Robert E Lee High School - Leeway / Record Yearbook (Staunton, VA)

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proportions, arouses the admiration of both layman and architect. This hall is richly paneled and has a range of Corinthian philasters. Each wing, of which there are four, consists of two rooms, a larger and a smaller. There are two stories, a ground fioor, on which are the bedrooms, and a main story embodying the principal living rooms. Some of these rooms have painted walls and others panelling with dadoes. There are many mantels which remain from the first period of the house. As students of Robert E. Lee High School our interest, naturally centers about the southeast chamber, the room where Robert E. Lee was born. The Mother's room and the adjoining nursery have been restored as they were at the time of Lee's birth. There are mahogany paneled doors and oyster white walls surrounding the Adam mantel in the chamber, Beyond each corner of the house stands a brick out-building. These are known as the Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, and Northwest Dependencies and have been called by succeeding generations in accordance with their use, the kitchen, master's office, dairy, gardener's house, and storehouse. The Southeast Dependency is a fine example of an old southern colonial kitchen. lt contains a fireplace twelve feet wide, six feet high, and five feet deep. lt is supposed to be capable of roasting a fair sized ox. A laundry, walled in kitchen court with a cobblestone center, herb garden, and a smokehouse complete the group. The Southwest Dependency or the office in which Thomas Lee conducted his legal affairs contains three rooms, each with a fireplace, and one central chimney. The Northeast Dependency, used as a workroom and a storehouse, has plastered walls and a brick fioor. The Northwest Dependency is the Plantation office in which the masters of Stratford met with their overseers, servants, and tradesmen. Another important feature of the grounds is the beautiful garden east of the Great House and beyond the Southeast and Northeast Dependencies. The formal walled garden, with its grassed terraces, box borders, and patterned after the Lee Coat-of-Arms, is a revelation of the grand manner of the Eighteenth Century. VVithin its walls bloom again many old fashioned perennials, fragrant shrubs, and beautiful fiowers. a..Looking north from the mansion across a wooded park one sees the Potomac River. A landing and a nearby mill and millpond also catch the eye. Departing from the vast estate, covering in all eleven hundred acres of wooded land cut by winding ravines, you look back upon a harmonious plantation group rising simply and majestically in its soft coloring of age, a fitting memorial to a man so noble as General Robert E. Lee.

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STRATFORD HALL In Westmoreland County, Virginia, between 1725 and 1730 there was erected one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in America. This beautiful and impressive mansion was built by Thomas Lee, grandfather of Robert E. Lee. This building, due to the reconstruction work of the Robert E. Lee Memorial Foundation, is still standing in good condition. They have endeavored to restore, furnish, preserve, and maintain it as a national shrine in perpetual memory of the Commander-in-Chief of the Confederate Armies, Robert E. Lee. The Great House, as the central building of the extensive estate is often called, is uniformly balanced, serene, massive, and austere. Fine brick work in Flemish bond comprises the walls, there are glazed headers in the upper and lower stories and wide corners, jambs, and arches of rubbed brick. On the north and south sides are two doorways of moulded bricks, with stone stair- ways rising to them in balanced flights. The stone balustrade at the Southern doorway is the only one of this kind known to exist in the colonies. One of the most interesting features of the building is, however, the two grogs of four chimney stacks, joined by arches and forming pavilions over the hipped roof at each end of the house. ' The house is built according to the traditional H plan of the Seventeenth Century with a hall occupying the center which, because of its symmetry and

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SCENES FROM STRATFORD I'1.ANTAT1oN OI-'Iflclc xNYURK ROOM STRAT l-'ORD H.'XI.I. Lrxyy Qlrlrlcg IQITCHISN