Colonial Williamsburg Digital Library

Introduction

The identification of neighborhoods in Williamsburg is a difficult process, partly because the town has rarely been approached from a geographical viewpoint. Individual houses and sites have been studied; the population and their occupations are still being researched; but seldom have demography and geography been joined to determine patterns of settlement on a city-wide scale. For example, we have yet to discover (1) if craft shops clustered in groups; (2) if the residences of the well-to-do tended to be in a specific section of the town; (3) if the character of different parts of the city changed over time; and (4) if the crime rate varied from one end of the city to another. At this point, we do not even know which lot of Williamsburg land was bought first or whether land in one section was more valuable than land in another. All of these questions parts of a larger quest to determine whether Williamsburg had neighborhoods in the eighteenth century — are still unanswered.

This report was undertaken as a feasibility study to test whether some of these questions could be answered. It concludes that with additional research many of them can, but the existence of neighborhoods in eighteenth­century Williamsburg is still a moot point. From the sources examined in the preparation of this report, however, it is clear that recognizable landmarks or focal points did exist in eighteenth-century Williamsburg. Whether these landmarks formed the basis of neighborhoods can only be determined by further research.

WHAT IS A NEIGHBORHOOD?

To our 20th-century ears the word "neighborhood" conjures up visions of skid row, Beacon Hill, Harlem, and suburbia. It carries connotations of ethnic, racial, and economic subcultures within the city. All three of these may have existed in Williamsburg, but the evidences for them are few and equivocal¹. We must, therefore, seek a broader definition of neighborhood to work with. Modern sociologists provide us with four:

• 1.The administrative neighborhood. This is an area within a city which has been set apart for governmental or business purposes, such as a ward, precinct, school district, or taxi delivery area.
• 2.The symbolic or ideological neighborhood. This is an area which carries certain images in the minds of residents — images such as religious cohesion, social position or power, immorality, danger, or sedateness.
• 3.The subcultural or sociological neighborhood. This is an area within which people share a certain kind of life style, socioeconomic status, and patterns of social interaction. It is this kind of neighborhood that can be defined as "An area in which the residents are personally well acquainted with each other, and are in the habit of visiting one another, or exchanging articles and services, and, in general, of doing things together." Neighborhood landmarks (such as the corner grocery) are an important way of defining the subcultural neighborhood.
• 4.The ecological neighborhood. This is an area which has a distinctive identity due to geography, land-use patterns, and the social, economic, and cultural characteristics of the population. It is often bounded by physical features such as streets or rivers. It usually serves a definable purpose: industrial, commercial, residential, and so forth.²

Looking at these definitions, we can suggest at least two administrative subdivisions within the city — the Palace and the College — which would both make interesting subjects for future study in terms of their role or lack of role in the community. The second kind of neighborhood may have existed below the Capitol, but more evidence to substantiate this claim needs to be turned up. The third is difficult to research because we do not have the kind of evidence which permits us to take a participant-observer role and thereby investigate social interaction in the city, but we have turned up a set of landmarks, The fourth category, the ecological neighborhood, is the most workable since we do have information that we can translate into land-use patterns, land values, and crime locations.

In the following two sections of this report I will deal first with the formal conception of Williamsburg in the minds of the city's planners. The importance of this subject lies not only in the fact that the town's extremely rational layout had a profound effect on the later development (or lack of development) of neighborhoods. The subject also gives us a glimpse into contemporary ideas about neighborhoods and social interaction — ideas which are very different from our own. In the second section I will summarize the findings from a study of the Williamsburg advertisements in the Virginia Gazette from 1755 to 1775. This was undertaken primarily to discover the major landmarks in the town, but also produced some incidental information on names and orientation (the use of the terms "up" and "down"). It is important to reiterate that this report is only a small beginning on an enormous subject, and it does not provide conclusive evidence proving the existence of neighborhoods in eighteenth-century Williamsburg.

WILLIAMSBURG: The Idea

It is no mystery that most cities in agricultural areas evolve from the need to process the crop in some way, such as cleaning it, milling it, inspecting it, or transferring it from one kind of transportation system to another. The non-farm employment offered by a break in the transportation system, such as a waterfall or a port, attracts labor, which in turn fosters secondary occupations such as teachers, innkeepers, merchants, craftsmen, and mechanics.³ But Williamsburg was different. It had no indigenous source of power, and although it lay astride a main land route up the lower peninsula, this road hardly qualifies as a major transportation route. But, then, Williamsburg had no natural birth. It did not evolve; it was invented. Its site, its size and its purpose were all decreed by legislative fiat. Therefore, any attempt to describe or explain the geographical evolution of the city must take into account the purposeful planning that formed the starting point of that evolution.

