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Virginia: Tidewater and Piedmont » Hampton Roads » Williamsburg » Colonial Williamsburg Historic Area » Goodwin Building

Goodwin Building

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1940, Department of Architecture, Colonial Williamsburg. 124 N. Henry St.
  • (Photograph by Mark Mones)
  • (Photograph by Mark Mones)

The administrative center of Colonial Williamsburg continues the design theme of Merchants Square, freely arranging details from post-Revolutionary American buildings. Here no less than nine units suggest separate buildings, all of comparable size (two stories, two to five bays), arranged in an H plan. Occasional shop windows suggest some of the promiscuous manner in which houses and shops were mixed in cities of the new republic but are here used entirely for ornamental effect. A wrought iron screen encloses a front courtyard treated as a garden. Brass doors with c. 1800 details open onto the courtyard and give access to corridors lined with offices. Light fixtures blur the line between neoclassical and Art Deco, and a fully paneled second-floor boardroom is hung with portraits of the museum's benefactor, designers, and presidents.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Richard Guy Wilson et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

College of William and Mary, Old Campus
Merchants Square
Timson House
Peacock Hill
President's House

Citation

Richard Guy Wilson et al., "Goodwin Building", [Williamsburg, Virginia], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/VA-01-HR30.

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