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Colin, Kirby and Kevin Moore, in their superhero costumes, live in one of the private residences in Colonial Williamsburg, where modern living mixes with the days of old.
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The Moores live in the Taliaferro-Cole House, a two-story, original 18th century structure that was enlarged in the early 19th century. It’s thought that the house was initially built as a shop in the 1760s, and at some point became a residence after being acquired by coach and chair maker Charles Taliaferro around 1773.
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Natalie and Dan Moore make their family home in the Taliaferro-Cole House, with their three boys.
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Traditional colonial crafts are demonstrated next door to the modern family’s home, while Colin, Kirby and Kevin Moore contemplate their next move.
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It's a privilege to live in the historic area and the Moore Family makes the most of it.
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It’s not unusual to see tourists walking through the yard to the back garden.
Inside the private residences of Colonial Williamsburg
The interiors of the stately houses lining Duke of Gloucester Street contain much of what you’d expect in an 18th century building: worn pine floors, quaint brick fireplaces, careful attention to woodwork such as chair rails, baseboards and mantles.
But wait—inside that closet, there’s a superhero costume hanging. Over in that room, a blue laptop is sitting on a table. In the wall-papered dining room, a young boy is playing Minecraft on another computer. And wait—there’s a television in the living room?
Welcome to one of the private residences in Colonial Williamsburg, where modern living mixes with the days of old.
Perhaps unknown to many, there are dozens of people—families, couples, college students—who live in some of the historic homes of Colonial Williamsburg. Many of the homes are original colonial-era buildings; others were rebuilt based on historical accounts to look like the homes they once were.
It’s not a perk available to everyone. To live in the Historic Area, one has to work at Colonial Williamsburg or be an employee at the College of William & Mary. In all, there are 75 houses rented through the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, which maintains the properties and keeps tabs on them in order to keep them as historical as possible.
“I had always wanted to do this,” says Natalie Miller-Moore, a 39-year-old writer who moved into a historic house at the corner of Duke of Gloucester and Nassau streets in May with her husband and three children. “This is the main street of Williamsburg.”
While the Moores are some of the most recent residents in the historic area, there is one renter who has lived there since the late 1980s, according to Keith Johnson, CW’s director of property management. A few other renters have lived there since the early 1990s.
The Moores live in the Taliaferro-Cole House, a two-story, original 18th century structure that was enlarged in the early 19th century. It’s thought that the house was initially built as a shop in the 1760s, and at some point became a residence after being acquired by coach and chair maker Charles Taliaferro around 1773.
The house was christened the Taliaferro-Cole house in 1941 after a year-long restoration project by Colonial Williamsburg. It’s named for Taliaferro and for his business associate Jesse Cole, who bought the building in 1804 and later enlarged it. An apothecary and storekeeper, Cole became Williamsburg’s postmaster and rented out rooms to students and professors at the College.
“The house has seen a lot of American history,” wrote Dan Moore in a description of the house that he researched, framed, and hung in the home’s front hallway. “In colonial times George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Patrick Henry, James Madison and other founding fathers walked past it when they traveled up and down the Duke of Gloucester Street. During the Revolution the British Army, under General Cornwallis, marched past the house on their way to Yorktown.”
Moore, 39, has worked at Colonial Williamsburg for the past 15 years, and serves as a supervisor of group interpretation. In other words, he trains the tour guides who lead visitors around.
He never had much interest in living where he worked— a stark contrast to his wife, who was eager to be right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of things. The Williamsburg Farmers Market is a quick walk away. There are tons of cultural events going on all the time. And for their three sons to grow up in the middle of history—what could be better?
“It has a great feeling of community,” says Miller-Moore, who runs her own health communications firm, Moore than Words, and is a self-described extrovert. “And if I feel lonely, I just go out on the front porch until someone talks to me.”
The Rise of Colonial Williamsburg
For more than 80 years, from 1699 to 1799, Williamsburg was Virginia’s thriving capital—the political, cultural, and educational center of the most influential of the American colonies. After the capital and seat of government was moved to Richmond during the Revolutionary War, Williamsburg became more of a quiet, college town.
In 1926, the rector of Bruton Parish Church, Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. began working to preserve the city’s historic buildings, embarking on a restoration project that grew to include a major portion of the colonial town. Rockefeller funded the preservation of more than 80 of the town’s original structures and reconstruction of many buildings.
Historical Homes
Houses that existed prior to the restoration were purchased and then leased back to tenants or CW employees, Johnson says. As the restoration progressed from the 1930s-50s, the buildings that weren’t made public sites continued to be leased to employees.
