Ionic Pilasters- A Fruitful Intersection of Craft and Architecture at Veritas School

Veritas School was founded in 1998 to restore a vision of classical education in Richmond Virginia. In 2016, the school acquired the consistently classically designed campus of the former Presbyterian School for Christian Education, an education complex dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. North Hall, the former administration building stands at the end of a handsome quadrangle. Although built in the 1953, its exterior embodied the same classical spirit as the rest of the campus, while its interior was merely functional in detail and plan. Glave and Homes restored the exterior of the building and transformed the interior.

The achievement at North Hall was essentially that of stepping outside the world usually associated with high-end residential work and directly increasing the quality of architectural design in the civic realm without unduly increasing costs for the client. 

Civic work is usually governed by commercial contractor relationships that default to conventional forms of classical expression. A higher level of architectural quality was achieved by intense and careful collaboration between architect and craftsman, aided by the flexibility of both contractor and client throughout the project.

Baskervill and Lambert Architects, Block Plan, Training School for Lay Workers, 1921.

Veritas was founded as a classical K-12 Christian school, based in the study of the liberal arts. The campus was built in the first half of the 20th century as a women's school for Presbyterian lay workers. The campus master plan, a product of the early twentieth century architectural and urban planning movement known as the American Renaissance or the City Beautiful Movement, organized the individual buildings into a unified whole. The design not only represents the general structure of the school’s educational program but embodies the form of human knowledge and its relation to divine wisdom.  Like Thomas Jefferson’s University, of Virginia, the campus plan also imitates the human body, with a head (chapel and administration), essential organs of perception and sustenance (library and dining hall) and appendages (dormitories) organized into a well-proportioned whole. Architects Baskervill and Lambert organized the campus buildings around three sides of a central lawn facing south towards Westwood Avenue.

North Hall exterior design, adding a dome raising the status of the building at the head of the lawn and housing the upper school. 

North Hall under construction on 1953.

North Hall was built in 1953 as the central administrative building at the north end of the central lawn.  In spite of its late date, the building was executed in keeping with the thirty-year-old master plan. It still employed British Palladian forms and details and traditional masonry construction with a reinforced concrete internal structure, but the interior was functionally laid out and plainly detailed. 

Veritas School asked Glave and Holmes to rehabilitate an existing building for use as its new upper school. Gibson Worsham was the design architect for a new double-height entry hall to be carved out of the interior of the two-story building. The building benefitted from the kind of classical architectural planning and detailing for which Glave and Holmes has long been recognized. A carefully designed full-height entry hall and student gathering area inserted into the two-story interior seemed the best way to introduce students and visitors to school's classical ethos. In designing the campus, we followed the following principles:

• Classical education is based in the idea that knowledge is structured in a way that is both intelligible and transferable. That structure can be taught to students in ways that are appropriate for different levels of intellectual maturity, enhancing their ability to absorb and synthesize ideas. 

• Classical architecture, because it is based in the same ancient understanding of the truth, goodness, and beauty, can reinforce and direct students’ attention of the students and teachers toward the sources of wisdom.

• Classical buildings, because of their adaptable plans and universal appeal, are better able to respond to changes in use over time. A classically trained architect can recognize the important features in an existing building and ensure that it continues to orient the user in a way the underlines the educational models from which the school is derived.
   

Hall, Chicheley Hall, Buckinghamshire

 
 

The precedent used by the original architects for the exterior of North Hall seemed to be the English Palladian country house. Several examples of these country houses incorporated two-story halls behind a conventional elevation incorporating two levels of windows, as we would need to do at North Hall. Examples at Chicheley Hall and Ombursley Court were particularly apt as precedents for the new interior. At Chicheley Hall, the height of the hall was mitigated by use of a one-story order, and the balustrade on top permitted a balcony on one side and a screen for the lower portion of the second-floor windows, while filtering the glare of their south-facing aspect.   

Interior Rendering, North Hall Entry Hall

The Entry Lobby at North Hall is intended to support the restoration of classical education at Veritas School through an analogy with the beauty associated with classical architecture and craft traditions. As a civilization, we lost track of these building ways at the same time and for many of the same reasons that we abandoned the tradition of classical education.


