1111 ORONOCO STREET, ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Colross Mansion, erected in Alexandria, Virginia, around 1799 to 1800, was one of the most impressive private residences of its time, a grand urban house that announced classical order along Oronoco Street. Commissioned by merchant John Potts, the mansion rose on a generous two-acre parcel and quickly became a landmark of scale and distinction in the young republic. Its rectangular brick form, originally accompanied by service and carriage wings, displayed the balanced proportions and formal symmetry associated with the finest Georgian design.
The exterior composition was laid in brick. A neoclassical portico with paired Doric columns marked the entrance as a moment of ceremony. Fanlight and sidelights softened the doorway with light, and evenly spaced lintels and dormers animated the roofline, once crowned by a balustraded deck above the cornice. Moulded profiles at the eaves and around the openings repeated classical lines from base to roof, creating a sense of compositional harmony. The house drew inspiration from the great Virginia estates of the era, translating their ordered grandeur into a renewed setting responsive to Alexandria’s expanding wealth and its pursuit of elegance and permanence.
Although Colross no longer stands on Oronoco Street, its presence endures through documentation and through its relocation and reconstruction in Princeton, New Jersey. The measured drawings and photographs preserved in the Mouldings One gallery allow the viewer to trace its moulded details with exactness that once shaped its rooms and elevations. Through these records, Colross retains its architectural standard, offering a vivid glimpse of how classical design, brick construction, and finely worked trim combined to create a house of lasting grace and distinction.
