The 18th
Century Puzzle

It was an ambitious project to say the least, but one that Tom Glass, a 35-year veteran of the residential construction industry was not only prepared for, but also aching to begin.

By KIM ORR
Photos: Greg Powers & Audrey Crewe
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At the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Appomattox County, Virginia, a land dotted by farms, cows and the occasional rider, there’s a certain aura that even the one-time visitor can’t escape.

It’s an aura consumed by historic battles, won and lost, and the kind of loneliness that can heal a lifetime spent among skyscrapers and bustling traffic – or even war. In 1797, a revolutionary war officer by the name of Robert Kelso constructed a home so unique for the time that 200 years later it would captivate even the most jaded historian.

It was this place three years ago that Tom Glass discovered the abandoned Woodlawn house and decided to call it home. Calling it home was the easy part.

New Beginnings

It’s the day after New Year’s and Glass is enjoying a comfortable afternoon at his recently restored home in Rappahannock County. Two nights ago, he and his longtime girlfriend had several friends over to bring in the new year among the scent of firewood burning through Woodlawn’s famous double chimney, which engulfs the east side of the house in a mass of red brick. These days, despite the surrounding solitude, Woodlawn is rarely short of houseguests. “We usually have lots of people come to visit from D.C. to escape the city for a bit,” said Glass, a small man distinguished by a head of gray hair that seems oddly more youthful than his once blond locks.

The house’s new environs aren’t unlike its original resting place, about 120 miles south. The craggy blue line of the Blue Ridge Mountains still extends across the horizon, leaving just a sliver of sky hanging above. A blanket of soft grass stretches in every direction nearly uninterrupted by man-made structures. And cows still graze in the nearby farms, flicking their tails at buzzing pests.

How it got here is perhaps Glass’ greatest architectural achievement to date. At the least, it’s a story to tell guests as they traverse the home’s Federal-era side halls, momentary subjects on a canvas of aged wood. It’s this wood, which appears soft and worn like the deck of an old boat, that gives the house its true character and belies its much more intricate inner workings.

A year ago, most of these so-called inner workings were splayed out on the field that now serves as Woodlawn’s foundation. Over six months, Glass and his team pieced them together into what became a 3-D puzzle of gargantuan proportions. “This was the first time I’d actually taken apart a house and put it back together again,” Glass said.

It was an ambitious project to say the least, but one that Glass, a 35-year veteran of the residential construction industry, was not only prepared for but also aching to begin.

Constructing the 3-D Puzzle

When Glass met Walter Cart in 2005, Woodlawn was little more than a stack of centuries’ old wood and brick and, like the old oaks reaching past the more than 40-foot-high double chimney, threatening to break at the first sign of bad weather. That it had lasted this long was already quite remarkable.

The attic – one of Cart’s favorite features – flooded in a small downpour and cows made a habit of taking refuge in the basement, says Cart, who is the vice president of Central Virginia Bank but also dabbles in unearthing and selling abandoned homes built in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Discovering these abandoned homes is a source of passion for Cart, and Woodlawn was no exception. The English basement featuring handmade brick laid in a Flemish bond pattern, and the mix of architectural styles echoing those found in Virginia’s Tidewater region in the 18th century captivated him. “I’d never seen those styles this far east,” he says.

After years spent negotiating with the landowners for rights to the house and the land, he wasn’t going to sell Woodlawn to just anyone. When he met Glass and learned of his extensive work in renovating structures from this period, he figured Glass was about as good a buyer as he could hope for and sold the house.

Although transporting Woodlawn wouldn’t be kind to the original structure nor the handful of history surrounding it, including a cemetery erected by the original owner, “the house was a wreck” and likely would have fallen down from neglect, said Woodlawn contractor Richard Williams, who’s helped move and rebuild at least five of these historic structures.

Nearly a year after Glass and Cart shook hands, Woodlawn was disassembled and loaded onto two tractor-trailers bound for Rappahannock. Over the next year, the crew assembled each of the giant oak mortise and tenon joints just as they had been put together in 1797, supplementing the missing pieces with oak timbers as close to the original hand-hewed parts as possible.

Early on in the process, Glass worked with an architect to map out and number every beam and joint and decide how to fill in the gaps. It made rebuilding the original structure relatively simple, though incorporating the modern necessities like plumbing and ductwork was a different story. “It’s difficult to get through the house vertically because of the diagonal braces – we couldn’t cut through them,” says Glass. So instead, the team created three different zones to house all of Woodlawn’s plumbing.

While this kind of work is fairly commonplace for people like Cart, Williams and Glass, who’ve built their livings around such feats of residential construction, the project has attracted a fair amount of attention from industry hobbyists. Five Star Films made a short video following the reconstruction of Woodlawn and Glass’ painstaking process. Today, the finished product is a sum of grand dimensions: a 30-foot-by-12-foot hall, a 40-degree pitched roof, and so on. For Glass, it’s what fills those spaces that’s taken Woodlawn from house to home.

Open House

Woodlawn holds a charm and mystique that draws people to it – especially those who once lived under its steep-pitched roof. The interior, a mix of old and new that in many ways fits the space better than the more literal period pieces seen in many of these classic reconstructions, is a source of calm to all who enter.

“I didn’t want it to be a museum piece, so I didn’t furnish the house with 18th century furniture,” said Glass, who instead used a mix of simple furniture from makers in Ohio, Chicago and even India, and a tableau of modern art pieces, paintings and sculptures, including a few ceramic pieces he created himself.

Over the years, a number of Woodlawn’s old inhabitants have contacted the new owner, anxious to see the structure, retell old stories and revel in the masterpiece it has become.

The Five Star Films video follows Nancy Jamerson Weiland’s reunion with the space where she grew up. “My father would be thrilled,” she said, lost in memories of her time at Woodlawn. “If he were here, he probably wouldn’t say anything. He’d just take that big burley hand of his and wrap it around my little bitty hand like I was a little girl, and we’d just stand here together and marvel that Woodlawn’s still here.”

Thanks to Glass, it’ll be here for many years to come.

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