Vernacular Architecture Group Tours Clermont
07/05/22 15:45
On May 7, the District of Columbia/Maryland/Northern Virginia regional members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) toured the historic buildings at Clermont Farm in Clarke County under the leadership of Dr. Dennis Pogue.
The VAF is a national organization which promotes appreciation and scholarship of ordinary buildings and landscapes, including both very common buildings (ordinary housing and business/agricultural buildings) as well as very unusual “one-offs” emerging from the imaginations of ordinary people.
The tour was led by Dennis J. Pogue, an extensively-published archaeologist who was for twenty-five years director and VP for Preservation at Mount Vernon and later a faculty member in the University of Maryland’s preservation program. Dr. Pogue is well-known for, among other things, restoring the Distillery building at Mount Vernon to working order and writing a book about George Washington and the origins of the American distilling industry, Founding Spirits.
Clermont’s buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries were of great interest to the group, both because they are ordinary buildings (generic types of residential and plantation service buildings of the Chesapeake region) and because they can be examined literally from the inside, with some walls and floors opened to show construction details, and others opened up for current rehabilitation projects.
They closely examined the Owner House, consisting now of four separate early buildings now linked together: the original house 1755-56, the kitchen 1777, the dining building 1788, and the stone building 1836. In addition they studied the Smokehouse 1803, the log Slave Quarter 1823, and the Dairy/Springhouse of 1857. Because of an on-going project, they were able to examine the flooring and joists of the porch added in 1788 to the 1755 house, including the clear use of the process of “gauging” floor boards used to make the hand pit-sawn boards of equal depth as they were nailed to the log joists to obtain a flat, even floor surface.
The buildings and research work at Clermont were ideal for this group and similarly interested people. It is not a furnished house museum restored to one specific period, but a set of home and farm buildings built over time and altered over time, starting in the mid-18th century up to 1970.
Clermont is open by appointment and the staff is happy to arrange tours for local as well as out-of-town visitors (540-955-0102).
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The VAF is a national organization which promotes appreciation and scholarship of ordinary buildings and landscapes, including both very common buildings (ordinary housing and business/agricultural buildings) as well as very unusual “one-offs” emerging from the imaginations of ordinary people.
The tour was led by Dennis J. Pogue, an extensively-published archaeologist who was for twenty-five years director and VP for Preservation at Mount Vernon and later a faculty member in the University of Maryland’s preservation program. Dr. Pogue is well-known for, among other things, restoring the Distillery building at Mount Vernon to working order and writing a book about George Washington and the origins of the American distilling industry, Founding Spirits.
Clermont’s buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries were of great interest to the group, both because they are ordinary buildings (generic types of residential and plantation service buildings of the Chesapeake region) and because they can be examined literally from the inside, with some walls and floors opened to show construction details, and others opened up for current rehabilitation projects.
They closely examined the Owner House, consisting now of four separate early buildings now linked together: the original house 1755-56, the kitchen 1777, the dining building 1788, and the stone building 1836. In addition they studied the Smokehouse 1803, the log Slave Quarter 1823, and the Dairy/Springhouse of 1857. Because of an on-going project, they were able to examine the flooring and joists of the porch added in 1788 to the 1755 house, including the clear use of the process of “gauging” floor boards used to make the hand pit-sawn boards of equal depth as they were nailed to the log joists to obtain a flat, even floor surface.
The buildings and research work at Clermont were ideal for this group and similarly interested people. It is not a furnished house museum restored to one specific period, but a set of home and farm buildings built over time and altered over time, starting in the mid-18th century up to 1970.
Clermont is open by appointment and the staff is happy to arrange tours for local as well as out-of-town visitors (540-955-0102).
END