Virginia, the 'Mother State of Presidents,' reproduced George Washington's home at Mount Vernon. The architect, Charles K. Bryant, made exhaustive measurements of the original. One wing, joined to the house by covered galleries, held the kitchen and dining room. The other copied an old Virginia farmstead. Todd found that the quaint colonial architecture carried visitors out of 1915 and back to the Revolution.
Washington relics lent by Miss Nannie Randolph Heth, the hostess, filled the rooms. In an upper room was the bed on which Washington died. There were also Martha Washington's needlework table and Washington's desk. On Virginia Day, July 8, about a thousand guests danced on a platform built between the wings.
The very quaintness of its colonial architecture took you out of the atmosphere of the year 1915, and translated you into the time and place of the Revolution.
Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), p. 354
At a glance
- Virginia appropriated $40,000.
- Dedicated March 26, 1915; Virginia Day July 8.
- Architect Charles K. Bryant, who measured the original Mount Vernon.
Afterward
Went across the Bay 'to become a part of Santa Venetia, in Marin County' (Todd V, p. 246); it has not survived.
Where it stood
Virginia Building (Mount Vernon) stood at about 37.80497 N, 122.45286 W on today's map. The whole fairground over the city →
Sources
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. LVIII, p. 317
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. III (1921), ch. LXVIII, pp. 354-356
- Frank Morton Todd, The Story of the Exposition, vol. V (1921), ch. XXXVII, p. 246 (fate)
- Official Guide of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (1915), p. 60