“AIRLIE” 
THE ESTATE OF H. C. GROOME, ESQ. 
COPE & STEWARDSON, ARCHITECTS 
C LOSE to the foot-hills of the Blue Ridge, in 
the Piedmont region of Virginia, is the town 
of Warrenton,a placed some historic inter¬ 
est during the Civil War. Here the peaceful rural 
landscape is shadowed by the surrounding hills and 
watered by the streams that flow from hillside springs. 
In a delta formed by the confluence of two such 
streams a few miles north of the town the grass lands 
and grain fields of “Airlie” lie. The Mansion House 
is built on a bit of rising ground close to the stream 
which flows through the park between the public 
road and the house. A belt of fine oak timber 
borders the stream on the east, and the grass cov¬ 
ered bottom on its west bank extends to a piece of 
rolling land at the edge of which winds the entrance 
drive. As one approaches the house an apple 
orchard is passed on the right, divided from the 
flower gardens by a stone wall. The grounds and 
gardens were laid out by the owner of the prop¬ 
erty after the completion of the Mansion House in 
1900, the present arrangement having been reached 
by a process of evolution. 
T he site chosen for the house was the north slope of 
a knoll near the stream, the house facing north, and 
the land, falling abruptly in every direction, lent 
itself to a variety of treatments. On the north 
two terraces rise from the driveway, which itself 
practically constitutes a third terrace, being at one 
point ten feet above the bottom-land of the stream 
and supported by a huge retaining wall which, as it 
rises above the drive, forms a parapet bordering the 
drive on the north, the house side being bordered 
by the retaining wall of the first terrace. The 
driveway after passing the house crosses the stream 
NORTH FRONT OF THE HOUSE FROM THE LOWER TERRACE 
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