Alexandria Gazette Packet

The imposing cream-colored brick house perched on a terraced knoll just north of Huntley Meadows Park commands the attention of many passersby. “The house has singular architectural sophistication and exhibits the refined ingenuity inherent in the buildings of the English Regency period,” says the Virginia Landmarks Register. 

This is Historic Huntley, a federal period, 11-room villa built around 1825 by Thomson Francis Mason, the mayor of Alexandria and grandson of Gunston Hall’s George Mason IV. Mason called his country retreat “Huntly,” likely named for the family’s ancestral home in Scotland.  

While in the eyes of some, it may not have the grandeur of George Washington’s Mount Vernon or Robert E. Lee’s Arlington House and historians call it a “secondary home,” architecturally, it’s a gem, experts say. Secondary in this context means it was not the Masons’ primary residence.

Mason, a public figure, built the villa almost a mile west of today’s U.S. 1 as a place to escape the bustling port city and probably some demanding constituents, to wind down in a quiet place and have some private time. It probably took 90 minutes for Mason to get there by horse from his home, Colross, on Oronoco Street. “It’s like driving to the Northern Neck today,” said Robbie McNeil, a Friends of Historic Huntley (FOHH) board member.

The three-level house has a main entry room with opposite doors that open to the north and south, plus a door to the outside from every main floor room. This was perhaps the summer “cooling system” of the day, taking advantage of the hilltop’s breezes.

Marking its 200th Year

To honor the 200th anniversary of the villa’s construction, FOHH and the Fairfax County Park Authority, the property’s owner, hosted Art and Architecture Day on April 5. Eight artists created sketches and paintings and volunteers led tours for around 60 visitors.

FCPA acquired the house and 2.8 acres in 1986 and restored it in 2012, removing changes made by owners who followed the Masons. The complex includes the house, a necessary with flanking rooms, a root cellar, an icehouse, a spring house and a tenant house.

In the 1800s, the site overlooked a 2,000-acre plantation called Hunting Creek Farm where enslaved people grew oats, wheat, corn, hay, clover and other crops. Today’s visitors can see Huntley Meadows Park to the south.

Refined Architecture

Historic Huntley is a federal period house, a style that some say shifted from European influences to reflect the country’s independence and new identity.

Symmetry is a salient design element inside and outside.  The complex appears to have been designed as a whole, with symmetrically-situated dependencies on both sides.  One still stands.

“The mansion house at Huntley has remarkable refinement for a secondary house of a Virginia planter’s family,” wrote historian Tony P. Wrenn. At 1,400-square-feet, it has an “H” design with a central room and two identical wings. 

The federal register nomination states, “From the front, the broad central gable is crowned by two rectangular interior chimneys which run parallel to the roofline.” The house has eight fireplaces and the original random-width, pine-board floors sawed by hand. 

The interior has features like a beaded keystone bisecting the arch of the fanlight, an oval medallion on one mantel and ornamented woodwork on the doors and windows. 

In one room, visitors can study construction details, including the insides of interior walls from the first crude layer to the smoother, finished outer wall and plaster made from limestone, sand, water and hog and cattle hair. 

The exterior bricks are held together by lime mortar, consisting partly of oyster shells. At the underground icehouse, visitors can peer down the ice well. Back then, people of means got blocks of ice from northern lakes, explained Friends of Historic Huntley volunteer J.G. Harrington. “It was a symbol of being rich.”

The brick “necessary” is a four-holer, considered rather large for its time. On each side of the privy is a room with diamond-shaped vents, probably smokehouses, Harrington speculated. This building’s cornice has the dog-tooth dentil pattern matching the main house.

Wrenn summed up the significance of Huntley, writing, "Whatever the derivation of the mansion house at Huntley, it survives as a notable example of early nineteenth century architecture; as an example of a farm or country house of an early nineteenth century city dweller; as a Mason family house and as part of a well-sited and relatively complete complex. When considered together, these factors make Huntley an important architectural landmark.”

Franconia Supervisor Rodney Lusk stopped by on April 4 and commented, “It’s important to preserve historic structures and this is one of the oldest in Fairfax County. I especially appreciate the research to contextualize the role of the enslaved people who worked here.”

Historic Huntley is on the National Register of Historic Places, the Virginia Landmarks Register and the Fairfax County Inventory of Historic Sites.