New Color Scheme of Lee-Fendall House Restores Historic Accuracy
The property's restoration celebrates its 50th anniversary as a public museum
ALEXANDRIA, VA – The Lee-Fendall House Museum and Garden recently completed a major exterior paint and restoration project, fascinating Alexandrians with the changes. For decades, the museum at 614 Oronoco Street had been presented in a familiar pale cream paint, adorned with dark green shutters. But as the Lee-Fendall House celebrates its 50th anniversary as a public museum in 2024, the estate’s management elected to restore the house’s appearance to reflect a more historically accurate color scheme.
The new appearance of the house is based on careful research. With great attention to detail, the house is now restored to approximate the oldest well-documented color scheme of the structure. “This is a house with over two centuries of history behind it,” said Shawn Eyer, Executive Director of the Virginia Trust for Historic Preservation, the 501(c)(3) foundation that preserves the home and its gardens for public benefit. “We knew that restoring its color scheme to a more historic era would align with current best practices for the care of historic properties. The major change in our appearance has had the added benefit of generating fresh interest in the museum itself.”
Relying on several sources, including a 2023 Historic Structures Report by SmithGroup, a 1998 microscopical paint and color analysis by the Frank S. Welsh Company, and the museum’s own careful scraping of the building’s various surfaces, the Lee-Fendall House arrived at a beautiful combination of moderate red-brown and classical white for the house’s clapboards, flushboards, and trim. Extensive repairs to exterior woodwork, reglazing of windows, and cleaning and repair of siding and masonry were also part of the project.
“While the house was built in 1785, the new appearance of Lee-Fendall approximates the color scheme that existed after a major renovation around 1850,” Eyer explains. “Prior to that, we know that the surface was stained in dark red-brown, which was common at that time.” While later the house was gray, then yellow, and eventually white, returning to the earliest documented appearance has brought new life to the museum.
“We’re seeing the house now very close to how it looked before and during the Civil War,” said Ed Horn, the President of Lee-Fendall’s board. “We’re getting compliments from passersby constantly, so we’re pleased with the new look both from a historic perspective and in terms of the present-day result.”
The exterior renovation was done by HomeWorks Painting and dedicated volunteers. It was made possible by funding generously provided by the Historic Alexandria Foundation, Spring2Action donors, and the members and friends of the Lee-Fendall House.
People interested in seeing the results for themselves may wish to stop by for a tour or attend Lee-Fendall’s 50th-anniversary Jazz Under the Stars fundraiser on October 19. For more information, please visit leefendallhouse.org.
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