The concept of Williamsburg, as outlined in the founding act of 1699, is notable for its aesthetic and symbolic considerations. First, there was the site, chosen because it was a "healthy proper & comodius Place suitable for the Reception of a considerable Number and Concourse of People" and recommended particularly because of its "serene and temperate Aire dry and champaign Land and … wholesome Springs and the Conveniency of two navigible and pleas[an]t Creeks." The possibilities of commerce and trade are never explicitly mentioned in the act. Middle Plantation, Williamsburg's former name, was chosen as the site of the new capital in large part — but not exclusively — because it was a pleasant locale.

The first plan of Williamsburg, drawn even before the act of 1699 was enacted, reveals these aesthetic considerations even more clearly. (Map 1). Hidden in the plan is a subtle set of proportions, revealing that the designer, Governor Francis Nicholson, was well grounded in the principles of Baroque 5. architecture and town planning.⁵ The shape of the proposed town breaks down into two sections: a large square 160 poles on each side and a smaller rectangle 120 poles by 80 poles. The square is centered on Bruton Parish church, which is located approximately 80 poles from each side of the square. The proportions of the rectangle are 2:3 (dimensions particularly favored by Baroque architects); the proportions of the length of the rectangle to the length of the square are 3:4, and the proportions of the width of the rectangle to the width of the square are 1:2. The large square, 160 poles on each side, also happens to contain 160 acres. The small rectangle contains 60. There is not a measurement or relationship in this central part of the plan that does not work out to an even integer.

The purpose of all these mathematical ratios was not merely ornamental. They were an aggressive ethical and philosophical statement. In the contemporary world view, there was an underlying identity between nature, art, and the human mind — for all of these were based on the principles of a mathematically structured cosmos. Thus the regularly proportioned city was both the most natural and the most aesthetically pleasing, for it emphasized the harmony, symmetry, and proportion from which all nature and beauty sprung. As Batty Langley, an Enlightenment architect, put it, beauty was the result of "well-chosen Symmetry, connected together according to the harmonick Laws of Proportion, which of necessity naturally produce that Effect upon the Mind thro' the Eye, as the Cords 6 or Discords of Musick, please or displease the Soul thro' the Ear." What Williamsburg symbolizes is the very antithesis of the Romantic concept that the organic and natural, though it can be quantified and articulated through mathematics, is not in essence mechanical. To the town's Baroque designer, there was no dividing line between a tree and a machine. Both were examples of formal, rationalized aesthetic principles, differing in complexity but not in quality. Map of the Williamsburg, Virginia, Town Boundaries: 1699
Map 1. Copied from Reps, Tidewater Town, p. 150. 6. In the realm of ethics, the human being who lived up best to the moral symmetry of the golden mean was the person whose soul was proportioned best. Thus Williamsburg's mathematical ratios had a complex subtext of associations — scientific, aesthetic, and ethical.⁷

Other aspects of Williamsburg's town design heighten the Baroque symbolism. The streets are broad and admirably suited for the concourse of "gilt equipages" that might grace its avenues. Vistas down long straight streets which terminate in views of "magnificent fabricks" were considered a "great ornament" by the Baroque designer.⁸ Duke of Gloucester Street, with the Capitol and Wren Buildings at either end, forms the most perfect example of this principle, but secondary streets also afford several opportunities for vistas. John Reps has pointed out how the jog in Nicholson and Francis Streets, when they intersect with Palace Green and King Street, gives two grand sites for buildings.⁹ The site on the south unfortunately turned out to be in a ravine, but the site on the north has been exploited to the fullest extent by the George Wythe house. Similar grand sites were taken up by Tazewell Hall at the southern end of England Street and by the more modest Ewing House at the southern terminus of Botetourt Street. The prevalence of open spaces and the presence of radiating diagonal streets (such as Jamestown and Richmond Roads and the diagonals that once framed the Capitol) further emphasize the Baroque origins of the town. The setback line of houses along Duke of Gloucester Street, so carefully specified in the act founding the city,¹⁰ provided that the view down the street would give people a feeling of enhanced perspective. The fact that all the houses "fronted alike" meant that the eye would be led down the converging sight lines on either side of the street, unconfused by randomly placed buildings (an effect, by the way, which is destroyed by the presence of trees in the modern restoration). Even the minimum required size of dwelling on the main street was to be built to the 7. proportions of 2:3. The minimum required height of ten feet was almost exactly one tenth the width of the open street — not so high as architect Andrea Palladio would have recommended, but an integral proportion nevertheless.¹¹

The distribution of public spaces and buildings in Williamsburg also emphasizes the rationality of the plan. The Market Square was centered between the east and west boundaries, where it links together the two main sections of the town plan. Palace Street, keyed as it is off the church, leads north from the central point in the large l60-acre square, forming the main secondary axis. Four public spaces are strung out on the other axis: the College lands, the Churchyard, the Market Square, and the Capitol square. Within this linear arrangement the public areas were carefully placed, a consistent 80 poles apart from each other ° or would have been, had physical reality not intervened. The original plan placed the Capitol 80 poles from the Market Square and 160 poles from the church; but as these ideal measurements would have meant building the Capitol in the midst of a ravine, the site was moved eastward to take advantage of better ground, thus ruining the original proportions.¹²

