COLONIAL Cole Digges House Historic Structures Report

Photograph 1: View northwest along Main Street, with Custom House to left and Charles Cox and Coles Diggs houses on the right. Winter of 1863, during Union occupation but apparently before the Swan Tavern blew up. Said to be a Mathew Brady photo. Right (southeast gable) and the exterior chimney centered on it as well as the centered left (northwest) chimney are visible behind the Cox House. This may be the only known photo showing the old right chimney. The house shows a fresh coat of white paint, or more likely, whitewash, at this time.

Photograph 2: Cook Collection photo (from Valentine Museum, Richmond) looking northwest along Main Street, with the river visible in the distance. Possibly c. 1865-75 because the small frame house in right foreground beside the Charles Cox House appears well maintained, and this building was already deteriorating when a piece of it was shown in a sketch of a similar view published in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, November 1, 1879. The photo shows the Cox and Digges houses freshly painted. There is a glazed door in the right front corner (southwest end of southeast wall) of the Digges House.

Photograph 3: View northwest along Main Street with Custom House and 19th-century wooden houses on the left, Cox House with scruffy outbuildings, Cole Digges, and Somerwell House (probably owned by Lightfoot) to the right. Probably c. 1870-80. The old right (southeast) chimney is missing, and its replacement is partially visible behind the left Cox House chimney. The left (northwest) chimney has been rebuilt with the stack behind the ridge. Brickwork appears freshly painted white, except the chimneys. The two-story frame house visible just beyond the Cole Digges House in this photo, is absent from Photo 1. Here it has either dark paint or very little white paint.

Photograph 4: Summer view of Cole Digges House from the south, c.1880-1900. Elizabeth A. Cooper's tearoom sign is in place over the front door of the Digges House. It is thought that Cooper opened the tearoom in the cellar by 1881, and she died in 1901. The door has two six-light leaves, opening out. Louvered shutters on the first-floor windows and dormers. Picket fence to the right (southeast), surrounding shed-roofed porch, square-butt shingle roof with traditional combing at the ridges and swept valleys, installed precisely like 18th- and early 19th-century Chesapeake shingles. It is likely that this is mid-19th-century roof covering. Front painted white, relatively fresh, right side dirty, upper woodwork unpainted or dark paint. Shows second left (northwest) chimney with some damage and scrawny stove chimney on right (southeast).

Photograph 5: Another summer view from the south, also showing the derelict Cox House to the right, within a year or two of the fourth photo, judging from extent of vines on the right gable and shrubs inside the picket fence. Shows the E. A. Cooper sign, shingles, glazed front doors and louvered shutters. The two-story frame Old York Tavern visible to the left of the Cole Digges House looks freshly painted.

Photograph 6: A printed winter view looking north/northwest along Main Street, roughly contemporary with photos 3 and 4. The ramshackle single-bay wooden house east of the Cox House has substantially deteriorated since photo 2 was taken. The J. S. deNeuville store has not yet been built northwest of the Digges House.

Photograph 7: View looking northwest along Main Street published in Charles H. Callahan, Washington: The Man and the Mason, (c. 1913), with the Custom House on the left. The Digges House appears in better condition, freshly painted white (except woodwork and upper chimneystacks), and with a new sawn-work porch railing enclosing the exterior cellar steps at right end. The front right door is visible inside this enclosure, and louvered shutters remains in place. The Cox House, which apparently burned in 1912, remains standing, and the turn-of-the-century J. S. deNeuville store is now standing.1

Photograph 8: Photograph taken from near the Nelson House, looking northwest, offering a clear view of the Cox and Cole Digges houses, with chickens and sleeping dog in the foreground. Taken somewhat later than photo 6 because the one-story wooden extension has disappeared from the east end of the Cox House by this time.

Photograph 9: View of the Digges House from the south, across a rutted dirt Main Street, with a telegraph pole to the left. The house seems to have declined somewhat. All shutters have been removed from front and visible right windows. A solid front door has replaced the glazed leaves, and an old nail-studded leaf is in the right front door. There are nine-over-nine sash with wide muntins in the right window lighting the right front room, perhaps the earliest surviving sash visible in any of the photographs. A small rectangular sign has been attached to the right of the front door transom.

Photograph 10: A view from the west contemporary with photo 8. In this rare view, one glimpses the mid-19th-century brick-walled rear shed across a white-painted brick fence. Two front window wells intended to light the cellar are clearly visible. Shutters are absent on the left wall as well.

Photograph 11: Uneven view from the south showing the Digges House used as the First National Bank of Yorktown, with a long rectangular sign hanging above a concrete sidewalk. The building appears in rough condition despite its new function. Much of the sawn work railing has disappeared from the right end, replaced with plain rails, and there is some type of fabric, probably canvas with a tar coating, patching the inevitable leaks where the dormer roofs meet the front slope.

