Utility and Beauty:  Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America

2003:  Utility and Beauty:  Robert Wellford and Composition Ornament in America, by Mark Reinberger.  University of Delaware Press, Newark, Delaware, Page 125.

This comprehensive study of Robert Wellford, his Philadelphia-based business, and his use of composition ornament, includes Wharton Place and the four signed Wellford mantles there, though Reinberger erroneously indicates only three are signed.  More about Wellford and the use of composition ornament at Wharton Place is discussed elsewhere herein.  As it pertains to the house itself, Reinberger offers the following:

Wharton House [sic] in Accomac [sic] County, on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, exemplifies these tendencies [only the finest rank of houses in the countryside and smaller cities had compo].  The house was built in the first decade of the 1800s by John Wharton (1762-1811 [sic]), a sea captain, privateer, and maritime merchant who spent much time in Philadelphia.  The house resembles a suburban Philadelphia villa more than a tidewater plantation house, and it is believed that Wharton contracted for much of the work in Phildelphia…

Wharton typifies both late-eighteenth-century Philadelphia villas and Tidewater plantation homes in that both major facades (land and water) are identical.  The exterior has typical Federal details, including white jack arch lintels, an attenuated cornice with dentils and modillions, fanlight doorways, and panels between the first- and second-floor windows…