Nelson House: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Colonial National Historical Park

Beagan, Christopher; Auwaerter, John

The Nelson House is located in Yorktown, a small unincorporated village at the lower Chesapeake Bay estuary between Williamsburg and Hampton in the Virginia Tidewater region. Also known as Historic Yorktown, the village is on the south side of the York River near the eastern end of the Colonial Parkway, a limited-access road connecting Yorktown Battlefield with Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown. The village is a part of the Yorktown Battlefield unit of Colonial National Historical Park that also includes the units of Jamestown, Cape Henry Memorial, and the Colonial Parkway. The Yorktown Battlefield unit features a visitor center and park headquarters east of the village, across a wooded ravine historically known as Tobacco Road, adjoining the Revolutionary War battlefield. Along Yorktown’s quiet Main Street of mostly small colonial buildings, the Nelson House and its two-acre walled grounds occupy a prominent place. Initially acquired in 1706 by Thomas “Scotch Tom” Nelson, the property reflects the village’s eighteenth century prosperity and its early twentieth century revival. Scotch Tom built the existing Georgian-style two-story brick house in ca.1730, and during the 1781 Siege of Yorktown, the Revolutionary War’s final major battle, it was the home of Governor Thomas Nelson Jr. His descendants remained through the nineteenth century during a period of marked decline in Yorktown. In 1914, the property was purchased by wealthy industrialist George Preston Blow and renovated into a Colonial Revival-style country place known as York Hall. Charles Gillette, one of Virginia’s most prominent early landscape architects, designed the grounds. After acquiring the York Hall estate in 1968, the National Park Service restored the Nelson House to its colonial appearance in the 1970s. Due to a lack of historic documentation and desire to retain some York Hall estate features, the park did not complete a corresponding restoration of the colonial landscape. Instead, it removed features that were overtly twentieth century in character, leaving the major structures, organization, and plantings of the Colonial Revival landscape. Today, the landscape is dominated by the Nelson House, located at the northeast corner of the grounds, and brick walls that extend along Main and Read streets. Incorporated into the perimeter wall along Read Street are two Colonial Revival-style York Hall estate outbuildings, the carriage house (garage) and Wisteria Cottage (gardener’s cottage), which date to ca.1916. Lawns defined by hedges and fences surround the front and back of the house, while a lawn terrace overlooks a formal garden dating to 1922 lined with grass paths and wood and brick edging. Lawns with scattered trees, shrubs, and hedges comprise the remainder of the property, and screen a ca.1916 stable that is part of a service area.

Nelson House: Cultural Landscapes Inventory, Colonial National Historical Park

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