Proportions were not the only important thing about these public buildings. They also embodied the kind of civic symbolism that so appealed to the architectural theorists of the Italian Renaissance. It is hard to believe that Francis Nicholson was unaware of Andrea Palladio's strictures that the public buildings of a town ought to embody the civic virtues: the courts to symbolize justice and good government; the places of learning to symbolize prudence and training of the young; churches to symbolize the religion "without which it wou'd be impossible that civil society cou'd be maintained." Palladio's concept of the city as a three-dimensional course in moral instruction finds ample embodiment in Williamsburg. Not only did Williamsburg contain all of Palladio's symbolic buildings but it also had a palace for the ruling monarch's representative 8. and a market square where commerce — so essential to the life and growth of any English town — takes place. Palladio's original concept was that the symbolic "decorum" of the city gives "princes…a very ample opportunity to make the world acquainted with the greatness of their souls." The theory applies to Royal Governors and planter aristocrats as well as princes. As Sylvia D. Fries has written, "above all the baroque city is a setting and celebration of authority — secular, spiritual, and cultural."¹⁴ In this sense, Williamsburg was an undeniably Baroque city.

Thus, Williamsburg was an idea before it was a place. Its plan had philosophical and social underpinnings as well as practical and aesthetic considerations. But does this mean the city's planners had a concept of neighborhoods? John Reps argues that they did. He describes a "rough zoning scheme" which he believes Nicholson had in mind. The large square on the western side of the town, which was centered on the church, was to be the residential section. This arrangement had moral overtones, since to an ardent Anglican like Nicholson, family life in an ideal city ought to be centered on religion. The administrative, governmental, and commercial area was to be on the east, in the area between Market Square and the Capitol.¹⁵ The relatively smaller space given over to this purpose reflects the subordinate position commerce held in the concept of the town. If Reps' suggestion is true, then Nicholson planned neighborhoods into the town scheme, but they were neighborhoods whose boundaries were based on geometry and mathematical ratios, and whose composition was based on the structure of the ideal Anglican society.

All town planning is based to a certain extent on social philosophy, even if it is only an attempt to arrange the space we live in more efficiently so that traffic may move faster and property lines be better defined. But 18th­century social philosophy was far different than our own. Sylvia D. Fries in her book, The Urban Idea in Colonial America, argues that Williamsburg was 9. planned to house a certain kind of society which can be best characterized by the word "urbane." The urbane city (to quote the orator from the College of William and Mary who tried to convince the Assembly of 1699 to found a capital at Middle Plantation) was "a seat of trade, wealth, and Learning" filled with "all the selectest and best company that is to be had within the Government." It would be a place full of "men of fashion and business" where the younger generation would learn "action and conversation" by "seeing & conversing among men, and being acquainted with action and business." It was, in other words, to be a place of fashion and culture, where a well-educated elite would perpetuate its values by the exchange of ideas and the cultivation of manners. And yet, as Fries points out, Virginians were ambivalent about cities even before Thomas Jefferson likened them to sores on the human body. They might be touch­stones of learning, fashion, and good taste, but they also represented social and economic dislocation, the decay of rural values, and the depravity that Hogarth was so busy portraying in London. Fries suggests that the Virginia planters who founded Williamsburg wanted Gro[venor Square without Gin Alley, urbane gentility without the impoverished rabble, an urban center where rural values would remain intact. In other words, they wanted an alabaster city undimmed by human tears. And to prevent the formation of such neighborhoods as we would immediately recognize today — Zones In Transition, skid rows, and so forth — they mustered the forces of law and geometrical proportion to emphasize what kind of city this was. What Fries describes is a process peculiarly characteristic of that era: the application of an aesthetic solution to a social problem. And yet, the 18th-century ideal of urbanity still has enough mythic appeal that 16 countless Americans make pilgrimages to see its re-creation even today.

WILLIAMSBURG: The Place

The development of Nicholson's alabaster city was not, however, left to the forces of mathematical proportion and civic virtue which the town plan symbolized so well. It was left to forces of economics, demography, and social attitudes. We must turn to other sources to find whether Nicholson's vision ever grew into a reality. Many of the sources that might tell us how the town really developed still lie untapped. But we can begin to probe the attitudes of colonial residents of Williamsburg, as reflected in that tireless voice of the community, the Virginia Gazette. We can ask questions like, Did the residents of Williamsburg see the town as Francis Nicholson seems to have envisioned it? Did they see the space as we see it? What were their landmarks? Where did they prefer to live?