North Elevation, Entry Hall, North Hall, Veritas School.

The initial specifications for North Hall called for a decorative use of wood that was intended to contributed to the character of the room as the lobby of a classical upper school. The trim was specified as an Ionic entablature running around the entire room. The high ceiling was to be crowned with a classical cove molding, although during design development decisions had not been made how the molding or entablature would be made and installed. Undiminished pilasters were closely flanked by piers (or "antae") that added visual support for the floor above and also served to conceal the existing concrete structural columns within. The piers had capitals that were directly based on and extensions of the Ionic pilaster capitals.

As part of the construction administration process, the design team asked Patrick Webb of Real Finishes, a traditional plaster craftsman and teacher who is a national leader in the restoration of this craft to offer quotes for doing selected portions of the work in cast plaster in order to enhance the beauty and authenticity of the architectural treatment and to provide better fire protection than wood. These portions included the plaster cove ceiling, the entablature, and the pilasters with their special, custom-sculpted capitals. Webb and the design architect worked together to develop details that would make the most appropriate setting for a renewed classical education.

Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Capitol. The Ionic pilasters are not diminished like the adjacent columns, which are smaller
at the top than at the bottom. As a result, the capital of the pilaster is wider than the column capital.

The Ionic capital used follows the variation known as the "Scamozzi" capital, which incorporates angle volutes. Capitals obtained in the marketplace can vary widely in quality. The cast capitals originally specified were sourced from a standard catalog and did not have sharp edges or refined forms. Because we had decided to use undiminished pilasters (as is customary), the design required an extra level of intensity. Since the pilasters are not diminished, the capitals must be "stretched" in width to account for the added thickness at the top of the shaft. Examples aren’t hard to find of this phenomenon- the first-floor pilasters at the Banqueting House at Whitehall and those at the Virginia Capitol are good examples, but this kind of capital is not available from any catalog.  

Inigo Jones, Banqueting Hall at Whitehall, London.

In order to make any set of matching capitals, there has to be an original that is created by a craftsman, from which casts (and scans) can be made. A stock capital that will fit the top of an undiminished plaster will be too tall and out of proportion with the rest of the order. In addition, it is always best that the proportions of the full order, including the columns and entablature, not be based directly on a standard set of proportions, but that its form should be adjusted to fit the perceptions of viewers and the actual proportions of the room. In close collaboration, Gibson Worsham and Patrick Webb crafted a custom capital that was firmly rooted in the British Palladian tradition, and that included a special reference to the school’s ethos in the form of its mascot, a lion, centered between the volutes.  

Patrick Webb's shop drawing and profile of the entablature, showing mutually agreed adaptations.   

 

In addition to sculpting the capitals, Webb provided cast elements to form the entablature with its pulvinated (outwardly curved) frieze and regularly spaced modillions. Adjustments to the form were made in the interests of a more beautiful appearance. The projection of the cornice was decreased slightly to ameliorate the appearance of verticality associated with the narrowness of the room, its two-story height, and the acute angle of view experienced by the occupants. For the same reasons, the depth of the pulvination was increased, as can be seen in darker line in the shop drawing prepared by Webb. This shape was closer to the measurements of Roman precedents made by Palladio in the Renaissance as opposed to a shallower profile in late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practice.         
 

Patrick Webb's design process illustrated in his workshop  

Webb and his team casting the entablature

The entablature during installation

The cost of the plaster capitals was somewhat greater than the standard off-the-shelf elements, but the overall cost of using plaster for the entablature/cornice element was slightly less than the millwork that was originally specified. Significantly, the use of fine craftsmanship in the project become a meaningful narrative in the presentation of the school’s educational ethos. The custom-made capitals and the flanking pier capitals assured a close fit between the building parts and a superior final product.

Typical hallway- the significance of classrooms in students' lives is reinforced by a more elaborate door treatment than others doors along the hallways.

Patrick Webb completing work on one of the flanking piers.

The completed Entry Hall

The completed Entry Hall with the plaster cove molding at the top, showing the light filtering in through the balustrade on the right.

Richmond's Laburnum House

LLaburnum 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.

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[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.