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Minutes of the Advisory Committee of Architects(1928–1948)

  • MS 1996.6 20C
  • 1 vol.

Bound preservation photocopy of minutes from meetings of the Advisory Committee of Architects for the Williamsburg restoration, held between November 25, 1928 and March 19, 1948. This volume appears to have been prepared by Catherine Savedge Schlesinger, a member of the Foundation’s Architectural Research Department, and also includes photocopies of photographs of committee members. The Advisory Committee of Architects consisted of various architects and architectural historians who were invited to Williamsburg to act as consultants to the Rev. William A.R. Goodwin and the architects in charge of the restoration. The eight original members were: Robert P. Bellows; Edmund S. Campbell; Finlay F. Ferguson, Sr.; Sidney Fiske Kimball; A. Lawrence Kocher; Milton B. Medary; Thomas E. Tallmadge; and Robert E. Lee Taylor. Later, W. Duncan Lee, D. Everett Waid, Marcellus E. Wright, Philip N. Stern, and Merrill C. Lee also participated in meetings. The minutes cover a wide variety of topics connected with the restoration project and record important decisions reached regarding building materials, the scope of the restoration, historical integrity, and methods to be used for the restoration and reconstruction of buildings. While the minutes from 1928–1930s focus primarily upon design of the architecture and landscape of Colonial Williamsburg, later minutes from the 1940s record discussions of the development of the educational and publications program and of the Institute of Early American History and Culture.

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