was covered in pink stucco. The house is now owned by the Montpelier Foundation which has thus far spent $25 million on restoration- most of which was used to remove the pink stucco and all of the additions the duPonts had made to the house.
Here are a couple more pictures of the house today (well yesterday).
And here are a couple pictures taken from the roof terrace- the first is of the front lawn and the second of Dolly and James chillin' in the backyard.
I took these next 3 pictures as we walked the ground around the house- it's a beautiful spot.
And here is a picture of the garden gate (we didn't actually go in the garden).
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house- so that's it for the pictures today- but I wanted to bring something up. We have gone to these amazing homes- like Montpelier and Westover (not to mention my owns trips to Mount Vernon and Monticello) and we all ooh and aahh over these architectural beauties but the people who run these sites rarely mention the people who actually built these homes. Slaves. Oh- they will talk about slaves and we might even look at the slave quarters but people rarely acknowledge that slave owners, like Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and William Byrd, would never have been able to build these homes without slave labor.
4 comments:
I love it when the tour guides opt for the more delicate "servant" when they really mean "slave." As in, "Now we're going down the servant's stairs!"
At a tour at the White House of Confederacy last summer, I asked afterwards if the Davis family owned slaves. No joke, the tour guide waited for everyone else to leave before talking about all the slaves who had lived and worked in the house. Apparently, though, their stories don't warrant inclusion on the regular tour.
the guide at Montpelier spent a couple minutes talking about slaves- he even mentioned the myth about Dolly saving the portrait of George Washington when the British burned down the White House during the War of 1812 and asked if we really thought she pulled down an 8 foot painting and hacked the frame off and rolled up the canvas and carried it out- obviously not- a slave did it.
So at least he didn't completely ignore slaves- but there was maybe 5 minutes of the 2 hour tour that was devoted to slaves. There was this moment in the house when it kind of hit home for me- he pointed out a beam in the ceiling that ran from one corner of the house to another and if I remember correctly it was something like 60 feet long- it was massive and one piece of wood- he asked us to think about how difficult it would be to get that beam into place. I thought he was going to talk about slaves again- but instead we moved on to the next room. He also told us that Jefferson suggested that Madison lift the ceiling in the sitting room so that the sun burst window would have more appropriate proportions- which of course would require taking the house apart and lifting the floor above and the roof- all for a window! And Jefferson gave no thought to the amount of labor that would create. Madison decided not to because of the expense- again with no thought to the labor. So distressing.
That's were we should go on the last day of my next visit there.
You'd have to have a rather late flight- it's quite the drive. But it would be in keeping with tradition!
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