Maymont was created in the Gilded Age by James and Sallie Dooley, who lived there from 1893 until 1925, spanning a period of remarkable economic growth and technological advances. The Dooleys bought the land in 1886, after discovering it on one of their daily horseback rides and being “struck with the beauty of the views of the river and the beautiful oaks that were on the slope of that hill,” as Dooley later wrote.
On this large swath of tree-lined pastureland, the Dooleys had a blank canvas for building an ornamental estate typical of the Gilded Age. James Dooley had become one of the wealthiest men in Virginia by the end of Reconstruction through savvy investments in railroads, land, iron and steel. The couple commissioned a European-trained local architect, Edgerton Stewart Rogers, to design a 12,000-square-foot home on the highest ridge of the property overlooking the James River, at the crest of a long, tree-lined drive.
Completed in 1893, the Mansion blended two popular architectural styles of the day, Romanesque Revival and Queen Anne. Even the service buildings added between 1904 and 1908 — a stone barn, a carriage house and a water tower— were designed to evoke the charm of an Old World village by local architectural firm, Noland and Baskervill.
Taking advantage of the showplace they had built, the Dooleys entertained often at Maymont, from social teas and holiday dinners to business meetings and a seated luncheon for more than 200 guests at a national governors’ reception in 1912. During Richmond’s hot summers, the couple would either travel abroad or, after 1912, retreat to their summer home Swannanoa, on Afton Mountain not far from Sallie Dooley’s relatives in Staunton, Virginia.
To manage the large home and their social gatherings, the Dooleys employed seven to 10 skilled domestic workers, most of whom lived off property, with dozens more workers to tend the gardens and landscape. Though the wages they earned at Maymont were at or slightly above the prevailing wages for domestic jobs at the time, many of the predominantly African American staff who worked there during the restrictive Jim Crow era would continue to seek out new opportunities, some joining the Great Migration to the North and West.
James Dooley’s will, published in 1922, bequeathed the grounds, the Mansion and all its contents to the City of Richmond, upon the death of Sallie Dooley in 1925. The bequest ensured that Maymont serve as a public park and museum so that everyone could enjoy the beautiful gardens, architecture, furnishings and decorative arts that the couple had carefully assembled over years of travel and collecting.
