Hartwood Manor, renewed
Hartwood Manor in western Stafford County gets new life with
comprehensive restoration.
By RICHARD AMRHINE
The Free Lance-Star
Date published: 1/20/2006
WHEN CONNIE Hilker discovered that the price had come down on Hartwood Manor, she thought it might actually be within reach.
So she asked her husband, Stephen, what he thought. “Well, it can't hurt to take a look,” he replied.
Famous last words, as they say.
That was 2002, and before the year was out the couple had become the proud owners of a rare Southern example of Gothic Revival architecture - one of just two in Stafford County.
Hartwood Manor is a landmark home along Hartwood Road in western Stafford County, sitting on about nine acres next door to
Hartwood Winery. It is two stories tall with an English basement.
It dates to 1848, when it was built by Ariel and Julia Foote. They had relocated to the area from Connecticut, and brought the idea for a Gothic Revival-style brick home, which was more common in the Northeast, with them.
It was a large and very solidly built house - but a spectacular, rich person's mansion it was not. Cost was a consideration from the beginning for the Foote family. On the front of the house the bricks were laid in Flemish bond, but on the sides and rear the less costly American bond was used.
In July 2002, The Free Lance-Star paid a visit while it was on the market. It was clearly a house that had been well-cared-for over the years and presented new owners with a choice: They could maintain it and make selective improvements, or they could completely rehabilitate it from top to bottom. Connie Hilker knew her choice would be the latter.
Last year, through the efforts of the Hilkers and the research of architectural historian Nancy Kraus of Glen Allen, the house took its place on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.
The rehabilitation project Connie Hilker has undertaken is entering its final stages in the portions of the house the family will initially live in - most of the main and upper levels. Plaster repairs being made now will leave those walls ready for paint.
“We set some deadlines [to move in] and they came and went,” Hilker said. “I am so looking forward to the day that coming
here will mean coming home. This will be a cool place to live.”
It will be a well-earned homecoming. Aside from enlarging and completely redoing the kitchen, the project has primarily involved scraping walls, stripping woodwork and repairing plaster.
“We are the 21st registered owners of this house, and I think every one of them put a coat of paint on the trim without taking anything off first,” she said.
In addition to being a primary carpenter for the project, Hilker also has been the general contractor, enlisting and organizing the efforts of family members and subcontractors.
Her father-in-law is the electrician, for example, and her brother installed the new kitchen cabinets. Those handsome, new cherry cabinets, by the way, were custom-built by a New Hampshire company based on measurements Hilker provided. Communication was exclusively via e-mail. The cabinets nevertheless fit perfectly as delivered.
In addition to the physical work the project has entailed, which is actually a labor of love, Hilker said the real challenge has been in scheduling work that needed to be done in a certain order.
“It hasn't been easy coordinating everyone involved,” she said. When you have something in particular that needs to be done, “it doesn't help that there's usually only one guy in the area that does it.”
To the casual eye, the project looks very comprehensive, but Hilker insists that the renovation could have been even more thorough.
“We really didn't want to take on anything that didn't have to be messed with,” she said. “But we did learn what's old, what's older, what we could take off, and what we had to leave alone.”
It was all a part of doing the most sensitive restoration possible without going completely broke, she said. The gingerbread trim on the eaves of the house, which wasn't original to the house, had rotted and would have been prohibitively expensive to replace.
Hilker and her subcontractors are digging deep around the front of the house to improve drainage. Though the basement has never been wet, the walls show signs of moisture infiltration.
For several reasons, it is remarkable that the house is standing at all. First, there were the fires. There is evidence of a significant blaze that was contained in one upstairs bedroom; in another bedroom, the upper corner of a fireplace mantel had burned from the inside but was apparently caught before it spread; and the box behind a basement electrical outlet Hilker had used turned out to be completely rusted away by chronic moisture, leaving old live wires exposed within the wall.
Then there was the home's role in the Civil War. Some 100,000 Union troops descended on Stafford County, which had fewer than 9,000 residents in the 1860s. The soldiers would virtually denude the county of trees, using the wood for fires and structures.
But Hartwood Manor is populated with huge old trees, many predating the Civil War, and research suggests that the Connecticut roots of the Foote family may have spared the property such destruction.
Soon after buying the house, Hilker brought in an arborist to prune the trees, which probably saved them when Hurricane Isabel roared through in 2003.
The house itself was used as a Union hospital during the region's various campaigns, with bloodstains so severe on some floors that they were replaced, according to lore that's been handed down.
Not all the surprises that come with renovating an old house are costly or troublesome. Hilker discovered that one previous resident, Clarissa W. Graves, a daughter in the family that owned the place in the late 19th century, liked to sign her name here and there in her room. One signature, next to a window, will be preserved.
As the project unfolded, Hilker was pleased to find that the 1967 addition to the house was so carefully done. The added space was well-thought-out, the construction was solid, and the trim work inside and out matched the home's unique style. The bricks had come from a demolished Petersburg building from the same era.
Hilker also was paid a surprise visit by members of the Jett family of Stafford County, descendents of the Jetts who owned the house at the turn of the 20th century.
To enhance the historic nature of the house, Hilker will transplant a few items she's collected along the way, such as a pair of old doors and an old iron gate to a cemetery plot with the name Henry Lubker on it.
“Old houses like this always have a creepy aspect to them,” she said. “Why not add to it?”
