Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 17, 1995 TAG: 9508170037
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LAWRENCE LATANE III RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: WARSAW LENGTH: Long
Start with a Lee family mansion, add time, and wait for the building to fall. Give the ruins a sort of Gothic splendor, and what do you get?
Some say the last great preservation adventure in Virginia.
That is how some Northern Neck historians view their opportunity at Menokin, the home of Francis Lightfoot Lee, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, state senator and member of the Continental Congress.
Menokin was a compact, hip-roofed Georgian manor built of white-plastered stone with contrasting brown sandstone trim. It has been regarded as a masterpiece of Colonial architecture. Construction began in 1769 as Lee's wedding gift from his father-in-law, Col. John Tayloe.
What is left of the house sleeps in a tangle of locust trees and vines at the end of a cornfield in a remote corner of Richmond County.
Time has torn down most of the sandstone blocks that formed its walls. Its deep cellar has swallowed the floors. Two massive chimney stacks loom over the rubble like tombstones.
But Martin King couldn't be happier. As president of the Menokin Trust, King has spent several hot weeks with a chain saw slowly freeing the ruins from the forest.
King sees Menokin's devastation as its promise - a rare chance to rebuild a sophisticated Colonial Virginia mansion piece by piece from its original fabric, and, in the process, to educate historians, archaeologists and preservationists.
``Virginia needs another house museum like it needs a hole in the head,'' King said while peering through one of Menokin's empty windows. ``We have a chance here to make this a real educational opportunity.''
He motions with a cigarillo to the one corner of the house still covered by a fragment of roof. A beautifully molded face board is warped just enough to reveal the juncture of heavy white oak beams that skilled builders notched and set into place.
``That corner,'' King said, ``tells us exactly how the entire roof was built. There's a tremendous detective job here that's going to be so much fun. It's really going to be great.''
The trust was created this summer to receive Menokin's ruins and 500 acres from its owner, T. Edgar Omohundro, a reclusive county resident who is the last survivor of several siblings to share ownership of the property.
King credits the Omohundro family with saving Menokin's intricate interior paneling and woodwork. The family removed it in the 1940s after the vacant house had begun to attract vandals. Looting and fire robbed many Virginia mansions of their original paneling, he said.
``We have every door, most of the windows, all the paneling and all the shutters from every window,'' King said.
A bit of fate left the house free of any modern alterations that would have compromised its original form: The house was vacated more than 50 years ago.
``Menokin was never modified,'' King said. ``No electricity, no water and no bath has ever been in that house.''
Menokin also shares the distinction with Thomas Jefferson's Monticello of being the only remaining Colonial Virginia houses with their original builders' plans.
If the trust can do what it wants to, it one day could reassemble all of Menokin's parts and basically produce a time capsule of Colonial life.
The trust wants to establish Menokin as a field school of historic and architectural preservation.
The goal parallels plans once laid down by Mary Washington College's Center for Historic Preservation. The center operates a field school in Orange County that is excavating and studying the archaeological remains of colonial Gov. Alexander Spotswood's ``Enchanted Castle.'' The center tried unsuccessfully to buy Menokin in the late 1980s.
Mary Washington College wanted to preserve the mansion and its rural surroundings and create an architecture and history curriculum that focused on early Virginia and the conservation and restoration of that period's buildings.
``We've picked up their proposal,'' King said.
The seven-member trust plans to work not only with Mary Washington but also with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, other colleges and the myriad historical institutions in Virginia and elsewhere.
Calder Loth, the trust's honorary member and senior architectural historian with the Historic Resources Department, said, ``If it happens the way we envision it, it will be the only permanent field school dealing with a site in this way.''
Loth said computer technology being used in Greece to rebuild ruins could be applied at Menokin to help refit its crumpled walls like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
Menokin also had a terraced garden that could be restored, plus plantation buildings and slave quarters that could be uncovered by archaeologists. Its fields and woodlands await other experts who may be able to uncover clues about colonial agriculture and land use.
King said the preservation of Menokin's deep woods and marshlands along Cat Point Creek also will complement federal and private efforts to secure wildlife habitat along the Rappahannock River.
All this is a tall order for the trust, which took possession of Menokin on July 4, in honor of Lee's standing as a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
``It's going to take millions of dollars,'' King said. ``I'm guessing $3 million or so to restore the house, run the school and build a warehouse and lab.''
Gary Stanton, chairman of Mary Washington's department of historic preservation, said one of the trust's first jobs will be to draw long-range plans for Menokin's restoration.
``Before we actually start anything, we want to understand what the best minds suggest we should consider,'' he said.
by CNB