Bassett Hall, once was the Williamsburg home of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, is a key part of the story of the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg.
Philip Johnson, a member of the House of Burgesses from King and Queen County, Va., is believed to have built the 18th-century frame house sometime between 1753 and 1766.
In November 1926, Williamsburg’s Rev. Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin wrote to John D. Rockefeller Jr., “I wish you would buy Bassett Hall for yourself. It would give you a charming vantage point from which to play with the vision and dream which you see, and it might give me the joy of being your ‘playmate’ in this dreamland playground.” The following year, Rockefeller purchased the house and its 585 acres of lawn, garden and woodlands, naming it after its 19th-century owner Burwell Bassett, a congressmen who was a nephew of Martha Washington.
The Rockefellers did not immediately occupy Bassett Hall. It was not until after a lightning strike set fire to the house in the spring of 1930 and the ensuing six years of restoration, additions and improvements, that Abby and John Jr. made it their home during their twice-annual trips to Williamsburg.
Abby Aldrich Rockefeller decorated the home with folk art and a John D.Rockefeller, Jr. biographer wrote, “Perhaps his favorite residence – the one that most attracted him in his later years – was the small white house known as Bassett Hall in Williamsburg, Virginia. Here, surrounded by the details of a vast project, he found the satisfaction of creation, of being a part of one of his own great dreams.”
Bassett Hall remained in the Rockefeller family until 1979, when it was bequeathed to Colonial Williamsburg. An extensive two-year renovation of the property was completed in December 2002, and the home reopened to the public. Unlike the rest of the Historic Area, where guests travel back to the 18th century, Bassett Hall appears as it did in the 1930s and 1940s, in the early days of the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg, when the Rockefellers made it their home.
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