The President's House is the residence of the President of the College of William and Mary in Virginia in Williamsburg, Virginia. Constructed in 1732, the building still serves its original purpose and is among the oldest buildings in Virginia. Since its construction only one of the college's presidents, Robert Saunders Jr., has not moved into the building, which is let for free to the president. The President's House is the College's third-oldest building and the oldest official college presidential residence in the United States.
Location
The President's House is located on the College's Ancient Campus (also known as "Historic Campus"). Situated northeast of the Wren Building and facing the Brafferton to the building's south, the President's House is considered to be a component of the Wren Building's forecourt. Together, these seventeenth-century structures form the centerpiece of the Virginia Landmarks Register's Williamsburg Historic District.
The three buildings occupy the wedge formed by the confluence of Richmond Road and Jamestown Road. These two roads originate at Richmond (the current capital of Virginia) and Jamestown (the first capital of the Colony of Virginia), intersecting at the western terminus of Duke of Gloucester Street and forming an intersection referred to by locals as "Confusion Corner" or "College Corner". President's House is visible looking west from Duke of Gloucester Street in present-day Merchant's Square of Colonial Williamsburg.
Design
Copying much of the Brafferton design, Henry Cary Jr. built the President's House to sit directly across from the Brafferton on the campus. Each dimension of the President's House is larger than the Brafferton. A central passage on the ground floor was built with two rooms on each side with a dining room and parlor in the front, austerely mirroring contemporaneous Georgian gentry residences in the Tidewater region. The exterior features a hip roof, five-bay design on Flemish bond brickwork with glazed headers.
During its 1928-1931 renovations as part of John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s efforts to restore Williamsburg to its colonial appearance, several of the outbuildings were rebuilt or altered. Among them was a garage built during Benjamin Ewell's 1854-1888 presidency, which was converted into a firehouse. The grounds of the President's House also include a flower garden and an unpaved driveway.
History
The College of William and Mary in Virginia was chartered on 8 February 1693 by King William III and Queen Mary II, the King and Queen of England, as a seminary for the Church of England in Virginia. Middle Plantation, a halfway point between Jamestown along the James River and the small settlement of Chiskiack along the York River, was selected as the site of this new school. On the site of what is now the President's House ran a wooden palisade built in 1633 that cut through Middle Plantation to prevent Powhatan incursions in the aftermath of the massacre of English settlers in 1622 and the ensuing Second Anglo-Powhatan War. The palisade survived less than a decade but figured largely in the societal memory of the first students at the College over 60 years later.
Construction began on the Sir Christopher Wren Building–named for its potential architect, Christopher Wren–on 8 August 1695 as the College's first building. The construction on the Wren Building was completed in 1699, the year the City of Williamsburg was both established and became the second capital of Virginia, but rebuilding was required following a fire in 1705. In 1717, Governor Alexander Spotswood established a school for Indians. In 1723, the Brafferton was constructed to house this school.
Williamsburg resident Henry Cary Jr. is thought to have been contracted to construct the Brafferton and did extensive work on the Governor's Palace and Capitol. On 31 July 1732, several weeks after completing the Wren Building's chapel wing in 1732, Cary is recorded as having laid the foundation for the President's House. Construction was completed the next year, with the College's first president and founder James Blair moving in. Both the Brafferton and the President's House were built by enslaved laborers hired out to the College.