Gunston Hall

Built in 1923 in Biltmore Forest, a residential park carved from the Vanderbilt estate near Asheville, this five-part brick house follows the plan of Gunston Hall, the Virginia home of Dr. Mason's great-great-grandfather George Mason. Washington architect Waddy B. Wood replicated the central block's proportions and pedimented porch, while the garden front has a three-part Tuscan doorway instead of the original Chinese Gothic porch. Luther L. Merchant built the house, which Dr. Mason used as a summer residence. The property is valued as a pioneering early Colonial Revival design, predating the restorations at Colonial Williamsburg by several years. Its grounds, shaped by landscape superintendent Chauncey Beadle and later enlarged by owner Lola Anderson Dennis, are regarded as a largely intact early twentieth-century designed landscape. The house was also an early model for later construction in the development.