I recently went to the Presidential Mansion of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia.
Jefferson and Varina Davis lived here during much of the Civil War.
The house is now surrounded by the Virginia Commonwealth University medical buildings.
Above is the street view.
But from the gardens one can imagine how it looked when Varina Davis lived there.
Here's a Matthew Brady photo of the house from the National Archives. I assume this was taken in 1865 when Brady documented the fallen Confederate capital.
Street view about 1935
Garden view about 1910
The cupola on top is now gone.
Garden view about 1950
See two posts on the blocks Richmond and Christmas Star with stories of the Davis family in this house.
http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/02/6-richmond.html http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/12/52-christmas-star.html
And see pictures of the interior here.
6 comments:
Hi Barbara~ thanks for the informative post ~ Our daugghter, Hannah attends VCU and I will be picking her up on the 14th for Winter Break. I will make a note to take a walk to the this landmark. We live in Amherst, VA ~ not too far from Appomattox, where the treaty was signed to end the war. So much history here! We moved here in 2003 from Connecticut where Hannah & I did a little reenacting.
Love your blog, thanks for all the work you put into everything and for sharing with us~
Blessed be,
Lori from Notforgotten Farm
what an elegant window....
The poor house got lost with all those buildings. I love visiting historic buildings, hopefully we can get down south, this year.
Debbie
Barbara, Thanks for all your hard work and for sharing the information and quilt blocks with us. This is an amazing journey with you!
What a fantastic visit! The house is lovely! The gardens - that would interest me very much.
I love reading your blog posts... I don't always comment, but do read them all. One of our favorite RV vacations was a trip to D.C. and visiting all the landmarks. Someday we need to get back since we were not able to see everything we hoped and I desperately want to spend many weeks touring several Civil War landmarks including this beautiful home.
I am just fascinated by the Civil War and recall stumbling onto your CW BOW project one day while I was googling CW quilt blocks. Of course I leaped in and though I was behind several weeks from start to finish I did complete all the blocks and my sashing is finally done. Onto the borders. And then I need to catch up on Grandmothers Choice. History and quilting.. how can I resist?
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