After falling in love with Mount Pleasant, the 1765 landmark Georgian house overlooking the Schuylkill River outside Philadelphia, a Maryland couple asked Washington,D.C.– based architect David Jones to re-create it for them on a generous site in Potomac. “It’s actually Scottish Georgian, a more robust architecture that combines stucco and brick on a stone foundation, and the program was for 10,000 square feet compared to the original 3,500 square feet,” the architect explains. The completed project offers a neat lesson on doing Georgian properly—in both design and construction.

First, it had to be perfectly symmetrical. After all, 18th-century Georgian was the full English realization of the 16th-century Palladian ideal. Jones used a five-part composition, with the proportions of the central two-story body of the house in a double square—twice as wide as tall. “Combined with the projecting entry and pediment, that produces a strong verticality and anchors the house in its setting,” he says. Two hipped-roofed wings, freestanding in the original, are connected to the central mass with shallow, arcaded galleries. What appear to be simple
passages actually mask large living spaces behind: a media room on one side, the kitchen on the other.

Exterior materials give the house its robust Scottish turn. “We have stucco scored to look like stone blocks and then great contrast with the brick quoins (corner blocks) and belt course (a horizontal band of decorative masonry), a more articulated look than an all-brick house,” Jones says. “And there are cut stone window lintels and an ashlar stone foundation.” For this project, Ilex Construction strove to find a foundation stone that was durable and suited the homeowners’ taste. The builders, who visited quarries in several states, finally found a perfect match in a Vermont quarry and used a unique method of excavating the stone to obtain the right color.

Depth is everywhere, from the casing around windows and doors to the molded edges of the brick quoins to the dentil molding under the eaves. The dimension of all these elements gives the exterior a sense of weight and permanence, as well as the subtle play of light and shadow often missing in modern construction.

Depth was an architectural issue in the interior plan too. Typical of its period, Mount Pleasant is
essentially one room deep, but this house is two rooms deep. “We kept the strong axial connection from front to back with enfilades to provide uninterrupted sight lines,” the architect explains. The aligned doorways are fully integrated into the authentic Georgian architecture, so they carry substance and richness throughout.

“Everything built was drawn,” says Jones. “Every piece of window trim, each pilaster, all the cabinets and wainscoting, every door panel, the quoins to show where the special brick pieces are. We found some Historical American Building Survey drawings and were able to measure and photograph the house in detail, but all had to be redrawn or modified to fit this design.”

One of the challenges in staying true to period is deciding how to incorporate modern elements, such as electrical controls and ductwork. “The key is to massage them so they don’t overwhelm,” says Ilex Construction president Delbert Adams. “The floor registers were made from heart pine and installed flush with the floor to minimize their appearance.” As a result, the authenticity of the architecture is maintained.

Landscape architect Jay Graham worked with Jones on placing the house and developing the setting. “A grand Georgian house typically stood in an open setting at the crest of a hill, so this site helped meet that expectation,” Jones says. Also true to period, there is no foundation planting along the core of the house, so as not to obscure how it rises from the ground. To the rear, though, the architect and landscape architect devised a raised terrace on the same level as the ground floor rooms that open onto it.

Classical Georgian style has endured for good reason. The details can be either humble or grand, but if the proportions are right, it always satisfies.

© September–October 2006 Southern Accents