Branch House seen through dogwood blossoms.

Armchair Adventures

published April 22, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

A Great House and Two Plastic Spoons

Richmond, Va.-With at least 27,000-square feet of floor space, you'd expect this city's Branch House to be imposing.

            Sure, it's big, I thought, seeing the Monument Avenue behemoth for the first time.

            But it reminded me of driving to work long ago when I taught high school far away at a building that looked a lot like that in New Zealand.

            The reason was the architectural style, known in both those both buildings (and countless others) as Tudor Revival.

            This was going to be interesting.

            The Branch House, also sometimes called the Branch Castle, is the largest residence in Richmond. Depending on your definition of a "room," it has either 28 or 63 of them. And although some sources say there are 11 levels in the house, that's only if you count each step-down  or step-up. It's actually four quite large floors of space.

            Today, the house is again a home-to the Virginia offices of the American Institute of Architects. But with more than ample space, the first and two levels serve as an architectural museum of sorts.

            Banker and financier John K. Branch and his wife, Beaulah, hired renowned architect John Russell Pope to design their Richmond home, which takes its primary cues from Britain's Compton Wynyate Castle in Warwickshire-a somewhat larger Tudor Revival estate.

            Construction was undertaken during World War I, on half a block of land near Richmond's Union Station. That handsome station, coincidentally, which today houses the Science Museum of Virginia, is another Pope-designed building.

            By 1919, Branch House was completed. A source familiar with the building's history said the Branch family never occupied the home year-round. Although they were Virginians, the new owners apparently spent most of their year at their Pawling, N.Y., farm estate, although they later acquired a villa in the vicinity of Florence, Italy. They occupied the Richmond home for a few months in wintertime.

            We visited on a Saturday and nearly had the place to ourselves. The gentleman in the gift shop was quite knowledgeable about this most impressive home. He even took us upstairs for a quick walk-through of the second floor, including the magnificent formal dining room. That space, with its beautiful pale blue ceiling adorned by carved white moldings, was probably my favorite.

            The third (fourth depending on how you're counting) floor is leased office space.

            Mr. and Mrs. Branch were avid collectors of Italian Renaissance art, carvings, tapestries and furniture. At one time, during the 20-odd years of their occupation there, it contained a substantial part of their collections.

            Few of those antiquities remain, although a beautiful double-door set on the first floor, opposite the gift shop, is one exception.

            We explored the house at our leisure, taking special care to learn more about its design and history in a small museum dedicated to it on the first floor.

            Afterward, we went outside and enjoyed the walled backyard, where there are excellent views of architectural detailing. Don't miss the semi-turreted corner, the hewn-timbers set-in brick, the handsome window gables. And pay particular attention to the wonderful triple brick chimneys-each different.

            I have to take a big leap here, from Richmond's Monument Avenue with its stately homes, broad median and eponymous memorials, to Mount Olympus Farm in Caroline County. When we get the chance we like to stop there.

            Taking US 1, we stopped at the farm this time. As I settled into the porch swing to gaze out over the farm fields and the picturesque pond with its nice shade tree, my friend, CG, brought a pint of Trickling Springs butterscotch toffee parfait ice cream.

            She handed me one of the two spoons. We settled down in silence to the serious business of doing in that box of ice cream.

            "It just doesn't get any better than this," I said.

            She nodded.

            I understood her silence.

           

           

           

Springtime in The Valley

Lovely, historic Belle Grove Plantation, built in 1797

Armchair Adventures

for April 15, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Vistas in the Valley of Virginia

            I cannot tell you why I turned left at the stop sign, heading south on US 11.

But I did, and it proved to be a revelation.

            On a whim, historic Middletown offered a sight unseen, a place not explored.

But nice as that small town was, the sight I shall long remember was not in Middletown but just beyond it where the old Valley Pike follows a ridge through the Cedar Creek Battlefield.

            One look westward across the deeply rolling Spring-green, farm-dotted hills to the distant ridge of the Alleghenies and I stopped the car. Words fail such a scene.

            My friend, CG, and I had set out Saturday to explore several villages in the Upper Shenandoah Valley. We never got to them.

