Photo courtesy of Eamonn O Muiri.
The Bowden-Armistead House, a three-story Greek Revival home surrounded by black wrought-iron fencing, stands out. It is an antebellum relic; the last remnant of the post-colonial homes and businesses present before the 1930s restoration of Williamsburg was finished. The house is located at 207 W. Duke of Gloucester Street, on a lot once owned by the adjacent Bruton Parish Church. Built in 1858 by prominent lawyer Lemuel J. Bowden, local gossip of the time reported its astonishing cost to be more than $10,000. The Bowden-Armistead House has ever since been a landmark on the cultural and geographic landscape of Williamsburg’s main street.
The stately home serves as a symbol of the wealth, power, and longevity of two successive judicial families. It still stands tall among its colonial neighbors as the only structure on DoG Street not presently owned by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
According to a local newspaper article dated June 30, 1858, “A most handsome building stands on the North side of Main Street,” where it intersects Nassau Street. Measuring 53 feet wide and 40 feet deep and capped with a hipped roof, the house was described as being “... one of the finest residences to be found in this section of Virginia. Mr. Bowden’s house bids fair to be a thing of beauty. May it be to him and his a joy forever.” Bowden was a lawyer and politician who was anxious to shine among the people whose families traced their roots back to the earliest days of Virginia’s existence.
Photo courtesy of Maggie McCain.
Bowden spared no expense in the construction or furnishing of his home. Classical Greek Ionic columns gracing its Baltimore brick exterior were faux-painted to resemble marble, and the wide windows and doors boasted granite sills and iron caps. Guests entered into a gracious, ten-foot-wide hallway that stretched the length of the house. The main floor had damask drapery at all of the windows facing the street. Its two parlors (separated by pocket doors) held sofas and numerous chairs, coal-burning fireplaces, and large gilt mirrors adding to the desired impression of elitism. The home’s most expensive piece of furniture was a grand piano much cherished by the young daughter of the house.
Alas, all Bowden’s efforts to impress and ingratiate himself with Williamsburg society were to no avail. There was a war brewing that would change the course of his own life as well as many others.
Bowden was well known for his Union sympathies, and vowed to cease any legal or financial activities as long as he was behind Confederate lines. His own mother refused to set foot under the same roof as her son. For Unionists, there was a real risk of arrest and imprisonment, or of being covered in hot tar and feathers and carried out of town riding a plank rail like a horse. Bowden wisely took his family north. The house was then at one point used as a hospital, and recovering patients used a diamond to scribe their names into the window glass. The Battle of Williamsburg saw the town under attack and, subsequently, occupied by Federal forces.
William Champion, Robert Travis and Henry Tabb Armistead. Cary Peyton Armistead was born later in 1857. The artist was Leopold Paul Unger, circa 1854.
During the war, the furnishings and plundered library suffered greatly at the hands of careless occupants. Meanwhile, Martha Ellen passed away, followed shortly by Bowden himself, who died of smallpox in 1864 at the age of 48. Their surviving children’s squabble over their inheritance exposed the pettiness of their characters. Within a few short years of Bowden’s construction of his grand home, it was sold and his heirs estranged.
Robert T. Armistead, James City County Commonwealth’s Attorney, purchased the Bowden house and its one-acre lot from the estate in 1874 for the grand price of $2,625. The Armistead family has preserved it ever since.
The home served as a wonderful place to raise many generations of Armisteads. Cousins Mary Frances Armistead and Robert Travis Armistead married in 1869, and their son, Frank, was born in the home in 1878. He grew up to continue the family tradition, attending William & Mary and studying law under his father. He became a judge in 1927.
Mark Scheider interpreting General Marquis de Lafayette in front of the Bowden-Armistead House. Photo courtesy of Adam Fagen.
Frank bought out his sister’s interest in the estate in 1914, married Rosa Lee Warburton the next year, and began populating the grand house. Robert Travis Armistead was born in 1916, and his sister, Letitia, in 1918. Frank added much needed modernizations to the house such as plumbing and electricity, and the first central heating system in 1936. The kitchen was brought indoors and the original pump and wood-burning fireplace were removed.
When John D. Rockefeller started purchasing properties for the Colonial Williamsburg Restoration project, Frank’s granddaughter, Mary Peyton Armistead Hogge, today recalls that her father’s cousins, Dora and Cara Armistead, had refused to sell their property, a Victorian house across from the Capitol. Mary speculates that perhaps Frank might have accepted a more generous offer than was given but is glad their home and location also survived the Restoration.
Rosa Armistead inherited the property when Frank passed away in 1952. Upon her death, the property passed to Judge Robert Travis Armistead and his sister, Letitia (Lettie). When Robert and his wife, Sarah, moved in, they had two children. After Mary came along in 1959, they decided to enlarge their home, adding a back section in 1965. They made many other improvements, both inside and out, keeping meticulous records.
Robert T. Armistead, circa 1920.
“My dad was the one who brought the house into the twentieth century,” Mary says. “We had air conditioning by the year I was born, and the new addition meant each bedroom finally had its own bathroom, instead of guests sharing with us.” It also provided more privacy for the family by creating living space shielded from curious pedestrians. “My grandmother was in the Williamsburg Garden Club and loved flowers of every kind. With the help of her talented yardman, Greenhow, she planted flowers, trees and shrubs which would help screen the yard.”
Mary was born after her grandmother passed but grew up in the gardens that were part of her legacy. “I fell in love with peonies that my grandmother planted,” she remembers. “There were roses, lilies, and lots of boxwood, of course. During her lifetime, the Bowden-Armistead House was a stop on the club’s annual Williamsburg Garden Tour.”
Mary and siblings, Travis and Sallie, grew up always conscious of the history their home embodies and their familial duty to protect it. “One day Travis and I were tormenting each other near a window that had Civil War signatures inscribed on the glass,” Mary recalls. “My father asked us to move. ‘That window means more to me than either of you,’ he joked.”
Growing up in the middle of America’s largest living history museum was a unique privilege Mary only fully realized when that 1960s era of playing football on Palace Green and riding bikes all over Williamsburg was over. “It was such a safe place to grow up, and we had lots of freedom. Everybody would keep an eye on the kids as we roamed from house to house. We couldn’t get away with much mischief,” Mary recalls with a smile. Older brother Travis’ tall tales about creatures lurking in their home’s dark attic and basement limited Mary’s hiding places when playing hide and seek. “Thanks to him, I was never able to gather my courage to go in the attic, and I still haven’t opened one particular basement door,” Mary says with a laugh.
Virginia’s Historic Garden Week guidebook, 1955.
Mary left the area as a young woman but always had an interest in preserving her family’s history. Before Mary’s mother, Sarah, passed away in 2018, Mary had moved back to Virginia and now lives in her husband’s family home in Seaford. A few years before his 1999 death, her father made Mary a copy of a scholarly paper by William & Mary student Beth Ann Spyrison. In it, Judge Armistead is quoted extensively regarding the history of his home. As well as her own memories, Mary graciously shared this paper preserving a detailed record of how a nineteenth-century home’s exterior came to enclose a twentieth-century interior. What remains to be seen is who will bring the home into the twenty-first century and beyond.
As Spyrison says in the conclusion of her 1992 paper, the Bowden-Armistead House is an example of a historic home surviving and evolving, adapting to the changing needs of modern living. Its geographic position on Duke of Gloucester Street now serves as a visual reminder to both tourists and residents that Williamsburg did not always look as it does today. Like its citizens, Williamsburg also evolved, changed, and survived.