Visit Colonial Williamsburg and you can leave with more than memories of re-enactments of 18th Century daily life. You can buy reproduction candlesticks or even ship home pricey, Stickley-manufactured reproductions of the furniture seen in the town’s restored and reconstructed Georgian buildings. Or, you can now even go a step further. Instead of reproduction objets d’art or chifforobes, how about a reproduction house?
William Poole, a well-known residential designer who has licensed home plans and designs for Southern Living homes and House Beautiful house plans, has created 18 sets of copyrighted plans and specifications based upon the historic and historically recreated structures at Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia’s Revolutionary-era capital cum outdoor museum.
Poole’s plans are based on original Williamsburg designs, and the street facades of the houses built from his plans will indeed be replicas. But the interior rooms, while primarily symmetrical as in Georgian room planning, are much larger in order to accommodate contemporary living patterns. In other words, master bedroom suites replace parlors. Poole’s smallest house plan is just over 2,000 square feet; the largest is 4,555.
So what makes Poole’s plans different than, say, any other developer’s in the country?
One, he’s taking his brand of Southern vernacular to new heights at a time when most builders do not have such a strong design identity.
Two, the licensing agreement with Colonial Williamsburg signifies a time when non-profit groups are willing to take on more creative means of raising revenues. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation turned down Poole’s request for this arrangement 10 years ago.
Why have they said yes now? There may be more in it for them. Poole’s plans methodically specify windows and detailing that can be purchased through the foundation — and also specify products such as window shutters licensed by others under the Poole name.
Of course, there’s nothing to stop a buyer from replacing Poole’s specified brick with vinyl siding. And this lack of control might have a deleterious effect on Poole’s brand and that of Colonial Williamsburg’s.
And three, Poole attempts to make Georgian Williamsburg designs — which were relevant to the town’s colonial community, function and identity — relevant to the 21st Century. Poole’s plans compress Georgian architecture into fashion, and have the potential of spreading “Colonial Williamsburg” to a suburb near you. : William E. Poole Designs Inc., of Wilmington, N.C., has extended its brand to include home accessories, such as higher-end furniture. His licensing agreement with the foundation is another tenet that extends a well-established brand. Poole said that he and the foundation get a percentage of every home plan sale. Neither Poole nor the foundation would disclose how much money they will get from the licensing agreement, or what their percentages will be.
Previous Poole designs have been showcased with fanfare in many places, including a gated suburban community in Brentwood, Tenn. There, as in other places, his designs imitate classical architecture, be it Georgian or Federal, and create suburban houses that look like Southern plantation mansions. His goal is to capture the past and tweak the size, arrangement and type of rooms to accommodate today’s buyers.
Does authenticity have a place in house design? Or, is it enough that Poole’s designs are beautiful?
“Every house in the [Williamsburg] collection has something unique: These houses have character. Sometimes a window is made a little out of symmetry,” Poole said. His designs mimic the one-of-a kind character and mass-market it, somewhat of an oxymoron.
Some architects think Poole’s approach may work for knickknacks, but not for architecture.
“[Architecture] is a systemic thing,” said Chicago architect Carol Crandall, principal of Crandall Ritzu Architects. “It’s a relationship between inside and outside where the exterior is a systems response of the entire organizational structure . . . Decorators work with the surface level and that’s fine. But Poole is a decorator marketing himself as an architect.”
Poole said he’s tried for the last 20 years to create a relationship such as this one with Colonial Williamsburg. They had continually turned him down. “They just didn’t think licensing was a good idea,” he said. About 10 years ago, after unsuccessfully pitching Williamsburg, Poole partnered with Southern Living magazine to create a line of historically inspired home plans. Then, three years ago, Poole tried the foundation yet again. They said no.
A few days later, however, the foundation’s staff changed and new leadership had a different mindset, Poole said. “The new head realized how good this could be for the foundation,” Poole said. In a statement given through a staff member. A foundation spokesperson, Bonnie Penney, merely said it took a while to “just create the plans and develop it.”
Though Poole’s 18 copyrighted plans, each comprising about 20 pages when typical spec builders’ plans might contain eight, go so far so as to include section drawings of the moldings and casings for each house. Despite that detail, there is no controlling how they are actually executed.
Example: For $1,350, a hopeful homeowner could buy a set of plans based upon the George Wythe House, built in 1752. Wythe, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a lawyer and a teacher of Thomas Jefferson, resided in Williamsburg. But, instead of cladding your William Poole version of it in the brick that Poole specifies, what if you choose vinyl or wood siding instead?
“Those who would purchase these plans in the first place wouldn’t do such a thing,” insisted Penney, a contract worker for the foundation who served as its liaison as Poole developed his designs. Poole said that while he is concerned about how his designs will be implemented, he hopes those purchasing the plans will have a respect for the classical designs and won’t debase them with unspecified materials.
Some local architects believe the project is base from the get-go.
“This is the continuing Disneyland-ism of American architecture,” said Crandall. “Williamsburg is an historic life museum and, by supporting this kind of window dressing, it supports a gift-shop mentality that’s eclipsed the genuine purpose of that institution.”
Crandall added that by making the size of the houses larger than their originals and programming garages and walk-in closets where there were none in the 18th Century, Poole has divorced interior space from exterior treatment — a move that is less suspect when applied to vernacular design.
“[Colonial Williamsburg] is a living institution that has crossed a line,” Crandall continued. “What if someone sold `Frank Lloyd Wright’ homes that just mimicked the exterior and screwed around with the interiors?”