            In an instant, we knew our plans for the day would change. There had to be a way to soak in this wonder, to feel it in our pores. It was that thrilling.

            We could stop at the battlefield visitor center, or follow that gray thread of a road off the highway to stately Belle Grove in the valley beyond. I took the thread.

            Built in 1797, Belle Grove was once the center of a prosperous 7,500-acre farming community. The property came into the family through a patent obtained by Hite's grandfather, Jost Hite, in 1714. He is the first known European settler in the Valley.

            Hite's wife, Nelly, was the sister of President James Madison. 

            Guided tours of the home are offered, as is a self-guided tour of the grounds. While it is much reduced from its original size, the estate continues to encompass 283 acres of what has to be some of the most beautiful rural country in Virginia. The web address is bellegrove.org

            Every Virginian should see this site, if only to be reminded of the state's impressive heritage. Because we had not planned on Belle Grove, we did not allow time enough for it. A more manageable day would include lunch at The Irish Isle Restaurant & Pub in Middletown-which we did-followed by a minimum two hours for Belle Grove and the Cedar Creek Battlefield visitor Center. Walking shoes and a camera with a wide lens are musts.

            The 1864 battle, centering on Belle Grove and sometimes going by that name, was a major clash of forces contesting control of the Shenandoah Valley.

            Our day did include at least one stop we had planned-at the always enjoyable State Arboretum at Blandy Farm, east of Winchester on the south side of US 50.

            For anyone who loves the outdoors, trees, flowers, gardens and birds, no trip to this part of Virginia is complete without a stop at Blandy. The 700-acre experimental farm is operated by the University of Virginia.

            Its collections include more than 6,000 trees plus a huge assortment of shrubs in many themed gardens. There are miles of trails at Blandy, and it is a favorite with birders, photographers and painters as well as horseback riders.

            We wandered trails, tree-lined walks, a scenic gazebo overlooking a fertile wetland and gardens of both native plants and herbs.

            There is much to see here. Be sure to pick up the map of the grounds at the kiosk next to the parking lot. Oh, and by all means bring a picnic. There are two quite nice picnic areas. And dogs are allowed if leashed within 200 yards of buildings. Give it half a day, minimum, if this is your cup of tea.

            I only wish this outdoors showcase of the Shenandoah Valley was half as far from Fredericksburg.

           

           

           

             

           

           

           

Truisms to Live By (Or Laugh At)

Armchair Adventures

for April 8, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

Springtime: Time to Smell the Roses

(And Let the Mind Wander)

            It's Springtime. Time for, well, goofy thoughts like…

            My little list I call, Sullivan's Laws.

            Some of these are old, some new, some you've heard before,

but they're little gems I try to live by, at least once in awhile.

            #No chore, spring cleaning or otherwise, can be completed without performing some other chore, which positively cannot be done without first cleaning or finding or doing yet more, and on and on, which is why at day's end, you never got the original thing done.

            # No new flat surface within a building will remain uncovered with Stuff for more than three days.

            # No top official of any government agency, company, university, etc., shall ever under threat of death admit a total screw-up. Terms such as "we blew it!" and dozens more are off-limits and career-enders.

            # Corollary to the above: You, on the other hand, must always confess your total ineptitude and beg forgiveness. In triplicate if you are in the Armed Forces.

            # Sullivan's Sixth Law: If all else fails, sure, read the instructions. If that doesn't do it, Turn Off the TV. Grab a cold one out of the door of the fridge, and if you still give a hoot, you must have run out of cold ones.

            # Sullivan's 7th: Music Helps…

            # Sullivan's 8th: Except When It Doesn't.

            # The 9th: Never Simply Drive the Car, when you could be doing so many other urgent tasks.

            # 10th: Remember the 9th on the way to the hospital.

            #12: Believe 20 percent of the "forwards" you are e-mailed. If they're political, make that zero percent. Remember, there is a thriving industry out there on some undiscovered planet creating this garbage.

            # 13: The obsessively TIDY shall never be satisfied that yes, it's clean enough.

            # 14: Certitude: Never-no exceptions-trust anyone who knows they are always right.

            # The corollary: never believe anyone who always has to top what you know or say. There are people out there with a desperate need to be smarter than you are. They need help. It is in the door of the fridge, if there is any left from #6. In an emergency, Chianti or Merlot will substitute.

