Although row houses--a continuous row of joined family residences on
unit foundations--were a common city feature in 17th-century England,
apparently they did not become popular at Jamestown. But the brick
foundation of one true multiple-family unit has been uncovered, and two
others approach this category, thus providing the true precedent for the
row houses which came to characterize miles of Baltimore and
Philadelphia streets, and are a familiar pattern of some modern duplex
apartment units.
This Jamestown row house is probably the most impressive foundation on
the island. It is 16 feet long and 20 feet wide (inside measurement),
situated east of the Tercentenary Monument, facing south, well back from
the river and "the back streete." A cellar and a great fireplace
terminate the east end, and 9 other fireplaces are evident in 4 main
divisions, which may have housed one family or more in each division.
Since artifact evidence relates it to the last quarter of the 17th
century, and possibly the beginning of the 18th, there would seem little
possibility of the row house having served as a public building or a
tavern. There is some evidence that at least part of the structure
burned.
Two other foundations might be classed as row houses, but are less
clearly delineated. One is the Last Statehouse Group of five units in
the APVA grounds.[1] The other multiple house is a 3-unit building
midway between the brick church and Orchard Run. This structure
generally fits the description of the First Statehouse in its 3-unit
construction and dimensions, and has long been thought to be the
original Statehouse building. The structure, however, is as close to the
present shoreline as the First Statehouse is recorded to have been in
1642--a puzzling coincidence, if the factor of erosion is taken into
consideration.
[Footnote 1: After the Third Statehouse burned, it was replaced on the
same foundations by the Fourth (and last) Statehouse built on Jamestown
Island, which burned in 1698. The Fifth Statehouse, now reconstructed at
Williamsburg, also burned, continuing an unhappy tradition that includes
the destruction of the National Capitol at Washington in 1814 and the
Virginia Statehouse at Richmond in 1865.]