Richmond's Laburnum House

Laburnum House

Architectural Form

The house at Laburnum is the largest and most elaborate house on Richmond’s north side. The house has the massing and solidity of a French town house “hotel” or villa. While it was designed in the mode made popular among American architects by the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, it combines with its overall French character features (Mansart roof, arched dormers, balustraded terrace) that are drawn from the Anglo-American architectural tradition, such as the tight Flemish bond brickwork, the splayed jack arches at the window openings, sash windows, and the swan’s neck pediment crowning the frontispiece at the main entry door. The wide-flat-topped portico on the entry front recalls the dramatic use of two-story porches on the garden front of houses in Richmond in the mid-19^th-century. The frontispiece was sourced by the architects from the 1734 pattern book Palladio Londonensis by William Salmon, probably by way of Westover Plantation on the James River.

Laburnum was the work of the New York-based firm established in the early 20^th century by Wainwright Parrish (1867-1941), a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and J. Langdon Schroeder (1869-1949). Shroeder served as a draftsman in the form of Renwick from 1890-1894 after graduating from Columbia College’s School of Mines in 1889. The firm achieved considerable success in both Gothic and Classical modes. One of their first large projects was the 23^rd Street YWCA in New York (1904). They developed a specialty in educational work, including at Princeton, where they designed the massive Guyot Hall Geological and Biological Museum and Laboratory (1908-09), Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Hall at Teachers College (now part of Columbia University), Bayard College, and the YMCA Building (Madison Hall) at the University of Virginia. They also designed churches, such as the English Gothic Christ Presbyterian Church in New York (1904). Their residential work, however, embraced several elegant palazzo-style houses in New York City’s Upper East Side, such as the Ludlow-Parrish Houses (1897), the Clarence Whitmer House (1898), and the Edward R. Sparrow House (1910), all of which employed Beaux-Art details in a skillful and effective way.

        23rd St. YMCA, New York City NY, 1904 (left) and Clarence Whitman House, New York City NY, 1898 (right)

Much of the success of Parrish and Schroeder appears to have been due to Wainwright Parrish’s family connection as brother-in-law of the politically influential businessman, investor, and philanthropist Cleveland H. Dodge, who served on the boards of institutions like Princeton University and the YMCA.[1] An example of their Colonial Revival work is the President’s House at the Mount Hermon School for Boys (1912) with inventive details of chimneys and dormers. 

Ford Cottage  (President’s Home), Mount Hermon School for Boys, Northfield MA, Parrish and Schroeder Architects, 1912 [https://issuu.com/nmhschool/docs/nmh_mag12spr].

Grand Trianon (above) and Petit Trianon (below), Versailles, France. 

Modeled on the Grand Trianon: Laurel Court (1907), Columbus Ohio (above) and modeled on the Petit Trianon:              Marble House (1892), Newport RI (below). 

Scott House (1907), Richmond, Virginia (above) and Laburnum (1908) Richmond, Virginia (below).

Prototypes for a grand house like Laburnum are hard to find among the European palaces and villas that are often the sources for architects of domestic architecture at the turn of the 20^th century. One of the grand French houses that served as an object of imitation for many architects in the 19^th-century French academic tradition was the Petit Trianon in Newport RI. Another, powerful model used in the United States was the nearby Petit Trianon, which might be the ultimate source for the design of long, flat façade of Laburnum, with its Laburnum. The Petit Trianon and the houses derived from them utilize the elaborately carved Corinthian order, except that Laburnum uses the much simpler Corinthian of the Tower of the Winds order, a form not deriving from Italian sources, but from ancient Greece.

Like the Bryans’ house, the Petit Trianon is a basic rectangle centered on a flat-topped colonnade that is flanked by a single window bay to each side. Another, much closer, model is the Scott House on Richmond’s Franklin Street, which the Bryans would have known well. Both Richmond houses can be seen to be based on Marble House (1892) in Newport, which was itself ultimately based on the Petit Trianon. Similarities between the houses are the monumental two-story entry portico, use of terra cotta on the upper parts of the building, the terrace which forms a platform for the house as is appropriate for a suburban villa, long windows opening to the exterior, and the inclusion of a third story of bedrooms. Differences include the concealment of the third-floor windows behind the parapet at the Scott House and the extra two bays of columns at Laburnum. The overall character of Laburnum seems to embody a desire to embody regional forms and materials within an overall French academic framework. 

YMCA Building (Madison Hall), University of Virginia, 1904, Parrish and Schroeder. 