The prejudice against intensive commercial development that is suggested by the choice of Williamsburg's site and early descriptions of its purpose seems to have achieved a certain amount of embodiment in Williamsburg's outer face, if not in its back alleys. Visitors to the town, whose superficial first impressions show surprising similarities over the years, agreed that Williamsburg had a decidedly uncommercial aspect in comparison to the thriving harbor towns of the northern colonies. "[Williamsburg] is a place of no trade," Josiah Quincy wrote in 1773; "and its importance depends altogether on its being the seat of government, and the place of the college." Three years earlier, John Ferdinand Dalziel Smyth wrote that the courts "are indeed the chief, if not the whole, support of the place: for her share of commerce is very inconsiderable, and she does not possess a single manufacture." Ebenezer Denny in 1781 agreed that Williamsburg "does not appear to be a place of much business, rather the residence of gentlemen of fortune." Andrew Burnaby blamed the site away from water 17 for Williamsburg's not being "a place of any consequence."¹⁷

Looking at a map of property uses in Williamsburg in the 1770s (Map 2), we can see that residential property was indeed most widespread. Commerce was not absent, but it was concentrated at the eastern end of the main street in precisely the area where Reps speculated that Nicholson intended it to be. The farther away from the main street and the Capitol a building was, the more likely it was to be residential. In these very general terms, therefore, the town did develop into residential and commercial areas as Nicholson may have foreseen.

But the town also developed in ways that Nicholson could not foresee. To realize this, we have only to study the configuration of settlement as shown on the Frenchman's Hap, and compare it to the original town boundaries (Hap 3). By 1782 some settlement had occurred to the south of the original boundaries, in 18 the area known as "Johnson's Lots,"¹⁸ which were surveyed and added to the city at least by 1774. But the greatest growth beyond the town boundaries occurred along York Road and Capitol Landing Road. This was not accidental growth. The York Road area, at least, was intentionally planned, surveyed, and sold by its owner, Benjamin Waller, in the manner a later age would call real estate development. As early as 1756 the Assembly recognized the changing shape of the city and passed an act providing for the annexation of land to the east within the town boundaries, thereby destroying the symmetry of the original plan and creating a lopsided but functional plat. By 1777 even a casual visitor to town could see that the York Road area comprised "a large built-up street which forms the suburb." This area represented a spontaneous — indeed an organic and evolutionary growth that occurred for reasons other than the neatly legislated plan for Virginia's capital.¹⁹

Another striking thing about the Frenchman's Map is the scarcity of settlement on the western end, where Nicholson had apparently expected the demand Map 2. Property uses in Williamsburg, 1770s-1780s. Compiled by Lou Powers. Map 3. Williamsburg in 1782, with original town boundaries shown. 12. for lots to be highest (if we may judge by the expansion of the town boundaries in this area). From the records available it appears that this lack of development was not because lots were going unsold; it was because land was being used for different purposes than near the Capitol. Commercial property on the eastern end of Duke of Gloucester Street was in such high demand that it was being sub-divided into half-, third-, and quarter-lots (see, for instance, Block 18, lots 49 and 50). The residential property on the west, however, was being sold in undivided squares of eight or more lots. Map 4 shows some of the squares that remained substantially undivided throughout the 18th century. These tracts of land seldom held more than one complex of buildings at a time: some were public buildings (squares 2 and 5); some were the town houses of wealthy planters (squares 4 and 10); some were the homes of well-to-do permanent residents of the town (squares 8 and 9). A striking proportion of the owners of these squares were re­lated, particularly in the squares marked 7, 8, and 9 on Map 4, where the Pratts, Cockes, Holloways, and Joneses formed an intricate web of intermarriage and pro­perty ownership. The western end of town was an area of miniature estates lying in small fields, gardens, and pastures of their own.

Not only were the patterns and density of settlement different on the western side of town than on the east; the patterns of ownership over time were on the whole more stable. It is not at all unusual to find one family holding a residential square for ten years, and in at least two cases (squares 3 and 4), the land remained in one family's possession for over 60 years. It is interesting to note that, despite the long periods for which people owned these blocks of property, 9 out of 10 of the squares marked on Map 4 were either sold or put up for sale in the five years from 1778 to 1783, a period during which revolution raged and the state government moved to Richmond. After those years, which marked a transformation of the Back Street estates, the pattern of stability again seems Map 4. Undivided lots on Back Street 13. to have resumed.²⁰

Thus, in the simplest terms, Williamsburg evolved away from the original plan in that the commercially oriented district on the east expanded far more than was foreseen, and the residential area on the west filled up much more slowly, due to the fact that small numbers of people tended to own large tracts of land. In emphasizing how the town's development departed from the original plan, however, I do not want to imply that the plan disappeared. On the contrary, travelers' accounts tell us that even the most casual visitor to Williamsburg could still perceive the structure of the town. Despite the fact that the most intensive development was concentrated on the eastern end, visitors often spoke of the church and Palace as being in the center of town, indicating that they were measuring from the Capitol to the College as if those two buildings marked the town's boundaries.²¹ If they had measured from the actual edge of the built-up portion on the east, however, their calculation would have been very different, for the Frenchman's map shows that the center of real settlement fell somewhere near the post office. Thus the visual effect of Nicholson's design overrode the actual reality of where the town lay — at least in the minds of those seeing the town for the first time.

