Restoring the Powder Magazine

The Williamsburg Powder Magazine was completed in 1716 under the direction of Virginia’s Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood. It is a two-story brick octagonal structure built as a storage and distribution point for the colony’s supply of arms and gunpowder.

After the American Revolution, the Powder Magazine served a string of different purposes, including a market, church, stable, dancing school, and an arsenal once again during the American Civil War.

By 1889, the Magazine had fallen into disrepair, resulting in a wall collapse. Some Virginians concerned about the loss of the structure formed a preservation group to step in, purchasing and stabilizing the structure. They later opened it as a memorial to colonial life.

In the 1930s, to help the preservation group, Colonial Williamsburg, which was in its early stages of an ambitious restoration of Williamsburg to its 18th-century appearance, conducted a full restoration to return the building to its original 1776 appearance. But limited research resources led the Williamsburg architectural historians to make some inaccurate design choices.

New questions and new research deepens the stories shared at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and helps uncover where earlier interpretations went wrong. With new discoveries, Colonial Williamsburg modifies its Historic Area to reflect the most accurate possible view of colonial life.

In 2021, Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Preservation team began a project to uncover the Magazine's true appearance in 1776. This would be difficult. Sparse records from the 1930s restoration and numerous prior alterations left the structure layered with changes, obscuring its original form.

A key challenge was determining the original window orientation. Since the building had been heavily altered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the preservation team relied on multiple evidence sources to uncover their layout.

The team first examined historic images for clues. The earliest, an 1855 illustration by historian Benjamin Lossing, depicts windows on every first-floor wall without a door and on the north, south, east, and west walls of the second floor.

Later images verified the window orientation seen in the Lossing image. Now the question became: what exactly did these windows look like?

To further investigate this question, archaeologists conducted excavations around the Magazine. They unearthed many artifacts that related to the use of the Magazine during the 18th century including gun parts, scrap iron, and various architectural material.

Casement windows are a type of window characterized by the use of diamond shape glass held together by strips of lead called cames. These windows can sit in either an iron or wood frame with side hinges that allow them to open like a door.

No replacement is noted in primary records until 1778, when new windows are recorded as being made for the Magazine. This is when sash windows likely replaced the original casements to increase the safety and security of the Magazine.

With this evidence, the preservation team concluded that restoring the Magazine to its 1776 appearance would require replacing the existing sash windows with casements. Because so few colonial casements survive in the United States, the next challenge was determining the design for the reconstructed casements.

To determine the size of the original casement windows, the team looked to the physical building for clues. Masons trained in historic methods worked to remove the masonry from the original window locations. However, years of alterations had destroyed much of the physical evidence.

With no physical evidence, the team turned to historic images from before the 1930s restoration. They looked closely at the images and multiplied the number of brick rows by the height of one brick to determine the size of the window.

After determining the general size, the team studied 17th- and 18th-century casement window examples with similar dimensions from the colonies and the UK. These references guided the design of the reconstructed casement windows for the Magazine.

Once the new casement windows were designed, restoration began by reopening original window spaces. Many had been filled or enlarged in the 1930s, so masons removed infill and later windows to rebuild the brick window openings to their proper size.

To reconstruct the casement windows, the team turned to the UK for expertise. Owlsworth Conservation, renowned for traditional craftsmanship, was chosen to recreate the historic design.

With the windows being only one part of a larger restoration, the preservation team continues to study the structure to ensure the most accurate result possible. Once the exterior is completed, the team will shift its focus to the interior, restoring it to its 1776 storehouse appearance.