Re-searching the Fairfax County Courthouse

DELOS HUGHES fiGURE 1 Fairfax Counry Courrhouse, 1800, Fairfax, Virginia. (Phowgrc1ph by aurhor) ARRIS 62 § VoLUME 21 § 2010 RE-SEARCHING THE FAIRFAX COUNTY COURTHOUSE DELOS HUGHES The Fairfax County Courthouse of 1799 occupies a special place in the architectural history of Virginia and of the United States (Figure 1). It is the earliest "town-hall" courthouse, a type that Marcus Whiffen first described as a courthouse that "presents to the street an arcade ... supporting a windowed wall and gable end above; ... the court itself sits on the ground floor; sometimes there are jury rooms over the piazza, and sometimes the public part of the courtroom rises over it, like a theater" (Figure 2). 1 Historians of an evolutionist inclination have focused on the arcade as the significant feature in the appearance and popularity of the type. The arcade is interpreted as a survival from the hiproofed colonial courthouses in Virginia that typically featured arcades on the principal facade (Figure 3). Other historians focus more on the gable-endforward characteristic, interpreting the town-hall courthouse as a variant of the temple form, and lump it together with the Jefferson-influenced courthouses and later Greek-revival temple forms (Figures 4 and 5).2 From either point of view, the Fairfax courthouse is an important prototype for other Virginia courthouses. In concentrating on these formal characteristics, however, another aspect of the building 's history has been largely ignored-the question of its authorship. Given its innovative design, the matter of who its architect was is certainly relevant. To investigate this question, it is especially useful to re-examine the documents that historians have relied upon to determine the origin of the design. Looking closely at them suggests some alternatives to the conventional reading of those documents and the identification of the architect of the building. EXHIBITING THE PLAN Systematic study of Virginia's historic courthouses began in the 1950s with Marcus Whiffen and continues most recently with Carl Lounsbury.3 PerVoLUME 21 § 2010 § ARRIS 63 DELOS HUGHES haps significantly, these two careful scholars did not attempt any attribution of the design of the Fairfax County Courthouse. Other historians who have written about the building, however, have been unanimous in crediting it to James Wren. An important survey of Virginia architecture, the Virginia Landmarks Register, credits Wren without qualification, as does the nomination approved for including the building on the National Register of Historic Places. Close students of the local area history, Nan and Ross Netherton, for example, as well as surveyors of the Virginia courthouse landscape more broadly, such as Margaret and John Peters, have concluded on the basis of period newspaper evidence that Wren (sometimes "Wrenn") was the designer.4 The documentary record for this attribution is skimpy, though there are reasons to rely on it. Some observers have proposed that James Wren carried the right genes for architectural design, being a distant relative, some think, of London's estimable architect, Christopher Wren.5 Much more to the point, however , is James Wren's record of architectural achievement . Reliable documentary evidence shows that he designed three churches in the Alexandria, Virginia, area where he spent his adult life-Christ Church, Falls Church, and the Truro Parish Church at Pohick (Figures 6a, 6b, 6c). Finally, and perhaps more convincingly , is an advertisement that the Court House Commissioners of Fairfax County placed in Alexandria newspapers in June 1798, after they decided to build a new courthouse for the county. The Fairfax Court-House Commissioners have fixed on Thursday, the zgrh inst. for letting out the erection of the necessary PUBLIC BUILDINGS, to the lowest bidder, as they have adopted the plan exhibited by Mr. Wren. Those workmen, who mean to attend, may have a sight of the plan, and the manner ARRIS 64 § VoLUME 21 § 2010 in which the work is to be finished, by application at the Clerk's office. CHARLES LITTLE, D. STUART, W PAYNE, J. WRENN, G. MINOR N.B. Bond with approved security, will be required from the undertaker.6 That the Court House Commission might have chosen one of its own members to design the building for which it was entrusted to find plans need not arouse suspicions, for...