Georgian architecture is part of the American vernacular and is relatively authorless — it cannot be ascribed to one individual architect, or its architects are not widely known. Because of this, it’s easier to separate concept from the architectural object and use its style superficially, Crandall says.
Incidentally, Wright’s own Usonian houses appealed to a mass market, but Wright still sited each house and tweaked it during construction. Sears, Roebuck & Co. licensed its kit-of-parts houses, which, unlike Poole’s designs, controlled the materials used.
Poole, a sincere lover of Southern vernacular design, himself acknowledges that architects would “rather die” than license their designs. He calls himself instead a “designer” and doesn’t share architects’ distaste for multiplying their designs.
“Yet most Western architects have no qualms about designing all over the world,” Poole said of globalization. “In the end, people should have the choice of what home style to purchase” and not be dictated to by limited home plan offerings or architect’s professional misgivings about historicism.
Sarah Susanka, also an architect and author of “The Not So Big House,” agreed that Poole’s designs fill a gaping market niche.
“One thing that upsets me about my profession’s attitude to date is that we only see ourselves as serving those who feel that it’s worth their money to hire an architect for custom design,” she said.
Susanka uses the fashion industry as an analogy to describe Poole’s niche: “We have architects that are the equivalent of tailors, and then we have average home plans that are the equivalent of going to Kohl’s. But we have no one that builds the Ralph Laurens and Liz Claibornes.”
Would that statement then make the three-step ranches of the world the equivalent of a cardigan from Wal-Mart? Chicago architect Doug Garofalo, a contemporary designer, doesn’t think so.
“I would consider those ranches to be more authentic because they aren’t aspiring to be something they aren’t.”
Turner Brooks, an architect based in New Haven, Conn., thinks Poole’s idea isn’t that bad when compared to its competition.
“There are so many horrible buildings being built now. It stands a good chance of being fun in a kind of wacko way than a standard builder’s [house]. Why not? Everything is a ripoff in some way. Having a literal ripoff may be richer and more fun than the watered down, normal builder stuff because there’s nothing worse than the diluted colonial or shingle style.”
Yet, Brooks says that when he designs, he believes in expressing a relationship between inside and outside. He clearly holds a different standard for spec houses. Because such houses have been reduced to such a low common denominator, a replica Georgian done well might not be so bad, Brooks’ reasoning goes.
However, when Brooks realized that Poole is only selling plans — without control over their eventual development — he said: “Then it just falls apart. It’s taking it as an image and then diluting it just like everything else.”
Regardless, Brooks still has hopes for Poole’s designs: “It’s like all that gothic cookie-cutter stuff that came in pattern books. But it’s based on something rather than nothing, which is better than the contractor making up his own proportions.”
Who exactly is the market for Poole’s home plans? Is he up against contractors’ proportions or architects’ custom designs? In theory, his plans may be geared toward the upper market, but in execution, they may fall below that, Garofalo said.
Poole speculates that the cost to build one of his homes in the Chicago area would be $140 a square foot, including a lot. Garofalo said that sounded “quite low” and that the Chicago market encompasses too an wide an area for such a ballpark figure. But a Chicago-area builder strongly disagrees with Poole’s estimations. Court Airhart, vice president of Airhart Construction, a semi-custom home builder in West Chicago, scoffs at the quote of $140 per square foot.
“I really don’t think so,” Airhart said. “Maybe, just maybe, a house like that could be built for $140 if the lot were free. But if a home of that level of detail were to be built to specifications, I believe it would be a lot higher.”
The level of detail Poole specifies includes custom casings, chair rails and crown moldings, drawn at a 1-to-1 scale on the last page of his Wythe House’s plans.
The largest of Poole’s Williamsburg portfolio, his 4,555-square-foot, five-bedroom “George Wythe House c. 1752,” built exactly to his specifications, would then cost $637,700.
“[Poole’s designs] are not for purists; they’re for middle-class Americans who want the look of an historic home,” said Colonial Williamsburg’s Penney. She said the detailing is wonderful and the pitch of the roofs toward the back of Poole’s designs is lowered so the street facade of the house maintains the look of the original.
“Having not seen the plans, I do want to stop short of condemning it,” Garofalo said. “Those houses at Williamsburg are beautiful, but I think it’s a marketing ploy.”
A lot of people think they can’t afford an architect, Garofalo continued, but he asked, “Can you afford a doctor? You’re going to be living in this, after all.” Ten to 20 percent of construction cost is an architect’s fee, Garofalo said. He believes that instead of writing off architects’ services as only for the wealthy, people need to think of their services as part of their investment — even if they’re building a $200,000 house.
A smaller house among Poole’s 18 designs, the 2,199-square-foot “George Pitt House c. 1717-1719,” would come in at $307,860. The real George Pitt House was destroyed by fire in 1896 and reconstructed as part of the development of Colonial Williamsburg in the 1930s and ’40s.
John D. Rockefeller Jr. financed the rebuilding of Williamsburg at the time, and schools and parking lots were swept away to recreate many of the Georgian buildings that had been destroyed. Those that still stood were renovated to appear as they did in colonial times, with additions such as 19th Century Victorian porches removed.
So, much of the museum’s buildings themselves have been recreated. What makes this re-creation and Poole’s different is number: At Colonial Williamsburg, there’s still only one Wythe House, but buyers of Poole’s Wythe House plan can create thousands.
