. Upstairs detailing, including the mantels,
dates from the postbellum remodeling. Throughout the house, the wooden trim is
painted a uniform light gray.
In summary, the River House is a good unaltered example of a typical
Virginia plantation house of the antebellum era. Although the symmetrical
central-passage format was employed in Virginia as early as the cid-eighteenth
century in large, high-style dwellings, it was not widely adopted until the 19th
century. In its framing and overall form as well as its detailing, the River
House illustrates the conservatism of 19th-century Virginia builders.