The private homes are mixed in with the public buildings, with often only a tiny plaque on the mailbox indicating that the home is private. Eager visitors don’t always realize there are people who actually live in the houses, so it’s not unusual for someone to jiggle a doorknob to try and see what’s behind a closed door, or to peer in a window.
“More than one tenant has told me about people entering their homes while they were having breakfast or morning coffee in their pajamas,” Johnson says. “Others have had people follow them into their houses thinking it was an exhibition building.”
There are stories about tourists being given impromptu tours by the residents. The Moores have often given directions, and offered a towel to one rain-drenched couple. Their house is next door to the joiner’s shop, and where The Candlemaker’s Apprentice program demonstrations are done in the yard. It’s not unusual to see tourists walking through the yard to the back garden.
The plot of land that the Taliaferro-Cole house sits on once included stables, a separate kitchen, a small orchard, gardens, and way in back, a small cemetery. Today, a couple lives in the small apartment behind the main house that once was the kitchen. The stables house the African American Baptist Meetinghouse Exhibit. The gardens are still there—today they’re a popular place for professional photographers to pose their subjects.
“I’m happy to be an ambassador for this great city of Williamsburg,” Miller-Moore says. “We have to be good neighbors. It’s the people who visit who keep this place going.”
From the outside, the 3,600-square-foot Taliaferro-Cole house looks like a plain, white, two-story Colonial structure. Inside, there are high ceilings, wide, wooden doors and softly worn wooden floors. Up the stairs are several bedrooms and an attic; down the stairs is a big basement that’s been turned into a playroom by three boys under the age of 10.
Residents of the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation’s houses have to abide by some rules: they can’t change anything on the inside or outside of the houses, including paint colors. The interior walls of the Taliaferro-Cole house are mostly white with green trim.
Nothing modern—such as televisions or computers—can be visible from outside the house. Window air-conditioning units are permitted, but can only be on the backside of the house and even then, can’t hang too far out the windows.
Tenants can decorate the inside of the homes as they wish, although some who live in the houses choose to use antiques. Outside, there can’t be any kids’ bicycles left lying around, or grills if they’re not being used. (The Moores prefer to use their grill in the evening, when the flow of tourists has dwindled down. Between 5-7 p.m. is also a great time to take a quiet walk on Duke of Gloucester Street, they say.)
“We’re trying to create an environment that feels like the 18th century, so we try to hide these modern amenities,” says Jeffrey Klee, an architectural historian with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation.
For the people who live in the historic district, though, the rules are easy to abide by in exchange for living in the middle of history. And although the way of living wasn’t necessarily tops on Moore’s list, the history buff says the idea has grown on him and he finds the story of the house “really fantastic.”
“It’s pretty neat to think about who was here, what they thought,” Moore says, adding that his research found that one owner, a staunch Confederate, ended up locked up at Fort Monroe by the Union Army. “Living in an old house is right up my alley.”
There are over 500 buildings in the Colonial Williamsburg district, according to Klee. Built in the Georgian or simply Colonial style, many houses share similar features, such as beaded weatherboards, plaster walls, modillion cornices (the decorative elements under the eaves), double-hung sash windows and end chimneys.
Many of the houses have hallways that run through their center, with other rooms branching off the hallways. In some of the homes, you might find elaborate mantles and turned balusters on the stairs.
The Taliaferro-Cole house has seven fireplaces. Although it will likely change come winter, the Moores use most of the fireplaces for storage. One has a laundry basket resting inside it, another office supplies. Still another has a Lego table parked in front of it.
“No matter where you’re living, some things are still the same,” Miller-Moore jokes. “You still step on Legos.”
There aren’t any ghosts that haunt the house (that they know of anyway). But one of Williamsburg’s popular ghost tours stops at the gate across the street, where a huge Magnolia tree casts fascinating shadows on the brick house behind it. The kids are convinced there must be a secret passageway somewhere. The oldest son finds the paradoxes amusing.
“I like how out of place technology looks,” says 10-year-old Colin, who gets a kick out of watching Star Wars inside the house. “It’s like it’s from the future.”
Seven-year-old Kirby likes hanging out on the house’s screened-in back porch, while 4-year-old Kevin likes the playroom.
Bottom line, it’s a great opportunity to get to rent one of the historic houses, Klee says. Openings don’t come available all that often. When they do, applications are reviewed carefully by a committee to make sure the tenants are right.
“It’s not for everyone,” says Klee, who lived just outside the historic area himself at one point. “It’s a privilege, and people want to make the most of it. And they make it special.”
Learn more at colonialwilliamsburg.com.