When a town ceases to be a plan and begins to be a reality, residents develop attitudes toward areas of the town, landmarks, and paths they must travel to get from one place to the next. In other words, the town begins to have a shape in the minds of people as well as in physical reality. I have investigated three things that reflect upon the mental shape of Williamsburg: names, the terms "up" and "down", and town landmarks.

Williamsburg, like most towns, had two sets of names: the official and the colloquial. Francis Nicholson and the other directors appointed "for the Settlement and Encouragement of the City" may have been responsible for the former — the names still used on maps of the historic area today. Duke of Gloucester Street, Nicholson Street, and Francis Street were names used on wills and 14. deeds throughout the 18th century, but in more popular modes of expression (such as the newspaper), these complicated, politically motivated names were supplemented by an overlay of simpler names, more expressive of day-to-day uses of the places. The official names for Williamsburg's two landings seem to have been among the first to be discarded. The act founding Williamsburg provided that the landing to the north would be called Queen Mary's Port, while the road leading to it would be Queen's Road. The landing to the south was to be Princess Anne's Port, and the road leading to it Princess Road. Yet, outside of legal documents it is extremely difficult to find these places called anything else than Capitol Landing and College Landing, while the roads leading to them were Capitol Landing Road and College Landing Road. The two landings' proximity to the college and Capitol apparently outweighed the importance of doing honor to dead royalty in most residents' minds.²²

A similar thing happened to the names of streets within the town. In the Virginia Gazette from 1745 to 1778, I was able to find only two advertisements that mentioned the name "Duke of Gloucester street" — all the rest of the advertisements used the unoriginal but functional name, "Main Street." (Often it was "the main street"; capitalization varied.) The secondary east-west streets were given a label, "Back Street." In Jamestown, where a Back Street also existed, the name had been slightly more meaningful, since there the back street was back from the river; in Williamsburg there was nothing to be back from except the main street, creating the complication that both Nicholson and Francis streets were equally in back, so both deserved the name. In fact, we find that the references to Back Street in the Virginia Gazette are almost equally divided between Nicholson and Francis streets. How people deciphered which Back Street was being referred to is a mystery. It may be that the purpose of advertising the Back Street location of a shop or house was not to direct people to a specific 15. location, but to suggest the kind of area it lay in. At any rate, people seemed to feel the inconvenience of having two Back Streets, for the name "Francis Street" appeared as early as 1752, and was used as an alternate name for the back street on the south through 1776. Whether this had anything to do with increased development along the street is still to be determined. At any rate, the name "Nicholson Street" never appeared in the Virginia Gazette advertisements in the years studied.

A map of the various colloquial names applied to streets in Williamsburg reveals some interesting patterns (Map 5). There is a marked lack of names for north-south streets on the western end of town. Even North England Street was only known as "a cross street" in 1806, and the present Colonial Street was similarly anonymous well into the nineteenth century. The name "Pump Street" for present Botetourt Street was apparently a late eighteenth-century innovation, inspired by the location of a public well at the north side of the intersection of Botetourt and Duke of Gloucester streets.²³

But it is not until one looks to the section below the Capitol that the names start to become plentiful. In this small area where the town had burst out of the straitjacket of the formal street plan, people seem to have bestowed more names than in all the rest of the town combined. "Woodpecker Street," "Gallows Street," "Waller Street," and "Page Street" are all names that trace their origin to local landmarks, incidents, and people rather than to a governor's formal concepts of civic planning, and thus they suggest a livelier local culture than the names in the main part of town. It is likely that the two street names mentioned in the Virginia Gazette which I could not match with any known street on the map (St. Mary's Street and Bell-Craig Street)^{Note. Bell Craig street is in the Moody subdivision north of town. 11/87 CBH} were also in this area.

When residents of the town oriented themselves, they seldom wrote in terms of "east" and "west" or "left" and "right." The terms they used were "up" Map 5. Street names. 16. and "down," "above" and "below." Their meaning seems to have been remarkably consistent. So far, I have found no exceptions to the rule that "up" was to the west and "down" was to the east. For example, the Norton-Cole house was described as being below the church (Virginia Gazette, 2/27/52) and on the upper end of the market place (3/2/53); the Ludwell-Paradise house was on the lower side of the market place (8/15/55); the Tarpley store was above Anderson's (Wetherburn's) Tavern (P&D 6/2/74); Mrs. Steel's house (Block 7 lot 24) was just below Lewis's store (Block 7 lot 23) (R 11/1/70); James Geddy was below the church (P&D 9/28/69); William Pasteur's shop was below the Raleigh Tavern (R 11/29/70). The area to the east of the Capitol, often called "below the Capitol," was also referred to as "the lower end of the city" (R 4/13/69). Similarly, the Severinus Durfey shop near the college was described as being at "the upper end of this city" (C&D 8/28/79). Eventually this terminology evolved into a sense of "uptown" and "downtown". The term "uptown" was used to describe the location of the Geddy shop (P&D 6/4/72), and "downtown" was the direction one walked from the Blair house to reach Greenhow's store ("my sister Burwell was a going down Town to call and pay it [money] to Mr. Greenhow," Anne Blair wrote)²⁴. We know that these terms had nothing to do with the actual lay of the land; there is no hill that slopes down from the college to the Capitol and beyond. What it may refer to is the direction of the rivers. Since in Tidewater Virginia west is upstream and east is downstream, a water-oriented society simply transferred the terminology onto the land, even in a city that was nowhere near the water.

