Colross was an early 19th-century Mason family estate on Oronoco Street in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia.[1][2] Colross was the Alexandria residence of Thomson Francis Mason (1785 – 21 December 1838[3][4]), a grandson of George Mason.[2][5] The Colross mansion was relocated to Princeton, New Jersey, restored, and currently serves as the administrative building of Princeton Day School.[2][5][6]
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The Colross property was developed as a plantation by John Potts, a prominent Alexandria merchant.[2][5][6] He began construction of a brick mansion on the property in 1800.[2][5] Potts ran into financial difficulties and put the unfinishe house up for sale in 1801.[2][5][6] The property was purchased in December 1803 for $9,000 by Jonathan Swift, a merchant and Freemason.[2][5] Swift presided over the Alexandria City Council from 1822 through 1823.[2] Swift referred to his estate as “Belle Air” and “Grasshopper Hall.”[5] His wife, two daughters, and three sons lived at the mansion.[5] As Alexandria expanded, Colross evolved from a rural plantation into an urban estate.[2] (Between 1791 and 1847, the city of Alexandria was a part of Alexandria County within the District of Columbia.[7][8])
After Swift's death in 1824, the estate was purchased and renamed Colross by Thomson Francis Mason, a prominent jurist, lawyer, councilman, judge of the Criminal Court of the District of Columbia, and Mayor of Alexandria between 1827 and 1830.[2][4][5] Mason made Colross his chief homestead and made substantial modifications and additions to the mansion at Colross.[2][5][9][10] Huntley in Fairfax County, Virginia remained his secondary country residence.[9][10] After Mason's death in 1838, his son Arthur "Pen" Pendleton Mason (1835–1893[3]) inherited the Colross estate.[11] During the American Civil War, Colross was seized by Union authorities.[5] Local tradition has it that several Union deserters were executed against a brick wall on the estate.[5]
William Smoot, a lumber merchant and Alexandria mayor in the 1880s, resided at Colross with his family between 1885 and 1917.[2][5] In 1917, another lumber merchant, William Hoge, acquired ownership of the mansion.[2][5] In a fashion similar to that of nearby Abingdon, Colross's property underwent industrialization with the construction of a warehouse complex and other supporting buildings associated with Alexandria Hay & Grain.[2][5] Colross's mansion become a storage facility within a lumber yard operated by another planing mill owner.[6] Both the mansion and the adjacent warehouses suffered considerable damage from a 1927 tornado.[2][5]
Between 1929 and 1932, John Munn purchased the mansion and shipped the structure brick by brick to New Jersey, where it was restored.[2][5][6] Following Munn’s death in 1956, Colross became the main building of the Princeton Day School, which it remains to this day.[2][5][6] Colross's remaining brick foundation was buried for over a half-century beneath a slab of reinforced concrete.[2] After the mansion's relocation, its site was the location of, among other structures, a large 50-truck garage, Andy's Car Wash, a Dominion Virginia Power substation, and the Hennage Creative Printers facility.[2][5]
The former Colross property, which is bounded by North Fayette, Oronoco, Henry, and Pendleton streets,[2][5][6] was purchased in 2003 by real estate development company Diamond Properties with plans to build Monarch Condominium, a mixed-use mid-rise luxury condominium project.[1][2][5] In 2005, Diamond Properties was forced to halt its construction to allow for an archaeological excavation of the Colross site due to Alexandria's Archaeological Protection Code requirement.[1][2][5] At the behest of the city of Alexandria, the excavation of the Colross archaeological site began between March and June 2005.[2][5] Diamond Properties paid R. Christopher Goodwin & Associates Inc., a cultural resource management firm, approximately $100,000 to explore the site for historical artifacts and ensure that all burial plots had been removed.[2][5]
While few artifacts were recovered, historians said the dig offered a clearer view of early 19th-century life at Colross.[2] Discoveries included: an underground domed brick cistern that served as a water purification system and evidence that slaves lived in outbuildings on the Colross estate.[2][5] Archaeologists also discovered Colross's original basement floor, laid in a herringbone bond.[2][5] Evidence of the estate's exterior walls was unearthed along with the foundations of the estate's smokehouse, stables, and burial vault.[2][5] In the northwestern portion of the property, the foundation of what is believed to be a rectangular burial vault also was uncovered.[5] There were no remains of burials discovered.[5] All interments were presumably removed in the early 20th century.[5] (Thomson Francis Mason was originally interred in 1838, along with two of his daughters, at the Colross graveyard until subsequent residents had their remains reinterred at Christ Church Episcopal Cemetery in Alexandria.[4][5])
According to the Alexandria Economic Development Partnership, 79 condominium buyers walked away due to the construction delay.[1]
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