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A circa 1695 windowpane etched with names
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The Powder Magazine’s weather vane rod, circa 1715
In its new exhibit, “Restoring Williamsburg,” the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum in Colonial Williamsburg will reveal, through extremely rare objects and artifacts, how architectural historians and preservationists know what they know and do what they do.
“We have wanted to do this exhibit for a long time,” says Dani Jaworski, manager of architectural collections for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. The exhibit is meant to enhance visitors’ understanding of the architecture in the historic district. “A lot of people don’t know that we have an architectural collection.”
Two of the earliest pieces from the museum’s collection that are included in the 80-object exhibit are a circa 1695 scuttle door from the Nelson-Galt House on Francis Street, which served as an access hatch for the attic space, and an original 1715 weather vane rod and wooden finial that connected the rod to the roof of the Powder Magazine on Market Square before an 1889 roof fire, when both were removed.
The exhibit also includes an etched windowpane from Bassett Hall etched with the names of Mary E. Coke, who lived in the house between 1843 and 1845, and her cousin Clarissa W. Henley.
“Our exhibit is about buildings, but this speaks to the people that lived in those buildings,” Jaworski says.
