A Norfolk Landmark Gleams

By John G. Funchion

After a year long effort to showcase Norfolk’s signature architectural icon, the Battell-Stoeckel Whitehouse is sparkling white once again.

The project, which began in the fall of 2006 and was completed last month, experienced its fair share of interruptions. Following an initial power-washing of the entire building and some priming, winter weather suspended operations before a late spring renewal of work.

Work then progressed smoothly throughout the early part of the summer until the Yale Summer School of Music began in early July. At that time, Paul Hockshaw, the program’s Director, suggested a temporary halt to the project. “With this year’s special fund raising gala and all of the other activities connected to our festival, we had concerns about paint fumes, workers and ladders.” Work began again in late August, finishing two months later.

Roberge Painting Contractors, Inc. of Forestville, Connecticut held the contract for the project. According to Peter Roberge, the firm’s president, “a major concern of ours came in the form of dirt being kicked up onto the paint from traffic on Route 44. As a result, I suggest power washing the front of the Whitehouse every couple of years in the future.”

The labor intensive endeavor included painting 90 windows and 1,110 window panes, 427 balustrades, 82 shutters, 14 twenty-foot high Ionic columns, 11 iron grates and every arch between the 28 Corinthian columns gracing the northwest wrap-around veranda and sun porch.

Workers applied to the prepared surface a protective “peel bond” first coat followed by a singular oil-based primer and two final coats of mold and mildew proof exterior latex paint. “Nearly 70 gallons of paint were required,” Roberge said.

Built in 1801 by Joseph Battell, the elegant house morphed from an early Colonial Georgian with Federal style hints, to an 1855 makeover in the Victorian mode and finally, in 1908, to the Neo Classical Revival style we see today.

When Ellen Battell-Stoeckel died in 1939, her will established a trust extending Yale University’s influence in music and art in Norfolk and also provided for the upkeep of the venerable estate.

According to Bill Gridley, Chairman of the Yale Board of Trustees, “the cost of the project was in six figures.” He explained that the Whitehouse was the last of three painting projects, including the Music Shed and the Battell House. Joseph Veronesi, manager of the Battell-Stoeckel estate, indicated that the Whitehouse is painted “about every ten years.”