Audio
W. Brown Morton III Interview Clip #2: Waterford, Va. NHL Oral History Project
Transcript
BROWN MORTON: I don’t remember there being any objections. I tried to explain to them why I didn’t want to go with property boundaries, but I wanted to go with a boundary that established the integrity of the viewshed. That’s what I was trying to achieve, and that, of course, doesn’t always coincide with property boundaries.
MORRISEY: And do you recall how you specifically mapped the lines, especially on the periphery where it kind of cut across various property lines?
BROWN MORTON: Yeah, I went and stood with my back to every single building in the village and looked out and I thought, what can I reasonably establish, an achievable boundary which doesn’t appear to be overreaching? But neither do I want to establish a boundary that is too close in. So, I wasn’t paying attention to legal boundaries. I was looking at the site because I felt that what makes Waterford nationally significant is the unspoiled preservation of not only the place but the viewshed.
Description
W. Brown Morton III and interviewer Catherine Morrissey (Center for Historical Architecture and Design, University of Delaware) discuss Brown Morton’s methods of creating the boundaries for the district. Rather than using property boundaries to define the edges, Brown Morton took an “unusual” approach for the time and created boundaries that encompassed the village and its viewshed.
Credit
NPS / University of Delaware, Center for Historic Architecture and Design staff, December 2019
Date Created
03/03/2021
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