The Virginia Eastern Shore and its British Origins

1975:  The Virginia Eastern Shore and its British Origins by H. Chandlee Forman.  Eastern Shore Publishers’ Associates, Easton, Maryland, Pages 328, 329, 340-344, and 350.

This book offers the first questions to the conventional wisdom (or apocrypha) previously published about Wharton Place.  On pages 328 and 329 Forman offers the following:

In describing Wharton Place (1800-1810; Fig. 352), Whitelaw in his great work noted a “new” type of the Eastern Shore [sic] which resembles, according to him, a Philadelphia mansion of the period.  At the same time he submitted no names of comparable Philadelphia examples and was willing to make an architectural statement based on hearsay.  True, you can find in Philadelphia squarish [sic] Georgian mansions with hip roofs and central chimneys, as Stenton, Germantown, but to this writer’s knowledge the floor plans are not like that of Wharton Place.  Weakening his argument, Whitelaw admitted that John Wharton, builder of Wharton Place, was not related to the Philadelphia Whartons.

Actually Wharton Place is an Eastern Shore type.  Another like it is Beckford (1780s?; Fig. 351), Princess Anne, Maryland.

On page 340 Forman continues in a section entitled “Hangover Georgian Mansion in an Eastern Shore Style” with the following:

It was discussed earlier how Wharton Place (Fig. 352) does not appear to be an early Philadelphia type of suburban or town house, and how the owner, John Wharton (d. 1811 [sic]), was not related to the Philadelphia Whartons.  So strong has been the Philadelphia tradition for this place that the Philadelphia Historical Commission went out on a limb by putting a certified marker upon the front door of Wharton Place.

The builder, John Wharton, probably constructed the homestead between 1800 and 1810.  It stands on the land facing Assawaman [sic] Creek and the great barrier islands.  The water and rear or garden façade are identical, each having a front doorway with fanlight and reeded, engaged columns.  These columns appear to support entablature blocks crowned by a broken pediment—the ensemble having fish-scale, dentil, and modillion decoration, as the photograph shows.  The sunk panels underneath the second-floor windows are not “aprons” as claimed, but decorative elements in place of the old-fashioned Georgian belt course.  The panels, now filled with boards, are said to have had swag ornaments of the kind of “plastic” described earlier.  The main cornice has the usual paired brackets of this era, and the hipped roof is crowned by a captain’s walk between central chimneys.  The watertable is of quarter-round bricks.

On the north side the one-storey brick wing does not bind in with the main house and forms an addition.

And on page 350, after a section of photographs including those of Wharton Place, Forman concludes:

As pointed out earlier, this is the same kind of floor plan as used at brick Beckford in Somerset County, Maryland.  There are so many convincing similarities to Beckford, reputed to have built in 1776, but possibly in the 1780s, that no one should be swayed by the Philadelphia “theory” in regard to the origins of Wharton Place.