The lack of house numbers in 18th-century Williamsburg meant that each time an advertiser wished to locate his house or shop, he had to describe its site in relation to some landmark that everyone was likely to recognize. By analyzing which landmarks were referred to most frequently, we can get a 17. picture of which buildings and streets formed the hubs of areas within the town.

If we may judge by the advertisements in the Virginia Gazette, the Capitol was by far the most important landmark in Williamsburg. In advertisements from the year 1755 to 1775 (with a few random advertisements included from the 1740s and 1780s), there were 53 descriptions of buildings or lots being "near the capitol." This was nearly twice the number of references accorded to the next most important landmark. If the number of advertisements defining buildings as "below the Capitol" were added, the importance of the Capitol would be even more overwhelming.

The rest of the landmarks, with the number of times they were mentioned, are as follows:

The second caveat that should be uttered is obvious from reading the list: many of these places overlap. Francis, for instance, corresponds with at least half of the Back Street references. To evaluate the true importance of Francis Street, it would be necessary to consolidate those mentions of Back Street which refer to Francis Street (in some cases a hard thing to determine) with the ones which specifically name Francis Street. In any case, it is clear that Francis Street was far more frequently mentioned than Nicholson Street, though the latter assumes more prominence in the present restoration, Another clear overlap of categories is the printing offices and the post office. Similarly, Waller Street is in the area also listed as Below the Capitol. I have consolidated the references to Duke of Gloucester Street and Main Street; those to the Hospital, the Lunatic Asylum, and the Madhouse; those to Henry Wetherburn's Tavern, James Southall's Tavern, and Robert Anderson's Tavern (when these gentlemen were located at Block 9 lot 20-21); and those to the Speaker's House and Mr. Attorney's House under the heading "Peyton Randolph House," assuming 19. that these varieties of the names do not affect the place or character of the landmark referred to. In other cases I have tried to use the exact terms used in the advertisements.

Some of the most interesting points only become obvious when we analyse the dates when these advertisements occurred. The college, for instance, is first mentioned rather suddenly in 1769, then appears frequently as a landmark in advertisements every year thereafter until 1774 (the systematic part of my research only went up to 1775). This may indicate that the western end of Main Street was not fully developed or was not occupied by the kinds of residents that advertised in the paper until the late l760s. Similarly, a sudden increase in advertisements for Back Street in 1770 may indicate a change in the character of that area. The printing office, as might be expected, was only popular as a landmark in the days before William Rind opened a second printing office in town. Once the Hunter/Purdie/Dixon printing office was no longer unique, the advertisements began to refer to the post office instead.²⁵ The four references to Waller Street all occur in 1777 or after, reflecting the relatively late period when people became accustomed to using street names on the eastern end of town. It does not reflect late development of that area, since references to "Below the Capitol" begin in 1755 and occur throughout the l760s and l770s.

Only about half of these advertisements describe an identifiable house or lot. Thus, though we can get a sense of where the landmarks were, it is rather harder to identify the properties that comprised any landmark's hinterland. Those that can be identified are represented on Map 6, which uses a color code to symbolize the 13 most frequently mentioned landmarks (barring Capitol Landing Road, for which no house histories exist). As the map shows, a number of lots were described differently over the years. The site of the Norton-Cole House, for instance (lot 162), was at various times Map 6. Most frequently mentioned landmarks. (See key, next page.) Key to Map 6 20. described as on Main Street, near the church, and on the Market Square. Similarly, the Brick House tavern (lot 19) was described as on the Main Street, by the post office, and near Richard^obert Anderson's tavern. The apparent lack of color near the college is not due to a lack of references to houses in this area, but rather to a lack of house histories. Only one of the 14 references to houses "near the college" could be located. The same is true, as I said above, of the area along Capitol Landing Road.