            # 15: Pay no attention to those who cannot occasionally laugh at themselves.

            # 16: When it comes to gut instinct vs. reason, trust babies and your dog. They understand what you have forgotten about right vs. wrong. But do not follow their examples. Drinking out of the toilet is bad for you.

            # 17: No one ever died from giving someone a hug…unless someone is their friend's spouse or a cop.

            #18: Letters to the Editor of a newspaper usually say more about the writer  than what they're writing about. Think about it. You can always tell the ones from heavy TV-watchers, and what channel they watch. It's like a time-delayed Tivo.

            #19: If you have no doubts whatever about it…you're probably wrong.

            #20: It is always more instructive-to both listener and speaker-to ask questions than to make declarations. This includes writing essays under one's own name and declaring them to be laws.

PS-A dear friend who read this before you did said it sounds as though I'm heavy

into drink. To the contrary, I tread lightly through that field. But you know the Irish, they love to exaggerate.

           

Tilting My View of Time

Armchair Adventures

for April 1, 2012

by Paul Sullivan

A Little Look at a Big Picture

            Is there any adult who hasn't wondered who they are and where they

came from?

            When DNA analysis became widely available, we expected to learn

more about our roots, short-term and over our long history.

            But as with science itself, the more we learn about ourselves, the more

questions arise.

            Along my dad's side of the family there had been intriguing possibilities about American Indian ancestry in there somewhere. Yet they remained just that: possibilities.

            More than a year ago my friend CG gave me an unusual Christmas gift. It was a kit to take part in National Geographic's Genographic Project. This is an effort to build a database of long-term DNA data to help fill out the deep ancestry picture of our human kind.

            I didn't know quite what to make of it. In fact, I read the accompanying materials and then set it aside and did nothing at all with it for more than a year.

            Early in February, I read through it one day while in Arizona and asked, "Why am I procrastinating about this?"

            I promptly took the necessary cheek swabs and mailed it away to the lab in Texas.

            My mother's and even my father's mother's side of the family are pretty much straightforward Anglo-European.

            But dad's father, Timothy A. Sullivan, who had died when I was but two years old, could have been more complicated.

            There was the story that dad had once said that at age two, his father had been placed in a Catholic orphanage. That much is almost certainly true. But for years the family story was that while at the orphanage, a woman-"dressed like an Indian"-would come to a window and talk to him. He was five years old at the time, according to the account.

            We haven't the option of asking dad about these things again, as he died many years ago. It gets murkier here, but either she told him or he thought that she was his mother.

            The results of the DNA analysis that I sent away in February came up online last week and they bore no surprises at all.

            A deep DNA analysis is quite different from the shorter-term kind of analysis taking us back through a few or a few dozen generations. The deep analysis is intended trace our lineage all the way back to the emergence of modern man in northeast Africa-probably in the vicinity of what is now Kenya.

            It is a big-picture view of some 60,000 years of the human journey rather than a look back a few hundred years.

            The key to my results was graphically illustrated in a broad map depicting Africa, Asia and Europe.

            When I typed in the code required to see the nearly infinitesimal part my family had played in the story of man, I didn't know what to expect.

            There it was, clear as could be: a line tracing the genetic markers that led northward from Africa into what we now think of as the Near East, then eastward toward Central Asia and what we now think of as Iran, then making a near complete reversal westward across northern Europe and down into the heartland of western Europe and the British Isles.

            If there had been any Native American influence-at least in the Y-chromosome faithfully carried by the male-that long line of migration would have traveled northeastward into the Asian heartland and eventually across the so-called Land Bridge to begin the population of the Americas via what is now Alaska.

            It simply was not there.

            Now I have never studied anthropology, but I am inclined to believe these results do not really settle the issue, definitively. To do that, we may have to trace the maternal lineage through a mitochondrial DNA analysis.  

            But before pursuing that line, I'm thinking that it may be fun to do one of the near-term DNA checks.

            This is more fun than I would ever have believed. When it strikes you that your ancestors don't just go back tens, but hundreds and thousands of years, that your true roots are enormously deep, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination.