Maymont, Gilded Age Estate

During the Gilded Age, when great fortunes were being made, ornamental estates such as Maymont were built throughout America as extravagant showplaces that demonstrated their owners' affluence and upper-class taste for diverse historical and exotic styles. In 1886, the Dooleys purchased 100 acres of rolling countryside on the James River for their new home, and architect Edgerton Rogers designed the thirty-three-room sandstone mansion, completed in 1893. The opulent upstairs rooms are restored and filled with original furnishings and artwork acquired by the Dooleys, while the restored downstairs service area is furnished with artifacts of the period. Over time, the Dooleys developed the estate landscape with an Italian garden, Japanese garden, grotto, arboretum, and extensive parkland, and the largely intact complex of picturesque outbuildings included the gatehouse, stone barn, carriage house, water tower, compost house, chicken coop, and stable, later used as the Dooleys' garage; their mausoleum was added in 1923. As an elaborate ensemble of architecture, landscape, furnishings, and carriages, Maymont provides an unusually complete representation of a distinctive era of America's past. Maymont was not only a home and showplace but also a workplace, where the Dooleys typically employed seven to ten individuals, including butlers, cooks, a housemaid, lady's maid, chauffeur, coachman, and laundress, to maintain the residence. With few exceptions these domestic employees were African American, and for southern blacks the era brought limited work opportunities beyond agriculture, factory work, and domestic service, along with increasingly strict racial segregation.

Richmond, Virginia · United States