If Map 6 is used as a basis for dividing the town into areas, each oriented toward its own central landmark, the result is Map 7. Needless to say, these boundaries are approximate. Main Street, one of the crucial landmarks, is left out, since it overlaps most of the other areas. Other points of overlap are not shown — as, for example, at the Peyton Randolph House, which was in both the Back Street and Market Square areas. Despite these drawbacks, the map does show some interesting things. The lack of an area around the Palace might surprise a visitor to the modern town, since the Palace seems to form such a prominent landmark today. It must not have seemed so to the average 18th-century resident, since there was not one reference to a building being "near the Palace" in the Virginia Gazette between 1755 and 1775. Another thing worth noting is that, though most of these areas are centered on a particular building, street, or square, there are two of them which are not keyed to any landmark, but are areas which 18th-century residents themselves seem to have recognized. One of these, in the northwest corner, is simply called "a retired part of the city." The other is "below the Capitol," in Benjamin Waller's sub-division of the town.

Map 7 shows boundaries that 18th-century residents might have drawn within the town; in fact, the residents did draw such boundaries unconsciously every time they described their property in relation to one of these landmarks. Map 7. Landmark areas. 21. But does the map show neighborhoods? If neighborhoods are defined as areas in which all the residents share the same social standing and/or economic purpose, the answer is not necessarily. There were differences within some of these areas, not only in the purposes for which the land was used, but in residents' attitudes toward it. For evidence of this we have to turn again to the Virginia Gazette, and study the phrases that were used to describe property in each of these areas. These read as follows:

Appendix III
The Exchange

[Note: This appendix was substantially revised by Patricia Gibbs 1 October 1980.]

In researching the above report I have repeatedly run into a strange series of assumptions having to do with the location of the "exchange" in Williamsburg, where merchants met to bargain over tobacco prices, exchange rates, etc. After looking over the matter, it seems to me that the location of the exchange behind the Capitol has little foundation, and the sources point to a more likely location of the exchange on the first block of Duke of Gloucester Street west of the Capitol.

There seems to be only one reference to the exchange in historical sources: this is in a letter of Governor Fauquier to the Board of Trade on November 3, 1765. This reference reads as follows:

"Very unluckily Colonel Mercer arrived at the time this Town was the fullest of Strangers. On Wednesday the 30th October he came up to Town. I then thought proper to go to the Coffeehouse (where I occasionally sometimes go) which is situated in that part of the Town which is call'd the Exchange tho' an open Street, where all money business is transacted. My particular Reason for going then was, that I might be an Eye witness of what did really pass, and not receive it by Relation from others. The mercantile people were all assembled as usual. the first word I heard was "One and all." Upon which as at a word agreed on before between themselves, they all quited the place to find Colonel Mercer at his Fathers Lodgings where it was known he was. This Concourse of people I should call a Mob, did I not know that it was chiefly if not altogether composed of Gentlemen of property in the Colony some of them at the Head of their Respective Counties, and the Merchants of the Country, wether English Scotch, or Virginians; for few absented themselves. They met Colonel Mercer on the way just at the Capitol. there they stop'd and demanded of him an answer whether he would resign or act in his Office as Distributor of the Stamps. He said it was an affair of great moment to him, He must consult his Friends, and promised to give them an answer at 10 o'clock on Friday morning at that place. This did not satisfy them, and they followed him to the Coffee house, in the porch of which I had seated my self with many of the Council and the Speaker…"

Notice that Fauquier does not locate the exchange; he only says it is an open street near the coffeehouse. For about 50 years it has been assumed that this coffeehouse was what was then Mrs. Vobe's tavern, now Christiana Campbell's. The reasons for this assumption are never quite clear. The Campbell Tavern house history says merely that "Fauquier described what must have been Mrs. Vobe's location as 'the Coffee House'" because (the footnote informs us) "The Exchange is believed to have been in that area behind the Capitol" (p. 11). In The Coffeehouse of the 17th and 18th Centuries, a research report written by Mary Goodwin in 1956, the reasoning is similar: "only Francis Fauquier's letter mentioned its [the coffeehouse's] location in reference to 'the Exchange' — which it has been assumed was immediately east and back of the Capitol" (p. 25). The earliest identification of the site of the exchange I could find was in an anonymous report of November 4, 1930, entitled "York Road Area," which gave no source for its assertion that the exchange was behind the Capitol. James Soltow, identifying the site of the exchange in The Economic Role of Williamsburg, p. 8, merely cites Fauquier's letter without any further comment. In other words, all we know of the exchange is that it was near the coffeehouse, which has been located at Block 7, lots 21-22, because that location is near the exchange.

As a matter of fact, there is not a single reference to the building on Block 7, lots 21-22, as a coffeehouse — neither when it was operated by Mrs. Vobe nor when it was operated by Christiana Campbell. Both women referred to their establishments as taverns.¹ The only reference Mary Goodwin could find to this location as a coffeehouse was Fauquier's — and that was attributed to this site only on the grounds that it was near the exchange!

