In Prodigy Houses of Virginia: Architecture and the Native Elite, Barbara Burlison Mooney provides a critical, Marxist analysis of Virginia’s Tidewater plantation houses as expressions of Virginia’s eighteenth-century gentry culture. Mooney seeks to demonstrate that analyzing members of Virginia’s colonial gentry can reveal much about the mansions they created. As a result, the book deals less with issues of architectural design than with the social and cultural context in which the architecture was created. Rather than architectural history, her study is more a work of social history as it relates to architecture.

In her introduction, Mooney establishes a historical background for her subject by discussing the enormous country houses built by the Elizabethan nobility in the hope of obtaining a visit from the Queen during her summer progresses and thus securing royal favor. Often, the cost of erecting these prodigy houses was financially devastating to the owners—not to mention the costs incurred if the Queen actually paid a visit. Mooney draws a parallel to the great colonial mansions of Virginia. By spending exorbitant sums on grand houses, Mooney claims that their owners hoped to gain social and political prestige as well as to secure their relatively new status. Mooney explains that she uses the term “native elite” rather than “governing elite” or “ruling elite” to mean a “ruling class that not only increasingly monopolized power and wealth but formed its own culture as well” (3).

In studying the relationship between owners and their houses, Mooney states that she uses a methodological approach called “patronage,” which asserts that patrons of art or architecture often take an active role in the design process. Once the role of the patron is recognized, she claims, information providing insight into their lives becomes as important as studying the building itself. Mooney examines twenty-five eighteenth-century Virginia patrons and their mansions as case studies for comparative analysis within various social, economic, and cultural contexts.

Mooney notes how Virginia’s great houses stood out in dramatic contrast to the rest of the built environment and how this architectural “extravagance” often resulted in ruinous debts for the owners and their descendants. One of the professed aims of Mooney’s study is to investigate “those patterns of behavior that affected the decision to build these more extravagant architectural gestures” (6).

It soon becomes clear, however, that the purpose of Mooney’s book is to advance a specific ideological agenda. Even in her introduction, Mooney brandishes Marxist-inflected rhetoric: “Throughout the book I propose that the most privileged members of the elite class created imposing houses in order to inscribe inherited privilege more permanently on the cultural landscape of the colony” (8). She continues, “Rather, architecture was meant to serve as an active agent in legitimizing the social order the wealthiest planters envisioned” (10). She states furthermore, “Virginia’s native elite exploited the built environment in the expectation of perpetuating their authority” (10).

The main idea being expressed here is the Marxist belief that architecture is a tool of the wealthy and powerful to dominate, control, and exploit the lower classes. Mooney attempts to force history to conform to this belief system. The text is marked by an unwavering hostility to the upper classes, and Mooney subtly insinuates this point of view throughout the book, which is laced with carefully selected words intended to reinforce this outlook—even seemingly innocuous sections describing colonial brickwork. For example, on page 26 she states, “Some architectural patrons demanded [emphasis added] more complex and time-consuming decorative brick patterning.” She automatically casts the patron as the villain, demanding “time-consuming” labor from the bricklayer. She does not stop to consider that perhaps the bricklayer may have wanted the employment and might have even suggested the idea.

The first chapter, “Defining the Prodigy House: Architectural Aesthetics and the Colonial Dialect,” analyzes the context of colonial Virginia’s built environment and describes the types of vernacular buildings with which these mansions shared the architectural landscape. It then addresses high-style architecture, including the role of design, scale and relative size, building materials, symmetry, the use of the Orders, and floorplans. Chapter 2, “Blind Stupid Fortune: Profiling the Architectural Patron,” analyzes demographic characteristics of the twenty-five patrons and attempts to profile them as a distinct social group. The chapter addresses the role of ancestry, patterns of inheritance, vital statistics, marriage, progeny, education, wealth, inheritance, sources of income, and property valuation.

The middle three chapters address specific aspects of patronage. The third chapter, “Reason Reascends Her Throne: The Impact of Dowry,” examines the impact of marriage and dowry money, which may have played a role in the way Virginia’s prodigy houses were financed. Mooney proposes that, “A woman’s dowry may have significantly contributed to her husband’s ability to build a mansion” (128). She seeks to make a case that dowry money played a significant part in the financing of Stratford Hall, Menokin, Rosewell, and Berkeley. The fourth chapter, “Each Rascal Will Be a Director: Architectural Patrons and the Building Process,” examines how owners participated in design and construction. It opens with a description of the problems encountered when trying to build a large house of quality in colonial Virginia, including the scarcity of qualified craftsmen and the difficulties associated with importing them from England as indentured servants. For these reasons, Mooney states that, “the owners of colonial Virginia mansions became actively engaged in the building process out of necessity” (153).

Chapter 5, “Learning to Become: Good Mechanics in Building,” discusses how patrons learned about building fashions. After stating that there was no systematic process of conveying architectural values to “ambitious and wealthy” Virginians, Mooney identifies six sources for acquiring architectural literacy: formal education, plantation management, travel, architecture books, conversation among gentlemen, and the craftsman’s knowledge. Never missing an opportunity to take a swipe at the gentry, Mooney continues to characterize patrons as unreasonably demanding. “Conservative colonial craftsmen competent in vernacular styles were unable to satisfy the needs of wealthy planters demanding more unique fashion” (222; emphasis added). According to Mooney, Virginia’s colonial gentry could do no right. In one instance, she faults them for even talking to each other about architecture: “Conversation and correspondence among the Virginia gentry disseminated aesthetic values and preserved the exclusivity of knowledge within a closed group of social and economic cohorts. Like insider trading among financial elites or pig latin messages among schoolchildren, the conversations of gentlemen provided a way of sharing exclusive privileged information that was effective only if it excluded others” (218).

The sixth chapter, “Epistemologies of Female Space: Early Tidewater Mansions,” analyzes Virginia’s plantation mansions from a feminist perspective and describes them as “expressions of male power” and reflections of “the patriarchical hegemony of the tobacco planter elite” (225). Drawing from the work of previous scholars, Mooney distinguishes a map of male and female territories within Virginia mansions, recognizing the library and dining room as male-centered spaces, and identifying the bedchamber, parlor, kitchen, and garden as female-centered spaces.

Chapter 7, “Political Power and the Limits of Genteel Architecture,” deals with “interrogating the political efficacy of architectural patronage” and seeks to elucidate the nature of the relationship between architecture and power. Mooney starts with the premise that “prodigy houses of eighteenth-century Virginia served to create, maintain, and perpetuate authority” (260). The first part of the chapter seeks to make a connection between building a “prestige house” and holding public office—an indication of power and authority. The public offices discussed include those of militia officer, vestryman, justice of the peace, burgess, and councilor. Mooney finally admits that, “Although the correlation between success in the political arena and the ability to construct a genteel residence is high, it is difficult to prove that building a high-style dwelling directly influenced future political status” (261). This appears to undermine the first part of her premise.

On page 260, Mooney states that, “Exposing and destabilizing the wicked machinations of the ruling class is heady stuff.” This is the purpose of the book, and the architectural topic frequently serves as a means to that end. Mooney delivers a final jab at Virginia’s mansions at the close of her book: “The visual appeal of Virginia’s prodigy houses persists, I believe, because of, rather than despite, the failure of their first owners to establish a permanent oligarchy based on inherited privilege and signaled by superior architecture. Prodigy houses stand as dreams that fortunately did not come true” (292).

Prodigy Houses of Virginia makes some interesting points, and the appendices, footnotes, and bibliography are useful reference sources. The text, however, though highly polished and articulate, presents a rather rigid and conventional Marxist view of eighteenth-century Virginia social and architectural history.