Parrish and Schroeder designed few buildings in the American South. The question of how Joseph Bryan made contact with his architects may have been related to his position on the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia from 1896-1902, five years before the completion of Madison Hall, the University’s new YMCA building. Possibly due to his brother-in-law’s involvement in the YMCA organization, Wainwright Parrish and his partner designed the Madison Hall just north of the grounds of the University of Virginia, across the main road from the Rotunda. This brick building has an uncanny resemblance to Laburnum and, like Laburnum, it represents a melding of Virginia architectural traditions with French academic forms. Another precedent for the house at Laburnum are the round-topped windows in the basement terraces flanking Jefferson’s Rotunda which closely resemble the window lighting the areas under the terrace at Laburnum. 

Door case with Composite pilasters and Swan’s Neck pediment from plate XXV1 in William Salmon’s Palladio Londinensis of 1734 (above left) and the south entry based on it at Westover, Charles City County, Virginia, built in the 1750s (above right). The door at Laburnum is ultimately based on Salmon as well (below), but it includes the fanlight from Westover to provide light in the vestibule within

Terrace windows at the University of Virginia’s Rotunda (left) and at Laburnum (right). 

The Parrish and Schroeder firm clearly researched the local architectural heritage. They employed a version of the Composite doorway at the great Virginia house of William Byrd III at Westover as a source to give the house regional character.

The Virginia architectural tradition did not extend to the interior, in which the principal rooms were designed in what was then a contemporary grand style, with each room emphasizing a disparate style and a contrasting material.  The wide entry Hall with its painted classical treatment was derived from the same sources as great American houses of the 18^th century. The mahogany-lined Dining Room recalled Georgian interiors in England. The Library, with its elaborate beamed ceiling and marble mantel, resembled Italian Renaissance. The paneled Parlor was lined with carved and painted panels and trim that were detailed, like the marble mantel, in the spare Neoclassical Louis VI style, while the Smoking Room, with its paneled wainscot and beamed ceiling, took it inspiration from the dark oak interiors of Tudor Britain.

Historic images of Laburnum, including the Living Room (below), Valentine Museum.

Laburnum, Library.

History Narrative

The properties along the west side of Brook Road first emerged as 100-acre “prize lots” in William Byrd’s lottery of 1768. Several of these lots were acquired by Dr. James Currie before 1790 and later subdivided. The property was subdivided by Currie’s heirs in the 1850s and later. The remainder of the Westwood tract was also assigned to Gordon heirs. Other parcels had been sold or distributed as well, including lot 8, a 68-acre tract that was assigned to the Brown heirs.   John Stewart Walker acquired a large portion of the Westwood property in the early 1850s. He purchased the 68-acre Lot 8 from the heirs of Isabella Brown in 1850.^[2]

The Smith Map of Henrico County in 1853 shows C. Allen near the location of Laburnum. Old Brook Road left Brook Turnpike near the entrance to present-day Walton Avenue. The road that angles off to the east at the Toll Gate is today’s Ladies Mile Road and enters Brook Turnpike approximately where Brookland Park Boulevard is today. The red circle shows the location of Laburnum.

1864 Gilmer Map of the Richmond vicinity, shows Miss L[Lillias] Gordon near the intersection of Ladies Mile Road with Brook Turnpike, James Lyons at Laburnum just south of the intermediate defenses (formerly Confederate Avenue), and a house without a label where the Westwood Cottage stood until recently (appropriately parallel the house on the Williams Farm, which survives at 3209 Seminary Avenue). The road between Lyons property and the Westwood Cottage is close to today’s Westwood Avenue and connected Brook Road with Hermitage Road. The house at Westwood is circled in red.

Plat of [Some of] the Lots of the Westwood Tract, divided in 1850 by commissioners of the Henrico County Court. Drawn by Thomas M. Ladd. The Brown tract that contains Laburnum is at the bottom of the plat.

James Lyon, a prominent Richmond attorney, acquired a part of the Currie tract before 1860. The tract, which he named "Laburnum.” He rebuilt it after an 1864 fire. The land, which included most of the current Laburnum Park neighborhood, was purchased by Joseph and Isobel Stewart Bryan in 1883 after a second damaging fire. Joseph Bryan (1845-1908), a Confederate veteran and lawyer, was a significant leader in the post-war Southern economy. Owner and publisher of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Bryan owned the Richmond Locomotive Works and co-founded the Georgia-Pacific Railroad. Isobel Stewart Bryan was a social leader in the city. The couple had spent years living in a wing at her parents’ home, Brook Hill, several miles to the north on Brook Road. She preferred a location outside the city center.