If we look at the newspaper account² of the events described in Fauquier's letter, we find that the logistics of the situation fit a coffeehouse (and thus an exchange) located on the main street far better than one below the capitol. George Mercer was staying at his father's lodgings. (We do not know for certain where this was; however, George's brother, James Mercer, was two years later lodging with Robert Nicholson on York Road. It has often been assumed George was staying at the same place.) Leaving his lodgings, walking to the Governor's Palace, Mercer passed the Capitol. Here he met the mob that had left the coffeehouse on its way to find him at his lodgings. (If the coffeehouse were Campbell's, there would be no need to pass the Capitol on the way to York Road.) Refusing to satisfy the mob that waylaid him at the Capitol, Mercer kept on walking toward the Governor's Palace, the mob following. Soon III-3 he came to the coffeehouse where the Governor was waiting. (If Campbell's were the coffeehouse, we would have to assume that Mercer had turned around and was retreating back to his house, not continuing on as Fauquier and the newspaper both imply.) Thus the coffeehouse seems to have been somewhere between the Capitol and the Governor's Palace.

Between 1769 and 1773 a building at the western end of Duke of Gloucester Street, Block 17, western side of lot 58, was sufficiently well known as a coffeehouse to use it as a reference for locating nearby businesses. In 1769 the Palmer House across the street was advertised as "the large and commodious Brick House, opposite to the Coffee-House and nigh the Capitol" (R 2/2/69) and as "the brick house opposite the coffee house" (PD 9/21/69). In 1771 the building was described as "the coffeehouse in the main Street, next the Capitol, where Mrs. Campbell lives" (PD 5/l6/71) ³. In Mary Dickenson's 1772 and 1773 advertisements for her store she identified her business as "the Store above the Coffeehouse, near the Capitol" (PD 4/30/72) or "next Door above the Coffee­house." (PD 10/14/73). By "above" she no doubt means "west of," this being the invariable usage of the term.

Only one of the tenants of the property on the eastern part of Block 17, lot 58 owned by Nathaniel Walthoe (and later his estate) from 1762 to 1772 can be positively identified. Christiana Campbell operated a tavern there from about 1769, when she moved from the James Anderson House, until the fall of 1771, when she moved to Block 7, lots 21-22 (PD 10/3/71). Even though the location of his business is unidentified, an earlier tenant could have been Richard Charlton. In 1767 he advertised that "the coffee-house in this city being now opened by the subscriber as a Tavern he hereby acquaints all Gentlemen … that they will meet with the best entertainment …" (PD 6/25/67). His wording about the coffeehouse being opened as a tavern not only suggests that the previous tenant used the building for a different purpose but also implies that the building was a landmark known to persons who frequented Williamsburg.

What does the house history of Block 17, lot 58 west (known as Walthoe's Storehouse) tell us about the structure? Deeds for the sale of the property to Walthoe in 1762 and Charlotte Dickson in 1772 refer to the building as a storehouse, but when Walthoe's executor advertised the property for sale in 1771 he called it the coffeehouse (PD 5/16/71). Mrs. Dickson and her son apparently occupied the property before the deed was executed, since in October 1771, Beverley Dickson wrote London merchant John Norton that "we have Bought a House on the main Street next the Capitol the most convenient in Town for a Store."

If this building was the coffeehouse mentioned in Fauquier's letter, then it had a porch in 1765 large enough to seat Fauquier, members of the Council, and the Speaker of the House of Burgesses. Because of the requirement in the law directing the building of Williamsburg that houses fronting the main street be set back six feet from the street, few buildings on Duke of Gloucester Street had sizeable front porches. But this does not rule out a side porch on the building.⁴ If the building had a side porch overlooking the Capitol, this would fit the coffeehouse location implied in Fauquier's letter and the newspaper account of the incident.

The assumption that the coffeehouse mentioned by Fauquier was located on the eastern part of lot 58, though conjectural, appears a more likely site than identifying it as the building reconstructed as Christiana Campbell's Tavern. And since the location of the exchange is only mentioned in Fauquier's letter, unless new information turns up, it will probably be impossible to prove the location of the exchange to everyone's satisfaction. I hope I have at least made clear that the subject is open to question.

Appendix I

References from Virginia Gazette in chronological order

The left-hand column contains the date the advertisement appeared. The right-hand column carries the identification of the house mentioned, where this can be supplied from house histories. The block number appears first, followed by a colon and the lot number. The identification always refers to the words immediately preceding the asterisk.

This list only attempts to be complete between 1755 and 1775. With a few exceptions, it includes only those references which concern the relationships between two or more buildings or places. Thus, an advertisement such as George Hamilton's informing people that he is setting up shop at the home of Edmund Dickinson would not be included, since it does not indicate the relationship of Dickinson's home to other landmarks in the town. An advertisement that mentioned a street, an area, a landmark, or an adjoining building would be included.

Appendix II
References from Virginia Gazette chronologically in order of landmark

Obvious duplications of advertisements (such as when the same advertisement was printed in both papers, or repeated in subsequent issues of the same paper) were not included in the following list. Series of advertisements by the same person were included.