Photograph 12: A more complete view, slightly later, with canvas draped over shingles below the front dormers and what appears to be tarred canvas covering sizable parts of the right slope on the ell roof. A concrete sidewalk has been laid in front of the house.

Photograph 13: Postcard view from the south, labeled "Old Bank, Yorktown, Va." The side porch has disappeared, leaving holes in the right wall and flooring boards or cover over the cellar steps. The early nine-over-nine sash are now clearly visible between the two right doors. Fabric above the front door has fallen away, leaving firing strips, and the bank sign has been taken away. Two front cellar window wells are visible in the concrete sidewalk.

Photograph 14: A remarkable view looking west past the fully exposed right wall of the Cole Digges House toward the Customs House. This is a still photo from D. W. Griffith's film America, 1924. Wistful maidens stand in the exterior door to the rear passage, various colonials pile up against the gable-end wall, and a slave carries tubs of water past a pair of frontiersmen with furs and flintlocks. The mid-19th-century shingle roof and earlier nine-over-nine sash remain in place.

Photograph 15: Detail of right gable, new interior chimney, and right slope of the ell, labeled "Pate House, June 6, 1925, by John H. Scarff."2 The right-facing dormer has been reworked and the picturesque slate roof installed, but the sash are not yet in place.

Photograph 16: Left slope of roof on the ell and rebuilt chimneystack, from the west, labeled "Pate House, June 8, 1925, by John H. Scarff." Here, too, the left-facing dormers have been reworked, but the sash are not in place.

Photograph 17: View of the restored house from the south. All sash, first-floor louvered shutters, and a side screen door are in place, as well as an iron picket railing shielding the exterior cellar steps. The walls were not newly whitewashed, just as Mrs. Paul seems to have preferred in 1925.3

Photograph 18: View from the west showing the end of a new rear, shed-roofed porch. A trellis closes the left end of the porch. The garden to the left is surrounded by a metal post and wire fence.

Photograph 19: View from west/southwest across a wide concrete sidewalk through the fence to the garden in bloom, obviously after 1926. Labeled in old handwriting "Perhaps Mrs. Chenoweth would like this."

Photograph 20: Interior view in the new living room, looking east toward closets and the arched doorway to the "hall" (enlarged stair passage). The woodwork appears light in color.

Photograph 21: Interior view in the new "dining room" looking southeast toward a door to the "hall," a diagonal bathroom wall, and the fireplace with a neoclassical iron coal grate. There appears to be a bed on the left.

Photograph 22: View in the stair "hall" looking southwest toward the stair and dining room door with wooden grille above.

Photograph 23: The living room, facing the fireplace (northwest). Edith Tunis Sale's plate 59.4

Photograph 24: Essentially the same view with Mr. and Mrs. Chenoweth.5

Photograph 25: Right rear corner of the living room, with arched doorway to the stair hall. Sale's plate 142.

⁵This print is from the Compte de Grasse Chapter of the D.A.R.

Photograph 26: Dining room looking southeast from the living room. Sale's plate 143.

Photograph 27: Dining room, looking southeast toward the fireplace. The bed in photo 20 is not in evidence. Sale's plate 73. A new glazed leaf is in the right front (south) doorway.

Photograph 28: Stair hall, looking west toward the new main stair and enclosed cellar stair. Four of J. H. Scarff's acorns are in view. Sale's plate 19.

Photograph 29: Post-restoration view from the south, perhaps c. 1930, with ivy growing up to the eaves and across the right gable.

Photograph 30: View of the house and temple-fronted First National Bank of Yorktown, dating from the early 1930s; by this time the ivy had reached the ridge.

Photograph 31: View from northwest along Main Street, showing the house flanked by J. S. deNeuville store and the bank. Ivy has covered most of the left end and chimney.

Photograph 32: View from the west, showing cellar window patches uncovered by excavation for waterproofing. Photo by Willie Graham, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999. Neg. No. 99-WJG-125, 19s.

Photograph 33: View of the northwest chimney base from the southwest. Photo by Willie Graham, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999. Neg. No. 99-WJG-125, 3s.

Photograph 34: View from north toward left wall of ell, with coal chute at left (northeast) and c.1925 vestibule supported by southeast wall of early cellar entrance. Photo by Willie Graham, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999. Neg. No. 99-WJG-125, 30s.

Photograph 35: View of cellar entrance from north, with slots for the wood step nosings visible on the northeast or left wall. Photo by Willie Graham, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1999. Neg. No. 99-WJG-125, 35s.