Examination of the remaining walls and foundations yielded substantial evidence of the building’s internal arrangement and general decorative character, as of ca. 1810 when it was expanded to something like its present size by addition of the present upper floor and east wing. By these changes Mount Pleasant came to resemble the dwelling we know today. Not until this time did the property come to be called “Mount Pleasant.”

Thus restoring Mount Pleasant to the period immediately following 1810 captures a transformation of the house—but also a concurrent remaking of the entire property, implied by its new name and everywhere demonstrated in the archaeology. Restoration to ca. 1810 maintains an important historical consistency between the house we now see building and the name it bore. Restoring to this period also allows us to retain all pre-1900 fabric, while recreating the period for which the physical evidence is most plentiful.

Following complete demolition of the 1950s interiors, architectural explorations revealed the location of the early floor levels, the passage walls, the probable disposition of the stair, the related location of doorways to the principal ground-floor rooms, and the configuration of front and rear porches for the main house. It is also clear that the spaces to either side of the west chimney were enclosed in some fashion, upstairs and down. Downstairs, these were fashionable arched niches; upstairs they were closets. We can also say with complete confidence that the east wing was two full stories in height.

In the main house, evidence for the general character of interior embellishments is plainly evident. The distressed lower zone of the wall shows that the ground-floor rooms were wainscoted to chair-rail height. Above this point, remaining nails indicate that they were furred out and plastered. In the west ground-floor room, arched alcoves to either side of the chimney had vaulted plaster soffits. In the east room, there were no such closets or alcoves. Scribed lines on the rubbed brick surround of the fireplace in this room reveal the size of the chimneypiece, as measured between the inner edges.

Upstairs, joist pockets show where the ca. 1810 floor stood, and the absence of these pockets in the passage demonstrates that joists ran east-west here, and that the flooring therefore ran lengthwise in the passage. It almost certainly did the same downstairs. Plaster remnants show that the west room upstairs had closets while the east room did not. Remains of plaster also outline the size and location of chair boards on the upper floor, with plaster above and below. Likewise, the masonry is conclusive in showing that there were no window seats in these upper rooms.

On the exterior, the removal of two window frames uncovered evidence fixing the depth, width, and set-back of the window frames, and the profile of the sills. This information allows us to determine the size and configuration of the sash lights with substantial accuracy. Inside, the brickwork testifies to the existence of window seats in the ground-floor rooms of the main house.

Removal of twentieth-century door surrounds revealed that the masonry openings for all three exterior doorways of the main house remain intact, all having rubbed jambs and rowlock heads. All three appear to have been what Virginians referred to as “folding doors”; today we call them “double doors.” In the cellar, the remaining brick jambs of the passage walls capture the size of the doorways as well as the size and nature of the members that framed these openings.