1965 - Menokin Rediscovered
In 1965, three University of Virginia Architecture School graduate students, who shared an apartment, planned a road trip to the Northern Neck to explore historic sites. Among the three was Calder Loth who would later become Senior Architectural Historian with Virginia's Department of Historic Resources, where he played a major role in saving Menokin twenty years later. More about Calder’s story to come.
One of those places the students were seeking on their trip was Menokin. To find the place, they had to ask a lady walking along the side of the road if she knew the location of Menokin. She replied, ”Right up ahead and down the road.”
Calder Loth, Peter Hodson and Bob Nylander at Menokin in 1965
They found the original Menokin house abandoned and in a state of neglect. The house was wide open as well, so these three young students (naturally) decided they had free reign to enter the house and explore.
One aspect of the house that struck them was that all the original woodwork and details of the interior and exterior ornament were largely intact, even as the house was unmaintained and unsecured.
Calder vividly remembers exploring the dwelling and being aghast at the condition it had befallen. At one point he picked up smashed fragments of the front door fanlight that lay scattered on the hall floor. His preservation mindset induced him to place the fragments in a first-floor cupboard, hoping someone would find them later for preservation purposes. One of the fragments was indeed found years later, which enabled the fanlight to be replicated in the front door design that is currently displayed in the Menokin Visitor Center today. Incredible.
The two students accompanying Calder that day were Peter Hodson and Bob Nylander. Each would go on to celebrated careers in their respective fields. Calder was hired by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in 1968 where he worked for decades with colleagues to promote the preservation of historic sites in Virginia, many threatened with loss.
One of these would be Menokin. That chapter comes nearly 20 years later in this timeline.
Within this photo gallery are the only existing images of the Menokin’s second-floor taken that day along with photographs of Calder, Peter and Bob. The photos of the upstairs taken by Bob would provide guidance later in the preservation and interpretation of Menokin.
When Calder and Peter returned to Menokin briefly in 1967, they were distressed to find that the irreplaceable woodwork had vanished. Perhaps to thievery, the saddened Calder surmised. Or so he thought. Head to the timeline to see what actually happened many years later in 1985.
