Huntley (Historical Marker)

Here follows the inscription written on this roadside historical marker:

Huntley

On the hill above stands Huntley, a Federal-style villa built about 1825 for Thomson F. Mason, a grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall. Thomson Mason, a prominent Alexandria lawyer, served on the city council, as mayor, and also as president of both the Little River Turnpike and Alexandria Canal companies. The thousand-acre Huntley property stretched across the valley below. Remaining dependencies include a subterranean icehouse with a vaulted ceiling, and a combination privy and storage building. The author of Huntley’s unusual design remains unknown, but the house has been attributed to Benjamin H. Latrobe or George Hadfield, two notable early architects.

Marker Erected 1994 by Department of Historic Resources. (Marker Number E-96.)


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Here follows an excerpt from the 1970 Fairfax County Master Inventory of Historic Sites which contained entries from the Historic American Buildings Survey Inventory:

Huntley was built about 1820 on Mason family land for Thomson F. Mason, a grandson of George Mason of Gunston Hall. It was not the personal residence of the Mason family, however, but was used by a succession of renters, overseers and farmers. The property passed out of the Mason family in 1862, in payment of Mason's son's debts.

Huntley consists of a dwelling; necessary with flanking storage rooms; root cellar and storage room; ice house; dairy-spring house; and tenant house. All are brick and from roughly the same period, the first quarter of the 19th century. The brick is laid in common bond ranging from three to five stretcher courses. The ice house is a domed structure, fully below ground, laid entirely in headers.

The house is essentially Federal in character, though possessing certain elements transitional to the Greek Revival. Most doors, including the center section doors with fan and side lights, all mantels, sash and moldings are Federal. The house is built into a hillside in an "H" shape so that the center section is three story to the front, two to the rear, flanked by projecting wings two story to the front, one to the rear. The roof is now a ridge one with shed extensions over the wings which have projecting ridge roofs. There is evidence that the center section roof was originally hip. Massive chimneys are located on each side at the intersection of the wings and center portion. The center section has been extended to the end of the wings at the rear.

Certain stylistic elements of the house appear in this area principally in structures designed by George Hadfield, one of the superintendents of the construction of the U.S. Capitol. For this and other reasons, it is possible that the house derived from a design by Hadfield.


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Here follows an excerpt about the house from Donald Hakenson's "This Forgotten Land" tour guide:

The Huntley house was built circa 1825 by Thomson F. Mason, the grandson of George Mason. It was George Mason who wrote the Virginia Constitution of 1776. Thomson Mason was President of the Middle Turnpike Company, the Alexandria Canal Company and was also Mayor of Alexandria.

During the Civil War George W. Johnson was a tenant at Huntley. George Johnson had two nephews in the Union Army. Sergeant John W. Johnson was in Captain Samuel Means Loudoun Rangers, the only organized body of troops from the state of Virginia to fight for the Union Army, and Richard Barnhouse, an ambulance driver in the Army of the Potomac. George Johnston wrote after the war:

"I offered to shoulder any musket with others to go out and shoot the Rebels, who had been shooting at our pickets along Pike Run, just outside Alexandria ... I sat on my porch and listened to the Battle of Bull Run and we hoped we would have a great Union victory. I felt pretty badly when I found out how the battle had gone."

George Johnson also stated that he believed that a short time after the Union Army returned from the Peninsula campaign that all the corn was taken by General Sickles' men, and that many of the hogs were killed by the Garibaldi Regiment. It was also reported by neighbors that Richardson's Brigade was camped on the Huntley house grounds. The Huntley farm was occupied by Union troops in the fall of 1861 and the winter of 1862.

The Huntley house is on the National Register of Historic Places because of its architecture.