Together with his law client, tobacco manufacturer Lewis Ginter, Bryan and several other partners, saw the potential for development to the north of the city. They acquired a large acreage with the intention of creating a leading residential streetcar suburb in the late 1880s. Both men moved to large tracts in the area to be served by streetcar and rail lines. The Bryans had an impressive Queen Anne mansion on a large tract constructed facing Brook Road, the historic turnpike that ran north from Richmond. Brook Road flanked the tracks of the Richmond and Chesapeake Bay Railroad after it opened between Ashland and Richmond in 1907. That house burned during the Christmas season of 1906 and Bryan determined to build an even grander and more up-to-date house to enable then couple to entertain in keeping with their position of leadership, particularly with the arrival of prominent international guests in connection with the tricentennial celebration of the founding of Jamestown in 1607.[3]

Drawing from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Ginter Park Supplement promoting the suburb of Ginter Park, probably derived from a rendering prepared by the architects [“Laburnum, Magnificent Home of Mr. Joseph Bryan,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, No. 17914 (3 May 1908) 1].

The Bryans selected the young New York firm of Parish & Schroeder, who exhibited renderings or drawings of “the residence of the late Joseph Bryan, Esq., Richmond, Va.” in the Annual Exhibition of the Architectural League of New York in 1909.[4] There is very little in the form of records of the construction of the house, other than the blueprints. Laburnum was completed early in 1908 and Bryan died later in the same year. His wife Isobel died two years later. She is said to have lamented the lack of broom closets at Laburnum. Her husband had been taken aback by the cost of the home; he lamented “If as president of a corporation I had made such a mistake as to cost and time of construction as I have made in the matter of Laburnum, I would have lost my job, and I ought to have lost it.”

Houses like Laburnum were designed to accomplish smoothly the functions of a contemporary “country house,” as defined by the early twentieth century architectural press. They were laid out like the most advanced commercial buildings, with steel beams and rafters, concrete floor slabs, iron fire stairs, elevators, and up-to-date kitchens and service rooms.  The decorative treatments were likewise the products of industry, obtained from catalogs, like the terra cotta balustrades, terra cotta roof tiles “book tiles,” suspended ceilings, marble mantels, and pressed composition ornaments.   “Numidian marble mantel”

The property was left to his widow and their son John Stewart Bryan (1871-1944), who married Anne Eliza Tennant in 1903. He continued to publish the Richmond Time-Dispatch and News Leader newspapers and continued to live at Laburnum for the next 36 years. As one of the city’s principal business leaders, he made his expansive suburban residence available to entertain numerous national and international dignitaries including Franklin D. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, prime ministers Lloyd George and Winston Churchill of Great Britain, and Nancy, Lady Astor, a Virginian who was elected as the first woman member of the parliament of Great Britain.[5]

In 1921, John Stewart Bryan sold seven and a half acres between the house and Brook Road to serve as the campus of the Assembly Training School of the Presbyterian Church. After his death on 1944, John Stewart Bryan’s son David Tennant Bryan gave the remaining 13 acres to become the site of Richmond Memorial Hospital, for which he was a leading donor and supporter. The hospital and house were opened in 1957, dedicated as a memorial to Richmond’s WWII dead. In 1965 Sheltering Arms Hospital, a charity institution established in 1889, relocated to adjoin and share the services of Memorial Hospital. They built a three-story annex that connected to the north side of Laburnum. The entire facility closed in 1998 and the property remained empty until the main hospital was developed in 2008 as condos by Ginter Place Associates. Laburnum was to have been used as an events venue, but it was not successful. The entire property was acquired by StanCorp Mortgage Investors. The house was used as a set for numerous movies, including Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln. The eastern portion of the Laburnum property was acquired by Veritas School in 2016. The Sheltering Arms Annex has since been demolished. This report was prepared for Veritas School by Gibson Worsham for Glave & Holmes Architecture as part of a full condition assessment.

---

[1] “Camp Canaras- Upper Saranac Lake, New York, Summer 2015,” Mailboat, publication of the Upper Saranac Lake Association, online resource.

[2] Laburnum Park Historic District Nomination, National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service, Washington DC. 

[3] Henrico Land Book 1850.

[4] Year Book of the Architectural League of New York and Catalog of the Twenty-fourth Annual Exhibition, vol.24, 1909.

[5] Harry Kallatz, Jr. The Laburnum Legacy: They tore down paradise and (eventually) put in a parking lot,” Richmond Magazine,19 May 2015.